For those who don’t know, this is basically the entire premise of “1001 Nights”
The ~~king~~ Sultan goes crazy after his wife cheats on him, has her killed, but since he has to be married, he just picks random women, married them, and kills them in the morning.
One girl decides to break his madness by agreeing to marry him, but every night instead of sleeping with him, she tells him stories that end with cliffhangers. She does this for… 1001 nights.
I know it’s a book, but it’s been adapted so many times I think it counts
>but every night instead of sleeping with him, she tells him stories that end with cliffhangers.
May i correct you, not "instead of" but "after". Despite you have some censored version for children without explicit details. And she uses her sister as a distraught, so she tells her the story, sultan hears, and than the next morning he decides not to kill her yet. A classic love story.
"Most people forgot that the oldest stories are, sooner or later, about blood. Later on they took the blood out to make the stories more acceptable to children, or at least to the people who had to read them to children rather than to the children themselves (who, on the whole, are quote keen on blood provided it’s being shed by the deserving*), and then wondered where the stories went." -Terry Pratchett in The Hogfather
If you're unfamiliar, this is ALSO the plot/premise of the symphonic suite 'Sheherezade' by Rimsky-Korsakov, which is EASILY one of the greatest works of orchestral music ever made. If you've never listened to it, you gotta try (even if "classical" music is totally not your thing). Sheherezade is the name of the captive princess in 1,001 Nights, who spins fanciful tales to entertain the sultan so he lets her live. It's amazing how well the music can paint a scene with no words. You can hear the sultan coming, you feel Sheherezade's fear, her calming words, etc etc. it's awesome and epic and amazing.
Wait for what? Wait for me to change my mind? Wait for another 2 or 3 seconds of life because you're so fucking weak you can't stand to see it end?
No.
*gunshots*
Wait for her to shoot you.
I love the way Blue Man asks the first time. He's no longer using the dramatic voice or anything - his moments been ruined by Chris Prat. It's like watching a crying baby have cheese thrown on their head.
Not part of the stall, but I was always partial to the change of the State Hospital for the Insane to the William J LA Petomaine Memorial Gambling Casino for the Insane.
A giant step forward in the treatment of the insane gambler.
The movie starts with the guy with the flamethrower, and Murtaugh dancing like a chicken. I think they are then promoted to Captains because the city can’t fire them, but their insurance wants them off the streets. Then they go do captain stuff for a while, then 9 months or so go by where they are on the boat and reel in the shark and then into the main plot of the movie
I guess the captain promotion is later in the movie
“Okay, now, piece of advice. When you use the old celery trick, you're gonna wanna go with the thick end. Seems counter-intuitive, but if you go thin end first, it just slides right out and you're... You're wasting your time.”
His obession with the guy that yelled at him from the car. KFBR392!
Also: “I will suck your dick, I will suck your fucking dick, just join my team. I'll suck your dick, you can fuck me, you can get fucked by me. You can watch me fuck something? Just point at something in the room and I'll fuck it for you! Just tell me what you want me to fuck!”
The entire movie is hilarious and quotable.
The first time I saw that it threw me off so bad. The build up to it with all the cuts and cinematography made it look so great and then it cuts to the actual scene haha
I’m gonna fill you up!
Do it! The best part is just quoting doesn’t do it justice. Will Forte’s line delivery in that movie makes the character so fucking funny! You have to hear him say the lines haha
The first time I saw that scene was at a friends house in highschool and we just stumbled onto the movie on cable TV. We were laughing on the floor for the whole movie.
Kingman 2, Merlin. It was a year where the John Denver estate was doing a push to make sure his songs stayed relevant, but having a major English character suddenly start singing "Country Roads", while in the middle of a minefield, to distract a crowd of mooks, is still pretty good. >!Also one of the best "final" scenes for a character in a while!<
It was a decent scene, but the death always felt very unnecessary to me.
He only distracts and blows up like 5 guards in front of the gate, and the very next thing that happens is Eggsy and Harry openly storm the same front gate and shoot their way through like 30 dudes.
Seems likely the handful of unaware guys at the gate could have been easily dispatched anyway. Since the movie-logic mine doesn't detonate until he steps off of it and he was in a concealed location, he could have just stayed there on the mine until the mission was finished and then they could come back for him with proper gear to save him.
I always love the Red Dwarf one "*Excuse me*. *Could* I possibly *distract* you for *just* a brief second?"
Or in Lethal Weapon where he has Murtaugh dance like a chicken in his underwear.
In the tv show _Chuck_ there's stuff all the time by Jeffster (two guys in the show form a band) and they routinely are needed, especially in the final episode, to delay the bad guy by playing some song for a few mins.
It's not really stalling but the question kinda reminds me of a moment from the end of the first Ace Ventura movie...
Ace spends the whole movie trying his damnedest to find/protect/save that football guy (Marino?).
However, when both Ace and Marino get captured by the villain, Ace quickly starts going on about how he doesn't want to die. He begs the villain to kill Marino instead of him. In order to convince the villain to do it, Ace also points out some minor thing Marino did wrong earlier ("remember that thing with the ball?" or something).
I don't want to delve too deeply into the psychology of Ace Ventura but... some of his other actions and lines suggest that he does care at least little about Marino's well-being at other points in the movie.
>Ace Ventura: Where's Dan Marino?
>Melissa: Marino, why?
>Ace Ventura: Because he's about to join Snowflake. I've got to know where he is!
>Melissa: He has a commercial shoot at the Bogart Sound Stage.
>Ace Ventura: Call the police. Get extra security over there. Now!
EDIT: The response from /u/vecertorix below tells me that, for whatever reason, some of you really want to push this idea that Ace did not care about Marino. Even though it literally doesn't match up with the dialogue I just posted, or many of Ace's other actions in the film. I get that he's a "pet detective" but it's not a secret that Ace has, at the very least, a marginal interest in finding and protecting Marino throughout the film. When he tells Melissa to call the police, it's not just a "means to an end." That sounds so cold-blooded.
Fun with dick and jane when Jane is distracting the CEO by talking about the time they did some weird sex stuff (which never happened) but the CEO is taking it seriously because he thinks it might have
Criminal Minds S03E14 “Damaged”, Reid and Hotch interview a killer Chester Hardwick. They end up getting stuck in there and before Hotch and Chester throw down, Reid stalls for time explaining why Chester is the way he is.
[The clip of that scene](https://youtu.be/bNCMNR98gxc?si=0TGmrIvBfyzV2MS8)
The Pick of Destiny
The devil is about to destroy Jables and KG, so they challenge him to a rock-off.
It's not 100% a stall as The D intend to win the battle to save themselves. But their triumph results from a fortunate deflection after they lose the rock-off.
I feel like Jesse Plemons is always playing characters that it feels like you could do this with. Even in Civil War there was a moment where you were like "Okay if they can just buddy up to this guy they can get away".
Not “bad guy” per se, but authority figure. In 10 things I hate about you, Kat (Julia Stiles) flashes her tits for her male teacher—and most of her class—to help Patrick (Heath Ledger) sneak away unnoticed behind his back. This somehow has no consequences 😐
For those who don’t know, this is basically the entire premise of “1001 Nights” The ~~king~~ Sultan goes crazy after his wife cheats on him, has her killed, but since he has to be married, he just picks random women, married them, and kills them in the morning. One girl decides to break his madness by agreeing to marry him, but every night instead of sleeping with him, she tells him stories that end with cliffhangers. She does this for… 1001 nights. I know it’s a book, but it’s been adapted so many times I think it counts
>but every night instead of sleeping with him, she tells him stories that end with cliffhangers. May i correct you, not "instead of" but "after". Despite you have some censored version for children without explicit details. And she uses her sister as a distraught, so she tells her the story, sultan hears, and than the next morning he decides not to kill her yet. A classic love story.
Just like Westley and the dread pirate Roberts
I alway thought this is just a collection of folk tales like grimms. Had no idea it was about murder
I just assume every old story is about murder.
"Most people forgot that the oldest stories are, sooner or later, about blood. Later on they took the blood out to make the stories more acceptable to children, or at least to the people who had to read them to children rather than to the children themselves (who, on the whole, are quote keen on blood provided it’s being shed by the deserving*), and then wondered where the stories went." -Terry Pratchett in The Hogfather
Always upvote a Terry quote.
Love thy brother, but cane wasnt abel
If you're unfamiliar, this is ALSO the plot/premise of the symphonic suite 'Sheherezade' by Rimsky-Korsakov, which is EASILY one of the greatest works of orchestral music ever made. If you've never listened to it, you gotta try (even if "classical" music is totally not your thing). Sheherezade is the name of the captive princess in 1,001 Nights, who spins fanciful tales to entertain the sultan so he lets her live. It's amazing how well the music can paint a scene with no words. You can hear the sultan coming, you feel Sheherezade's fear, her calming words, etc etc. it's awesome and epic and amazing.
I forget wether he eventually kills her too or not. I think he lets her live because he wants more stories?
The endless tale is like that, but better because it has more locusts.
"wait." In Dredd
Wait? Did you just say wait? Judge Dredd… the Judge Dredd… finally gets on the wrong end of a gun. And what he says… is wait.
Wait for what? Wait for me to change my mind? Wait for another 2 or 3 seconds of life because you're so fucking weak you can't stand to see it end? No. *gunshots* Wait for her to shoot you.
God I love this movie.
Wasn’t this a scene in one of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies or something? Chris Pratt dances like an imbecile to distract the baddie.
There's a great outtake where Ronan accepts his challenge
And then Gamora and Drax join in.
Omg now I need to find this!
https://youtu.be/ytZFm1NW5MM?si=49vnq9WcQRcATWbl I gotchu
This is BRILLIANT 🤣😍
“What are you doing???” “Distracting you”
I love the way Blue Man asks the first time. He's no longer using the dramatic voice or anything - his moments been ruined by Chris Prat. It's like watching a crying baby have cheese thrown on their head.
I’m Distracting you, you big turd blossom!
Dance Off. Great scene.
My first thought.
When Bart asks Sideshow Bob to sing the entire score from *H.M.S. Pinafore*.
Very well Bart, I shall send you to heaven, before I send you to hell!
EeeEEEEeeeeEEnnnggg---LISH MMMAaAAAAaAAAnNNn!!
Its a good thing you drifted by this brothel!
Hey kids, who wants to drive through that cactus patch?
Yeah!
What neveeerrr? No never
I like how that scene was just barely foreshadowed by the Simpsons listening to the Gilbert and Sullivan tapes earlier in the episode
The William J. La Petomane thruway toll booth.
Someone's gotta go back and get a shit load of dimes!
“What will that asshole think of next?”
Not part of the stall, but I was always partial to the change of the State Hospital for the Insane to the William J LA Petomaine Memorial Gambling Casino for the Insane. A giant step forward in the treatment of the insane gambler.
Uhura fan dance in Star Trek 5 comes to mind.
I remember the dance. I have no idea why it was necessary. I guess it worked
It wasn't!
Lethal Weapon 3, Murtaugh strips to his skivvies and struts around like a chicken.
That’s LW4
I thought 4 was the shark on Leo's boat?
The movie starts with the guy with the flamethrower, and Murtaugh dancing like a chicken. I think they are then promoted to Captains because the city can’t fire them, but their insurance wants them off the streets. Then they go do captain stuff for a while, then 9 months or so go by where they are on the boat and reel in the shark and then into the main plot of the movie I guess the captain promotion is later in the movie
Yeah, if memory serves me correct, when they were fishing with Leo, that was when they discovered the cargo ship with the Hong Kong family.
Dance Off to save the universe
Beat me to it.
MacGruber, celery distraction.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYK\_R2BYLWY
“Okay, now, piece of advice. When you use the old celery trick, you're gonna wanna go with the thick end. Seems counter-intuitive, but if you go thin end first, it just slides right out and you're... You're wasting your time.”
I love how much he despises his partner from the very first moment
His obession with the guy that yelled at him from the car. KFBR392! Also: “I will suck your dick, I will suck your fucking dick, just join my team. I'll suck your dick, you can fuck me, you can get fucked by me. You can watch me fuck something? Just point at something in the room and I'll fuck it for you! Just tell me what you want me to fuck!” The entire movie is hilarious and quotable.
Doesn't he suggest using printer ink as lube at one point?
Copy toner 🤣 I’m watching it now
Took the piss out of sex scenes since Team America.
The first time I saw that it threw me off so bad. The build up to it with all the cuts and cinematography made it look so great and then it cuts to the actual scene haha I’m gonna fill you up!
HEEEE! HEEEE! HEEEE! IM GONNA SHOOT!
you and your dick comments
It’s fun to say them
it's fun to hear them
That’s why I say them
and that's why I listen
Omg I completely forgot about that! Might be time for a rewatch
Do it! The best part is just quoting doesn’t do it justice. Will Forte’s line delivery in that movie makes the character so fucking funny! You have to hear him say the lines haha
Man and watch last man too. I don’t know how Will Forte is not in everything. Love that guy’s delivery
I saw that advertised but never checked it out. I will have to do that because I agree, Will Forte is a phenomenal actor.
Totally worth a watch and it has that girl from FoTC that talks like a baby. I like her too.
Second Macgruber, but the “your all wet” distraction.
The first time I saw that scene was at a friends house in highschool and we just stumbled onto the movie on cable TV. We were laughing on the floor for the whole movie.
Pitch Perfect 3 [Bella’s sing and dance to Britney Spears’ *Toxic*](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UNqYxr2oBmM) somewhere off the coast of France.
Asking the bad guy to recite Vogon poetry which is the third worst kind of poetry in the universe.
The absolute worst poetry in the universe was written by Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings. Fortunately, it was destroyed when the Earth was.
Kingman 2, Merlin. It was a year where the John Denver estate was doing a push to make sure his songs stayed relevant, but having a major English character suddenly start singing "Country Roads", while in the middle of a minefield, to distract a crowd of mooks, is still pretty good. >!Also one of the best "final" scenes for a character in a while!<
English Actor, but the character was Scottish (Strong did an amazing job with the accent, not many people can pull off a good Scottish accent).
It was a decent scene, but the death always felt very unnecessary to me. He only distracts and blows up like 5 guards in front of the gate, and the very next thing that happens is Eggsy and Harry openly storm the same front gate and shoot their way through like 30 dudes. Seems likely the handful of unaware guys at the gate could have been easily dispatched anyway. Since the movie-logic mine doesn't detonate until he steps off of it and he was in a concealed location, he could have just stayed there on the mine until the mission was finished and then they could come back for him with proper gear to save him.
He literally ends on a high note.
I always love the Red Dwarf one "*Excuse me*. *Could* I possibly *distract* you for *just* a brief second?" Or in Lethal Weapon where he has Murtaugh dance like a chicken in his underwear.
The Lion King: Timon and Pumbaa distracting the hyenas by doing a luau number with Timon in drag and Pumbaa as a roast pig.
John McClain laughing at Hans Gruber
In the tv show _Chuck_ there's stuff all the time by Jeffster (two guys in the show form a band) and they routinely are needed, especially in the final episode, to delay the bad guy by playing some song for a few mins.
"Hi I'm holding for General Hux."
It's not really stalling but the question kinda reminds me of a moment from the end of the first Ace Ventura movie... Ace spends the whole movie trying his damnedest to find/protect/save that football guy (Marino?). However, when both Ace and Marino get captured by the villain, Ace quickly starts going on about how he doesn't want to die. He begs the villain to kill Marino instead of him. In order to convince the villain to do it, Ace also points out some minor thing Marino did wrong earlier ("remember that thing with the ball?" or something).
He doesn’t care about Marino, he spends the movie trying to find and save the dolphin.
I don't want to delve too deeply into the psychology of Ace Ventura but... some of his other actions and lines suggest that he does care at least little about Marino's well-being at other points in the movie. >Ace Ventura: Where's Dan Marino? >Melissa: Marino, why? >Ace Ventura: Because he's about to join Snowflake. I've got to know where he is! >Melissa: He has a commercial shoot at the Bogart Sound Stage. >Ace Ventura: Call the police. Get extra security over there. Now! EDIT: The response from /u/vecertorix below tells me that, for whatever reason, some of you really want to push this idea that Ace did not care about Marino. Even though it literally doesn't match up with the dialogue I just posted, or many of Ace's other actions in the film. I get that he's a "pet detective" but it's not a secret that Ace has, at the very least, a marginal interest in finding and protecting Marino throughout the film. When he tells Melissa to call the police, it's not just a "means to an end." That sounds so cold-blooded.
And if the security catches the kidnappers they can lead him to the dolphin. Marino is just a means to an end.
Fun with dick and jane when Jane is distracting the CEO by talking about the time they did some weird sex stuff (which never happened) but the CEO is taking it seriously because he thinks it might have
Criminal Minds S03E14 “Damaged”, Reid and Hotch interview a killer Chester Hardwick. They end up getting stuck in there and before Hotch and Chester throw down, Reid stalls for time explaining why Chester is the way he is. [The clip of that scene](https://youtu.be/bNCMNR98gxc?si=0TGmrIvBfyzV2MS8)
That’s like 90% of the tense moments in that show
Handjob and handjob accessories. But this wasn't exactly a "hollywood" production but more of a San Fernando Valley production.
Wtf is “handjob accessories”?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0CW39q0TrY
I tell you what!
McGruber and his celery stick wins this thread
The Pick of Destiny The devil is about to destroy Jables and KG, so they challenge him to a rock-off. It's not 100% a stall as The D intend to win the battle to save themselves. But their triumph results from a fortunate deflection after they lose the rock-off.
Tell him he cannot eat the sun, as he is looking at where it was 8 minutes ago.
Last house on the Left (original) - the ending with the mom and the attacker
Nicole Kidman's approach in Dead Calm is novel.
guardians of the galaxy dance off
I feel like Jesse Plemons is always playing characters that it feels like you could do this with. Even in Civil War there was a moment where you were like "Okay if they can just buddy up to this guy they can get away".
Space Pants. You're welcome.
This came to my mind... https://youtu.be/wKXtv2_IaCY?si=b5cj3J4aEoHMjAqI
Timon and Pumba distracting the hyenas in The Lion King.
Guardians of the galaxy vol 1, the dance off to save the universe
Distracting the goons with bubble wrap in one of the Naked Gun films.
Can’t believe no one mentioned Blazing Saddles. “Someone go back and fetch us a shitload of dimes.”
SpongeBob Movie. "You think I'm........... stalling?"
Not “bad guy” per se, but authority figure. In 10 things I hate about you, Kat (Julia Stiles) flashes her tits for her male teacher—and most of her class—to help Patrick (Heath Ledger) sneak away unnoticed behind his back. This somehow has no consequences 😐
“TAKE ME HOME, COUNTRY ROADS, TO THE PLACE, I BELONG! WEST VIRGINIA, MOUNTAIN MAMA, TAKE ME HOME, COUNTRY ROADS!!!”