5 Iconic Movie Scenes That Were Totally Improvised

One of the things that makes the film Jaws so effective is that you don’t get a good look at the titular shark until the very end of the movie, where its sheer size terrifies the heroes who go out to sea in hopes of killing it. After the shark is first seen, a shocked Chief Brody utters, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat, ” famously improvised by actor Roy Scheider.

He repeats the idea repeatedly for the rest of the scene, begging Quint to return to shore for a better vessel, even though the line wasn’t part of the original script. Apparently, the line was something of an in-joke to the actors, who had complained to Steven Spielberg about the size of the barge that carried the cast, crew, and equipment out to the water. It turned out perfect for the scene and now is one of the movie’s best-known lines.

The Shining is one of those genre-defining movies that will probably remain on the top of the “Best Horror Movie” lists for a long time to come. It’s full of memorable sequences — the blood pouring out of the elevators, the ghostly twins asking Danny to “come play with us,” and the discovery of Jack’s madness by checking his typewriter are iconic moments that nobody who watches the film will soon forget. Among those moments is Jack Nicholson’s character, Jack Torrance, chopping through a door, sticking his head through, and maniacally saying, “Here’s Johnny!” 

This imitation of Ed McMahon’s famous line from The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson wasn’t in the script. It was an improvised line that Nicholson said during one of sixty takes of the scene. It was the take that the film’s notoriously-perfectionist director Stanley Kubrick decided was the best, and it is now part of movie history.

“I’m Walking Here!” is one of the most-referenced lines in cinematic history. It’s shown up in Animaniacs, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, The Muppets, Seinfeld, and two separate animated Disney movies, among other examples. But the now-common line from Midnight Cowboy would never have even existed if not for an inconsiderate taxi driver and a pissed-off Dustin Hoffman.

The story goes like this: the budget for Midnight Cowboy was so low that they couldn’t afford to get a street corner filled with extras for a scene of Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight walking and talking to each other. So, they secretly filmed it on an actual busy New York street corner, with both actors crossing a real crosswalk through actual traffic. A taxi driver decided he didn’t want to stop for the actors, prompting Hoffman angrily slamming his palm on the cab’s hood and yelling the iconic line.

Just about as iconic as “I’m Walking Here” is Robert De Niro’s rather disturbing scene in Taxi Driver, where he talks to himself in a mirror while testing out a quick-draw device that hides a gun up his sleeve. As part of his in-mirror performance, he asks, “You talking to me?” over and over again to an imagined foe. 

The entire sequence, including the well-known, oft-repeated line, was entirely improvised by Robert De Niro as he posed with the gun. The result was an extremely effective way to demonstrate how deranged De Niro’s character, Travis Bickle, was as he prepared for the act of violence that would make up the film’s climax. 

There were thousands of films made in the 1940s, very few of which anyone would want to watch today. Of those films, few are as outright enjoyable as the 1942 classic Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart and Madeleine Lebeau. In the final scene, where Bogart and Lebeau’s characters say their final goodbyes, Bogart utters the iconic line, “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

That line is particularly impressive since, according to reports, the script for the ending hadn’t even been written — both Bogart and Lebeau had to ad-lib the entire goodbye scene on their own. Considering it’s one of the best endings in movie history, they did a pretty good job.