One Hitta Quitta: Five Legendary Onscreen-Only-For-A-Scene Performances In Cinema

“If you only had…one shot.”

It might not be a lot…but sometimes that’s all a great performer needs.

Today’s TGIF episode of The Five Spot is “One Hitta Quitta: Five Legendary Onscreen-For-Only-A-Scene Performances In Cinema”, an appreciation of five actors that took it to the maximum while only having a small window to do their thing.

Mind you, this doesn’t just mean a great movie cameo (David Letterman in Cabin Boy, David Bowie in Zoolander, Aretha Franklin in The Blues Brothers, Keith Richards in one of those Pirate movies I’ve never seen, Dan Marino in Ace Ventura, DMX in Top Five) but a legitimate role.

It takes a special kind of presence to inhabit a character we’re just meeting, showing up and making the proceedings memorable enough to steal the screen, leaving you with some of the more memorable moments in movie history.

But before digging into the list, here’s a Friday toast to five on the outside looking in.

Do I Have Your Attention?

The Honorable Mention:

Alfred Molina-Boogie Nights. It breaks my heart a bit not including this. I just re-watched the absolute-classic Boogie Nights recently. But this scene is more a PTA master-class than any one actor. The setup, musical selections, tension-ratcheting, fire-cracking, Thomas Jane’s-mad-mustaching, the 40-second-shot of Mark-Wahlberg-as-Dirk-Diggler’s-eye-tracking, the gun blasting…everything in it is perfect.

Various Artists-True Romance. This movie has more incredible cameos/legendary-stunt-casts than any movie I can name, plus is blessed with juicy Young Quentin Tarantino dialogue. Christopher Walken as Vincenzo Coccotti, Gary Oldman as Drexel the pimp, Brad Pitt as Floyd, Val Kilmer as Elvis, James Gandolfini as a Pre-Tony-Soprano-Hitman/Sociopath, Dennis Hopper as Clarence’s retired alcoholic cop Dad. The most crucially memorable one-offs like Clarence visiting Drexel’s lair, or especially Walken and Hopper in the trailer, are dueling sword back-and-forth. But in most cases, these fully realized scenery-chewing characters, including both Walken, Gandolfini, and Hopper appear briefly in other scenes outside the one with some unforgettable and a few unrepeatable lines about Sicilians that aren’t reference to lie-detection pantomimes.

Chris Rock-I’m Gonna Git You Sucka. Chris Rock’s legacy as one of the greatest stand-up comics to ever live made him world famous long before the infamy of getting smacked-back-to-reality-oh-there-goes-gravity on Oscar Night. Walking into Hammer & Slammer’s in 1988 was my earliest introduction. He’d already been discovered in NYC by mentor-to-be-Eddie-Murphy and earned a spot in the sequel to Beverly Hills Cop. But before SNL, the still-hilarious “One Rib” scene was the thing that stuck to mine.

Christopher Walken-Pulp Fiction. Yes, Walken is amazing. QT gives him a hammy monologue to chew on knowing he’d turn it to mincemeat. Yet Child Butch is just there to listen, so this doesn’t rise to the level of his Hopper tête-à-tête in True Romance. And is this even a Top 5 scene from the movie it’s in? As good as it is, we’d say it isn’t.

Salma Hayek-From Dusk Till Dawn. I remember going to see this at AMC Deptford in my late teens. It was the first time I saw Salma Hayek onscreen and from the second she stepped onstage, shoulders draped with a snake, it was an unforgettable moment. Once she’s barefoot-glass-breaking across Tijuana tables to a nasty guitar lick, the effect was hypnotic. Nobody spoke. Everyone was transfixed. Then (SPOILER ALERT) just as you’re wondering if you’ve seen anything more tantalizing, she turns into a vampir…and the vibes, movie, and royal WE all suffer to varying degrees.

Now without further ado…”One Hitta Quitta: Five Legendary Onscreen-For-Only-A-Scene Performances In Cinema”

Grand Opening, Grand (Always Be) Closing.

Alec Baldwin
Glengarry Glenn Ross

You knew this was coming. You’d probably have guessed it before even seeing this post’s accompanying .GIF. Alec Baldwin’s brass-balled, impeccably manicured, master-of-the-universe, aggressive-arrogance-as-art delivery of this David Mamet monologue, the only part of the film’s script that wasn’t originally in the Pulitzer Prize-winning stage play, can still make you drop your jaw in awe and/or loudly guffaw.

This was a scene so hilariously mean that it likely had the unintended consequence of convincing some Wall Street DBags that this was acceptable behavior from an actual human being. But no, you gotta be a certain type of Northeast raised-with-a-building-bile-while-blessed-with-good-looks-type-of-clean to even dream of pulling off this scene. Mamet, a Chicagoan, might not have thought to write this scene until it became a movie and moved to a New York setting. Nothing about this, or Baldwin at the peak of his First-Jack-Ryan-matinee-idol-pulling-Kim-Basinger-right-after-Prince powers, feels remotely Midwestern.

Another well-coiffed, Northeast-bred, if-he’s-not-an-asshole-he-sure-does-have-a-knack-for-playing-one-with-scary-levels-of-accuracy type, Ben Affleck, did an homage to this in Boiler Room. And guess what? It’s highly entertaining too. But when it comes to GOATable quotables and toxic maschismo, respect the architect and give this handsome devil his due. “Nice guy? I don’t give a shit. Good father? Fuck You…go home and play with your kids.” Baldwin absolutely destroys this.

Tangling With GOATs…Shows And Proves Beyond Any Reasonable Doubt

Viola Davis
Doubt

Viola Davis was already into her forties, as a seasoned veteran thespian of stage and screen, before she finally got her chance to hop into the deep wudder with the legendary Meryl Streep for this unforgettable scene. And boy does she do the damn thing. Declaring a winner of this round, like the first round of Hagler-Hearns, is almost irrelevant. It’s all about the action.

Doubt, like Glengarry Glenn Ross above, is another film adapted from a Broadway play. Sometimes that can lead to a stilted PBS vibe when you try to take a great play from stage to screen. But you could not go on this slowly simmering Bronx walk nor read these facial emotions from a balcony with a Playbill in hand.

For those who haven’t seen 2008’s Doubt, do yourself a favor and do so. You can watch this scene as an appetizer without compromising the full viewing. If you have seen it, treat yourself to watching this scene again. The subject matter is tough but the cast and writing so brilliant that it awards repeat viewing. Good Lord (pun intended) do we miss Phillip Seymour Hoffman. This is also one of Meryl’s best. It’s Amy Adams at her apex and Viola’s true breakthrough.

All four actors got Oscar nominations. None won. The film didn’t receive a best picture or best director nomination. But trust us, Doubt and the performances in it are superior to any winners from its year. Anybody going back to Slumdog Millionaire? Hoffman lost Best Supporting Actor to Heath Ledger for reasons we don’t need to mention. But this wouldn’t be a problem. Let Heath keep it. PSH is a lead in Doubt. And far better than Sean Penn as a gay-rights politician. Let’s not get into the Best Actress win for The Reader’s Kate Winslet. That’s a movie with scenes you remember with a premise you try to forget. And take your pick of Adams or Davis for Best Supporting over Penelope Cruz in the obligatory annually-endorsed-by-the-academy Woody Allen bullshit.

But I digress with the Oscar dish. Back to Viola Davis. She’d popped up on L&O and some smaller roles she made memorable, like her evil foster-care-mother in Antwone Fisher. But in Doubt she broke out the full toolkit: evergreen-in-a-period-piece-timelessness and an unfuckwittable-ugly-cry-snot-bubble-on-command ability. Viola in her career has famously gone head-to-head against the male and female acting GOATs, Meryl and Denzel, of the past couple generations and in many eyes bested both of them or at least left them bloodied. Goes to show: stay ready and you don’t have to get ready.

“Not a Game!”…Kareem Fights Bruce Lee

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Game Of Death

Hey, who said they all have to be Tony-winning stage plays done by actors with years of university thespian training? Kareem graduated from UCLA with a different focus and won lots of hardware in other realms. But he’s always not only been a patron and participant in the arts, as you can see in his post-NBA-retirement as a culture critic and historian, but also a onetime movie star and student of martial arts. Kareem, seen here as Game Of Death’s “final boss”, was a friend and student of the great Bruce Lee during the seventies. Lee sadly passed before this film was officially finished or his Hollywood aspirations had fully taken flight. But this remains as a testament to their chemistry, and one of the greatest basketball players of all time’s inimitable presence plus physicality.

I love Kareem in Airplane but it’s more celebrity cameo comedic than incredible line reading. This is Cap truly doing his thing. I don’t care how many belts Bruce had, there’s no way you can convince me that he could beat a man that much bigger who’s also this strong and skilled. Which is why Game Of Death chose to give him a glaring (pun intended) weakness: a light-sensitivity affliction that’s as crippling as the one that led to Styxx deep-sixing original lead-singer Dennis DeYoung. If you didn’t get that last reference, you never any time laughing your ass off at the intentional comedy of that shitty band’s Behind The Music reruns back in the day on VH1. Either way, Kareem’s Mantis of the syndicate kicks up much dust in this one.

The Script Gets Flipped On The Traditional Horror Flick

Drew Barrymore
Scream

RIP Casey Becker. We miss you, Scream Queen.

I still remember where I was when Wes Craven took a shiv to my childhood.

Westminster, Maryland. Cranberry Mall.

I don’t even remember why I went to this but it was early enough in its run that I didn’t know much about it. Never really been a big horror movie dude. We’re from Haddonfield and proudly proclaim our love for the OG Halloween. The Exorcist scared the shit out of me at 13. The big horror flicks that came out seemingly every few month throughout the eighties (Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Child’s Play) all escaped me. Not sure who got me to go see Scream. Most likely a girl but twenty-some years later, I can’t say for certain. What I could say with certainty is my girl from my earliest days of watching movies was starring in it.

Allow me to reintroduce myself, my folks named me Matt. Drew Barrymore & I, mostly unbeknownst to her, go way back. We’re close in age, she’s almost exactly a year older within a matter of days.  And one of my first crushes not on a school bus with me was Gertie in E.T. Her appearance on The Tonight Show might have been the latest I’d been allowed to stay up to date as a kid (Thanks, Aunt Patty). The fire extinguisher in the first home I own is a homemade Firestarter/SZA reference. I love Irreconcilable Differences.

I was in my own Jersey version of a rebellious period when Drew got out of rehab as a Hollywood wild-child-product-of-poor-parenting-by-mother-Jade and began starring in trashy-fun b-movies like Poison Ivy and Guncrazy. I wouldn’t know it back then, but I’d later on in my twenties meet Drew in a WeHo bar called Jones, do rounds of shots concocted by a bartender we had in common, spit a sixteen for her and a friend on the smoking patio, earning applause and an enthusiastic hug from her post-performance. One of my favorite celebrity bar encounters, and trust me, for those I’m not lacking.

But let’s not get too far into the weeds. Back to Winter ’96 in the Cranberry Mall multiplex watching this. Within seconds of the New Line Cinema logo flashing, a phone rings and Drew’s onscreen in a beautiful house making Jiffy Pop in a blond wig. In that moment, the only Ghostface I knew was in my favorite rap group, who’d just dropped a solo album (Ironman) that along with the prior year’s appearances on Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… further proved the sharpness of his sword. 10 minutes later, my wig was split watching poor Casey Becker silently scream-gurgling out on the front lawn for her mom from severed vocal cords.

I’m not sure the impact of killing off the star, in an opening scene, can be fully conveyed today to someone who wasn’t around for the first Scream. Especially if you saw it without being hipped to the trick, a great idea which was Drew’s own as the script’s silent-producer. At the time, it felt almost traumatic for some time after it. But after recovering from the sucker-punch, you came out of the daze realizing this was some new shit. A self-aware, sarcastic, winking-but-still-creepy kind of popcorn flick. Wes Craven turning the tables on a genre he helped create that had grown stale. Inspired idea. Classic scene. Does it still pack the same wallop? You tell me…but for yours truly, I’d be delinquent in my duty to not find a place on this list for Drew Barrymore in Scream.

Right Now, Much Like Way Back Then…”The World Is A Corporation”

Ned Beatty
Network

Six minutes was all Ned Beatty as Arthur Jenson needed to generate an Oscar nomination in Sidney Lumet’s satirical-black-comedy-or-is-it-a-dystopian-drama Network. Lumet’s career began as director of the earnest Henry Fonda-starring courtroom 1957 classic 12 Angry Men. But the renegade auteur-era seventies saw him go on an incredible heater nearly two decades into his career: Serpico, Murder On The Orient Express, Dog Day Afternoon, and this.

That happened to coincide with the acting version of a white-hot streak from the great and recently late (June 2021) character actor extraordinaire Ned Beatty. Beatty’s tumbling hot dice led to memorable turns in the following from ’73 to ‘78: White Lightning, Nashville, All The President’s Men, Silver Streak, Superman, Mickey and Nicky. I recommend any film on either of those lists, for different reasons, wholeheartedly.

Beatty and Lumet cross swords here in the most over-the-top ways. Lumet framing this shot of the long table in dark with small lamps for an extra ominous vibe. Beatty delivering this monologue doubling as a sales pitch while vacillating between faux-sweetness and pure unhinged derangement.

At this point, I can’t remember a lot about Network as an overall film. Some of it probably refers to issues no longer as relevant as they were during the big-three network news era after the fall of Nixon, compared to the twenty-four-hour-news-cycle digital age we live in. But right around the time of Beatty’s physical demise, during a rabbit-hole home moment during the pandemic, I went back to this scene. I’ve probably watched it ten more times in the year or so since then.

I can’t decide if it’s relieving or unsettling that so much of what Arthur Jenson espouses lives on in our current post-you-know-who climate, as global viruses plague us and globalized tech hub CEO’s set sights on Mars while collecting payments from the consumer class they plan to leave on Earth after bleeding us dry. But never mind potential apocalyptic rants from me, when delivered by Beatty here it’s must-see-TV.

If you’ve never peeped this scene, before leaving this page, “YOU….WILL…ATONE..”