Since my students read two essays that were essentially about lying, I though it appropriate that I fabricate a quotation in their writing prompt; I told them they had to connect both essays to a line Samuel Jackson delivered in The Negotiator: "People don't lie because they need to, they lie because they want to" but, oddly, when I pointed out the quotation on the white board, one girl nodded her head like "yeah, I remember that" and even when I revealed to them that I made the line up, she insisted that it was in the movie-- and that she was going to bring in the scene (which is more flattering than what another student said when I revealed the truth: "I knew Samuel Jackson wouldn't say anything that stupid!)
Many years ago, after watching some show that featured lying (possibly an Andy Kaufman thing), I told my wife that once a day we were going to tell each other a big fib, and at the end of the day we'd compare notes and see who'd fooled the other with a bigger lie. Later that day, we were watching more tube (lazy day) and Penn & Teller came on. She told me how she'd gone to see them perform in Boston some years back, how they were awesome, and she went into pretty good detail. Later, I was so disappointed to hear that it was a lie and she'd never, in fact, seen Penn & Teller, that I cancelled the whole project immediately.
ReplyDeleteThat quote IS in the movie, right after the scene where he negotiates with the snakes to get them off the plane.
ReplyDelete