How film's one-liners lost their innocence with Apocalypse Now

It didn't take long for Apocalypse Now to add a whole bunch of one‑liners to the movie quote lexicon. Even before the mixed critical reception had coalesced into an iron-clad verdict, phrases from the screenplay by Francis Coppola, John Milius and Michael Herr (with a little help from Joseph Conrad) were already reverberating above and beyond their context in the film: "Saigon. Shit.","Terminate … with extreme prejudice", "Charlie don't surf!", "I love the smell of napalm in the morning", "Never get out of the boat", "The horror, the horror". And so on Screenplays are more than just dialogue, of course, yet a well-turned phrase can go a long way towards cementing a movie's cult status. Watching Casablanca nowadays is to experience a little thrill of recognition at every other line, and only partly because, "Play it, Sam" or, "Round up the usual suspects" have been adapted as titles for other movies. Ideally, a good quote is not only specific to its dramatic context, but has universal application. "We'll always have Paris" and "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship" are the gifts that keep on giving.