By TIME Staff
Keyser Soze, The Usual Suspects
Director: Bryan Singer
Year Released: 1995
Studio: Gramercy Pictures
Cast: Kevin Spacey, Gabriel Byrne, Chazz Palminteri, Stephen BaldwinGet this movie
It’s never made clear whether or not Keyser Soze, a brutal Turkish crime lord, is real or simply a myth, “a spook story that criminals tell their kids at night,” according to low-level criminal “Verbal” Kint, who proceeds to tell Soze’s. Soze’s influence is either everywhere or nowhere. But the idea of an all-powerful crime lord is so appealing that one can’t help but imagine it to be true. For those who don’t, Kint paraphrases Charles Baudelaire: “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” Soze is the king of criminals — appropriate given that his name is a version of the German word for Emperor (Kaiser), itself a version of the Russian czar and the Latin caesar.
Rufus T. Firefly, Duck Soup
Director: Leo McCarey
Year Released: 1933
Studio: Paramount Pictures
Cast: Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx, Chico MarxGet this movie
As Roger Ebert once wrote, to describe the plot of a Marx Brothers movie “would be an exercise in futility, since a Marx Brothers movie exists in moments, bits, sequences, business and dialogue, not comprehensible stories.” In Duck Soup, the brothers’ most famous film, Groucho plays Rufus T. Firefly, who becomes leader of the nation of Freedonia at the behest of the rich Mrs. Teasdale, who will fund the bankrupt nation if they install her man. Why? Who knows. He’s clearly not meant for the job, if any job. He’s actually probably insane. His name’s pretty wacky too. Hewing to the common knowledge that using the letters T or J as a middle initial automatically makes any moniker at least sound vaguely funny, Duck Soup‘s writers use the repetition of the f sound in the first and last names as the cherry on top.
Pussy Galore, Goldfinger
Director: Guy Hamilton
Year Released: 1964
Studio: United Artists
Cast: Sean Connery, Gert Fröbe, Honor BlackmanGet this movie
“Who are you?”
“My name is Pussy Galore.”
“I must be dreaming.”
It’s an absurd double entendre and definitely one of the most famous in film history. As the judo-proficient head of a gang of female stunt pilots, Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman) foils and then assists Sean Connery’s James Bond in Goldfinger. Though it’s insinuated that she’s a lesbian, the charms of James Bond prove too much for Pussy to handle. That’s how manly he is. And that’s how ridiculous and retrograde the Bond movies can be.
Dirk Diggler, Boogie Nights
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Year Released: 1997
Studio: New Line Cinema
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Julianne Moore, Burt ReynoldsGet this movie
Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg) is a young California man looking for a shot at stardom, like so many before him. He’s not particularly smart and doesn’t have any particular talents. But he does have a gift — he’s very well endowed. As he’s getting into the porn industry, he realizes he must pick a name. He tells his director Jack (Burt Reynolds) that he wants one that “can cut glass, y’know, razor sharp.” Adams continues, “When I close my eyes, I see this thing, a sign. I see this name in bright blue neon lights with a purple outline. And this name is so bright and so sharp that the sign — it just blows up because the name is so powerful … It says “Dirk Diggler.” And so it is. A name that sounds like a throbbing erection.
Snake Plissken, Escape from New York
Director: John Carpenter
Year Released: 1981
Studio: AVCO Embassy Pictures
Cast: Kurt Russell, Ernest Borgnine, Lee Van CleefGet this movie
An ex–Special Forces soldier turned criminal, Snake Plissken is offered a simple deal: rescue the U.S. President, who has been taken hostage on Manhattan island (now a maximum-security prison), and all charges will be cleared. The leather-wearing, eye-patched badass has a name to match, one that telegraphs both slippery cunning and brute strength. Talk of an Escape from New York remake led original star Kurt Russell to balk — in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, he said, “I didn’t play Snake Plissken, I created him! I am Snake Plissken.”
Buggin' Out, Do the Right Thing
Director: Spike Lee
Year Released: 1989
Studio: Universal Pictures
Cast: Spike Lee, Danny Aiello, John Turturro, Ossie DavisGet this movie
In Spike Lee’s Bed Stuy — a neighborhood full of blacks, Italians, Hispanics and Koreans — the personal most definitely is political, though Buggin’ Out (Giancarlo Esposito) seems to be the only resident who is willing to say so, the only one who is willing to agitate. A regular customer at Sal’s (Danny Aiello) pizza parlor, he’s insulted by the lack of black faces on the wall of honor, despite the fact that the eatery is in an overwhelmingly black area, and tries to start a boycott. His appearance — a shock of frizzy hair and wide-eyed look — matches his name, an urban expression for someone who’s acting crazy. Yet by film’s end, as a riot breaks out and the police choke someone to death, it can be argued that everyone’s buggin’ out.
Chev Chelios, Crank: High Voltage
Director: Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor
Year Released: 2009
Studio: Lionsgate
Cast: Jason Statham, Amy Smart, Clifton Collins Jr.Get this movie
As gun-for-hire Chev Chelios, Jason Statham runs nonstop across Crank and its sequel, Crank: High Voltage, both of which essentially operate as Speed, but in a human body. In the first film, Chelios has to keep his heart rate up or he will die from a poison he has been injected with. In the second, Chelios has to keep electrocuting himself (with a car battery, with a car cigarette lighter, with a Taser) because his heart has been stolen, and the electronic one in his chest keeps running out of juice. In the madcap sequel (by far the better film), Chelios lives up to his potential namesake — the violent, antisocial young men referred to in the U.K. as chavs.
Hedley Lamarr, Blazing Saddles
Director: Mel Brooks
Year Released: 1974
Studio: Warner Bros.
Cast: Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, Harvey KormanGet this movie
The evil villain in Mel Brook’s parody of Hollywood westerns, Harvey Korman’s Hedley Lamarr (one has to say the entire thing to get the full effect) spends a good part of the movie correcting other characters’ pronunciation of his name. Because it sounds like that of old Hollywood bombshell Hedy Lamarr. And it’s hilarious every time he blows his top over the confusion. The original Lamarr was not amused, though. She either sued or threatened to sue Brooks for the repeated use of her near name in Saddles, and the case was settled out of court.
Furious Styles, Boyz n the Hood
Director: John Singleton
Year Released: 1991
Studio: Columbia Pictures
Cast: Cuba Gooding Jr., Laurence Fishburne, Ice CubeGet this movie
Let’s just get it out of the way up front — it’s a cool-ass name, O.K.? Having either that first or last name anywhere in your name would automatically make you significantly more awesome. The two together? Forget about it. All that aside, though, Furious Styles (Laurence Fishburne) is one of the great movie fathers. Seemingly the only older black male in Compton, Calif., Furious is determined to raise his son Tre (Cuba Gooding Jr.) correctly. Stern but concerned, firm but caring, Furious imparts lessons about sex, drugs, violence, gentrification and the plight of the young black man in America. As befits his name, he has an anger inside him, a red-hot desire to push his son down the righteous path.
Johnny Utah, Point Break
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Year Released: 1991
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Cast: Patrick Swayze, Keanu Reeves, Gary BuseyGet this movie
Johnny Utah has the name of a simple (possibly too simple), young, corn-fed American boy. It matches his former profession: a college football quarterback for Ohio State. It matches the “whoa”-ness of the performance delivered by Keanu Reeves. But this rookie FBI agent proves that name isn’t destiny, and his street smarts allow him to penetrate the surfer-gang bank-robbing crew the Ex-Presidents. The film was initially going to be called Johnny Utah, a nod to the uncomplicated, evocative name. (Also, it allows Gary Busey to yell out the immortal line “Utah, gimme two!”).
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