There is nothing worse than being sober in a room full of drunk people.
OK, so there are a few things worse – like cancer, famine and finding out your dad wants to be a woman. Anyway, the points is, drunk people in real life are soooooo annoying. Almost as annoying as people who put to many ‘o’s in ‘so’ just to emphasise the point they are making.
But they are never that annoying when you are drunk. For some reason, you are immune to the annoying stuff they blather on about. See kids, drinking is good for you.
But put drunks in a movie and suddenly you start to see the joke; suddenly cease to be annoying and become quit charming and very funny.
Either this is because actors and scriptwriters suck at making people sound authentically pissed, or it’s because you know at no time of the evening are they going to seek you out to go and slobber “I love you, man” in your ear.
But which movie drunks were the best? Hecklerspray plumbs the depths. Cheers!
22. Gwen Cummings (Sandra Bullock)
From: 28 Days
21. Dong (Gedde Watanabe)
From: Sixteen Candles
Just brilliant.
20. Joe Clay (Jack Lemmon)
From: Days of Wine and Roses
Some say it’s the ‘last great film about alcoholism’, which is both wrong and a slightly odd award to win. But it is certainly up there, with Jack Lemmon in top form.
19. Alan Swann (Peter O’Toole)
From: My Favourite Year
Best line: After stumbling into the wrong restroom, a lady tells him: “This is for ladies only!”
To which Alan Swann, unzipping his fly, replies: “So is *this*, ma’am, but every now and then I have to run a little water through it.”
18. Elwood P. Dowd (Jimmy Stewart)
From: Harvey
Warning: Getting drunk can make you see huge rabbits. OK, we want what he’s drinking.
17. Coach Buttermaker (Walter Matthau)
From: Bad News Bears
Walter Matthau is perfect as the alcoholic coach of a little league team. He drinks and drives and even gives his young charges beer to get them to do his chores.
16. Gary (Anthony Michael Hall)
From: Weird Science
OK, so he is not strictly a drunk, but the scene in which he gets out his face is the best scene in the movie.
15. Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp)
From: Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy
Johnny Depp does a very good job of impersonating the legend that is Keith Richards, a man whose body should be donated to science to help create a race of super-humans that can withstand years of alcohol and narcotic abuse.
14. Henry Chinaski (Mickey Rourke)
From: Barfly
OK, we admit, Mickey Rourke pretending to be a complete a pisshead is hardly a stretch, but it’s a good performance nevertheless.
13. Willie (Billy Bob Thornton)
From: Bad Santa
Now this is the kind of Santa we can all believe in.
12. Shooter (Dennis Hopper)
From: Hoosiers
Dennis Hopper plays himself – the town drunk who cleans up his act.
11. Don Birnam (Ray Milland)
From: The Lost Weekend
The Lost Weekend – we can all relate to that. A superb movie about the best pastime ever – getting out of your face.
10. Ted Striker (Robert Hays)
From: Airplane
His drinking problem is so serious, he can’t even get the liquid in his mouth!
9. Hancock (Will Smith)
From: Hancock
The first half of the movie, when he’s drunk, is really good. But it soon descends into a hideous hangover.
8. Miles (Paul Giamatti)
From: Sideways
A movie about getting drunk, just brilliant. Our favourite bit? The one where he is so desperate to get drunk he drinks the spit bucket.
7. Arthur (Dudley Moore)
From: Arthur
Dudley Moore’s second best performance – behind Santa Claus: The Movie
6. Wong Fei-hung (Jackie Chan)
From: The Legend of Drunken Master
Jackie Chan’s finest hour – and a bit.
5. Ben Sanderson (Nicolas Cage)
From: Leaving Las Vegas
Nic Cage proves he can actually act in a movie about going to Vegas to die or something. Wish he would drink himself to death.
4. Doc Holiday (Val Kilmer)
From: Tombstone
Brilliant movie, but Val Kilmer – once again stretching his pretending credentials by playing a pissed-up gunslinger –is the star of the show. His best bit: “I have two guns, one for each of ya,” while seeing double.
3. Withnail (Richard E Grant)
From: Withnail & I
Teetotaller Richard E Grant justifies his existence on this planet by giving one of the finest comedic performances of all time.
2. Frank The Tank (Will Ferrell)
From: Old School
The naked street run – it will forever live long in the memory.
1. Bluto (John Belushi)
From: National Lampoon’s Animal House
A true legend.
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{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
Tch! Tch! You left off the greatest drunk performance of all: Lee Marvin in Cat Balou as the drunk gun slinger.
What about Matthau’s Drunk in Earthquake? The best thing about the whole movie is Walter Matthau sitting lugubriously at the bar, in the world’s most ridiculous hat, getting steadily drunker in the face of catastrophe.
Also, I can’t believe you left out W.C. Fields.
I totally agree he deserves to be on the list. That bulbous red nose should have gotten him the #1 spot.
Your list needs George and Martha from Who’s afraid of Virgina Woolf.
Will Ferrell in the number 2 spot and the complete omission of The Thin Man. Bang up job.
You forgot “Mr. Stopworth” played by Tom Poston from the movie “Cold Turkey”(1971). I loved how he explained that if he stopped smoking and drinking that his head would fall off.
elizabeth taylor-”who’s afraid of virginia woolf?”
how in the hell did this not make it on the list?
What the fuck is this shit? You don’t even have The Dude on there. A white russian in every scene warrants a fuckin place on top 22.
This is by far the worst top 22, of anything, I’ve seen.
Nick Cage should be 1st for realism, closely followed by The Dude for comedic effect.
Fail. Randy Quaid, Independence Day.
I was begining to get scared as I approached the #1 spot without seeing John Belushi in Animal House. Good show David Schwartz…good show!!!
Bzzt. Wrong answer for Dudley Moore. Should have been Unfaithfully Yours. http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0088326/
And one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen was Stan Laurel trying to bottle wine in The Bohemian Girl (http://www.laurelandhardycentral.com/tbg.htm) and getting completely sloshed in the process. Classic.
Putting too many o’s in so is almost as bad as not putting enough o’s in too.
They got #1 right with Bluto Blutarsky, aka John Belushi. I would have like to have seen Chris Farley in just about any movie he was in, and possibly Rodney Dangerfield and Chevy Chase in Caddyshack.
A third of the movie /entertainment industry was or still is drunk. Anyone remeber Dean Martin with a smoke in one hand a scotch in the other barely standing on stage? Judy Garland sported a pretty good dope habit, I’m sure Sinatra spilled a few glasses in his day and the classic moment in Caddyshack when the kid who drank all the bottoms of the drinks who threw up into a sunroof of, I think, a prosche.
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