What You Need: Bill Pullman's Speech from Independence Day On a Loop.

446

Matthew Phelan

07/04/14 08:00PM

Filed to: independence day

This is a good way (maybe the only good way) to celebrate today's holiday. Here is a YouTube playlist of this very important speech, given by America's best fighter pilot turned Commander-in-Chief, Thomas J. Whitmore (William Pullman), in the 1996 motion picture release, Independence Day, a 20th Century Fox picture.

Sadly, you have to make it a loop manually, by pushing a button. You can do that, though. Do not go quietly into the night! Crank this bully pulpit burner! Crank it LOUD!

munsonburner Matthew Phelan 07/05/14 11:32AM

I am not an American but 3 years ago I was in the US for the fourth of July and attended a public 4th of July event in South Orange County Caifornia.

As the fireworks went off a PA system blared patriotic music augmented with string of stirring quotes from American Presidents:

"Nothing to fe-ah... but fear itself"

Yep.

"Ahsk not what yoah Country can do for you"

Okay

"Today we celebrate our Independence Day!"

My jaw hit the floor. I discreetly turned to my wife careful not to crack up laughing (as I have discovered that some Americans take reverence for display of patriotic bullshit reallllly seriously*) and whispered "That's Bill Pullman as the President in Independence Day!"

*Hint: As a foreigner, standing at attention and silently observing your national anthem - or even singing along because it is way better than my country's shitty anthem - is not disrespectful just because I don't have my hand over my heart (which is really really fucking bizarre, BTW)

Matthew Phelan munsonburner 07/05/14 12:53PM

WOW. This is great.

This was a jokey, content-free, blog post (to be brutally self-critical) before you rolled up in here with this hilarious anecdote.

This will be a great buried lede for those willing to seek it out.

munsonburner Matthew Phelan 07/05/14 01:33PM

And the thing is that Independence Day is one of my favourite good bad films of the 1990s (a really large category actually: Air Force One, Executive Decision, Passenger 57) and have seen it a bazillion times, pretty much memorized it and had been recently watching The Bill Pullman Project. So while it came out of left field, it came with the clarity of a lightning bolt.

It also allowed me to make jokes about the out of place quotes from fake Presidents: Pullman and Bush II.

munsonburner Matthew Phelan 07/05/14 01:46PM

Wow, I just found a picture that is pretty much the exact vantage point I was in, on a lawn above Doheny State Beach in Dana Point CA.

I was actually sitting in one of these EXACT CHAIRS when President Pullman's stirring words came blaring through.

Postscript. Like many people my wife cannot often recall which one is Bill Pullman and which is Bill Paxton and I believe was visualizing the latter, which made it funnier. To me anyhow