Released the weekend before Christmas in 1995, Bernadine Harris (Angela Bassett) Savannah Jackson (Whitney Houston) Robin Stokes (Lela Rochon) and Gloria Johnson (Loretta Devine) collectively lit up the big screen in “Waiting to Exhale’ an adaptation of Terry McMillan’s novel of the same name. According to The African American Experience, at the time ‘Waiting to Exhale’ was the second novel by an African American woman to be adapted into a major Hollywood motion picture. The first was Alice Walker’s The Color Purple in 1985.
Directed by Forest Whitaker and distributed by 20th Century Fox, ‘Waiting to Exhale’ despite recieving some negative reviews by critics is a cult classic. Today we look back at some of our favorite lines from the film. Click continue.
Throwback Thursday: 15 Memorable Lines From ‘Waiting to Exhale’
Savannah: The deal is, the men in Denver are dead. No wonder I’m changing towns again. It’s got to be better in Phoenix.
Firefighter: Ma’am, are you aware that your car was on fire?
Bernadine: Yes
Firefighter: Did you start this fire, ma’am?
Silence
Firefighter: It’s against the law to burn anything except trash in your own yard, ma’am.
Bernadine: It is trash.
Savannah to Gloria:
To the best blow-drying, scissor-scalping, bumper-curling, braiding, weaving, get-this-gray-out-of-my-head dyeing beautician west of the Mississippi , Happy Birthday!
Photo by Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation – © 1995
Robin to Gloria: Gloria, I hope you find true love..and get you some that’s so electric, you ain’t going to need no blow dryer.
Bernadine to Gloria: Girlfriend, here’s to peace of mind and all the happiness your heart and hand can hold cause Lord knows you deserve it.
Bernadine: No Bernadine, you can’t start the catering business this year. Why don’t you wait a few years, huh? Yeah. Don’t start it right now wait one, two. three years. I need you to be the f*cking background to my foreground. Seven-thirty-two…Seven-thirty-two! The number of times we made love! I remember when that b*stard told me he was counting, right after 51!
cue Mary J Blige’s “Not Gon’ Cry”
When Kenya Moore’s character interrupts Lionel and Savannah while dancing.
“If I hurry, I can still catch Dick Clark”
Gloria to Marvin: Would you like to have dinner with us tonight? It’s just leftovers. Collard greens and cornbread, some candied yams, a little potato salad, fried chicken, peach cobbler and a few slices of ham.
Bernadine:I betcha’ there’s serial killers less anal.
Savannah: Nice House Bernie.
Bernadine: At $5.00 you can have it.
Savannah to Kenneth: I’m not mad, and to prove it, the drinks are on you. *throws drink on Kenneth
Gloria: I hope he’s not watching me walk away
*turns around
Gloria: oh, he’s watching.
Savannah: That’s my toothbrush, is he crazy!?
Gloria to her teenage son Tarik: You ought to be praising God, I’m letting you go out at all with all those grades you bringing in here, you know, you best get busy, you’re going to be using Morse Code to contact your little girlfriends of yours.
Before the closing scene, the women sang in unison to Roberta Flack’s “It Might Be You.”
