Patton Oswalt’s Star Wars Filibuster Used In Actual County Board Meeting

One of the simple pleasantries I’ve always enjoyed is getting to use lines from movies in a real life conversation. Don’t deny it, placing a Hollywood constructed phrase at the ideal moment takes almost talent as it does to write the words themselves.

Of course I’m joking, there are days I wish I had the ability to come up with a line half as great as “you had me at Hello.”

When using dialogue from movies and television I cannot stress enough how the importance of timing is. Also, the setting. I have this friend who claims he said Obi-Wan’s Jedi Mind Trick “you don’t need to see his identification” line to a Doorman at a club and it worked. I’ll believe it.

In fact, MLive.com reported on February 26th that a woman named Bridgette McDowell quoted Patton Oswalt’s famous filibuster from an episode of NBC’s Parks & Recreation.

Believe me, there was a reason for McDowell to stand at a podium and describe a rather intelligent theory on how to merge the Star Wars and Marvel Cinematic Universes. She was delaying a vote by the Livingston County (Michigan) Board of Commissioners that would have halted public broadcasts of their meetings online. A practice which started in 2017.

The unofficially dubbed “people’s filibuster” was organized by Jordan Genso, who has been a long time advocate for public broadcasting of the meetings.

“For each more local level of government, those votes and those issues have a greater effect on you. It’s more likely it’s going to change your day-to-day life in some way.”

The decision to stop the board meeting’s broadcast is still undecided.

I have to applaud Ms. McDowell for the valiant display of nerdery in the best interest of the public. I personally would have quoted one Heath Ledger’s “how I got these scars” speeches from The Dark Knight. Only I don’t have any facial scars so I’m not sure the weight of the words would be fully comprehended.

By Adam Chmielewski

@PolishKaiju

Photo Credits- NBC/Disney

What is your favorite movie or TV quote to use in real life? Let Nerdbot know in the comments!!