30 years ago today was the worldwide general release of the movie Independence Day, which would go on to be 1996’s highest grossing movie, and second highest on record at that time, behind Jurassic Park.
Near the climax of the movie is a rousing speech by Bill Pullman as President Thomas Whitmore, rallying the troops for the final stand against the alien invaders. The “We will not go quietly into the night” speech regularly makes ‘best movie speeches’ lists to this day.
Curious fact, however, is that the scene was written by producer Dean Devlin and it was the first draft of the scene in the script - he intended to go back to it, thinking it very much a placeholder until a better one could be written, but he didn’t get back to it prior to the scene being shot.
Upon seeing Pullman’s delivery, however, the consensus was that no rewrite was needed.