Wait for it... wait for it...

Manchegan

Following on from this six year-old thread, would anyone know in which movie the phrase "wait for it... wait for it..." appears. I've seen clips with a single "wait for it", but not twice. Any ideas?

Rule #1: YouTube clip or imdb quote page mandatory

chin_grin

Harrison Ford out of Star Wars immediately comes to mind.

scary

Kindergaten cop i believe

Hank_Jones

Manchegan wrote: »

Following on from this six year-old thread, would anyone know in which movie the phrase "wait for it... wait for it..." appears. I've seen clips with a single "wait for it", but not twice. Any ideas?

Rule #1: YouTube clip or imdb quote page mandatory

Rules? Well, where's the fun in that?

CardBordWindow

Manchegan wrote: »

Following on from this six year-old thread, would anyone know in which movie the phrase "wait for it... wait for it..." appears. I've seen clips with a single "wait for it", but not twice. Any ideas?

Rule #1: YouTube clip or imdb quote page mandatory

IMDB doesn't have every quote from a film!

Manchegan

My point about the rule is that if you read the original thread, there's many examples of people suggesting a film, only for another to say they've watched through it without finding the quote. Men in Tights has "wait for it" said once. Ditto Monty Python. It seems to me like the quote is like "You dirty rat!" - instantly recognisable but without foundation.

To quote another source:

"In a 2005 discussion thread on The Apple Blog, a casual question about the origin of "Wait for it…" ("Is that from a movie?") elicited the following wildly inaccurate suggestions: Braveheart, First Knight, Kindergarten Cop, Star Wars, Patch Adams, M*A*S*H (the TV series), The Matrix, Superman Returns, The Sandlot, Big Daddy, "one of the OCEAN films, either OCEAN's 11, 12 or 13," Saving Private Ryan, Robin Hood: Men In Tights, American Pie, Jaws, Old School, and Robin Williams: Live On Broadway."

The rule (small r) is therefore intended as a filter for unsubstantiated claims.

Sad Professor

It’s just a phrase. I don’t think you are going to be able to trace the source of it to a particular film or tv show. A bit like “beam me up, Scotty”, it’s possible it has never been said twice in a film in a comedic context.

AVClub have a pretty detailed explanation of its likely origin:

Just ask Eric Partridge, the well-traveled lexicographer who put together A Dictionary Of Catch Phrases in 1977, just two years before his death. In that work he traces "wait for it—wait for it" to two possible early 20th-century sources. It's possible that the phrase derives from the British army, when soldiers are warned by their superior officers not to execute the next command in a series until they're told to do so. This derivation would pinpoint World War I as the entrance of the catchphrase into the popular lexicon.

Or, Partridge opines, the phrase may derive originally from the British music halls. Comedians and farcical actors were urged to "wait for it—wait for it," meaning to allow during rehearsals for the rise and fall of laughter from the audience before continuing. Eventually, the phrase emerged from rehearsal onto the stage itself, in a bit of meta-humor that acknowledges the entire theatrical situation. If it originated on the stage, then its use as a catchphrase could be traced to the late 19th century.

The earliest published example Partridge provides uses the phrase in the latter context. It dates from 1935, in a Noel Coward play called Red Peppers, and it's a classic vaudeville setup, in which our target phrase appears in the stage directions:

GEORGE: I saw a very strange thing the other day.
LILY: What was it?
GEORGE: Twelve men standing under one umbrella and they didn't get wet.
LILY: How's that?
GEORGE: It wasn't raining. [Wait for it—wait for it.]

"Properly," Partridge advises, "the phrase is rapidly repeated." In its evolution through Monty Python into the American scene, the rapidity has turned into exaggerated extension, and the repeat has gradually been lost. And the phrase has acquired something of a different context, now intended most often as a pause for suspense or a beat before a punchline. On television, it's most frequently employed by self-consciously theatrical characters such as Arrested Development's Gob or How I Met Your Mother's Barney. So, Ashley, they're meant to be annoying, and everybody else is riffing off a century-old comic trope. Your remedial British linguistic homework is 32 hours of Monty Python's Flying Circus.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/ask-the-av-club-june-15-2007,1956/