A Cry in the Dark Quotes
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Source: A Cry in the Dark
Speaker: Lindy
The dingo took my baby!
Context
This line is spoken by Lindy, played by Meryl Streep, in the movie A Cry in the Dark, directed by Fred Schipisi (1988).
It's not a joke. This actually happened to an Australian couple named Lindy and Michael Chamberlain while they were camping in the Outback—the homeland of dingoes. The movie, originally released in Australia as Evil Angels, dramatizes the media circus that followed as a disbelieving public turned against Lindy. She was eventually convicted of murdering her child, mainly because she wasn't as weepy as everybody thought she should be. Thankfully, new evidence eventually surfaced and Lindy was exonerated. A happy ending... er, except for the baby.
Where you've heard it
Who says babies getting eaten by wild dogs isn't a cause for hilarity? Since A Cry in the Dark came out, there's been a ton of comic spoofs of it. The most well-known one is probably on Seinfeld, when Elaine uses a version of the quote to shut up an annoying lady at a party. (Here's a clip.) Family Guy also uses it pretty cleverly when Brian and Stewie have a radio show called "Dingo and the Baby." Get it? Brian is a dog and Stewie is a... yeah, you get it.
Additional Notable References:
Movies
- TV: The Movie
- The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert
- The Rugrats Movie
- The Nugget
- Yellowbrickroad
TV
- Saturday Night Live
- Tales of Monkey Island
- Supernatural
- Two and a Half Men
- Law and Order
- The Simpsons
- Frasier
- Mystery Science Theater 3000
- ALF
Pretentious Factor
If you were to drop this quote at a dinner party, would you get an in-unison "awww" or would everyone roll their eyes and never invite you back? Here it is, on a scale of 1-10.
It's a little wrong, sure, but not all that pretentious.