Comma or Colon?

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MisterFuzyPants  #347208  Wed, 04 Apr 07 03:20 PM
Hi, I'm new to these forums, and I have a couple questions about a sentence.


With his oversized gun drawn and pointed at the head of a hapless thief, Clint Eastwood’s character, Harry Callahan, in the 1971 film Dirty Hairy uttered his now famous catchphrase, “You've got to ask yourself a question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya punk?”



The first question I have is whetherI should use a comma, a semicolon, or something else when i'm introducing the quotation (right now I have a comma).

The second question I have is whether I should have a comma after the title.

Any hints would be apreciated!
  
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Marius Hancu  #347209  Wed, 04 Apr 07 03:26 PM
My choice:

With his oversized gun drawn and pointed at the head of a hapless thief, Clint Eastwood’s character in the 1971 film Dirty Hairy, Harry Callahan, uttered his now famous catchphrase “You've got to ask yourself a question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya punk?”
  
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MisterFuzyPants  #347217  Wed, 04 Apr 07 03:55 PM
Perfect!  Thanks!
  
Dawnstorm  #347220  Wed, 04 Apr 07 04:11 PM
1. The comma is correct; it's the convention for dialogue punctuation in fiction. I suppose this holds true for film-quotes, too.

2. Generally, there are two ways to treat "Dirty Hairy" (shouldn't this be "Dirty Harry"?):

Apposition: ...in Clint Eastwood's 1971 film, Dirty Hairy, ... (what you did with "Harry Callahan")

As head of a noun phrase: ...in the 1971 film Dirty Hairy...

Only the appositive use takes commas, but then you'd have to make one after "film" as well. This sounds strange to me.

This is how I see the subject of your sentence:

Clint Eastwood's Character, Harry Calahan, in the 1971 film Dirty Hairy = Subject.

OR

Clint Eastwood's Character, Harry Calahan, = Subject // in the 1971 film Dirty Hairy = another adverbial clause ("with... thief" is the first one)

If the former, the sentence could read like this:

With his oversized gun drawn and pointed at the head of a hapless thief, Harry Calahan, Clint Eastwood's Character in the 1971 film Dirty Hairy, uttered his famous catchphrase, "..." (Pretty much what Marius Hancu did, come to think of it, only I made Harry Calahan the subject, and the character-phrase the apposition.)

If the latter, it could read like this:

With his oversized gun drawn and pointed at the head of a hapless thief, Clint Eastwood's character, Harry Calahan, uttered, in the 1971 film Dirty Hairy, his famous catchphrase, "..." (This is so awkward, though, that I'd prefer the above version, even if the original intention was to say that Callahan uttered the phrase in Dirty Hairy, and not in any of the other "Dirty Harry" films.)

I don't think anything's wrong with the punctuation in your original sentence, though.






  
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MisterFuzyPants  #347255  Wed, 04 Apr 07 05:56 PM
Thanks for the insight!  Appositives can be tricky, but your post helped a lot.
  
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