It's one of the most iconic scenes in movie history: the moment in Taxi Driver when sociopathic Vietnam veteran Travis Bickle stands in front of a mirror, talking to himself. He's about to liberate his damsel in distress by storming a seedy Manhattan brothel, and to work himself up repeats again and again to his reflection, "Are you talkin' to me?" It's one of Robert De Niro and director Martin Scorsese's finest moments, but like many great movie scenes it involved a touch of luck.

Just out of camera, Scorsese was lying on the ground only inches away from De Niro; and the reason why the actor kept repeating the famous phrase was because his director kept mouthing "say it again", because he was worried the New York street noise outside was going to ruin the shot. It was only afterwards, when he saw the full take, that Scorsese realised what he'd got.

It's a great example of how haphazardly great movie moments can come about, and it's one of the highlights of a new book by London Independent columnist Roger Clarke called Story of the Scene. Subtitled The Inside Scoop on Famous Moments in Film, Clarke's book tells some great yarns about how some of the most memorable film scenes came about. But everyone has their own favourite stories and scenes, and here are 10 of ours.

The Third Man (1949)

Few films captured the desolation and paranoia of postwar Europe as well as Carol Reed's 1949 masterpiece, The Third Man. Based on an idea by Graham Greene, it starred Joseph Cotten as a clueless American hack who gets lost in the confusion and venality of Allied-occupied Vienna, but the film's real star was its villain, Harry Lime (right). Orson Welles was only on screen for 10 minutes or so, but his wicked turn stole the show, and provided the film's most memorable scenes.

Most cinephiles will remember Harry's wonderful "cuckoo clock" speech delivered to Joe Cotten at the top of a Ferris wheel above wartorn Vienna, but not everyone knows that Welles wrote it. When they were doing the scene, Welles and Carol Reed decided that Harry's speech lacked something, and so Welles concocted the film's most famous lines: "You know what the fellow said -- in Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace -- and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

Graham Greene liked the speech so much he incorporated them into his Third Man short story thereafter.

Psycho (1960)

Alfred Hitchcock was at his most innovative and inventive during the filming of Psycho, a film he felt might just revive his fortunes after the box office failure of Vertigo. In adapting Robert Bloch's novel based on the crimes of serial killer Ed Gein, he pushed the prevailing boundaries of taste and single-handedly re-invented the horror genre.

He also pushed his leading lady Janet Leigh (above) very hard, especially in the film's most famous scene. His minutely planned shower scene involved more than 70 separate shots, multiple camera angles and took a week to shoot. Janet Leigh spent seven straight days standing in a shower, though, contrary to popular belief, Hitchcock did not subject her to cold water.

A knife was plunged into a melon to create the stabbing noises, but Hitchcock had intended the scene to be otherwise noiseless, until Bernard Hermann persuaded him to add his famous stringed soundtrack.

When Leigh saw the completed scene, she became paranoid ever after about taking a shower.

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

When Steven Spielberg and George Lucas were shooting their first Indiana Jones film on location in Tunisia, the north African diet and brutal desert heat played havoc with the stomachs of cast and crew. Many fell ill, and Spielberg himself only avoided problems by sticking to a strict regime of English tinned food.

Harrison Ford was not so lucky, and had severe dysentery by the time he came to shoot a key fight scene between Indy and a giant swordsman. Spielberg and Lucas had planned an elaborate and minutely choreographed fight, but Ford wanted to get the scene over with as quickly as possible and said "why don't I just shoot the sucker?"

Spielberg agreed to try it, and it became everyone's favourite joke in a film that went on to earn nearly $400m worldwide and made Harrison Ford a major box office star.

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Apparently Sean Connery was Jonathan Demme's first choice to play caged serial killer Hannibal Lecter, but he didn't fancy it, so the director turned to Anthony Hopkins. It was, of course, an inspired choice: Hopkins recognised that the part was a huge opportunity, and went to prisons and serial killer trials as part of his research. He described the Lecter voice he created as "a combination of Truman Capote and Katharine Hepburn", and he contributed hugely to the key scene where Lecter and FBI agent Clarice Starling first meet.

After studying videos of Charles Manson and noticing that he hardly ever blinked, Hopkins adopted a similar approach. He suggested to Demme that Lecter should look directly at the camera whenever it panned into his line of sight to create the impression that he was all-knowing. And he caught Jodie Foster off-guard by mocking her Southern accent on the first take, adding to her genuine unease. Hopkins also invented the famous slurping sound.

The Godfather (1972)

Among the most famously troubled shoots in movie history, The Godfather was dogged by disputes between Francis Ford Coppola, his crew and a very worried studio. At one point, Paramount's president had emphatically told Coppola that "Marlon Brando will never appear in this motion picture", but Coppola believed that the notoriously mercurial actor would be perfect for the key role of Vito Corleone.

Coppola later said that "every one of Marlon's crazy ideas that I used turned out to be a terrific moment", but it was Coppola who came up with the element that made the key scene where we first see the formidable Don in action. A cat wandered on to the set and Coppola befriended it. And just before they were about to shoot the scene where the undertaker asks the Don for a favour, Coppola dropped the cat into Brando's lap. Brando obliged and so did the cat, and their gentle playing only served to underline his character's power.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

Jack Nicholson wasn't initially keen on starring in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (below) because he was sick of people telling hem he was going to be brilliant in it.

They were right, of course, and his powerful turn as an ordinary decent criminal sent to a mental asylum was heightened by frequent ad-libbing -- for instance when he asks a table of card-playing inmates "which one of you nuts has got any guts". But he and director Milos Forman clashed so much that they ended up communicating through their cinematographer.

And things got so bad over the crucial scene where McMurphy first enters the asylum ward, that Nicholson withdrew his services for two weeks and then spearheaded a coup among the other actors.

But Forman got his way about McMurphy's entry and his silent, passive assessment of the chaos on the ward, and perhaps the on-set tension helped add to the intensity of Nicholson's Oscar-winning turn.

Pretty Woman (1990)

If ever there was a hit film that came about by accident, it was Gerry Marshall's Pretty Woman (above right). Originally intended to be a much darker film, it was only rewritten as a straight romantic comedy at the last minute, and Julia Roberts nearly never got the part. The studio wanted Meg Ryan, and Molly Ringwald, Daryl Hannah, Michelle Pfeiffer and Demi Moore were among those who turned the role down. Roberts got to play the hooker with a heart, and her performance made her a star. Director Marshall realised early on that Roberts' blinding smile and infectious laugh were her greatest assets, and had a flunkie tickle her feet in key scenes to make her laugh on cue. But in the famous scene where Richard Gere hands her a necklace in a case, there was nothing forced about Roberts' reaction.

In the scene, Gere snapped the case down on Roberts' fingers as a joke, and the actress's peal of laughter was totally natural.

The Graduate (1967)

A surprise comic hit in 1967, Mike Nichol's The Graduate was considered very daring because of its story of a young man having an affair with a much older married woman, but one of its most famous scenes was the result of a comedy of errors.

When Benjamin Braddock and Mrs Robinson first meet in a hotel room, Dustin Hoffman decided he would emphasise his character's lack of experience by suddenly grabbing Anne Bancroft's breast. He didn't tell Bancroft or his director, and when he did it, Mike Nichols burst out laughing.

So did Hoffman, and to hide his corpsing he walked to the wall and began banging his forehead off it. Nichols thought it was so funny he left the whole take in.

Ben-Hur (1959)

Ben-Hur (below) was the epic to end all epics, and MGM studios was saved from bankruptcy by its success. Though it contained many memorable moments, its most celebrated scene is undoubtedly the chariot race. Director William Wyler purpose-built an 18-acre set, the race took five weeks to film and involved the use of some 15,000 extras. Contrary to popular belief, no one was killed during shooting, though several horses were. But the scene's most impressive moment was the result of an accident that could have ended in tragedy. When Charlton Heston's stunt double Joe Canutt was shooting the sequence in which Ben-Hur's horses jump over a crashed chariot, he was thrown in the air and only survived by clinging to the front of his chariot. He climbed back in with only a scratch on his chin, and the accident became part of the film.

Jaws (1975)

Much has been made of the technical problems Steven Spielberg encountered with remote-control sharks while shooting Jaws. But he had as much trouble shooting perhaps its most memorable scene, the part where Quint, Brody and Hooper swap war stories in the boat cabin at night.

Shaw and Dreyfuss argued constantly during the shoot, adding to the supposed tensions between their characters. And when Shaw, who drank between takes, wistfully announced he'd like to give it up, Dreyfuss grabbed his glass and threw it overboard. Shaw, an accomplished writer, rewrote the speech about a wartime disaster on a battleship, but fluffed it completely when he tried reciting it drunk.

He asked Spielberg to give him another shot, and the result was perfect, and became the human heart of the film.

The Shining (1980)

Most of the actors who worked with Stanley Kubrick had a harrowing tale or two to tell, but none more so than Shelley Duvall (below). During the protracted and exhausting Shining shoot, she fell foul of the director's almost obsessive perfectionism. She was playing latent psychopath Jack Nicholson's long-suffering wife Wendy, and to push Duvall into a suitably hysterical state, he ordered the crew not to sympathise with her or help her.

Then he began picking on her and telling her she was wasting everyone's time. And in order to get her sense of desperation right in a scene where she disturbs Jack at his desk, he made her repeat the moment where she backed up the stairs screaming and swinging a baseball bat over 100 times. Duvall's described it as an experience she'd never want to repeat.

Irish Independent