A quick heads up for our comedy writers: the term for this is "pragmatics", in the linguistics sense of "the analysis of language in terms of the situational context within which utterances are made, including the knowledge and beliefs of the speaker and the relation between speaker and listener", which can be used (as above) to comic effect. Here's a good article on Pragmatics as Comedy. And here are more examples of pragmatics comedy: - Chris Clarke, This is the title of a typical incendiary blog post - The Manifesto Manifesto - The Brain as described by John Cleese (video) - Charlie Brooker, How to report the news (video) - The Limestone Trio, Generic Uptempo Folk Song (video) - DaVinci's Notebook, The Title of the Song (video) - Trailer for Every Oscar-Winning Movie Ever (video) - Patrina Miller, Random Black Girl (video) - Spamalot, Song That Goes Like This (Be warned: there are some killer earworms on that list.) As you can see, I collect examples of pragmatics in action, and if you come across other good examples I'd love to see them. Back to the Soderbergh scene: has anyone else here tried writing a draft like that? I do, on occasion, if I have the shape and rhythm of a scene and want to get it on the page and come back and wrestle in the actual words later. I wouldn't be surprised if Aaron Sorkin wrote that way, given his background in musical theatre.

I just thought of this post again reading an interview with Roberto Benigni on the Euroscreenwriters website (which I arrived at through an interview link in an old GITS post; amazing site--thanks Scott). Benigni describes working with Fellini: >"I observed Fellini a lot when I made The Voice of the Moon with him. There was something fascinating about him, he was really a Mama to me. It was like staying with an oak tree. There is a legend that he is improvising when he shoots, but I don't think he was improvising. Before shooting, everybody is silent, because the maestro is shooting. No flies even buzz. But once he says "Action", everybody is screaming. And the actors are acting in this complete mess. You feel like you are making love to the film. This is completely the opposite to me. And then, he could change everything during the dubbing, because he liked to dub the movie. In one scene where I would say, "can I have a drink of water?", he would say, "now you are saying, I love you very much!" He liked to change everything. He was really a magician." You can see how my mind went to this Soderbergh scene. I'm fascinated by the concept of giving actors one set of dialogue, and then dubbing in something completely different. Wow. Imagine what you could do. Now I'm going to have to rewatch Fellini and watch for this.