Joe vs the Volcano, by John Patrick Shanley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGLKnAvzlg4 INT. ADVERTISING DEPARTMENT - DAY Joe comes in. Dede is typing away. Mr. Waturi is on the phone. Joe hangs up his coat. He misses with the hat again because of Dede's typing. He leans over and switches the typewriter off. Then he picks up his hat, dusts it off and throws it in the garbage can. WATURI (on phone) No. No. You were wrong. He was wrong. Who said that? I didn't say that. If I had said that, I would've been wrong. I would've been wrong, Harry, isn't that right? Mr. Waturi's attention is split between his call and Joe, who is walking around the office like a tourist. WATURI Listen, let me call you back, I've got something here, okay? And don't tell him anything till we finish our conversation, okay? Mr. Waturi hangs up the phone. Joe is looking at the coffee set-up. WATURI Joe? JOE Yeah? WATURI You were at lunch three hours. JOE About that. Joe wanders away, into his office. Waturi looks after. INT. JOE'S OFFICE - DAY Joe is staring at the big wheel valve sporting the sign that says Main Drain. Mr. Waturi comes in as Joe moves forward and, with great effort, rotates the wheel to its opposite extreme. This scares Waturi. WATURI Joe, what are you doing? JOE I'm opening, or closing, the main drain. Nothing happens. WATURI You shouldn't be touching that. JOE Nothing happened. Do you know how long I've been wondering what would happen if I did that? WATURI What's the matter with you? JOE Brain cloud. WATURI What? JOE Never mind. Listen, Mr. Waturi. Frank. I quit. Joe starts to take some stuff out of his desk. He looks at his lamp, gets the cord, plugs it in, and turns it on. WATURI You mean, today? JOE That's right. WATURI That's great. Well, don't come looking for a reference. JOE Okay, I won't. WATURI You blew this job. Joe takes in the little room. JOE I've been here for four and a half years. The work I did I probably could've done in five, six months. That leaves four years leftover. He's been filling up a shopping bag with stuff from his desk: three books (Romeo and Juliet, Robinson Crusoe and The Odyssey), an old ukulele and his lamp. Now he's finished. He walks out of the room without even looking at Waturi. Waturi goes after him as he exits. Joe is walking towards the front door. Waturi follows him in. Joe stops at Dede's desk. She's typing. He looks at her. She stops typing. JOE Four years. If I had them now. Like gold in my hand. Here. This is for you. (gives Dede the lamp) 'Bye-bye, Dede. DEDE You're going? WATURI Well, if you're leaving, leave. WATURI (CONT'D) You'll get your check. And, I promise you, you'll be easy to replace. JOE I should say something. WATURI What are you talking about? JOE This life. Life? What a joke. This situation. This room. WATURI Joe, maybe you should just... JOE You look terrible, Mr. Waturi. You look like a bag of shit stuffed inna cheap suit. Not that anyone would look good under these zombie lights. I can feel them sucking the juice outta my eyeballs. Three hundred bucks a week, that's the news. For three hundred bucks a week I've lived in this sink. This used rubber. WATURI Watch it, mister! There's a woman here! JOE Don't you think I know that, Frank? Don't you think I'm aware there's a woman here? I can taste her on my tongue. I can smell her. When I'm twenty feet away, I can hear the fabric of her dress when she moves in her chair. Not that I've done anything about it. I've gone all day, every day, not doing, not saying, not taking the chance for three hundred bucks a week, and Frank the coffee stinks it's like arsenic, the lights give me a headache if the lights don't give you a headache you must be dead, let's arrange the funeral. WATURI You better get outta here right now! I'm telling you! JOE You're telling me nothing. WATURI I'm telling you! JOE And why, I ask myself, why have I put up with you? I can't imagine but I know. Fear. Yellow freakin' fear. I've been too chicken shit afraid to live my life so I sold it to you for three hundred freakin' dollars a week! You're lucky I don't kill you! You're lucky I don't rip your freakin' throat out! But I'm not going to and maybe you're not so lucky at that. 'Cause I'm gonna leave you here, Mister Wa-a-Waturi, and what could be worse than that? Joe opens the door and leaves. Mr. Waturi and Dede are frozen. The door reopens and Joe comes halfway back in. JOE Dede? DEDE Yeah? JOE How 'bout dinner tonight? DEDE Yeah, uh, okay. Joe smiles for the first time since we've met him, and closes the door again. DEDE Wow. What a change. WATURI Who does he think he is? Notes: The first thing that strikes me is the honesty of the character in the dialog, basically merging the subtext with the action. He says what he thinks and feels. Usually this might be considered too 'on the nose' type of dialog. But it works here because we want to see him tell off his boss. Otherwise that tension of Joe needing to release, might take some other form, such as going postal or taking it our on someone else. And he doesn't do this at first. He's about to walk out. But then he decides he will have it out. The whole time he walks around, the prelude to the monologue, we feel the building of tension. Something is going on inside and we don't know what it is. But we can guess it has to do with his facing death and realizing how he's wasted his time at this place (or maybe he's just lost it). When he does talk, it comes out like some kind of classic scripture or epiphany about the meaning of what little time we have in our lives. This scene marks the turning point that propels Joe into the adventure of the rest of the movie. In a later scene Joe sits in amazement of the life he's apparently missed and his companion Patricia remembers her father saying that most people in the world are asleep except for a very few who live in constant amazement. Here again we have a scriptural, spiritual sort of statement about life. http://youtu.be/ICGIcfj4ZKE John Patrick Shanley also wrote Moonstruck which has life changing event themes as well. I think he is highly underrated.

Movie: Forrest Gump Youtube: http://youtu.be/pKKmzmeU5-0 Forrest Gump: [running] Anyway, as I was saying, I had a lot of company. My Mama always said, You got to put the past behind you before you can move on. And I think that’s what my running was all about. I had run for 3 years, 2 months, 14 days, and 16 hours. [he stops and turns around] Young Man Running: Quiet, quiet! He's gonna say something! Forrest Gump: [pause] I'm pretty tired... I think I'll go home now. Young Man Running: Now what are we supposed to do? Forrest Gump: And just like that, my runnin’ days was over. Comment: This whole movie is a visual metaphor and this is another example; someone literally running to escape all the unhappy things in his life and then quitting when he has run far enough. And he doesn't quit when he reaches home or a coast, he quits in the middle of a desert, when he decides he is done running.

I'm going to continue the Tom Hanks love fest and go with a quitting scene from A League of Their Own where Dottie quits the team. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndL7y0MIRE4 What everyone seems to respond to in this scene is the line: "It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard... is what makes it great." A really well stated comparison to life. My favorite choice in the scene is when the writer (or actress) said: "I don't need this" twice, making it obvious to the audience that she is trying to convince herself. Jimmy Dugan: Taking a little day trip? Dottie Hinson: No, Bob and I are driving home. To Oregon. Jimmy Dugan: [long pause] You know, I really thought you were a ballplayer. Dottie Hinson: Well, you were wrong. Jimmy Dugan: Was I? Dottie Hinson: Yeah. It is only a game, Jimmy. It's only a game, and, and, I don't need this. I have Bob; I don't need this. At all. Jimmy Dugan: I, I gave away five years at the end my career, drinking. Five years. And now there isn't anything I wouldn't give to get back any one day of it. Dottie Hinson: Well, we're different. Jimmy Dugan: This is chickenshit, Dottie, if you want to go back to Oregon and make a hundred babies, great, I'm in no position to tell anyone how to live. But sneaking out like this, quitting, you'll regret it for the rest of your life. Baseball is what gets inside you. It's what lights you up, you can't deny that. Dottie Hinson: It just got too hard. Jimmy Dugan: It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard... is what makes it great.