The Raven (1963) Screenplay by Richard Matheson, based on the poem by Edgar Allan Poe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_NBFJ4pow8 SCARABUS: Do you want to come in? Well, I believe it does. Well, then, come on. (The raven flies into the room.) Who sent you to me? Are you some dark-winged messenger from beyond? Answer me, monster, tell me truly. Shall I ever hold again that radiant maiden whom the angels call Lenore? RAVEN: How the hell should I know? What am I, a fortune teller? Ooohh! I...I'm chilled to the bones. Why don't you give me some wine? Well, don't just stand there gaping at me! SCARABUS: That voice...I... RAVEN: Will you give me some wine! SCARABUS: Yes, yes. (Begins to walk across the room, pausing at his desk.) Here's some nice hot milk. RAVEN: Milk? How vomitable! SCARABUS: Surely this is a dream. RAVEN: Hurry up, will you! SCARABUS: (Offering a glass of wine.) There you are. RAVEN: What do you expect me to do, hold it? With what? (Flies to Scarabus' arm.) Oh, never mind. (Drinks.) Mmm, I like that. Mmm. SCARABUS: Upon my soul. RAVEN: Never mind your soul. Start concentrating on getting me back to my rightful form. SCARABUS: Your rightful form? RAVEN: Well what do you think, I was born this way? SCARABUS: Well I...I have it! You are under an enchantment. RAVEN: Took you long enough to find that out. DIALOGUE ON DIALOGUE: Based (very) loosely on the poem by Edgar Allan Poe, this send-up of the horror films of all three of the main stars is a wonderful romp. The opening sequence begins with Price reading the opening lines of Poe's poem, then the action begins when the raven begins tap...tap...tapping (seemingly) at the chamber door, but then turns out to really be at the window. The surpise comes when the film goes off the rails and the bird begins speaking in Peter Lorre's voice. It's all downhill from there.

Roxanne (1987) Screenplay by Steve Martin, based on the play by Edmond Rostand https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1nYEH6EDwM DRUNK: Hey, where you going, Big Nose? CD: (Pauses, turns) Pardon me? DRUNK: You heard me...Big Nose. CD: That it? DRUNK: Yeah. CD: Well, you really got me on that one, didn't ya? (Starts to walk away) Oh, wait a second. What a waste of an opportunity. DRUNK: What? CD: Well, I mean, you've got someone standing in front of you with, uh, this, and all you can think up is "Big Nose". DRUNK: I suppose you can think of something better? CD: Yeah, I think I can think of something better. Come here. They move to the dartboard. CD: This dart. Whatever number you hit, that's how many I'll think up. The man throws the dart and hits the number 20. CD: Twenty? Sheez! (To the crowd) Two out of three. Two out of three. CD Retrieves the dart and gives it to the man, who throws another hit on 20. CD: Twenty. DRUNK: Darts champion, Denver, 1987. DIXIE: C'mon, Charlie, you can do it. Crowd begins to get into the competition. CD: All right, twenty something betters. Uh, here goes. We'll start with...obvious. Excuse me, is that your nose or did a bus park on your face? Meteorological: everybody take cover, she's going to blow! Fashionable: you know, you could de-emphasize your nose if you wore something larger, like Wyoming. Personal: Well, here we are, just the three of us. Cultural: all right, gentleman, your nose was on time but you were fifteen minutes late. Envious: Oooh---I wish I were you. Gosh, to be able to smell your own ear! Naughty: uh, pardon me, sir, some of the ladies have asked if you wouldn't mind putting that thing away. Philosophical: you know, it's not the size of a nose that's important, it's what's in it that matters. Humorous: laugh and the world laughs with you. Sneeze and it's goodbye, Seattle. Commercial: Hi, I'm Earl Scheib and I can paint that nose for thirty nine, ninety five! Polite: Uh, would you mind not bobbing your head. The, uh, orchestra keeps changing tempo. Melodic: everybody: He's got the whole world in his nose. Sympathetic: Oh, what happened? Did your parents lose a bet with God? Complimentary: You must love the little birdies to give them this to perch on. Scientific: Say, does that things there influence the tides? Obscure: Ooh! I'd hate to see the grindstone. Well, think about it. Inquiry: When you stop and smell the flowers, are they afraid? French: Sir, ze pigs have refused to find any more truffles until you leave. Pornographic: Finally, a man to satisfy two women at once! How many is that? DEAN: Fourteen, Chief. CD: All right, All right. Religious: The Lord giveth, and He just kept on giving, didn't he? CROWD: Fifteen! CD: Disgusting: Say, who mows your nose hair? CROWD: Sixteen. CD: Uh, Paranoid: keep that guy away from my cocaine! CROWD: Seventeen. CD: Aromatic: it must be wonderful to wake up in the morning and smell the coffee...in Brazil. CROWD: Eighteen. CD: Appreciative: Ooh, how original. Most people just have their teeth capped. CROWD: Nineteen. CD: All right, uh... CROWD: C'mon, CD, you can do it! CD: All right, Dirty: your name wouldn't be Dick, would it? Crowd applauds. DRUNK: You smart-assed son of a bitch. CD: You flat-faced, flat-nosed flathead. (Walks away) DRUNK: Hey! He goes to punch CD but CD blocks his hits and pounds him in the face over his shoulder. CD: Ow. (Walks over to the table where Dixie and Roxanne are seated.) Has he fallen yet? The drunk falls to the floor. DIALOGUE ON DIALOGUE: There are several layers of surprises in this exchange. At first, the drunk thinks he's on top by name-calling CD, but is surprised when CD not only refuses to take the bait to start a fight, but instead challenges him to a verbal battle. CD, thinking he's on top, is surprised by the number the man hits with the dart, only to discover he's a darts champion. CD then goes through the entire litany of insults, winning the crowd's favor and discrediting his opponent. At the end, the man tries to go through with what he wanted in the first place, only to be surprised to find that CD is not only more capable verbally, but physically as well. In this scene we get a story within a story, or, perhaps, one stand up routine within another. The scene gives Steve Martin a chance to do what he does best: stand-up comedy. The in-movie audience is entertained, but so is the movie-watching audience.

The Steve Martin theme continues with... DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS (1988) Written by Dale Launer and Stanley Shapiro & Paul Henning Clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMzkzNc68g0 JANET (now PAULA): C’mon, everybody, I want you to meet Mr. Big Stuff. I was showing Nikos property in Florida; he goes, if I'm going invest 16 million bucks, I wanna do it someplace new. I say, like where? He goes, how about Australia? And then it hits me, boom, Australia, what are you kidding me? We gotta go meet Mr. Australia himself, I say. So he goes, why not; I go, why not; pretty soon the whole group goes... GROUP (in unison): Why not? JANET: So, here we are. (beat) So, Nikos Papadrapolous, I'd like you to meet the favorite son of Australia, Chips O'Toole. Complete and total silence. JANET: Well, aren't you going to say anything? Silence continues until... LAWRENCE (now CHIPS): G'day, Nikos. How's it going, sport? Good on ya, cobber. Chips O'Toole, hotels and oil from Down Under. JANET: You still have any of those situations available in Sydney? LAWRENCE: No, it's all gone, Paula. Never mind, Nikos, people drop out, don't they? Anyway, come on up to the house, we'll put a couple of shrimps on the barbie for ya. JANET: Hey, I almost forgot somebody. Mr. Junior Partner, the man Chips can't do without. The whiz kid, Randy Bentwick. Unfortunately, Randy is a mute. Dialogue on Dialogue: When Janet shows up at the end of the film, Lawrence and Freddy are taken completely by surprise. But it's also a surprise for the audience whether or not these guys can get it together to pull this final ruse off. The scene works because of what's said but also because of what's not -- the painfully long silence.

Thanks, Will and Melinda!

one suggestion for a DD-theme: children speaking (it's an art that they don't sound like grown-ups) and here the suggestion for the theme of the week from "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" (and I couldn't decide for one suggestion of trivia, therefore three of them) and isn't there a tradition in the USA, that you write to "Mrs. John Wade Joanna Prentice"? I wasn't sure about that, but then Joanna would finish the sentence of her mother - not noticing her shock. JOANNA DRAYTON: He's so calm and sure of everything. He doesn't have any tensions in him. He knows what he believes and what he thinks is right and why, and where he's going. Oh, Mom, there's one thing I must tell you. He was married before, and he had a son. It was so tragic. His wife and son were killed in a train accident eight years ago. And John... I haven't even told you his name. Mom, it's John Wade Prentice. Isn't that a lovely name? CHRISTINA DRAYTON: John Wade... JOANNA DRAYTON: Joanna Prentice, I'll be. But, Mom. Mom? There's something else that John's that John's been concerned about, very deeply concerned about. He's been worrying if you and Dad would be upset if... Well, it's about time. I was wondering where you'd been. Mom, this is John. CHRISTINA DRAYTON: Doc... Doc... Dr. Prentice? I'm so pleased to meet you. JOHN PRENTICE: I'm pleased to meet you, Mrs. Drayton. Joanna's already busted out with the news. CHRISTINA DRAYTON: She has told me a good deal, and all very quickly too. JOHN PRENTICE: She's only known me for 10 days, so she can't tell when I'm blushing. That could be another problem for us. Mrs. Drayton, I'm medically qualified, so I hope you won't think it presumptuous if I say you should sit before you fall down. JOANNA DRAYTON: He thinks you're gonna faint because he's a Negro. CHRISTINA DRAYTON: Well... I don't think I'm going to faint. But I'll sit down anyway. — Guess Who‘s Coming to Dinner (1967), written by William Rose https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BI5jFyAdZ8 Trivia: This movie was still showing in theaters at the time Martin Luther King was assassinated. Originally, there was a line in the movie where Joey (Katharine Houghton) tells the maid another person is coming to dinner, to which Tillie (Isabel Sanford), the maid guesses, "The Reverend Martin Luther King?" When King was murdered, the studio immediately called the theaters showing the film and gave instructions to cut that scene from the movie. In the scene near the end where Spencer Tracy gives his memorable soliloquy, Katharine Hepburn can be seen crying in the background. This was not acting: she knew how gravely ill her longtime lover was and was moved by his remarks about how true love endures through the years. John says to Matt that Joey "feels that all of our children will be president of the United States and they'll all have colorful administrations." In 1960, seven years before this movie was released, a black economics student named Barack Obama and a white anthropology student named Ann Dunham met, fell in love, and got married. Like the characters of John and Joey in this movie, Barack and Ann were an interracial couple who met at the University of Hawaii during an era when interracial relationships and marriages were still taboos or even illegal in many parts of the country. In 2008, the child that Barack and Ann Obama had together did indeed become President of the United States. Dialogue on Dialogue: The whole movie is about the surprise of Joanna‘s parents about her black fiancé. In this scene her mother listens joyfully to Joanna describing John - as long as the door opens and she realises that he is black. Her reaction is without words, she discontinues speaking out his name. When she tries to find words again, she ties on his name again. Surprise and shock keep the least amount of words for the mother in this scene.

TERMINATED EMPLOYEE 1: This is what I get in return for 30 years of service for my company? And they send some yo-yo like you in here to try to tell me that I'm out of a job? They should be telling you you're out of a job. TERMINATED EMPLOYEE 2: You have a lot of gall coming in here and firing your number one producer. And then you're going to go home tomorrow and make more money than you've ever made in your life, and I'm going to go home without a pay check. Fuck you. TERMINATED EMPLOYEE 3: I just... I guess you leave me dumbfounded. I don't know where this is coming from. How am I supposed to go back as a man and explain this to my wife that I lost my job? TERMINATED EMPLOYEE 4: On a street level, I've heard that losing your job is like a death in the family. But personally, I feel more like the people I worked with were my family and *I* died. TERMINATED EMPLOYEE 5: I can't afford to be unemployed. I have a house payment. I have children. TERMINATED EMPLOYEE 6: I don't know how you can live with yourself, but I'm sure that you'll find a way while the rest of us are suffering. STEVE: [on the verge of tears] Who the fuck are you, man? RYAN BINGHAM: Excellent question. Who the fuck am I? Poor Steve has worked here for seven years. He's never had a meeting with me before, or passed me in the hall, or told me a story in the break room. And that's because I don't work here. I work for another company that lends me out to pussies like Steve's boss, who don't have the balls to sack their own employees, and in some cases, for good reason. Because people do crazy shit when they get fired. — Up in the Air (2009), written by Jason Reitman & Sheldon Turner, based on the novel by Walter Kirn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjVyrWdUy0c unfortunately I couldn‘t find the entire scene as a video, the first 3 terminated employees are missing The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Surprise. Trivia: A large amount of the people we see fired in the film are not actors but people who were recently laid off. The filmmakers put out ads in St. Louis and Detroit posing as a documentary crew looking to document the effect of the recession. When people showed up, they were instructed to treat the camera like the person who fired them and respond as they did or use the opportunity to say what they wished they had. A way to discern who are the actors and who are the real people is that the real people do not have dialogue with George Clooney or Anna Kendrick, as they were shot separately. Jason Reitman did this intentionally, feeling that the real people would freak out Clooney and Kendrick. Dialogue on Dialogue: These are the first lines of the movie, real people talk about their feelings being fired (despite Steve, who was played by Zach Galifianakis). You can feel their surprise and their shock as if it already had happen the moment before. And as they talk directly into the camera, it puts us in the shoes of the protagonists. This is what he hears everyday as he is messenger of the bad new‘s surprise. Though this are documentary scenes they are still selected and therefore kind of written in the editing room. These talks give the beginning of the movie a great counterpart. This version of the script (which can find here http://www.screenplaydb.com/film/scripts/up_in_the_air.pdf) starts with Bingham‘s“ What‘s in your backpack“-speech (here is the clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsRP9EUrXjo) where he suggests to burn all the ballast. In the movie it comes after we‘ve seen really people which will loose houses and perhaps there families. This scene gets more irony in the movie version.