Wednesday, July 16, 2008

A-Side of Owen Wilson, Please


I’ve been thinking a lot about dialogue, lately. I think most writers think it’s the easiest part of writing. I think it can be, but I also think it’s the hardest thing to do really well. Especially when you’re one writer speaking for two people. I have a pet theory that if you want to do really authentic dialogue, the people speaking should always leave the conversation feeling at least slightly misunderstood. Isn’t that how real people communicate? Never wholly getting through to each other?

One of my hands down, all-time -favorite lines of dialogue is spoken by Owen Wilson in his and Wes Anderson’s first collaboration—Bottle Rocket.
Luke and Owen Wilson’s characters, Anthony and Dignan, respectively, are fighting after their big plan has gone awry. They are broke and bloody and angry at one another and their car is broken down on the side of a lonely stretch of highway. At one point, Dignan/Owen points to the non-working car.

Dignan: I don’t have the tools to fix that car. And even if I did, I probably wouldn’t know how to fix it anyway.

Can’t you just hear Owen Wilson’s voice go up three octaves on “even if I did?”

Sadly, I had to paraphrase that. Ya know why? Because it’s NOT IN THE SCREENPLAY. Because MY FAVORITE LINE OF DIALOGUE OF ALL TIME—EVEN WHEN I INCLUDE ALL MY FAVORITE CLASSIC LITERATURE—was AD LIBBED!!! I can’t tell if that makes me extremely indiscriminate or if it means what I said above is true—that you can’t fake the authenticity of speaking from the hip. I love the authenticity of that line.

I also, more to the point, love the intimacy it offers between Dignan and the audience. Wilson, when I think about it, is doing a Shakespearean-style aside. And the crazy thing about that is that I always, as a writer, find those annoying. I’ve always thought they were lazy. Yes, I just called Shakespeare and Hawthorne and anyone else who’s ever used an aside, LAZY. It’s bold Wednesday here in Miss Ive’s corner of the world.

Thanks to Dignan and his confessed automotive ineptitude, I have seen that perhaps there’s more to these moments of ‘too much information’ than a shortcut, or an attempt to ‘tell’ rather than ‘show’ the depth of the character. Maybe it’s a great little way to turn to your audience and invite them into the story, personally. Maybe good dialogue requires two people, shooting from the hip, and the first take, no matter how messy, should be the final take.

Maybe somebody wants to let me call them up and yell at them while recording it so I can get through this bloody scene. Any takers?

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