Dupea: I’d like a plain omelette, no potatoes, tomatoes instead, a cup of coffee, and wheat toast.
Waitress: (She points to the menu) No substitutions.
Dupea: What do you mean? You don’t have any tomatoes?
Waitress: Only what’s on the menu. You can have a number two – a plain omelette. It comes with cottage fries and rolls.
Dupea: Yeah, I know what it comes with. But it’s not what I want.
Waitress: Well, I’ll come back when you make up your mind.
Dupea: Wait a minute. I have made up my mind. I’d like a plain omelette, no potatoes on the plate, a cup of coffee, and a side order of wheat toast.
Waitress: I’m sorry, we don’t have any side orders of toast…an English muffin or a coffee roll.
Dupea: What do you mean you don’t make side orders of toast? You make sandwiches, don’t you?
Waitress: Would you like to talk to the manager?
Dupea: …You’ve got bread and a toaster of some kind?
Waitress: I don’t make the rules. Dupea: OK, I’ll make it as easy for you as I can. I’d like an omelette, plain, and a chicken salad sandwich on wheat toast, no mayonnaise, no butter, no lettuce. And a cup of coffee.
Waitress: A number two, chicken sal san, hold the butter, the lettuce and the mayonnaise. And a cup of coffee. Anything else?
Dupea: Yeah. Now all you have to do is hold the chicken, bring me the toast, give me a check for the chicken salad sandwich, and you haven’t broken any rules.
Waitress (spitefully): You want me to hold the chicken, huh?
Dupea: I want you to hold it between your knees.
Waitress (turning and telling him to look at the sign that says, “No Substitutions”) Do you see that sign, sir? Yes, you’ll all have to leave. I’m not taking any more of your smartness and sarcasm.
Dupea: You see this sign? (He sweeps all the water glasses and menus off the table.)
– Dupea (Jack Nicholson), Waitress (Lorna Thayer), Five Easy Pieces (1970), screenplay by Carole Eastman, story by Carole Eastman and Bob Rafelson
The Daily Dialogue theme for the week is mealtime conversations, suggested by Deaf Ears. Five Easy Pieces suggested by Pliny the Elder.
Trivia: “Five Easy Pieces” refers to a book of piano lessons for beginners.
Dialogue On Dialogue: What does the wheat toast represent?
I have no idea. I did however recognize the dialogue immediately. Next you should do the scene from When Harry Met Sally, if you haven’t already….
The wheat toast…. at the risk of sounding pretentious, it represents Dupea’s desire to stand as an individual and his struggle against the forces of conformity.
The idea that something as prosaic as wheat toast should be too string a request to those whose minds have been conditioned to conform to the rules is telling. No substitutions, no exceptions.
Pliny, that’s very much how I saw it. The toast is only a symptom. The condition is the no substitutions rule. And Dupea is struggling claim his own identity, not that which he’s supposed to have, so this interaction with the waitress is taps into a deeper emotional dynamic he’s confronting on conscious and unconscious levels.