Daily Dialogue — June 23, 2013

INT. THE APARTMENT — EVENING

Buddy-boy is bending over a hot stove, preparing an Italian dinner. He takes a saucepan of spaghetti off the fire, and picking up the tennis racquet with the other hand, pours the spaghetti on top of the racquet strings. Then he turns on the faucet, runs water over the spaghetti. With the combined technique of Brillat-Savarin and Pancho Gonzales, he gently agitates the racquet, letting the water drain off the spaghetti. As he works, he hums a theme from Tschaikowsky’s Capriccio Italien. Fran walks in, still in her robe.

FRAN: Are we dressing for dinner?
BUD: No — just come as you are.
FRAN: (watching him) Say, you’re pretty good with that racquet.
BUD: You ought to see my backhand. (dumping spaghetti into platter) And wait till I serve the meatballs.
(demonstrates)
FRAN: Shall I light the candles?
BUD: It’s a must — gracious-livingwise.

— The Apartment (1960), written by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week is dinner scene, suggested by Turambar.

Trivia: Billy Wilder originally thought of the idea for the film after seeing Brief Encounter and wondering about the plight of a character unseen in that film. Shirley MacLaine was only given forty pages of the script because Wilder didn’t want her to know how the story would turn out. She thought it was because the script wasn’t finished.

Dialogue On Dialogue: One of the charms of The Apartment is a runner in dialogue, Baxter’s use of “wise”. It was so prevalent in the movie, the studio even featured it in the marketing campaign as with this poster:

And, of course, there is that terrific moment toward the very end of the movie when Sheldrake tells Fran about Baxter’s sudden emergence as a “mensch”:

SHELDRAKE: He said I couldn’t bring anybody to his apartment — especially not Miss Kubelik. What’s he got against you, anyway?
FRAN: (a faraway look in her eye) I don’t know. I guess that’s the way it crumbles — cookie-wise.

And right there, we know she is going to end up with Baxter.

God, I love this movie!

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