Daily Dialogue — December 10, 2013

Grandma: You know, when I was nineteen, Grandpa took me on a roller coaster.
Gil: Oh?
Grandma: Up, down, up, down. Oh, what a ride!
Gil: What a great story.
Grandma: I always wanted to go again. You know, it was just so interesting to me that a ride could make me so — so frightened, so scared, so sick, so — so excited, and so thrilled all together! Some didn’t like it. They went on the merry-go-round. That just goes around. Nothing. (beat) I like the roller coaster. You get more out of it.

— Parenthood (1989), screenplay by Lowell Ganz & Babaloo Mandel, story by Lowell Ganz & Babaloo Mandel & Ron Howard

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week is parental advice, suggested by David Proenza. Today’s suggestion by Femme_Mal.

Trivia: When Grandma (Helen Shaw) inhales the helium balloon and says that when she was born, Grover Cleveland was President. Shaw was born on July 25, 1897, just four months and three weeks after the end of Cleveland’s second term.

Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary from Femme_Mal: “Parenthood (1989), comes to mind, of course. It’s chock-full of great dialog. But some fine parental advice comes from a parent’s grandmother; it’s pure genius, making Gil look even more irrationally anal retentive, thereby setting up the movie’s climax.”

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