Daily Dialogue — January 30, 2014

“You punch in at 8:30 every morning, except you punch in at 7:30 following a business holiday, unless it’s a Monday, then you punch in at 8 o’clock. Punch in late and they dock you. Incoming articles get a voucher, outgoing articles provide a voucher. Move any article without a voucher and they dock you. Letter size a green voucher, oversize a yellow voucher, parcel size a maroon voucher. Wrong color voucher and they dock you! 6787049A/6. That is your employee number. It will not be repeated! Without your employee number you cannot get your paycheck. Inter-office mail is code 37, intra-office mail 37–3, outside mail is 3–37. Code it wrong and they dock you! This has been your orientation. Is there anything you do not understand, is there anything you understand only partially? If you have not been fully oriented, you must file a complaint with personnel. File a faulty complaint and they dock you!”

— The Hudsucker Proxy (1997), written by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week is directions, suggested by Bretton Zinger. Today’s suggestion by Jeff Messerman.

Trivia: The published script is introduced with a fake interview with “producer” Joel Silver (who is uncredited in the film). In this interview Silver claims that the Coens were difficult to work with and among other things wanted Ethan to play Tim Robbins’s part and Jeanne Moreau to play Jennifer Jason Leigh’s (despite of the age difference of 30+ years).

Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary from Jeff: “I think we’ve all had a job orientation like this where they draw the threat of “docking ya’” like a gun! My favorite line is the absurdly vicious ‘6787049A/6. That is your employee number. It will not be repeated!’”

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