Daily Dialogue — April 25, 2012

“He was ashamed of his persiflage, his boasting, his pretensions of courage and ruthlessness; he was sorry about his cold-bloodedness, his dispassion, his inability to express what he now believed was the case- that he truly regretted killing Jesse, that he missed the man as much as anybody and wished his murder hadn’t been necessary. Even as he circulated his saloon he knew that the smiles disappeared when he passed by. He received so many menacing letters that he could read them without any reaction except curiosity. He kept to his apartment all day, flipping over playing cards, looking at his destiny in every King and Jack. Edward O’Kelly came up from Bachelor at one P.M. on the 8th. He had no grand scheme. No strategy. No agreement with higher authorities. Nothing but a vague longing for glory, and a generalized wish for revenge against Robert Ford. Edward O’Kelly would be ordered to serve a life sentence in the Colorado Penitentiary for second degree murder. Over seven thousand signatures would eventually be gathered in a petition asking for O’Kelly’s release, and in 1902, Governor James B. Ullman would pardon the man. There would be no eulogies for Bob, no photographs of his body would be sold in sundries stores, no people would crowd the streets in the rain to see his funeral cortege, no biographies would be written about him, no children named after him, no one would ever pay twenty-five cents to stand in the rooms he grew up in. The shotgun would ignite, and Ella Mae would scream, but Robert Ford would only lay on the floor and look at the ceiling, the light going out of his eyes before he could find the right words.”

— Narrator (Hugh Ross), The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), screenplay by Andrew Dominik, based on a novel by Ron Hansen

The actual scene is here.

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week is voice-over narration suggested by Lloyd Morgan, who also suggested today’s movie.

Trivia: The original unedited screenplay was 132 pages long, but the final version was reduced down to 102 pages.

Dialogue On Dialogue: Why does this narration work so well? In part, I think it’s because it allows us to enter into the mindset of Robert Ford, like a novel, and experience something of what he did after he killed Jesse James. And also because it is beautifully written. 

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