Daily Dialogue — April 3, 2016

Ma: [about the mouse] He’s on the other side of this wall.
Jack: What other side?
Ma: Jack, there’s two sides to everything.
Jack: Not on an octagon.
Ma: Yeah, but…
Jack: [Interrupts] An octagon has eight sides
Ma: But a wall, okay, a wall’s like this, see? And we’re on the inside and mouse is on the outside.
Jack: In outer space?
Ma: No, in the world. It’s much closer than outer space.
Jack: I can’t see the outside-side.
Ma: Listen, I know that I told you something else before, but you were much younger. I didn’t think that you could understand, but now you’re so old, you’re so smart. I know that you can get this. Where do you think that old Nick gets our food?
Jack: From TV by magic!

— Room (2015), screenplay by Emma Donoghue, novel by Emma Donoghue

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Parental advice, suggested by Michael Waters.

Trivia: Brie Larson isolated herself in her home for a month without a phone or internet and followed a strict diet in order to get a sense of what Ma and Jack were going through. Larson has said that because she considers herself an introvert who prefers to stay at home, she thought that her month of isolation would be a vacation, but towards the last week she became very depressed and would cry all day.

Dialogue On Dialogue: Here the truth contradicts the ‘truth’ Ma has conveyed to Jack for years and Jack rejects this advice.