Daily Dialogue — April 6, 2016
A factory full of workers feverishly open thousands of Wonka Bars.
VERUCA: I wanted to be the first to find the golden ticket, Daddy.
MR. SALT: I know, angel. We’re doing the best we can. I’ve got every girl in the bleeding staff hunting for ya.
VERUCA: All right, where is it? Why haven’t they found it?
MR. SALT: Veruca, sweetheart, I’m not a magician! Give me time!
VERUCA: I want it now! What’s the matter with those twerps down there?
MR. SALT: For five days now the entire flippin’ factory’s been on the job. They haven’t shelled a peanut in there since Monday. They’ve been shelling flaming chocolate bars from dawn to dusk.
VERUCA: Make ’em work nights!
MR. SALT: (Shouting to the staff on the floor below) Come along, come along, you girls, put a jack in it or you’ll be out on your ears, every one of you! And listen to this: the first girl that finds a golden ticket gets a one pound bonus in her pay bucket! What do you think of that?
Staff shouts with joy.
VERUCA: They’re not even trying. They don’t want to find it. They’re jealous of me.
MR. SALT: Sweetheart, I can’t push ’em no harder. Nineteen thousand bars an hour they’re shelling. Seven hundred and sixty thousand they’ve done so far.
VERUCA: You promised, Daddy! You promised I’d have it the very first day!
MRS. SALT: You’re gonna be very unpopular ’round here, Henry, if you don’t deliver soon.
MR. SALT: It breaks my heart, Henrietta. I hate to see her unhappy.
VERUCA: I won’t talk to you ever again. You’re a rotten, mean father. You never give me anything I want and I won’t go to school until I have it.
MR. SALT: Veruca, sweetheart, angel. Now, there are only four tickets left in the whole world and the whole ruddy world’s hunting for them. What can I do?
A woman’s voice shouts from outside the office.
WOMAN: I’ve got it! I’ve got it, Mr. Salt, here it is!
VERUCA: About time, too! I want it!
The woman is led to the office stairway. Veruca grabs the ticket from her.
VERUCA: Give me that ticket! It’s mine! I found the golden ticket!
— Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971), screenplay by Roald Dahl based on his book
The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Tantrum. Today’s suggestion by Will King.
Trivia: Among Wonka’s lines are the following quotations: “Is it my soul that calls upon my name?” from William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”; “All I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by” from the John Masefield poem “Sea Fever”; “A thing of beauty is a joy forever” from John Keats’s “Endymion: A Poetic Romance” and “Round the world and home again, that’s the sailor’s way!” from William Allingham’s “Homeward Bound”. “We are the music-makers…” is from Arthur O’Shaughnessy’s “Ode”, which also gave us the phrase “movers and shakers”. “Where is fancy bred…” and “So shines a good deed…” are from William Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice”. The lines to the song “Sweet lovers love the spring time… “ are from Shakespeare’s “As You Like It”. “Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker” is from “Reflections on Ice Breaking” by Ogden Nash. “The suspense is terrible, I hope it will last” is a quote from Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest”. These literary quotations were not in Roald Dahl’s original script. They were added for one reason or another by David Seltzer when he re-wrote the screenplay.
Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary by Will: “Veruca Salt is the very epitome of tantrum. Throughout the film she throws one tantrum after another until she gets not what she wants, but what she deserves. She’s the archetypal spoiled brat. Her selfish nature is capped by her final line when, after a factory full of workers have slaved for days to find a ticket, she holds the treasure aloft and claims ‘I found the golden ticket!’”