Daily Dialogue — August 1, 2015
DEBBIE: I don’t want to hurt anybody. I don’t enjoy hurting anybody. I don’t like guns, or bombs, or electric chairs. But sometimes people just won’t listen. So I have to use persuasion. And slides. My parents: Sharon and Dave. Generous. Doting…or where they? All I ever wanted was a Ballerina Barbie in her pretty pink tutu. My birthday. I was ten. And do you know what they got me? MAL-I-BU BAR-BIE!
MORTICIA: Malibu Barbie.
GOMEZ: The nightmare.
MORTICIA: The nerve.
DEBBIE: That’s not what I wanted. That’s not who I was. I was a ballerina. GRACEFUL! DELICATE! They had to go.
Baby Pubert takes down a saw and begins cutting his way out of his prison.
DEBBIE: My first husband, the heart surgeon. All day long coronaries, transplants.
GRANNY: What about your needs?
DEBBIE: “Sorry about dinner, Deb, the Pope has a cold.”
GRANNY: An ax. That takes me back.
Pubert, crawling away, knocks loose a bowling ball.
DEBBIE: Husband number two: the senator. He loved his state. He loved his country.
GRANNY: What about Debbie?
DEBBIE: “Sorry, Debbie, no Mercedes this year. We have to set an example.” Oh, yeah? SET THIS!
More scenes of Pubert and the bowling ball.
DEBBIE: My latest husband. My late husband, Fester.
FESTER: The fool.
DEBBIE: The corpse, and his adorable family. They took me in, accepted me, but did any of you love me? Really love me?
GOMEZ: Hands!
Pubert slides down the stair rail and rolls across the floor.
DEBBIE: So, I…I killed. So, I maimed. So, I detroyed one innocent life after another. Aren’t I a human being? Don’t I yearn, and ache, and shop? Don’t I deserve love? And jewelry?
The bowling ball and baby Pubert set up the teeter-totter.
MORTICIA: A doomed ship.
GOMEZ: Adios, Cara Mia.
FESTER: Debbie, let them go. Take me and my money. For what I’ve done I deserve to die.
DEBBIE: Sorry.
The bowling ball launches Pubert into orbit, where he appears in the window of a passing jetliner.
DEBBIE: Goodbye, everybody! Wish me luck.
GROUP: Good luck.
Pubert lands just as Debbie throws the swtich. He rewires the cables so the shock returns and electrocutes Debbie, turning her into a mound of dust–and credit cards.
— Addams Family Values (1993), screenplay by Paul Rudnick, characters by Charles Addams
The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Madness. Today’s suggestion by Will King.
Trivia: Based on the New Yorker cartoons drawn by cartoonist Charles Addams beginning in 1938, the original characters did not have names. It was the 1964 television series based on the cartoons that caused the characters to gain names.
Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary by Will: “The Addams Family world turns all assumptions about normality inside out. To the Addamses, it’s the normal world that seems off kilter. So, how to make someone seem madder than the Addamses? Debbie Jellinsky had to be bigger than bigger-than-life, which meant writing (and performing) her melodramatically. In this scene we get the confessional trope. Why did she turn to be so bad? Blame it on Barbie (toy maker Mattel likely didn’t pay a promotional fee for this film). Adding a slide presentation was a new twist, which adds to the fun. She’s obviously prepared. Since this is the climax scene, there’s also the interspersed scenes of Pubert and the bowling ball to provide a Rube Goldberg-ish solution to how the baby defeats Debbie.”