Daily Dialogue — August 10, 2016

CURNOW: It’s funny. I’ve been thinking. You know what I miss? I miss green. Trees and…and grass. I love green.
FLOYD: I love a hot dog.
CURNOW: Astrodome. Good hot dogs.
Floyd: Astrodome? You can’t grow a good hot dog indoors. Yankee Stadium. September. Hot dogs have been boiling since the opening day in April. That’s a hot dog.
Curnow: The yellow mustard or the darker one?
Floyd: Darker.
Curnow: It’s important.
FLOYD: Darker.
CURNOW: You think we’re going to get out of this alive?
FLOYD: We have a chance.
CURNOW: A man of few words. I like it.

— 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984), screenplay by Peter Hyams, based on the novel by Arthur C. Clarke

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Recollection, suggested by Will King who also suggested today’s post.

Trivia: During the planning stage of 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984), an email connection was provided for Peter Hyams (in Hollywood) and Arthur C. Clarke (in Colombo, Sri Lanka) so that Hyams could regularly consult with Clarke about how to adapt the novel to the movie screen. In 1983/4, such an email correspondence was practically unheard of outside the academic community, and it was certainly the first for the film world. Edited highlights of the emails were published as a book, “The Odyssey File”, in 1984.

Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary by Will: “Floyd and Curnow are two Americans aboard a Russian spaceship heading to Jupiter to investigate what happened to the missing crew of the spaceship Discovery. In addition to not knowing what they may face when they arrive, there are political tensions back on earth between the U.S. and Russia, which makes working with and trusting their Russian counterparts difficult. Here, a moment of recollection is used to tone down the tension and add some insight into these two characters.”