Daily Dialogue — August 29, 2014

Dr. Harvey Kelekian: You have cancer. Miss Bearing, you have advanced metastatic ovarian cancer. 
Vivian Bearing: Go on.
Dr. Harvey Kelekian: You are a professor, Miss Bearing.
Vivian Bearing: Like yourself, Dr. Kelekian.
Dr. Harvey Kelekian: Why, yes. Now then, you present with a growth that unfortunately went undetected… in stages one, two, and three. Now it is an insidious adenocarcinoma…
Vivian Bearing: Insidious?
Dr. Harvey Kelekian: Insidious means undetectable at an early…
Vivian Bearin: Insidious means treacherous.

— Wit (2001), teleplay by Emma Thompson & Mike Nichols, play by Margaret Edson

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Delivering Bad News.

Trivia: The play “Wit” won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1999.

Dialogue On Dialogue: These are the very first lines of this HBO movie, literally: “You have cancer.” A compelling way to grab the viewer particularly with Kelekian (Christopher Lloyd) staring into camera… straight at us. This immediately poses the question in our minds: What if I did, indeed, have cancer? And that draws us closer to the story’s Protagonist Vivian Bearing (Emma Thompson).