Daily Dialogue — August 9, 2016

EXT. BEACH — LATER

Joel sits on a log, a paper plate of chicken and corn on his lap. People warm themselves at the fire. Joel watches couples talking, kissing, Rob sharing a joint with a guy.

JOEL: You were down by the surf. I could just make you out in the dark.

Joel looks down to the water. There’s Clementine, in her orange hooded sweatshirt, looking out to sea.

JOEL: Your back to me. In that orange sweatshirt I would come to know so well and even hate eventually. At the time I thought, how cool, an orange sweatshirt.
VOICE-OVER: I remember being drawn to you even then. I thought, I love this woman because she’s alone down there looking out at the black ocean.
JOEL: But I went back to my food. The next thing I remember, I felt someone sitting next to me and I saw the orange sleeve out of the corner of my eye.

A shot of the orange sleeve. Joel looks up.

CLEMENTINE: Hi there.
JOEL: Hi.
VOICE-OVER: I was so nervous. What were you doing there, I wondered. Your hair was lime green. Green revolution.

A shot of her green hair.

JOEL: You said…
CLEMENTINE: I saw you sitting over here. By yourself. I thought, thank God, someone normal, who doesn’t know how interact at these things either.
JOEL: Yeah. I don’t ever know what to say.
CLEMENTINE: I can’t tell you how happy I am to hear that. I mean, I don’t mean I’m happy you’re uncomfortable, but, you know… I’m such a loser. Every time I come to a party I tell myself I’m going to be different and it’s always exactly the same and then I hate myself after for being such a clod.
JOEL: Even then I didn’t believe you entirely. I thought how could you be talking to me if you couldn’t talk to people?
VOICE-OVER: But I thought, I don’t know, I thought it was cool that you were sensitive enough to know what I was feeling and that you were attracted to it.
CLEMENTINE: But, I don’t know, maybe we’re the normal ones, y’know? I mean, what kind of people do well at this stuff?
VOICE-OVER: And I just liked you so much.
CLEMENTINE: You did? You liked me?
JOEL: You know what I did.
CLEMENTINE: Yeah, I know. I’m fishing.
JOEL: You said —

She picks a drumstick off of Joel’s plate.

CLEMENTINE: I’m Clementine. Can I borrow a piece of your chicken?
JOEL: And you picked it out of my plate before I could answer and it felt so intimate like we were already lovers. I remember — 
VOICE-OVER: The grease on your chin in the bonfire light.

Shot of a smudge of chicken grease on Clementine’s chin.

CLEMENTINE: Oh God, how horrid.
JOEL: I’m Joel.
VOICE-OVER: No, it was lovely.
CLEMENTINE: Hi, Joel. So no jokes about my name?
JOEL: You mean, like… (singing) Oh, my darlin’, oh, my darlin’, oh, my darlin’, Clementine… ? Huckleberry Hound? That sort of thing?
CLEMENTINE: Yeah, like that.
JOEL: Nope. No jokes. My favorite thing when I was a kid was my Huckleberry Hound doll. I think your name is magic.

She smiles.

CLEMENTINE: (eyes welling) This is it, Joel. It’s gonna be gone soon.
JOEL: I know.
CLEMENTINE: What do we do?
JOEL: Enjoy it. Say good-bye.

She nods.

Joel and Clementine are walking near the surf.

JOEL: So you’re still on the Zoloft?
VOICE-OVER: Next thing I remember we were walking down near the surf.
CLEMENTINE: No, I stopped. I didn’t want to feel like I was being artificially modulated.
JOEL: I know what you mean. That’s why I stopped.
CLEMENTINE: But my sleeping is really fucked up.
JOEL: I don’t think I’ve slept in a year.
CLEMENTINE: You should try Xanax. I mean, it’s a chemical and all, but it works… and it works just having it around, knowing that it’s there. Like insurance.
JOEL: Yeah?
CLEMENTINE: I’ll give you a couple. See what you think.
JOEL: Okay.
CLEMENTINE: Have you ever read any Anna Akhmatova?
JOEL: I love her.
CLEMENTINE: Really? Me, too! I don’t meet people who even know who she is and I work in a book store.
JOEL: I think she’s great.
CLEMENTINE: Me, too. There’s this poem — 
JOEL: Did this conversation come before or after we saw the house?
CLEMENTINE: I think, before.
JOEL: Seems too coincidental that way.
CLEMENTINE: Yeah, maybe.

Joel and Clementine wander near some beach houses closed for the winter.

CLEMENTINE: Do you know her poem that starts “Seaside gusts of wind,/And a house in which we don’t live…
JOEL: Yeah, yeah. It goes “Perhaps there is someone in this world to whom I could send all these lines”?
CLEMENTINE: Yes! I love that poem. It breaks my heart. I’m so excited you know it. (pointing to houses) Look, houses in which we don’t live.

Joel chuckles appreciatively.

CLEMENTINE: I wish we did. You married?

— Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), screenplay by Charlie Kaufman, story by Charlie Kaufman & Michel Gondry & Pierre Bismuth

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Recollection, suggested by Will King. Today’s suggestion by Lois Bernard.

Trivia: The idea for this film was brought to director Michel Gondry by his friend, artist Pierre Bismuth, who suggested, “You get a card in the mail that says: someone you know has just erased you from their memory…”

Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary by Lois: “Of course, one of my favorite movies, tender eccentric. Clementine says ‘This is it, its gonna be gone soon’ towards the end of the scene as if there is a memory within the memory being erased even as Joel remembers.”

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