Daily Dialogue — August 9, 2018

“Yes, this is Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, California. It’s about 5 0'clock in the morning. That’s the homicide squad, complete with detectives and newspaper men. A murder has been reported from one of those great big houses in the ten thousand block. You’ll read about it in the late editions, I’m sure. You’ll get it over your radio and see it on television because an old-time star is involved; one of the biggest. But before you hear it all distorted and blown out of proportion, before those Hollywood columnists get their hands on it, maybe you’d like to hear the facts, the whole truth. If so, you’ve come to the right party. You see, the body of a young man was found floating in the pool of her mansion with two shots in his back and one in his stomach. Nobody important, really. Just a movie writer with a couple of ‘B’ pictures to his credit. The poor dope! He always wanted a pool. Well, in the end, he got himself a pool, only the price turned out to be a little high.”

— — Sunset Blvd. (1950), written by Charles Brackett & Billy Wilder & D.M. Marshman Jr.

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Swimming Pool.

Trivia: When crew members asked Billy Wilder how he was going to shoot the burial of Norma’s monkey, one of the film’s most bizarre scenes, he just said, “You know, the usual monkey-funeral sequence.”

Dialogue On Dialogue: The voice-over narration in Sunset Blvd. is outstanding in large part because the narrator is a screenwriter, so his language is sharp, sardonic, and entertaining. A classic swimming pool scene.