Daily Dialogue — December 27, 2015
BRAD: What are you guys doing for, christmas?
STAN: We got the entire family flying in. 13 airport pick-ups. 4 days of listening to how gifted my nieces are. My brother thinks his daughter, the four year old..is gonna be the next, Beyonce. She’s bad and she sucks.
ERIC: I’m vacationing in tropical Albany this year with, Tricia’s family. They got us a cot,
which is awesome. But we’ll probably end up sleeping on the musty couch in the basement with the cats. All seven of them. We’ll get to be there the whole week.
BRAD: Sounds like a prison sentence.
KATE: Why do you guys put yourselves through that?
ERIC: It’s, christmas, right, don’t you have to?
KATE: We don’t need to do it.
BRAD: We don’t. We don’t do it.
KATE: We’re done.
ERIC: Why, what are you doing?
KATE: We’re going to Fiji. Just the two of us.
BRAD: Yeah.
STAN: Fiji?
KATE: Yeah.
ERIC: Don’t your families get upset?
KATE: Not if you tell them you’re doing charity work. Like building houses in third world countries.
BRAD: Teaching english as a second language in, Puerto Rico. Helping orphans in, Somalia. Helping, Chinese kids capture lobsters. Boil them, cut them, clean the weird stuff out the middle. We find it that the more details you give kinda throws them off the set.
ERIC: You lie to your families at christmas time?
BRAD: You really can’t spell families without lies.
STAN: But don’t you ever feel guilty?
KATE: For taking a vacation on our vacation? No, not really.
BRAD: You do look pretty sexy with a tan.
KATE: Thanks, babe.
— Four Christmases (2008), written by Matt R. Allen, Caleb Wilson, Jon Lucas and Scott Moore
The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Christmas Frenzy. Today’s suggestion by Katha.
Trivia: The film started production during the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike, which meant that there could be no changes made to the script during filming.
Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary by Katha: “Family traditions seem to be without alternative. Brad and Kate ignore them and all the christmas frenzy. But they‘ll fail this time.”