Daily Dialogue — December 28, 2011
Party Guest 1: “Oh, my goodness. We got the wrong baby,” and the father says… “Shh. It’s a better buggy.”
Party Guest 2: I never heard that one before.
Hrundi Bakshi: Oh, yes. You… I missed the middle part, but I can tell from the way that you are enjoying yourselves it must have been a very humorous anecdote because the way you are laughing just shows how much you enjoyed it. I love a good laugh, don’t you? It makes the world go round. It’s good to have a laugh. Wonderful. Very good. I shall remember that one.
Congressman Dunphy: They were bound and gagged for six hours. They took everything… even the gold watch my daddy’d left me.
Hrundi Bakshi: They took the gold watch that your father left you? I’m sorry. It is utterly fantastic. What a wonderful thing for anyone to do. Take everything, including the father’s watch. It’s wonderful. I tell you, tonight is one big round of laughter. All fun and laughter.
Clutterbuck: The Congressman was just telling us about the time he was robbed.
Congressman Dunphy: Who’s the foreigner?
Clutterbuck: I don’t know. Someone my mixed-up wife invited.
— Hrundi Bakshi (Peter Sellers), Congressman Dunphy (Tom Quine), Clutterbuck (J. Edward McKinley), The Party (1968), screenplay by Blake Edwards & Tom Waldman and Frank Waldman, story by Blake Edwards
The Daily Dialogue theme for the week is parties. Today’s suggestion by Teddy Pasternak.
Trivia: This film was improvised from a 56-page outline. Each scene was shot in sequence, and built upon the previous scene. To aid in this experiment, the film’s producers had a video-camera tube attached to the Panavision camera and connected to an Ampex studio videotape machine, allowing the actors and crew to review what they had just filmed.
Dialogue On Dialogue: Set up and payoff at work here. First Bakshi hears the tail end of a joke, then hears something he thinks is another punchline, the absurdity of him laughing at a story about someone getting robbed. But basically you could have Peter Sellers improv on anything and get a laugh, my favorite comic actor of all time.
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