Daily Dialogue — December 4, 2015

CONRAD: Something happened.
BERGER: What?
CONRAD: It’s…
BERGER: It’s what?
CONRAD: God. I need something.
BERGER: What do you need? Tell me.
CONRAD: It just keeps coming. I can’t…I can’t make it stop.
BERGER: Don’t try.
CONRAD: C’mon. I gotta get…I gotta get off the hook. I gotta get off the hook.
BERGER: For what?
CONRAD: For what I did.
BERGER: What did you do?
CONRAD: For what I did to him.
BERGER: What did you do?
CONRAD: It’s something. It’s something. Don’t you see? It’s got to be somebody’s fault or there ain’t no goddamn point.
BERGER: Point? What point? It happened.
CONRAD: No. That ain’t it. I don’t mean — it’s…it’s…it’s…it’s…my fault. Bucky, I didn’t mean it. Bucky, I didn’t mean it. Bucky!
BERGER: I know that. It wasn’t your fault.
CONRAD: But it was. You said ‘Get the sail down’ and I couldn’t. I couldn’t. It jammed, and then the hallyerd, the hallyerd jammed and I couldn’t…why did the goddamn hallyerd jam? And then you said…you were screwing around until it’s too late to do anything, and I’m supposed to take care of it, I’m supposed to take care of it — 
BERGER: And that wasn’t fair, was it?
CONRAD: No! And then you say ‘Hang on! Hang on!’ And then you let go! Why’d you let go?
BERGER: Because I got tired!
CONRAD: Yeah? Well screw you, you jerk!
BERGER: It hurts to be mad at him, doesn’t it?
CONRAD: Yeah. He just wasn’t careful, he just wasn’t careful. He didn’t see how a bad thing would happen.
BERGER: Bad things happen even when people are careful.
CONRAD: Screwing around out there. We shouldn’t have. We should have come in when it started to look bad.
BERGER: Okay, so you made a mistake.
CONRAD: Why did he let go? Why?
BERGER: Maybe you were stronger. Did it every occur to you that you might have been stronger? How long you gonna punish yourself? When are you gonna quit?
CONRAD: God, I’d like to quit.
BERGER: Why don’t you?
CONRAD: It’s not easy. It’s not that easy. God, I loved him.
BERGER: I know. What happened? You said something happened. What started all this?
CONRAD: Karen. She killed herself. I just found out she’s dead.
BERGER: Jesus.
CONRAD: And she was fine. She was okay.
BERGER: No, she wasn’t.
CONRAD: She was. She was. She told me, she said she was — 
BERGER: What?
CONRAD: She was busy, she was feeling good and she — 
BERGER: And what? What?
CONRAD: I just wish I’d have known. I could have done something.
BERGER: You saw her once, and now you want to take her on, too?
CONRAD: No!
BERGER: No?
CONRAD: No, I just…
BERGER: What?
CONRAD: That isn’t it…I — I feel bad about this. I feel feel really bad about this, and just…just let me feel bad about this!
BERGER: Okay. Listen, I feel bad about it, too.
CONRAD: Why do things have to happen to people? It isn’t fair.
BERGER: You’re right. It isn’t fair.
CONRAD: You just do one wrong thing, and…
BERGER: Uh huh. And what was the one wrong thing you did? You know. You know.
CONRAD: I hung on. Stayed with the boat.
BERGER: Exactly. Now, you can live with that, can’t you?
CONRAD: Yes.
BERGER: Feelings are scary, and sometimes they’re painful, and if you can’t feel pain then you’re not gonna feel anything else, either. You know what I’m saying?
CONRAD: I think so.
BERGER: You’re here and you’re alive. And don’t tell me you don’t feel that.
CONRAD: I doesn’t feel good.
BERGER: It is good, believe me.
CONRAD: How do you know?
BERGER: Because I’m your friend.
CONRAD: I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t been here. You…you really my friend?
BERGER: I am, count on it.

— Ordinary People (1980), screenplay by Alvin Sargent and Nancy Dowd, based on the novel by Judith Guest

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Regret, suggested by Pj Woodside. Today’s suggestion by Will King.

Trivia: The first draft took a year and a half to write, and the second took another year, as it was very difficult to adapt a novel which featured very heavy dialogue with almost no descriptions of characters or settings. It was during this time that actor Robert Redford decided to direct the picture.

Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary by Will: “Conrad suffers from the regret of survivor’s guilt. The death of his brother Buck in a boating accident consumes his entire family. Conrad eventually learns to deal with the loss and his feelings about both Buck and his cold, distant, dysfunctional mother. This scene is where he begins to make the transition. Terrific performances from both Timothy Hutton and Judd Hirsch.”