Daily Dialogue — January 20, 2018

“You know what you look like to me, with your good bag and your cheap shoes? You look like a rube. A well-scrubbed, hustling rube with a little taste… Good nutrition has given you some length of bone, but you’re not more than one generation from poor white trash, are you — Officer Starling…? That accent you’re trying so desperately to shed — pure West Virginia. What was your father, dear? Was he a coal miner? Did he stink of the lamp…? And oh, how quickly the boys found you! All those tedious, sticky fumblings, in the back seats of cars, while you could only dream of getting out. Getting anywhere. Getting all the way — to the F…B…I.”

— The Silence of the Lambs (1991), screenplay by Ted Tally, novel by Thomas Harris

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Monologue.

Trivia: Jodie Foster claims that during the first meeting between Lecter and Starling, Sir Anthony Hopkins’ mocking of her southern accent was improvised on the spot. Foster’s horrified reaction was genuine, she felt personally attacked. She later thanked Hopkins for generating such an honest reaction.

Dialogue On Dialogue: Such a great moment in which Lecter ‘reads’ Clarice, revealing he sees through the veneer of how she presents herself to the public. The monologue unnerves Clarice, but arguably also sets a hook because now she KNOWS that this guy SEES her. And she unconsciously needs someone to mentor her into the dark recesses of his psyche.