Daily Dialogue — January 23, 2013
CHARLOTTE: Who’s he?
BEN: I’m Ben Stone.
ALISON: He’s my boyfriend.
PETE: That’s nice.
SADIE: I never met him before.
ALISON: He’s a new boyfriend.
BEN: But a boyfriend.
SADIE: So he came over for breakfast because he’s your new boyfriend?
DEBBIE: He came from his house, drove over to
our house because he thought it would be fun to have breakfast with us, so he drove his car from his house to our house to have breakfast.
PETE: Because he likes breakfast so much.
CHARLOTTE: I love breakfast.
BEN: You guys wanna hear something neat? We’re gonna have a baby together.
SADIE: What?
BEN:Yeah, a baby.
SADIE: Well, you’re not married. Aren’t you supposed to be married to have a baby?
PETE: You don’t have to be.
DEBBIE: But they should be because they love
each other and people who love each other get married and have babies.
SADIE: Where do babies come from?
DEBBIE: Where do you think they come from?
SADIE: Well, I think a stork, he drops it
down, and then, a hole goes in your body and there’s blood everywhere, coming out of your head, and then you push your belly-button, and then your butt falls off and then you hold your butt and you have to dig and you find a little baby.
DEBBIE: That’s exactly right.
— Knocked Up (2007), written by Judd Apatow
The Daily Dialogue theme for the week is answering children’s questions, suggested by @BillieJeanVK. Today’s suggestion by David Laudenslager.
Trivia: Much of the dialogue was improvised by the actors or fed to them in the moment by Judd Apatow just before a take.
Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary from David: “Clearly the adults have some awkwardness about Ben being at breakfast. The kid’s break up the tension, causing Ben to tell them about the baby, annoying Debbie. Debbie and Pete’s dialogue illustrate how they try to keep their kid’s innocent. A child asking questions is a good device to move an awkward scene along naturally.” That is a really good point. Writers can use children to create all sorts of awkwardness in social settings because they’re too young to know better.