Daily Dialogue — January 9, 2017

MCGUIRE: I just want to say one word to you. Just one word.
BEN: Yes, sir.
MCGUIRE: Are you listening?
BEN: Yes I am.
MCGUIRE: Plastics.
BEN: Exactly how do you mean?
MCGUIRE: There’s a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?
BEN: Yes I will.
MCGUIRE: Shh. Enough said. That’s a deal.

— The Graduate (1967), screenplay by Calder Willingham and Buck Henry, based on the novel by Charles Webb

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Advice. Today’s recommendation by Will King.

Trivia: Within a year of the movie’s release, plastic manufacturing companies became enormously successful. Many people attribute this to Walter Brooke’s quote about “plastics”. Brooke himself once told his nephew that he would have invested in plastics, if he had known that the remark would lead to such success.

Dialogue On Dialogue: Such a great moment because this piece of advice — “Plastics” — is a metaphor for how Ben feels about the world his parents, and most people he knows, live in. Fake. He doesn’t know exactly what he’s looking for, but he knows it’s not this. Amazing the power of one word to sum up a key theme of the story.