Daily Dialogue — July 13, 2015

MITTENS: There’s your antidote: food. Go on, use the Dog Face. This is gonna be beautiful. You know, beg. Do the Dog Face!
BOLT: What? The Dog Face? What does that mean?
MITTENS: Figures I’m tied to the one dog on earth who doesn’t know how to beg. Huh. Okay, if you want foo — uh, uh, the ‘antidote,’ you’re gonna have to do exactly what I say.
BOLT: No, not likely. You’re a degenerate creature of darkness.
MITTENS: Yeah, yeah, granted. With that said, all I’m asking you to do is tilt your head a little. You can do that, can’t you? C’mon. More…more.
BOLT: This is stupid.
MITTENS: No, no, no, c’mon, work with me on this, please, you’re almost there.
BOLT: Oh, boy.
MITTENS: Okay, try it the other way. There you go. Tilt up. Umm, down. Now a little smile. Uh, lose the smile. Drop your left ear…your other left. Okay, the other way was better. Now drop them both. Hold it right there, and ever so slightly, look up. Soup is on, baby!

— Bolt (2008), written by Dan Fogelman, Chris Williams

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Survival. Today’s suggestion by Will King.

Trivia: The first Walt Disney Studios film produced under chief creative officer John Lasseter’s management.

Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary by Will: “The first requirement for survival: food. Bolt, an animal film star who was raised on movie sets has no understanding of the real world, is forced to rely on Mittens, a streetwise cat. This scene is the first of many that will eventually transform both characters. Bolt will slowly lose his illusions of self-importance and both he and Mittens will come to trust and rely on each other. But it all begins with Mittens teaching Bolt how to beg for food.

Of interest is the speech patterns for these two characters. Bolt is the ‘hero,’ and the way he talks sounds heroic: reserved, overstated (‘You’re a degenerate creature of darkness’). Mittens, by contrast, is much more casual and even uses cultural metaphors (‘Soup is on, baby!’).