Daily Dialogue — July 19, 2014

“It’s your time, boy.”

— Rolling Thunder (1977), screenplay by Paul Schrader and Heywood Gould, story by Paul Schrader

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Revenge.

Trivia: In the book “Schrader On Schrader” Paul Schrader who co-wrote the movie complains how the studio completely twisted his original version of the story. He wrote it as a critique of US involvement in Vietnam War and fascistic and racist attitudes in America. Rane was originally written as white trash racist with many similarities to Schrader’s more famous character Travis Bickle (the main character of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver). In this version, Rane becomes a war hero without ever having fired a gun, and comes home to confront the Texas Mexican community. Rane’s racist upbringing and hatred that grew in him in Vietnam slowly come out. This version ends with Rane’s indiscriminate slaughter of Mexicans which was meant as a metaphor for Vietnam. Schrader concludes with a claim that he basically wrote a film about fascism and the studio made a fascist film.

Dialogue On Dialogue: For this type of genre-piece, there’s a tradition of revenge one-liners. “It’s your time, boy” slots right in with that trope.

If you have any suggestions for this week’s theme, please post in comments.

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