Daily Dialogue — July 19, 2016
JOHN DOE: (long pause) I… I doubt I enjoyed it any more than… Detective Mills would enjoy some time alone with me in a room without windows. (looks to Mills) Isn’t that true? How happy would it make you to hurt me, with impunity?
MILLS: (coy mocking) Now… I wouldn’t do something like that, Johnny. I like you. I like you a lot.
JOHN DOE: You wouldn’t because you know there are consequences. It’s in those eyes of yours, though… nothing wrong with a man taking pleasure in his work. (pause, shakes his head) I won’t deny my own personal desire to turn each sin against the sinner. I only took their sins to logical conclusions.
MILLS: You only killed a bunch of innocent people so you could get your rocks off. That’s all.
JOHN DOE: Innocent? Is that supposed to be funny? Look at the people I killed. An obese man, a disgusting man who could barely stand up… who if you saw him on the street, you’d point so your friends could mock him along with you. Who if you saw him while you were eating, you wouldn’t be able to finish your meal. After him I picked the lawyer. And, you both must have been secretly thanking me for that one. This was a man who dedicated his life to making money by lying with every breath he could muster… to keeping rapists and murderers on the streets.
MILLS: Murderers?
JOHN DOE: (ignoring) A woman…
MILLS: Murderers like you?
JOHN DOE: (ignoring, louder) A woman… so ugly on the inside that she couldn’t bare to go on living if she couldn’t be beautiful on the outside. A drug dealer… a drug dealing pederast, actually. (laughs at that one) And, don’t forget the disease spreading whore. Only in a world this shitty could you even try to say these were innocent people and keep a straight face. (getting worked up) That’s the point. You see a deadly sin on almost every street corner, and in every home, literally. And we tolerate it. Because it’s common, it seems trivial, and we tolerate, all day long, morning, noon and night. Not anymore. I’m setting the example, and it’s going to be puzzled over and studied and followed, from now on.
MILLS: Delusions of grandeur.
— Se7en (1995), written by Andrew Kevin Walker
The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Accusation. Today’s suggestion by Lois Bernard.
Trivia: New Line executives originally balked at the film’s ending, but Brad Pitt refused to make the film if the ending were changed.
Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary by Lois: “Mills accuses John Doe of enjoying killing while John Doe accuses, well, everyone who is alive of being guilty with special guilt reserved for the chosen victims. I think this is brilliant the way the theme has built to a climax (well pre-climax) and is spoken aloud by the two main characters.”