Daily Dialogue — June 13, 2018

“The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat, non-fat, etc. So people who don’t know what the hell they’re doing or who on earth they are can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self: Tall. Decaf. Cappuccino.”

— You’ve Got Mail (1998), Nora Ephron & Delia Ephron, play by Miklós László

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Nora Ephron.

Trivia: A remake of the 1940 film The Shop Around the Corner (1940) starring James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan. The original film involved two employees at a leather goods store. (In the source play it was a perfumerie). They could not stand each other at work, but were unknowingly falling in love through the mail as anonymous pen pals.

Dialogue On Dialogue: Nora Ephron was also an essayist and so it is not surprising her scripts are sprinkled with witty observations on contemporary culture — like Starbucks.