Daily Dialogue — June 22, 2013

INT. MESS HALL

CLOSE ON breakfast, a substance with a consistency somewhere between yogurt and cellulite.

TANK: Here you go, buddy. Breakfast of champions.

Tank slides it in front of Neo and takes a seat with the other crew members enjoying breakfast.

APOC: You mean the breakfast, lunch, and dinner of champions.
MOUSE: If you close your eyes, it almost feels like you’re eating runny eggs.
APOC: Or a bowl of snot.
MOUSE: But you know what it really reminds me of? Cream of Wheat. Did you ever eat Cream of Wheat?
SWITCH: No, but technically neither did you.
MOUSE: Exactly my point, because you have to wonder, how do the machines know what Cream of Wheat really tasted like? Maybe they got it wrong, maybe what I think Cream of Wheat tasted like actually tasted like oatmeal, or tuna fish. It makes you wonder about a lot of things. Take chicken for example. Maybe they couldn’t figure out what to make chicken taste like which is why chicken tastes like everything. And maybe –
APOC: Shut up, Mouse.

Neo scoops up a spoonful.

DOZER: It’s a single-celled protein combined with synthetic aminos, vitamins, and minerals. Everything your body needs. We grow it in a vat.
MOUSE: Oh no, it doesn’t have everything the body needs.

He sidles up to Neo.

MOUSE: So I understand you’ve run through the Agent training program? You know, I wrote that program.
APOC: Here it comes.
MOUSE: So what did you think of her?
NEO: Of who?
MOUSE: The woman in the red dress. I designed her. She doesn’t talk much but if you’d like to, you know, meet her, I could arrange a more personalized milieu.
SWITCH: The digital pimp hard at work.
MOUSE: Pay no attention to these hypocrites, Neo. To deny our impulses is to deny the very thing that makes us human.

— The Matrix (1999), written by Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week is dinner scene, suggested by Turambar. Today’s suggestion by plinytheelder_t.

Trivia: The Wachowskis harbored their vision for five and a half years, working through 14 drafts of the screenplay. The final concepts took up 500 storyboards.

Dialogue On Dialogue: This observation by pliny: “A lesson on Cartesian Philosophy disguised as a breakfast scene.”