Daily Dialogue — June 29, 2017

“Yes, this is Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, California. It’s about five o’clock in the morning. That’s the Homicide Squad — complete with detectives and newspapermen. A murder has been reported from one of those great big houses in the ten thousand block. You’ll read about it in the late editions, I’m sure. You’ll get it over your radio and see it on television because an old-time star is involved — one of the biggest. But before you hear it all distorted and blown out of proportion, before those Hollywood columnists get their hands on it, maybe you’d like to hear the facts, the whole truth. If so, you’ve come to the right party. You see, the body of a young man was found floating in the pool of her mansion — with two shots in his back and one in his stomach. Nobody important, really. Just a movie writer with a couple of ‘B’ pictures to his credit. The poor dope! He always wanted a pool. Well, in the end, he got himself a pool — only the price turned out to be a little high.”

— Sunset Blvd. (1950), written by Charles Brackett & Billy Wilder & D.M. Marshman Jr.

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Voice-Over.

Trivia: Billy Wilder went into production with only 61 pages of script finished, so he had to shoot more or less in chronological order. This was a first for Gloria Swanson, but proved a big boon in helping her develop her character’s descent into madness.

Dialogue On Dialogue: One of the most famous uses of voice-over narration in cinema history — the dialogue of a dead man. American Beauty’s opening V.O. is an homage, intended or not, to Sunset Blvd.