Daily Dialogue — March 23, 2016
ELLIE: You can do it. Push! (Diego groans and seems to be going through birth labor.) Push!
DIEGO: I…can’t…do…it…
ELLIE: Just one more big push.
DIEGO: You have no idea what I’m going through.
A change of perspective shows Diego barely holding a pair of dinosaurs at bay using a log, with Ellie’s help.
DIEGO: Okay, forget I said that. Let’s do this together.
Together they force the dinosaurs over the cliff.
DIEGO: Whoo! My paws are burning, baby, they’re burning! I gotta tiptoe. Tippy-toe, tippy-toe.
ELLIE: Excuse me, Twinkletoes, giving birth, here.
DIEGO: Oh, right. Sorry. Don’t worry about a thing. You’re doing fine.
The dinosaurs return, so Diego renews the attack.
DIEGO: It’s going great. Ah, excuse me.
Diego continues to fight, with varied results.
DIEGO: Just keep breathing.
ELLIE: Diego!
DIEGO: Just breathe, that’s the important thing.
— Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009), screenplay by Peter Ackerman, Michael Berg, Yoni Brenner, and Mike Reiss; story by Jason Carter Eaton
The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Pregnancy. Today’s suggestion by Will King.
Trivia: The characters of Buck and Rudy play out a story that is also found in “Moby Dick”. Buck and Captain Ahab are both hunters, and both handicapped by a white animal that is so huge as to strain belief. The white animals, named “Rudy” and “Moby Dick”, managed to handicap Buck and Ahab, tearing away an eye and a leg, respectively. The result is that Buck and Ahab, instead of becoming afraid of Rudy and Moby, become obsessed with the quest to get Revenge, hunting down the very beast that had hunted them. The fancy lines that Buck says when Rudy first appears sound like quotes from “Moby Dick”, and the reference is never clearer than when Buck climbs to the very top of a spindly tree, above the cloud layer, holding a straight-ish branch like a spear … or actually posing like a harpooner ready to hurl a harpoon at Rudy, who is moving just below the layer’s top just like a whale starting to breech the surface of the water. Buck is not going to do much to Rudy with a spindly stick, and his favorite weapon is the tooth/knife. The dinosaur tooth is the same color/size/shape as a whale tooth. Rudy has been given his white color for many reasons, perhaps, but the similarity to Moby Dick is one strong reason. Captain Ahab’s ship has a first mate named “Starbuck”, another connection with “Buck”. Finally, in both stories, both Buck and Ahab are so very obsessed with their hunt for their “enemy” that they abandon a choice of a more peaceful and sane life for their hunt.
Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary by Will: “Ellie is pregnant and Diego is left to defend her while Manny is involved in other skirmishes. The writers went for a reversal of the usual coaching situation during birth, with the opening camera angle chosen to give the wrong impression at first glance.”