Daily Dialogue — May 19, 2014

Pumpkin: Garçon! Coffee!
Waitress: ‘Garçon’ means boy.
Yolanda: This place? A coffee shop?
Pumpkin: Why not? Nobody ever robs restaurants. Bars, liquor stores, gas stations… you get your head blown off sticking up one of them. Restaurants on the other hand, you catch with their pants down. They’re not expecting to get robbed. Not as expectant anyway.
Yolanda: I bet you could cut down on the hero factor in a place like this.
Pumpkin: Right, just like banks, these places are insured. Manager? He don’t give a fuck. He just wants to get you out the door before you start plugging the diners. Waitresses? Fucking forget it! No way they’re taking a bullet for the register. Busboys? Some wetback getting paid a dollar-fifty an hour, really give a fuck you’re stealing from the owner? See, I got the idea, last liquor store we held up, all the customers kept coming in?
Yolanda: Yeah.
Pumpkin: And you got the idea of taking their wallets. Now that was a good idea.
Yolanda: Thank you.
Pumpkin: Made more from the wallets than we did from the register.
Yolanda: Yes, we did.
Pumpkin: A lot of customers come into a restaurant.
Yolanda: A lot of wallets.
Pumpkin: Pretty smart, eh?
Yolanda: Pretty smart. I’m ready, let’s go, right here, right now.
Pumpkin Remember, same as before, you’re crowd control, I handle the employees.
Yolanda: Got it.
Honey Bunny: I love you, Pumpkin.
Pumpkin: I love you, Honey Bunny.
Pumpkin: [Standing up with a gun] All right, everybody be cool, this is a robbery!
Honey Bunny: Any of you fucking pricks move, and I’ll execute every motherfucking last one of ya!

— Pulp Fiction (1994), screenplay by Quentin Tarantino, story by Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Robbery. Today’s suggestion by Alejandro.

Trivia: Roger Avary’s credit stems from the incorporation of his short film script for “Pandemonium Reigns” forming a core element of Quentin Tarantino’s screenplay. Avary’s input can largely be found in the Butch/Fabienne scenes.

Dialogue On Dialogue: This is the very beginning of the movie, so the start of the conversation between Pumpkin and Honey Bunny comes off as perhaps just a stray bit of business, conjecture on their part about the theory of robbing a diner. But as it moves along, we get more and more of a sense that these two are going to rob this place. Classic Tarantino approach with the slow build to action. 

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