Daily Dialogue — May 3, 2018
Julia Roberts: What took you so long?
Bruce Willis: Traffic was a bitch.
— The Player (1992), screenplay by Michael Tolkin based on his novel
The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Movie Within a Movie.
Trivia: Writer Michael Tolkin had a film company ring him up and try to option Habeus Corpus, the blatantly ludicrous film that is pitched within the movie.
Dialogue On Dialogue: The scene marks a one-hundred degree change by the Habeus Corpus writer-director played brilliantly by Richard E. Grant who was completely committed to the movie’s tragic ending in which the Julia Roberts character would die. After screening the new ending, there is an exchange between Grant’s character (Oakley) and film executive Bonnie Sherow:
Bonnie Sherow: How could you let him sell you out? What about truth? Reality?
Tom Oakley: What about the way the old ending tested in Canoga Park? Everybody hated it. We reshot it, now everybody loves it. That’s reality.
