Daily Dialogue — November 19, 2016

Earline: You been a good daughter. You sign that paper, it’ll take care of your family the way your daddy woulda wanted you to. Uh, how do you make your mark? Can you hold a pen?

Mardell: She gotta hold it with her teeth, Momma.

Earline: Huh?

Mardell: You gotta put it in her mouth.

Earline: [puts pen in Maggie’s mouth] Here you go, honey.

Maggie purses lips. Stops the pen.

Maggie: You see the fight, Momma?

Earline: You know how I feel ‘bout that.

Maggie: I did pretty good.

Earline: You lost, Mary M. Ain’t your fault the way I heard it, but you lost. Don’t want to lose the rest of what you got left.

Reaches down to put pen in Maggie’s mouth. Maggie spits out the pen.

Maggie: What happened to you?

Earline: What was that supposed to mean?

Maggie: Momma, you take Mardell and J.D. and get home. Before I tell that lawyer in hear you were so worried about your welfare, you never signed those house papers like you were supposed to. So anytime I feel like it, I could sell that house from under your fat, lazy, hillbilly ass.

— Million Dollar Baby (2004), screenplay by Paul Haggis, stories by F.X. Toole

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Bechdel Test suggested by Will King.

Trivia: Producer Albert S. Ruddy loved the story and was determined to make it into a film and spent four years trying to find backers who were interested in helping him make it. “I couldn’t get anybody interested”, he said in an interview, “and I’m talking about people who are friends of mine, people I’ve done business with for years. They’d tell me “Who wants to see a movie about two old grizzled guys and a girl fighter?”” Eventually he found someone interested — Clint Eastwood. The actor-director read the script and said “It’s a downer…but God, it’s gorgeous”.

Dialogue On Dialogue: Here are two women talking to each other about something other than a man. Not sure it’s in the spirit of the Bechdel Test, but damn, what drama.