Daily Dialogue — November 21, 2015

“I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.”

— In a Lonely Place (1950), screenplay by Andrew Solt, adaptation by Edmund H. North, story by Dorothy B. Hughes

The Daily Dialogue theme for the month: Writers and Writing.

Trivia: In the original ending and the final shooting script, Dix actually did kill Laurel in the heat of their argument. Martha comes and discovers the body as Dix silently types his script. Later, when his detective friend comes to arrest him, Dix says that he’s almost done with his script. There is a close-up of the last page of the script, echoing the words Dix said in the car to Laurel: “I was born when she kissed me, I died when she left me, I live a few weeks while she loved me.” It is said that this scene was filmed, but before it could be shown to a test audience, director Nicholas Ray shot a new ending because he wasn’t pleased with the scripted ending — he didn’t want to think that violence was the only way out of this situation. He cleared the set, including Lauren Bacall, who was visiting her husband on-set at the time, except for Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame, Art Smith — who ended up not being used in the final scene filmed — plus the camera and sound men. They improvised the ending that is seen in the final cut.

Dialogue On Dialogue: When you think of film noir, do you think of screenwriters as main characters? Here in the movie In a Lonely Place, the story explores the shadow self of the Protagonist Dixon Steele, a writer’s dark nature.