Daily Dialogue — November 28, 2018

Dotty: And I take the sardines. No, I leave the sardines. No, I take the sardines.
Lloyd: You leave the sardines and you hang up the phone.
Dotty: Yes, right. I hang up the phone.
Lloyd: And you leave the sardines.
Dotty: I leave the sardines?
Lloyd: You leave the sardines.
Dotty: I hang up the phone and I leave the sardines?
Lloyd: Right.
Dotty: We’ve changed that, have we, dear?
Lloyd: No, dear…
Dotty: That’s what I’ve always been doing?
Lloyd: I wouldn’t say that, Dotty my precious.
Dotty: Well, how about the words, dear, am I getting some of them right?
Lloyd: Some of them have a very familiar ring.

— Noises Off (1992), screenplay by Marty Kaplan, based on the play written by Michael Frayn. Directed by Peter Bogdanovich.

Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Callback. Today’s suggestion by Nathan Eyres.

Trivia: Although most of the dialogue was taken directly from the play, many words were changed to make the film more understandable for American audiences. Examples include “fortnight” being changed to “two weeks”, “technical” being changed to “tech rehearsal”, and “sixteen” being changed to “eighteen” (when referring to the age of consent).

Dialogue on Dialogue: Commentary by Nathan: “Much of the humor in this film is based on the play-within-a-film structure. The actors constantly break out of character as an increasingly desperate stage director, Lloyd (Michael Caine), takes them through their final rehearsal.

When the actors do break character, their speech patterns change noticeably. In the dialogue above, Dotty Otley/Mrs. Clackett (Carol Burnett) loses her Cockney accent when trying to figure out what to do with the sardines. Another example is John Ritter’s character, who never quite finishes a thought, leaving everyone (audience included) guessing what he really means.

In fact, only two of the actors’ speech patterns don’t really change when they are out of character: the one that seems incapable of improvising, no matter how many misplaced props and missed cues go on around her (Nicollette Sheridan) and the old burglar, constantly looking for a bit of booze backstage (Denholm Elliot, playing here in his last role).

The whole movie feels like an ongoing gag and the sardines mentioned in Act one pay off big in Act three.