Daily Dialogue — November 6, 2011

The Blue Fairy: Pinocchio, why didn’t you go to school?

[Pinocchio looks up at Jiminy]

Jiminy Cricket: Go ahead. Tell her.

Pinocchio: I was going to school till I met somebody.

The Blue Fairy: Met somebody?

Pinocchio: Yeah, two big monsters with big, green eyes!

[His nose grows a little]

Pinocchio: Why, I…

The Blue Fairy: Monsters? Weren’t you afraid?

Pinocchio: No, Ma’am, but they tied me in a big sack.

[His nose grows a little more and sprouts leaves]

The Blue Fairy: You don’t say? And where was Sir Jiminy?

Pinocchio: Huh? Oh, Jiminy?

Jiminy Cricket: [Jumps in front of Pinocchio] Psst! Leave me out of this.

Pinocchio: They put him in a little sack.

[His nose grows even more, taking Jiminy along with it]

The Blue Fairy: No!

Jiminy Cricket: Yeah!

[His nose sprouts flowers]

The Blue Fairy: How did you escape?

Pinocchio: I didn’t — they chopped me into firewood!

[His nose grows again, and a nest with baby birds sprouts at the end of it]

Pinocchio: Oh, look! My nose! What’s happened?

The Blue Fairy: Perhaps you haven’t been telling the truth, Pinocchio.

Jiminy Cricket: Perhaps?

Jiminy Cricket: Oh, but I have! Every single word!

[the branch with the nest on his nose whithers, and the birds fly away, whistling]

— Blue Fairy (Evelyn Venable), Pinocchio (Dickie Jones), Jiminy Cricket (Cliff Edwards), Pinocchio (1940), story adaptation by Ted Sears & Otto Englander & Webb Smith & William Cottrell & Joseph Sabo & Erdman Penner & Aurelius Battaglia, from a story by Collodi

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week is lies.

Trivia: Carlo Collodi was really Carlo Lorenzini, a journalist and rabble-rouser who settled down to write children’s stories. He took his pen name from the town of his mother’s birth, Collodi. When he originally published “Pinocchio” in the form of a magazine serial, Lorenzini’s intention was to kill Pinocchio by having him hang himself. At the suggestion of his editor, Lorenzini added chapters sixteen to thirty-two, giving the story a happy ending and creating the character of the Blue Fairy.

Dialogue On Dialogue: Perhaps the paradigmatic example of a character lying in a movie… with obvious consequences!