Daily Dialogue — October 19, 2011

[at the dinner table]

Carolyn Burnham: Your father and I were just discussing his day at work. Why don’t you tell our daughter about it, honey?

Lester Burnham: Janie, today I quit my job. And then I told my boss to go fuck himself, and then I blackmailed him for almost sixty thousand dollars. Pass the asparagus.

Carolyn Burnham: Your father seems to think this kind of behavior is something to be proud of.

Lester Burnham: And your mother seems to prefer that I go through life like a fucking prisoner while she keeps my dick in a mason jar under the sink.

Carolyn Burnham: How dare you speak to me that way in front of her. And I marvel that you can be so contemptuous of me, on the same day that you LOSE your job.

Lester Burnham: Lose it? I didn’t lose it. It’s not like, “Whoops! Where’d my job go?” I QUIT. Someone pass the asparagus, please.

— Carolyn (Annette Bening), Lester (Kevin Spacey), American Beauty (1999), written by Alan Ball

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week is mealtime conversations, suggested by Deaf Ears. American Beauty suggested by Jeff Kirschner.

Trivia: Alan Ball originally intended to write a script about Amy Fisher, the “Long Island Lolita” who shot lover Joey Buttafuoco’s wife Mary Jo Buttafuoco in 1992; but each successive draft of the script drifted farther away from that story, until it essentially disappeared.

Dialogue On Dialogue: What does the asparagus represent?

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