Daily Dialogue — September 21, 2015
ARNOLD: …Murray, I can’t watch this. You’ve got to shape up.
MURRAY: Shape up?
ARNOLD: That’s right, shape up.
MURRAY: Arnie, what they hell happened to you? You got sold. I don’t know you any more. Who is it? When you quit Harry the Fur King on 28th street, remember?
ARNOLD: That’s twenty years ago, Murray.
MURRAY: Now, Carrie said you weren’t behaving maturely enough for a salesman. Your clothes didn’t match, or something, so the next day you dressed perfectly: hamburg, grey suit, cuff links, carrying a briefcase and a rolled umbrella and you came into Harry’s office on roller skates. Where’d they go, Arnie? What happened to your roller skates?
ARNOLD: Well, I don’t do practical jokes any more, if that’s what you mean.
MURRAY: Practical! That’s right! A way to stay alive. Hey, if most things aren’t funny, Arn, then they’re only exactly what they are. Then it’s just one long dental appointment interrupted occasionally by something exciting like waiting or falling asleep. What’s the point if I leave things just the way I find them? Then I’m just adding to the noise, I’m just taking up some more room on the subway.
ARNOLD: Murry, the Welfare Board has these specifications. All you have to do is to make up your mind…
MURRAY: Arnie you don’t understand any more. You’ve got that wide stare that people stick in their eyes so nobody’ll know their head’s asleep. I’d be a moaner, a shufffler. You want me to come sit and eat fruit with you and watch the clock run out. You start to drag and stumble under the rotten weight of all the people who should’ve been told off — all the things you should have said, all the specifications…that aren’t yours. You know, the only thing you’ve got left to reject is your food in a restaurant, if they do it wrong you can send it back and make a big fuss with the waiter. Five months ago, was on the subway on my way to work. Was sitting on the express, same as every morning, looking out the window, watching the local scobs go by in the dark, with an empty head and my arms folded, not feeling great, not feeling rotten, just…not feeling. And for a minute I…I couldn’t remember. I didn’t know, unless I really concentrated, whether it was a Tuesday, or a Thursday. For a minute, it could have been any day, Arn. I gotta know what day it is! I gotta know what’s the name of the game and what the rules are without anyone else telling me. You got to own your own days and name ’em. Each one of ’em. Every one of ’em. Or else the years go right by and none of them belong to you. And that ain’t just for weekends, kiddo.
— A Thousand Clowns (1965), screenplay by Herb Gardner based on his original play
The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Depression. Today’s suggestion by Will King.
Trivia: The original Broadway production of “A Thousand Clowns” by Herb Gardner opened at the Eugene O’Neill Theater in New York on April 5, 1962, ran for 428 performances and was nominated for the 1963 Tony Award for Best Play. Jason Robards, Gene Saks, William Daniels and Barry Gordon recreated their stage roles in the filmed production. Gordon was nominated for the 1963 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play. Sandy Dennis who did not recreate her stage role, won the 1963 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play.
Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary by Will: “Murray, a former television writer, has lost his job, and his faith in modern civilization. He inherited a nephew from his sister who abandoned the boy to Murray seven years earlier, and now he has to convince the Welfare Board that he’s a capable guardian or lose the boy. In this scene Murray’s brother Arnold tries to convince him that he must conform in order to hold on to the boy, but Murray can’t abide the artificiality of the world. He’s not depressed about the state of the world, just sad that he can’t convince more people that they take it too seriously.”