Daily Dialogue — September 24, 2010

Sheila: Hi. Can I help you?
Bill Foster: Yes, I’d like a ham-and-cheese whamlet, an order of wham fries…
Sheila: I’m sorry, we stopped serving breakfast, but we are on lunch menu now.
Bill Foster: I want breakfast.
Sheila: Well, you can’t have it, we’re not serving it.
Bill Foster: So you said. Is that the manager?
Sheila: Yeah.
Bill Foster: Could I speak to him, please?
Sheila: Sure. [turns to Rick] Rick, there’s a customer that would like to speak with you.
Rick: Yes, sir.
Bill Foster: Hi, I’d like some breakfast.
Rick: We stopped serving breakfast.
Bill Foster: I know you stopped serving breakfast, Rick. Sheila told me you stopped serving breakfast. Why am I calling you by your first names? I don’t even know you. I still call my boss “Mister”, and I’ve been working for him for seven years, but all of a sudden I walk in here and I’m calling you Rick and Sheila like we’re in some kind of AA meeting… I don’t want to be your buddy, Rick. I just want some breakfast.
Sheila: You can call me Miss Folsom if you want. 
Rick: Sheila. [to Bill] We stopped serving breakfast at 11:30.
[Bill checks his watch. It’s 11:33. He sets his bag onto counter].
Bill Foster: Rick, have you ever heard the expression “the customer is always right”?
Rick: Yeah.
Bill Foster: Yeah, well, here I am… the customer. 
Rick: That’s not our policy. You have to order something from the lunch menu.
Bill Foster: I don’t want lunch. I want breakfast.
Rick: Yeah, well hey, I’m really sorry.
Bill Foster: Yeah, well hey, I’m really sorry too. [pulls out TEC-DC9]

Bill Foster (Michael Douglas), Rick (Brent Hinkley), Sheila (Dedee Pfeiffer), Falling Down (1993), written by Ebbe Roe Smith

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week is character meltdowns suggested by buccaneer. Falling Down suggested by Ken King.

Trivia: Every studio in Hollywood turned down Ebbe Roe Smith’s script. Producer Arnold Kopelson was getting to the stage of considering cable TV when Michael Douglas came across the script and pronounced it one of the best he’d ever read.

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