Daily Dialogue — September 26, 2018

Max: Yeah, Lenny, what’s up? It’s me.
Lenny: Just got off the phone with the cops. Desk sergeant called to check if you brought the cab in?
Max: Yeah, so?
Lenny: So, aside from I hate talking to cops, they tell me you crashed the goddamn cab?
Max: No, no, I got crashed into. I didn’t…
Lenny: Do I care what, where, why? You’re paying.

Vincent is trying to think of what Max should say next.

Vincent: [to Max] It was an accident. You’re not liable.
Max: It was an accident. I’m not liable.
Lenny: Bullshit. I’m making you liable. It’s coming out of your goddamn pocket.
Vincent: [to Max] You tell him to stick this cab up his fat ass.
Max: I can’t do that, that’s my boss.
Vincent: So?
Max: I need my job.
Vincent: No, you don’t.
Lenny: Still there? I’m talking to you. Max. Max!
Vincent: He’s not paying you a damn thing.
Lenny: Who the hell is this?
Vincent: Albert Ricardo, Assistant U.S. Attorney, a passenger in this cab, and I’m reporting you to the D.M.V.
Lenny: Let’s not, oh, let’s not get excited.
Vincent: Not get excited? How am I supposed to not get excited? Listen, you try to extort a working man. You know goddamn well your collision policy and general liability umbrella will cover the damages. And what are you trying to pull, you sarcastic prick?
Lenny: Look, I was just trying to…
Vincent: Tell it to him. [to Max] Tell him he’s an asshole. Go ahead.
Max: [to Lenny] You’re an asshole.
Vincent: Tell him he pulls this shit again, you’re gonna stick this yellow cab up his fat ass.
Max: [to Lenny] And, and next time you pull any shit, I’m gonna… I’m gonna have to stick this yellow cab up… up your fat ass.

— Collateral (2004), written by Stuart Beattie

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Taxi.

Trivia: Australian Screenwriter Stuart Beattie was only seventeen when he took a cab home from the Sydney airport. It was on that ride that he had the idea of a homicidal maniac sitting in the back of a cab, with the driver nonchalantly entering into conversation with him, trusting his passenger implicitly. Beattie drafted his idea into a two-page treatment. Later, when he was enrolled at Oregon State University, he fleshed it out into his first screenplay. Titled “The Last Domino”, he put the script away, taking it out occasionally for revisions and re-writes over the following years.

Dialogue On Dialogue: A non-action, but key moment in the movie where Vincent for the first time treats Max as more than an object.