Daily Dialogue — September 3, 2015
Holden: There’s a world of fucking difference between typical high school sex and getting fucked by two guys at the same time! They fucking used you!
Alyssa: (crying hysterically) NO! I used them! You don’t think I would’ve let it happen if I hadn’t wanted it to, do you?! I was an experimental girl, for Christ’s sake! Maybe you knew early on that your track was from point A to B–but unlike you, I wasn’t given a fucking map at birth, so I tried it all! That is until we-that’s you and I-got together, and suddenly, I was sated. Can’t you take some comfort in that? You turned out to be all I was ever looking for-the missing piece in the big fucking puzzle! (Trying to calm down) Look I’m sorry I let you believe that you were the only guy I’d ever been with. I should’ve been more honest. But it seemed to make you feel special in a way that me telling you over and over again how incredible you are would never get across.
She touches his face. He pulls back. She stares at him, hurt and pissed.
Alyssa: Do you mean to tell me that while you have zero problem with me sleeping with half the women in New York city you have some sort of half-assed mealy-mouthed objection to pubescent antics that took place almost ten years ago? What the fuck is your problem?!!
— Chasing Amy (1997), written by Kevin Smith
The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Monologue. Today’s suggestion by Gregory Netterville.
Trivia: This is the third film in Kevin Smith’s intricately interconnected View Askewniverse series (the others being Clerks (1994), Mallrats (1995), Dogma (1999), Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001) and Clerks II (2006)). The movies are all linked by characters, themes and events and each contains numerous references to the others.
Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary by Gregory: “Go through any of his work: Clerks, Mallrats, Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, even his last film Tusk, and you’ll see that Kevin Smith is a master craftsman of movie monologues… Film is and always will be a visual medium but just like Tarantino, Smith too strayed away from convention.
‘An Experimental Girl’ (shortened here) from Chasing Amy always catches me off guard because of its rawness. The film itself is loaded with great monologues–the “We’ve All Gotta Have Sex Together” scene probably being the most memorable–but “An Experimental Girl” has no subtext which I feel like a lot of monologues tend to have. It’s just a brutally honest argument between Alyssa (Joey Lauren Adams) and her ‘boyfriend’ Holden (Ben Affleck) about her past, and typical: the man can’t deal with it.”