Daily Dialogue — September 9, 2016

Frank Stark: We give you love and affection, don’t we? Well, then, what is it? Was it because we went to that party? Well, you know what kind of drunken brawls those kind of parties turn into. It’s not a place for kids.
Mrs. Carol Stark: A minute ago, you said you didn’t care if he drinks.
Mrs. Stark (Jim’s grandmother): He said a little drink.
Jim Stark: You’re tearing me apart!
Mrs. Carol Stark: [shocked] What?
Jim Stark: You, you say one thing, he says another, and everybody changes back again!
Mrs. Carol Stark: That’s a fine way to behave!
Mrs. Stark (Jim’s grandmother): Well, you know who he takes after.

— Rebel Without a Cause (1955), screen play by Stewart Stern, adaptation by Irving Shulman, story by Nicholas Ray

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Argument, suggested by Mark Twain.

Trivia: The writing credits for the film are as follows: Stewart Stern (screenplay), Nicholas Ray (story) and Irving Shulman (adaptation). In an interview, published in Michigan Quarterly Review in 1999, Stern, however, claims that he had never even seen “The Blind Run”, the treatment for “Rebel” supposedly written by Ray. The screenwriter says he was shocked when he learned that the director wanted to take the sole story credit as there had not been an actual story before he started writing the script. Stern admits that both Ray and Shulman had contributed to the story therefore he believes that the credit should have been divided between the three of them. Later, the film received an Oscar nomination for the story alone with only Ray being nominated for writing.

Dialogue On Dialogue: An archetypal argument between parents and adolescent son (or daughter) in which mother and father don’t understand the behavior of their progeny. See: The Graduate, Dead Poets Society.