Daily Dialogue theme for next week!

This last round of suggestions surfaced a number of good themes for Daily Dialogue. This week, we’ve featured notable movie monologues based on a suggestion from OutOfContext. 

For the upcoming week, I like the idea of doing notable voiceover dialogue. This per a suggestion from Jeff:

Since it’s SOOOOO taboo amongst us screenwriters, why not bust the gates open wide…

BEST VOICE OVER!

(ooooh… did he just say that?!)

This would include perhaps certain lines or perhaps just samples of lines which are representative of a great voice over…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmydTyspVhA

HENRY HILL (v.o.): Business is bad? Fuck you, pay me. Oh you had a fire? Fuck you, pay me! Place got hit by lightning huh? Fuck you, pay me!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-f8hwafsIU

VERBAL KINT (v.o.): It was all the cops’ fault. You don’t put guys like that in a room together. Who knows what can happen?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3cCqwTdTuk

WILLARD: I’d wake up and there’d be nothing. I hardly said a word to my wife, until I said “yes” to a divorce. When I was here, I wanted to be there; when I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle. I’m here a week now… waiting for a mission… getting softer. Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger. Each time I looked around the walls moved in a little tighter.

And, of course, there are about 20 keeper lines in the wonderful voice over of Charlie Kaufman’s ADAPTATION. This, of course, being the best… Charlie is admonishing himself (to himself) that he is worthless and weak for succumbing to a McKee seminar only to have McKee himself blurt out “…and God help you if you use voice over in your work, my friends!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VseQe4TFsg

Priceless!

Look, we’re all told that to use the cursed (v.o.) in our scripts is the kiss of death and yet there are hundreds of great movies which use it to great advantage.

As newbie writers, we FEAR the (v.o.)!

Therefore, in the coming week, we should FACE OUR FEARS! Very therapeutic!

Jeff is right. There is prejudice against using voiceover in movies and yet it is used often and well in hundreds of films. So I’m soliciting your ideas for notable dialogue from movies that feature extensive V.O. (throughout the film), bookends (a V.O. narrator up front, then at the end), or any other interesting use of voiceover. Perhaps we’ll gleam what elements contribute to good vs bad voiceover.

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