Re Monologues: Four basic functions?
This week’s Daily Dialogue theme has been monologues. Got a Tweet from @Shandipedia reminding me of this one from Magnolia:
That brought to mind other monologues from the same movie. Here’s a confession from a dying Earl Partridge (Jason Robards) to his caretaker Phil (Phillip Seymour Hoffman):
“Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I went to her school for that grade. Grade — that’s grade twelve. And we meet. She was… fucking like a doll. A beautiful porcelain doll. And the hips, child-bearing hips, you know that? So, so beautiful. And I cheated on her… over and over and over again. Because I wanted to be a man. And I didn’t want her to be a woman, you know? A smart, free person who was something! My fucking mind then. So stupid, that fucking mind! Stupid! Jesus Christ! What would I think, did I think for what I’d done? She was my wife for twenty-three years… and I went behind her over and over. Fucking asshole that I am. I’d go out and I’d fuck and I’d come home and get in her bed… and say… “I love you.” This is Jack’s mother. His mother, Lily. These two… that I had… and I lost. This is the regret that you make. This is the… regret that you make and the something you take and the blah, blah, blah, something, something. Gimme a cigarette. Mistakes like this… you don’t make. Sometimes… you make some and OK. Not OK, sometimes, you make other ones. Know that you should do better. I loved Lily. I cheated on her. She was my wife for twenty-three years. And I have a son. And she has cancer. And I’m not there, and he’s forced to take care of her. He’s fourteen years old. To… to take care of his mother… and watch her die on him. A little kid, and I’m not there. And she does die.”
These two along with this week’s roster of Daily Dialogue posts seem to suggest four basic functions for a monologue:
* Extended exposition: Where a character lays out a bunch of important story facts.
* Confession: Where a character reveals key information — details, emotional truths.
* Articulation of a belief: Where a character presents a complete overview of something they hold to be true.
* Summary of an argument: Where a character lays out a comprehensive take on their position on a specific subject.
Are there other functions? And none of these answer another important question: Exactly what ‘allows’ a character to take up so much time to deliver a monologue? After all, Hollywood’s current conventional wisdom is to avoid long sides of dialogue. Obviously that doesn’t mean you can’t write monologues, just that you’d better have a good reason for including them. If you do, what are the justifications for writing a monologue in a feature-film script?
Because of these questions and the fact that I have received so many great suggestions from GITS readers, I’ve decided to extend the monologue theme for another week. Let’s see if we can kick around this subject for a few more days to discover what we can learn about the use of monologues in movies and screenplays.
And many thanks to those of you who made suggestions. Some outstanding ones coming up this week.
Final observation: Did you notice how many of the monologues from this week included the word “fuck”? I believe it was 5 out of 7 Daily Dialogues. That is not a frivolous note as it suggests that monologues generally come from an elevated state of emotion on the part of the character, dropping f-bombs a way of underscoring their anger, frustration, amazement, etc.
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