[Watch the video interview on Youtube here]
For me, writing dialogue was really difficult in the beginning. It isn’t simply a talent. Some people have a natural talent. They can have an ear for it and they capture it, but it goes beyond that. You can actually learn how to do this. These are real people, they all have a unique voice. They’re all saying what they would say, they’re all doing what they would do and it’s never boring, it is just captivatingly interesting and gets more and more interesting, that’s the Holy Grail. When a writer can do that they are the needle in the haystack that the industry is looking for. Everyone will want to meet that writer and work with that writer.
In Pulp Fiction, there’s a moment where Bruce Willis’s character goes to buy some cigarettes and he says to the bartender:
One pack of Red Apples
And the bartender says
Filters?
And he says:
None
That’s just a really cool, fast, interesting exchange there as opposed to five lines to explain what brand of cigarettes he wants and:
Oh you know, how about no filters in those cigarettes.
It’s a very noir-ish feel. It’s very clipped and dark and tight and it’s just
Filters?
None
That just gets the idea across.
Claude Rains in Casablanca says to Bogart:
What brought you to Casablanca?
Bogart says:
The waters
Claude Rains says
It’s a desert
Bogart says something like:
I was mistaken, I was misinformed
Which is great dialogue. It’s music which is the difference between speaking like we’re doing here and an interesting dialogue…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
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