The shotgun would ignite, and Ella Mae would scream, but Robert Ford would only lay on the floor and look at the ceiling, the light going out of his eyes before he could find the right words.

Finding “the right words” is a quest all writers are intimately familiar with. Everyone knows that it’s not what you say, but how you say it. Dialogue, great dialogue, can be like music, expressing the profound in a manner that can be universally understood and, more importantly, felt. Also, “nobody has gotten a hand job in cargo shorts since ‘nam!” is a pretty funny line.

I can recall times when a great line has saved a scene and, in some cases, an entire movie for me. In the best of times it is a cherry on top, as is the case with the quote preceding this piece. It is spoken by the narrator of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) in the film’s final moments. It is poetic, to be sure, but it is also the perfect summation of the character of Robert Ford, a man so starved for fame and the attention and validation that comes with it that it drove him to murder his idol.

I have mentioned the line, “Say goodbye to Frankie, Dad”, before, which functions as an exhaling of the long-held breath that is In America (2003). But that film is full of beautiful lines, made all the more beautiful by their context. One such scene involves Johnny, an Irish immigrant grieving the death of his son, playing with his two daughters. He chases them around their sad, dilapidated Hell’s Kitchen apartment blindfolded and crying, “Fee-fi-fo-fum! I smell the blood of an Irish woman!” The girls scream with delight, but soon Johnny slips up: “Fee-fi-fo-fum! I smell the blood of an Irish man!” He removes the blindfold and the game grinds to a halt, the girls peering out from their hiding places. He realizes that he was looking for his son. Johnny’s wife approaches.

Play with the girls, Johnny.

As stand alone lines they are unremarkable. Given their context – the idea that life goes on, that these children are still here and they need their father – they are quite the opposite.

Sometimes dialogue can serve to enhance the overall aesthetic of a film, as is the case with the Coen brother’s brilliant Miller’s Crossing (1990). It isn’t so much a gangster film as a film about gangster films, utilizing a stylized form of slang-laden dialogue (Twists = Women. You know, because they get you all twisted) fondly remembered in older films like Little Caesar (1931) and White Heat (1949). While Miller’s Crossing is full of brilliant dialogue, one exchange in particular stuck with me. Tommy, Irish gangster and mob bosses right hand man, has just punctuated a rousing verbal sparring match with a “twist” (a woman) by smashing her vanity mirror. As she casually strolls away, without even turning back to face him, she delivers this final blow:

I suppose you think you raised hell?

Tommy counters with, “Sister, when I’ve raised hell you’ll know it”, but we all know who won that argument.

There are film makers who have come to be at least partially defined by their dialogue. David Mamet, who doubles as a playwright, has a distinctive voice, his dialogue marching to its own beat. Take this exchange from the brilliant Glenngarry Glen Ross (1992):

You got leads. Mitch & Murray paid good money. Get their names to sell them. You can’t close the leads you’re given, you can’t close shit, *you are* shit, hit the bricks pal, and beat it, ’cause you are going *out*.

The leads are weak.

“The leads are weak?” The fucking leads are weak? You’re weak. I’ve been in this business fifteen years!

What’s your name?

Fuck you. That’s my name. You know why, mister? ‘Cause you drove a Hyundai to get here tonight. I drove an eighty thousand dollar BMW. THAT’S my name.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s characters will often make oddly formal, declarative statements. Like when Barry, from 2002’s Punch Drunk Love tells his brother-in-law that he “cries sometimes, for no reason,” then asks, “Can you help me?” His brother-in-law kindly responds by reminding Barry that he is a Chiropractor. There is also the put upon Donnie Smith from Magnolia (1999), who declares that he “has so much love to give. I just don’t know where to put it.”

I could go on and on, but what I’d really like to know is what some of your favorite lines or exchanges of dialogue are, and why? Seriously, don’t just feed me the dialogue. There has to be a reason it resonates with you.

While laugh tracks are pretty exclusively a television device the film world has its fair share of manipulative tools as well, they’re just usually geared more specifically at emotional response.  Before I get rolling, let’s be clear about something: I’m talking about emotional manipulation and NOT enhancement.  Close ups, mood lighting and the swell of a soundtrack should be considered mere amplifications.  I know, I know.  It sounds like semantics, and in a way I suppose it is.  But where one might argue that any form of storytelling attempts to manipulate its audience I would argue that intent is half the battle.  Is your intent to seek empathy or an Oscar?

Pay It Forward (2000)—a regular whipping post of mine—is a prime example of emotional manipulation.  It hurls Lifetime made-for-TV movie clichés at you until you’re either bludgeoned into submission or you turn away in disgust (The only reasonable response, in my humble opinion).  PIF (Not only a useful acronym but a fine verbal sentiment towards the film itself) is the story of a little boy (Played by a doe-eyed Haley Joel Osment), prone to making trouble, who learns to pay good deeds forward from his teacher and becomes something of a folk hero.  His teacher also happens to be scarred (both physically AND emotionally, of course), and his mother happens to be single.  And alcoholic.  And works at a strip club.  Yeah, she’s a catch.  But perhaps these two crazy kids might find something in each other? 

As if all of that business wasn’t enough we are then faced with the ultimate in emotional manipulation:  The little boy dies.  Yep, he dies.  He is a martyr.  Sweet merciful Jesus (get it?).

Perhaps they would have won the Oscar if a sweet, mentally handicapped child who didn’t understand the full weight of what was happening had cradled the little boy in his arms as he died?  Then, a butterfly could land on his head.  PIF gradually makes its way from hinting that you’re supposed to be sad to aggressively challenging you not to be.  It tries to evokes tears it has not earned.

PIF could have been a fine film.  It could have been a simple, sweet story.  As Roger Ebert stated in his review:

I believed in these characters and cared for them. I wish the movie could have gotten out of their way.

Now I suppose I must come up with a counterpoint, lest you think I’m some sort of emotionless robot.  If there’s one film I can count on to start the water works every time it is In America (2002), written and directed by Jim Sheridan.  It is the story—told from the perspective of the eldest of two daughters—of an Irish family immigrating to New York shortly after the death of their only son.  They are forced, through both ignorance and lack of money to take up in a hole of an apartment in Hell’s Kitchen.  Hardly the new life Mom and Dad had envisioned.

Their building is filled with criminals and drug addicts.  Down the hall lives “the man who screams,” who lives up to that moniker nearly every night.  Sloppily painted on his door are the words “keep away.”  Naturally his heart will be warmed by the two little girls and he will be embraced by their family.  It is certain, as an outside observer, he will have some insight into the grief they feel about their child’s death.  And it is in the portrayal of this grief that the film truly shines.

It is rare that the film throws itself into melodrama.  The most effective scenes, in fact, are quiet, fleeting moments.  There is, for example, the scene where the father, Johnny, plays a game with his daughters, Christy and Ariel.  We get the impression he has played this game with them many times before.  He is blindfolded and clumsily chases the girls around the apartment declaring,

“Fee-fi-fo-fum!  I smell the blood of an Irish woman!” 

The girls run and scream with glee until he slips up. 

“Fee-fi-fo-fum!  I smell the blood of an Irish man!” 

He stops and removes his blindfold as his wife approaches and quietly whispers in his ear.

“Play with the girls, Johnny.” 

This is how these things tend to work.  We keep on going, we keep on trying, but every once in a while our grief punches us right in the stomach. causing us to pause before soldiering on.

In America‘s finale is also a fine counterpoint to PIF‘s overwrought melodrama.  As the father and his two daughters sit out on their fire escape the littlest one mourns the fact that she was never able to say goodbye to a deceased friend.  Their thoughts then turn to Frankie, their son and brother.  As the father and the eldest daughter try to convince Ariel that Frankie is flying across the moon and that she should wave and say goodbye, Christy turns to her father.

“Say goodbye to Frankie, Dad.”

When he does, we feel the weight of his grief lifted.  It is a beautiful moment because it has been earned.  We have not been told to feel his catharsis, we simply do, and that’s the difference.