They say that blog posts are all audio and visual content now, and that the written word is becoming an afterthought. Maybe that’s true, but with this annual feature about the best dialogue I’ve heard in the last 12 months, I spotlight words and never include any pictures or embedded video to distract from them. So will it always be.
As usual, I don’t include dialogue that’s based on another source unless it’s substantially different from the source material, which means I have to exclude some fine writing from Conclave and The Piano Lesson. As always, the stage directions are mine, I have taken the dialogue from the finished film and not from shooting scripts, and WARNING: Large amounts of offensive and profane language ahead. Also, Azrael, Flow, and Sasquatch Sunset do not make this list.
We’ll start with this scene from Challengers, in which low-level tennis pro Patrick Zweig approaches his ex-girlfriend Tashi outside a hotel with a business proposal. She has coached her husband Art to six Grand Slam titles, and when he wants a piece of that success, she calls him out memorably. The script is by Justin Kuritzkes.
PATRICK (exhaling cigarette smoke): I’m gonna propose something to you.
TASHI: Dude, blow it away from me, please.
PATRICK: Sorry. It’s gonna make you angry. It’s gonna make you very angry. (pause) I want you to be my coach.
TASHI (looking at him): What?
PATRICK: Even if he wins the Open and completes his career Grand Slam, Art’s still gonna retire as someone who was just really, really good. That’s what you guys will have done together. Imagine if you could turn Patrick Zweig into a guy who wins a Slam. I still have a season. I still have one good season, and I need you to bring it out of me. So what do you think?
(She slaps him hard in the face.)
PATRICK (recoiling): Ow!
TASHI: How fucking dare you?
PATRICK: Jesus Christ!
TASHI: You want my best piece of advice for you? Okay, quit. Quit right now. Right the fuck now, quit.
PATRICK: You know that when I’m good, I’m one of the best in the world.
TASHI: 271st best in the fucking world.
PATRICK: I still have a shot.
TASHI: You’re 31. You have a better shot with a handgun in your mouth. (He laughs, but he’s hurt.) Why don’t you go home? Go home, ask your parents for a seat on the board. Or you know what? Matter of fact, ask them for some money. Okay? Go be like any other spoiled kid who has ever amounted to nothing in their fucking life and stop this performance of being a down-on-your-luck professional.
PATRICK: Tashi —
TASHI: No, you’re not 20 years old anymore, and it’s not cute to be walking around pretending like you need to grind it out at bumfuck tournaments and sleep in your fucking car. And it is unforgivable that you would ask me to devote a single second of my fucking time to help you achieve your fucking dream. What dreams, Patrick? You never had any.
PATRICK: Is that what you and Art are doing? Living the dream?
TASHI: That is exactly what the fuck we’re doing.
PATRICK: Then how come you hate him? (She scoffs.) You do. It’s obvious you do. You can feel him giving up already, even though you know he’s not gonna retire until you let him.
TASHI: He is a grown man. He can do whatever he wants.
PATRICK: Sure, sure, but he doesn’t. He does whatever you want. Except now, he’s not even pretending to like it. He’s dreaming about eating hamburgers again, watching your daughter — (snaps his fingers) Lily grow up, maybe doing some commentary on the Tennis Channel. He’s ready to be dead. And you’re starting to realize you might not want to be buried with him, ’cause who is he to you if he’s not playing tennis?
TASHI: So that’s what you think he is to me? A racket and a dick?
PATRICK (meaningfully): Does Art know about Atlanta? You keep saying you came here because Art needed matches. I think you came for something else.
TASHI (laughing): You think I came here for you? (He smiles.) You think I came here to throw it all away for you?
PATRICK: Maybe you just wanted to see me.
TASHI: I have seen you. You look like shit.
(She starts to walk away.)
PATRICK: I’m gonna beat him. If we both make it to the final, I’m going to beat him.
TASHI: Even if you could beat him, it wouldn’t change anything.
PATRICK: It’ll break him. You know it will.
TASHI: It won’t make you. Okay? It’s too late for that.
The Critic came and went in North Texas before I had a chance to weigh in on it, and Patrick Marber’s script does a pretty fair job of adapting Anthony Quinn’s novel set in 1930s London. In this scene, West End actress Nina Land confronts longtime theater critic Jimmy Erskine in Lincoln’s Inn Fields about her inability to get any sort of good review from him in 10 years. It’s a pretty even-handed look at a critic who’s mean but also takes his job seriously, and the revelation of the old man’s homosexuality comes as a neatly placed surprise.
NINA: I want an apology.
JIMMY: For expressing my opinion?
NINA: For the manner of its expression. The rudeness, the disrespect.
JIMMY: One of my many solemn duties is to entertain the reader.
NINA: At my expense.
JIMMY: Well, it’s not just you, is it? I write, what, more than half a million words a year. Oh, mea culpa if 12 of them offended you.
NINA: Over the last 10 years, you’ve compared me to livestock, creatures of the sea, and an extinct bird. You’ve said my voice is “fluting,” “grating,” “girlish,” and “manly.” You’ve described me as “plump” and “emaciated.” Which is it, damn you? Last season, “her Mrs. Elvsted is glamorous but ungainly. She doesn’t seem to know how to walk.” How to walk? You’ve been dishing it out to me for a decade, and now it’s going to stop.
JIMMY: Oh, are you retiring?
NINA: Why, I’m tight enough to scratch your eyes out.
JIMMY (putting up his fists in a Marquess of Queensbury pose): Oh, I wouldn’t try. You stand before the vice captain of the Wigan Junior Boxing Club.
MALE PROSTITUTE (running up and intervening): Are you all right, miss? He’s a bit weird, this one.
JIMMY: This is a private conversation.
NINA: Weird?
JIMMY: Oh, be a good chap and bugger off. She’s perfectly safe.
NINA: Oh, tell.
MALE PROSTITUTE: He likes it rough.
NINA: Does he now?
(The prostitute leaves quietly.)
NINA (to Jimmy): Apologize.
JIMMY: I won’t, Miss Land. I will fight to the death for freedom of thought and its public expression.
NINA: Erskine of The Chronicle pays trade for rough sex. Why do you like that?
JIMMY: I dare say you can imagine. You spoke it last night. “My soul, like a ship in a black storm, is driven I know not whither.” Humiliation, danger. I think you understand. Don’t take what I write to heart. There are other critics, albeit lesser ones, who think you’re spectacular.
NINA: I’m not interested in them. I follow you.
JIMMY: Me? I’m a monster. I’m weird.
NINA: You most certainly are, but I grew up reading you. I wanted to act because of you.
JIMMY: You’re mocking me.
NINA (shakes her head): You formed me.
JIMMY: Well, that’s a terribly flattering thing to say.
NINA (seriously): You write so tenderly and passionately about the plays and the actors who move you, and yet you dismiss those who disappoint you so ruthlessly. As if you’ve been betrayed.
JIMMY: This little England lowers its standards every day. In my footling way, I’m attempting to maintain them.
NINA: I so wanted to meet your standards, but you think I’m appalling.
JIMMY: I am afraid so.
NINA (defeated): I might dissolve.
JIMMY (taking her comfortingly by the shoulders): There is art in you, Miss Land. My disappointment is in your failure to access it.
This feature (and indeed the Weekly’s online presence) did not exist when the original Mean Girls came out, and oh, how I wish I could have transcribed one of its scenes here. I’ll have to be content with this scene from the Mean Girls musical. Damian’s description of how Regina George bullied Janis in middle school is different from the original film’s. Once again, it’s Tina Fey.
CADY: She took him back. She took Aaron back.
JANIS (getting up and brushing the popcorn from her clothes): Of course she did. Regina’s a life ruiner.
DAMIAN: When we were in sixth grade, she told everyone that Janis —
JANIS: Damian! Okay, she does not need to hear this.
CADY: No, no, I know the story. (sitting down) You lit a fire ‘cause Regina got a boyfriend.
DAMIAN: She said what? Oh hell, no.
JANIS: Damian —
DAMIAN: No, the truth will be told. Stay with me, Cady. (He retrieves a large toy chest.) Like all history, this is richly layered and culturally dense. (He opens the toy chest and gets out a Bratz doll and a Dora the Explorer doll.) Janis and Regina were best friends in middle school. At that time, females expressed their identities through collectible Plushies.
CADY: I don’t what those —
DAMIAN (holding up a pink plush unicorn doll): It’s these bastards, and they were everywhere. Regina gave Janis a BFF set for her birthday. Janis put a rainbow patch on hers. This is how she came out to her friend. Regina put a rainbow patch on hers too out of allyship because she used to be human. Cut to eight months later, Regina becomes obsessed with this gross boy, Kyle.
(He holds up a superhero action figure.)
JANIS: Your scale is completely off.
DAMIAN: Hush! One night they were all playing Spin the Bottle, and Regina was worried that Kyle liked Karen more. When she spun and got Janis, Regina put on a little show. (He makes the Bratz doll and the Dora doll kiss.) And Kyle was like, “Boinnnng!” And Regina was like, “I knew she would let me! She’s, like, obsessed with me!” Not okay!
JANIS: Please put this all back in its box!
DAMIAN: They got into a huge fight, Regina started avoiding Janis at school, but did she give back that plush animal? Oh no! She took it everywhere. She named her Sissy Liz and she made everyone say good morning to it every day, and it was very weird and boring.
JANIS: Fast forward!
DAMIAN: One day in science, Regina was making everyone say hi to Sissy Liz and Janis finally heard it. “Sissy Liz” was short for “Obsessed Lesbian.” Regina had been making fun of Janis the entire time, and everyone but her knew. So, and this is regrettable, Janis took her Bunsen burner (strikes his cigarette lighter) and torched the doll, and Regina’s backpack caught on fire a little bit and Janis was kicked out of school for the remainder of the year.
CADY: And the adults didn’t know why?
DAMIAN: Janis just seemed crazy.
Jesse Eisenberg proves himself as funny as a well-seasoned Borscht Belt comedy writer (do those still exist?) in A Real Pain. In this scene at a restaurant in Lublin, Poland, David’s cousin Benji takes offense to a story that David has told and leaves the table amid a stream of profanities. David apologizes to the other members of the tour group who have borne witness to Benji’s outburst.
DAVID: I’m sorry about him.
DIANE: What a troubled young man.
ELOGE: He wants to be good. You can see the spark. You know what I mean?
JAMES: Yes, absolutely, Eloge.
MARK: Forgive me if I don’t see this magical spark.
DIANE: Mark, stop it. He’s tormented for whatever reason.
MARCIA: He’s funny and he’s charming under all the mishegoss. I feel bad for him. (to David) Has he always been like this?
DAVID: Yeah. I mean, he’s always been, like, up and down, you know? He’s, like, sensitive and he, like, sees people so clearly, y’know? But then you say the wrong thing and, like, something switches. Maybe it’s not appropriate to talk about him.
DIANE: No, what’s not appropriate? You obviously got something going on between you and, uh, he’s clearly in pain.
DAVID: Yeah, but isn’t everyone in pain in some way? I mean, look at what happened to our families. Look at where we came from. I mean, who isn’t, y’know, who isn’t wrought?
MARK: You seem okay.
DAVID: I’m not, though. I’m not. I just, like, take a pill for my fucking OCD, y’know, and I jog and I meditate and I go to work in the morning. I, like, come home at the end of the day and I, like, move forward, y’know, because I know that my pain is unexceptional, so I don’t feel the need to, I don’t know, burden everybody with it, y’know?
DINNER GUESTS (variously): Mmm-hmm. Yeah. It’s all right, David.
DAVID: I’m sorry. I’m ranting. I’m just like, I don’t know. Um, sorry, I’m just like, so fucking exhausted by him sometimes, y’know? Like, I love him and I hate him and I want to kill him and I want to be him, y’know? (starting to cry) And I, like, feel so stupid around him, y’know, because he is so fucking cool and he just does not give a shit, and then just, like, being here with him is just so fucking baffling to me, y’know? It’s just, like, baffling because how did this guy come from the survivors of this place, y’know? (to Mark) I mean, like, your uncle had to sell used furniture to rich assholes or, like, couldn’t get into medical school. (to Eloge) And that you, like, survived the worst thing to happen on this planet in the last thirty years. And that our grandma survived by a thousand miracles when the entire world was trying to kill her, y’know? And I look at him and I just, like, wanna ask him, I just wanna ask him and I just can’t. Like, like, how did the product of a thousand fucking miracles overdose on a bottle of sleeping pills?
(pause)
MARCIA: What?
DIANE: What did you say?
DAVID: Yeah, he tried to, yeah, sorry. I probably shouldn’t have said anything.
JAMES: I’m sorry to hear that.
ELOGE: I’m so sorry. That’s very distressing.
MARCIA: When did this happen?
DAVID: Like six, six months ago. My Aunt Leah, Benji’s mom, found him on the couch. And I know he is so funny and so charming and you are all gonna walk away with this picture of this amazing man, which he totally is in so many ways. But when I picture him, it is passed out on a ratty basement couch while I am in New York City with my beautiful wife and adorable child, and it just fucking kills me. Sorry, I’m oversharing.
(The restaurant piano suddenly strikes up a jaunty version of “Tea for Two.”)
DAVID: Well, they’re back again.
MARCIA: It’s him.
(David looks behind him, and Benji is the one playing the piano.)
I compared Heretic to the stage works of George Bernard Shaw in my review. Maybe Scott Beck and Bryan Woods have a ways to go before they really merit a comparison to the great Irish playwright, but in this excerpt from their horror movie, you can see what I was getting at. Here, Mr. Reed destabilizes and terrifies the two Mormon missionaries who have come to his door, Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton, by attacking their religious faith in his back room, which he has converted into a fake church with an altar. One of them isn’t having it, though.
REED: The story of a savior who was born to a virgin who could perform miracles and was supernaturally resurrected was a very popular story for at least a thousand years before Jesus was born. Mithras performed miracles, he was marked by the sign of the cross. Horus walked on water, was crucified, had twelve disciples. Krishna, he was a carpenter born to a virgin, baptized in a river, rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. This little gallery depicts twelve gods who were born on December the twenty-fifth, all of whom predate the existence of Jesus. I am sorry, but it is impossible to ignore the influence of one narrative upon another or to ignore the fact that all these stories iterate into Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace! Can you imagine thousands of years from now people accepting Jar Jar as a significant religious figure?
PAXTON: Beg your pardon?
REED: Jar Jar. Jar Jar Binks! (imitating the character) Jar Jar. Ex-squeeze me? (back in normal voice) Never mind. (He turns on all the lights.) It is all terrifying, isn’t it? I’m sorry. It is. It is all — (suddenly staring intently at a lit candle and moving his finger through the flame) scary. I’m scared. I’m scared just saying it out loud, really. (He writes the word “Belief” on the left-hand door.) If God is real, and He watches us when we masturbate, and He has such a fragile ego that He only helps us when we beg Him and shower Him with praise, and He hates gay people for being what He made them to be, well, that’s terrifying. (He writes the word “Disbelief” on the right-hand door.) If there’s no God, and we’re just horny microscopic ants floating through space with no divine purpose and no hope to achieve eternal life, well, that’s terrifying too. (reading text in an American accent) “Either the church is true or it is a fraud. It is the church and kingdom of God or it is nothing.” (back in normal voice) Do you agree with that? Would it help if I told you this is Gordon B. Hinckley, the fifteenth president of your church? Do you agree with Gordon?
BARNES AND PAXTON: Yes.
REED: Thought you might. So either it is all true or none of it’s true, yes?
PAXTON (scared): Yes.
REED: So I want you to choose which door to go through based on your faith.
(The sisters look at each other.)
PAXTON: Are you asking us to deliberate our belief in the church?
BARNES: Is that a factor that will correspond to us going home?
REED: I’m asking you to choose between belief and disbelief. My own claim is that all ten thousand verifiable religions that exist in the world today are as artificial as the symbolic church you are currently standing in. It is farce. There is nothing holy here. (picking up the Book of Mormon and throwing it aside) Your religious text is mere ornament, as hollow and as capitalistic as these ridiculous games.
(He clears the board games off his table with a big crash. He steps to one side. Sister Barnes steps forward, picks up the Book of Mormon, and eyes the letter opener that is lying nearby.)
BARNES (standing back up): I want to know what is going to happen to us before we choose.
REED: I don’t even know how to begin to answer that question if it hasn’t happened yet.
PAXTON (feigning defeat): Wow, Mr. Reed, you’ve introduced a lot of interesting points. I think we can admit that you’re a very smart man and we still have a lot to learn. So with that, I’d like to agree that you’ve convinced us and we’d like to leave through the “disbelief” door and go home now. (going to the door) Right, Sister Barnes?
(Sister Barnes moves slowly toward the other door.)
PAXTON: Sister? Sister Barnes? I think we should listen to our super neat and thoughtful host and choose the right door. You know, choose the right? Like they taught us in primary?
BARNES (suddenly calm): It doesn’t matter what you say to him. He’s not gonna let us go just because we admit he’s right.
PAXTON: Let’s just get out of here while our host is being gracious enough to let us leave.
BARNES: I think that we’re being studied. I think he wants to learn something about us based on which door we open. (looks at him) Is that the game? Someone scratches their neck and he’s watching. We say the wrong thing and he stumbles on his words. (he sits) A candle flame flickers and it captures his attention. What have you been looking for? What have you found? If I’m right, then the only thing that matters right now is what we actually believe. And because I think your rhetoric is thin and your garage-sale board-game metaphor is kind of offensive. I mean, you asked why Judaism only makes up 0.2 percent of the world’s population but didn’t even pause for the Holocaust. You make no acknowledgment of the religious persecution Jewish people have faced. You just use it as a setup to a punchline about missionaries. And then you skip over the fact that none of this addresses Islam, as Muslims don’t even believe Christ was resurrected. And then you point out all the similarities that these mythological gods have with Jesus but breeze over the many glaring differences. (pointing to Horus) One of these guys has a freaking bird head!
We cut to a diner booth in South Texas. Richard Linklater and Glen Powell wrote the script for Hit Man based on Skip Hollandsworth’s news article. In this scene near the beginning, an audio tech-savvy cop named Gary is pressed into service posing as a contract killer named Billy and meeting a potential client named Craig. A man who has never had to do this job before now has to convince the client that he’s a legitimate hit man. He does pretty well.
GARY/BILLY: Grab your shit. Sit down. Listen, this whole thing’s gotta be based on trust.
CRAIG: Yeah, man, no shit. So how long you been doin’ this?
GARY/BILLY (slowly, with emphasis): That’s none of your fucking business. You called me to do a job. You don’t know me, I don’t know you, and at some point in the future, that’s gonna be a good thing. We’re not gonna be friends, you got it?
CRAIG: Got it. So —
GARY/BILLY: So you’re assessing me. Am I the right guy to eliminate your problem? And just so you know, I’m assessing you too. Are you full of shit? Some big talker who’s not serious. And if you’re serious now, are you one day going to find Jesus and be so overburdened by guilt and remorse and confess your sins? Are you gonna crack under pressure, Craig, and are you gonna point a fucking finger at me?
CRAIG: Never! Fuck, man, never. In fact, I got it all worked out already.
GARY/BILLY: Okay, let’s hear it.
CRAIG: I work a seven and seven, so starting this coming Tuesday, which is crew-change day outta Houma, every second of my whereabouts is documented and accounted for. That way, anything bad were to happen, no one can think I did it, right? Not Craig, uh uh, ’cause Craig is out on an oil rig, isn’t he? A hundred and twenty miles out in the Gulf the whole damn time. (chuckling) What do you think about that?
GARY/BILLY: It’s a good plan. All right, I’d say Thursday or Friday is probably the best time.
CRAIG: Sounds good.
GARY/BILLY: So what are you thinking, exactly?
CRAIG: Ya know, just take care of him.
GARY/BILLY: What does that mean, exactly?
CRAIG: Come on, man. You know what it means. He just needs to go away for good.
GARY/BILLY: So what’s your proximity afterwards?
CRAIG: What do you mean?
GARY/BILLY: Going to the funeral?
CRAIG: Funeral? In my ideal world, there wouldn’t have to be a funeral, would there?
GARY/BILLY: So no funeral.
CRAIG: Dude, I’m sorry. Are we actually talking about the same thing here?
GARY/BILLY: The reason I’m asking is because it sounds to me like you’re talking about the disposal of a body, which is more risky for me.
CRAIG: Gotcha.
GARY/BILLY: Yeah, a faked suicide or botched robbery, I’m in and out. What you’re talking about requires me to spend a lot of time with the body, to be sure it’s never discovered.
In Titus Kaphar’s Exhibiting Forgiveness, a successful Black artist named Tarrell is preparing for a big show when his crack-addicted father La’Ron suddenly resurfaces in his life. Tarrell’s wife advises him that he needs to resolve his buried issues with his dad once and for all, so he sits down with the old man in his mother’s basement and videotapes an interview with him. This scene is an object lesson in how someone telling about something that happened to them can be much more dramatic than actually seeing the incident unfold.
LA’RON: I’ve had health insurance once in my life. Yo mama too, when she was pregnant. I remember the day I told my father. We was workin’ in the back of the truck, me and my daddy. I’ll never forget it. I looked over and I said, “Daddy, you remember Joyce? The quiet girl in the choir.” My daddy hated when I tried to talk and work. He said, “Boy, spit it out and get back to work.” “Uh, she pregnant.” (miming shoveling) I never lifted my head, I just kept on shovelin’. Daddy stopped and said, “But who baby is it?” I never said nothin’, I just kept on shovelin’, on shovelin’. “Well, who baby is it, La’Ron?” I stuttered and I stammered a bit and I finally said, “It’s mine.” And I just went on back to shovelin’.
TARRELL (removing his jacket): What’d he say?
LA’RON: He ain’t said nothin’. He took that shovel and hit me upside the head so hard, it knocked me out cold. We was over on James Street. Daddy just left me there layin’ on the ground in somebody’s backyard. Woke up and the neighbors standin’ over me, they thought I was dead. I just walked on. When I finally got home that night, Daddy said I gotta do two things. (sitting down) Marry Joyce and get a job with health insurance so I could take care of my baby.
TARRELL (quietly): You forgive your father? Did you ever even like him?
LA’RON: Your grandfather was a complicated man, Tarrell. Daddy would come home mad about somethin’ and try to take it out on Mama. Your grandmother was a livin’ breathin’ saint. Oh, he was a minister, but she was a saint. (standing back up) Man, when you was finally born and I introduced you to your grandfather, he wouldn’t even pick you up. I tried to put you in his arms, he walked right by. He went over to my mama and said, “Now that’s your son. That’s your lustful heathen sinner.” Mama looked him straight in the eye and said, “Jesus is strong enough to save.” Whoo-wee! Daddy looked at me and said, “You won’t bring that child into the house of the Lord! That baby was conceived in sin, and until you and Joyce confess your sin in front of the congregation, you won’t set one foot inside of my church.” Oh, I never seen Mama so angry. She jumped in his face and said, “You don’t speak for God!” That set Daddy off. Your grandfather kept a pistol. Folks used to call him “The Gun-Toting Preacher.” He whipped that thing out so fast I ain’t even seen where it came from. He aimed that pistol right at Mama’s head. She didn’t even flinch. I dropped you on the couch, I jumped, I ran between ’em. Mama tried to push me away, lookin’ over my shoulder, she said, “I trust God!” Daddy aimed that pistol at my head, said, “Boy, stay outta grown folks’ business!” Right when Daddy said that, you fell headfirst off the couch and boy, you started wailin’! But Daddy put that pistol down and said, “Somebody shut that pickaninny up! Somebody shut that pickaninny up!” Shut that pickaninny up! (sitting back down) It was hard for him.
TARRELL (appalled): Hard for who?
LA’RON: Daddy was a good man.
TARRELL: He was a good man? You just told me that, you just told me that he tried to kill you and Grandma.
LA’RON: Daddy wasn’t gonna kill her or me. You know how many times he pulled a gun on us. He had flaws.
TARRELL: Wait a minute, wait a minute. No, no. You judge a man by his actions, how he lives, and how he takes care of his family.
In Blink Twice, catering waitress Frida and reality-show star Sarah have been whisked away to a tropical island owned by tech billionaire Slater King. Sarah has just unearthed proof that Frida’s best friend Jess was on the island and has vanished, even though no one can remember Jess being there. Sarah shows Jess what is making the women lose and regain their memories. The script is by Zoë Kravitz and E.T. Feigenbaum.
FRIDA (waving around a big chef’s knife): Jess was here. Jess was here! And she said there was something wrong with this place.
SARAH: I don’t want to sound like a, like a bitch. It’s just that I feel like I would know if there was this whole other person here.
FRIDA: I know it doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t make any sense, but I feel like we’re forgetting a lot of stuff.
SARAH (carefully): How do we feel about putting down the knife? Yeah?
FRIDA (putting it down): No, that’s right. That’s right. Sorry. Sorry. What day is it?
SARAH: Huh?
FRIDA: Do you know what day it is?
SARAH: No, but like, I never know what day it is.
FRIDA: Right.
SARAH: I’m having a great time here. (pause) But I also have this feeling that I’m, like, not. Does that make sense?
FRIDA: Yes. (holding up her hands) I have dirt under my nails and I don’t know how it got there.
SARAH (taking off her robe to expose a bruise on her left arm): I’m sorry, what is this? What is that? They were like, “Sarah, you were climbing on a tree and you were so wasted, you fell.” Mmm-mmm. I didn’t last eight seasons on Hot Survivor Babes because I fell.
FRIDA: You don’t think I’m crazy?
SARAH: What’s crazy is that we got onto a plane with a bunch of dudes we don’t know.
FRIDA: I thought you all knew each other.
SARAH: No. Cody just chatted me up at a coffee shop talking about how he knew Slater King.
FRIDA: But Heather and Camilla, they know everybody, right?
SARAH (shrugging): No.
(They look at each other for a second.)
FRIDA: Oh my God!
SARAH: What the fuck were we thinking?
FRIDA: Fuck!
SARAH: I knew it! I knew it! I knew it! I knew it was too good to be true. Of course they’re fucking with our heads because that’s what they do. They distract us with these cute little outfits and they shower us with raspberries and champagne (picking up the knife) but we know what’s really going on. They are trying to control us. They are trying to make us look crazy! (She realizes that she’s now waving the knife around. She puts it down.) And it’s working. So they’re making us forget.
FRIDA: Yeah.
SARAH: But, like, how?
FRIDA: “Forgetting is a gift.”
SARAH: Huh?
FRIDA: Slater said forgetting is a gift.
SARAH: Oh. (pause) I don’t get it.
(Cut to the secret room where Frida is showing Sarah the red gift bags full of perfume containers.)
SARAH: We need to call the cops.
FRIDA: Yeah.
SARAH: We need to call the FBI.
FRIDA: Yeah.
SARAH: We need to call the cops and the FBI.
One reason The Brutalist does not collapse into a 215-minute pile of goo is the exquisite writing by Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold. In this scene set in the late 1940s, Philadelphia shipping magnate Harrison van Buren throws a house party for László Tóth, the architect who designed the library in his home. Note the contrast between the businessman’s formal English and the imperfect but visionary words of the Hungarian architect who sees a landscape for his work in America.
HARRISON: I was married once. She gave me two beautiful children. Nevertheless, my mother Margaret and the twins demanded my attention every minute of my scarce personal time. Things became awkward between my ex-wife and Margaret, so we separated. Amicably. Margaret raised me on her own in Rochester. It was just the two of us. Her parents had disowned her for a child out of wedlock. She was my only real family other than the twins later on in life, of course. I’ll tell you, shortly before their death, my mother’s parents — I hesitate to call them my grandparents — they reached out to Margaret and me after reading an article on the reported success of my first company. In actual fact, we weren’t doing that well at the time and would soon shutter our doors, but this was not yet public knowledge. (He lights a cigar.) I gather you conclude from our prior interactions I am blunt, not hyperbolic or particularly sentimental, but my mother, she was defenseless against their chumminess. She argued that they could very well be sick or dying and quite likely needed the money. I didn’t like seeing Margaret, an ordinary pragmatic woman, reduced to such bromidic assumptions. Still, I agreed to meet with them in person, in part to appease her, but also to satisfy the curiosities of my lineage.
PARTYGOER (breaking in, to László): You know, it really is very clever, the way the space surrounds one. The forced perspective.
HARRISON: I think so, yes.
PARTYGOER: It reminds me of a short story I once read. It’s about a never-ending library. Are you working on anything at the moment, Mr. Tóth?
LÁSZLÓ: A bowling alley.
HARRISON (to partygoer): Sorry, I was just in the middle of telling our friend here a story.
PARTYGOER: I’m so sorry, not at all. Please excuse me.
(He leaves.)
LÁSZLÓ (inviting Harrison to continue): You agreed to see them.
HARRISON: We exchanged pleasantries over the telephone and I offered to meet with them at their modest apartment residence in a neighboring town. I laughed to realize they’d been so nearby all those years. On the drive over, I had time to think, and I finally arrived at a figure I felt comfortable in offering the two of them, seeing that they were, whether I liked it or not, our only living relatives. I was received hospitably, so I swiftly moved to explain I’d made them out a check for the amount of twenty-five thousand dollars. When I handed it over, they appeared relieved but perhaps a little disappointed at the figure. They were courteous and thanked me all the same. I was quite uncomfortable, but before hurrying off, I asked them a question. “What will you do with all this money?” They rambled on about miracles or some such thing. For a moment, everything in their immediate line of view seemed solvable, achievable. They would finally be alright, and what a thoughtful grandson I was. Upon departure, before I even reached the edge of their front lawn, the two of them came running out after me, shouting, “You’ve forgotten your signature, Harrison.” I summoned the courage to be frank and to speak to them as adults. I had not forgotten, I said, but was not ultimately compelled to sign due to the blunder of their response. They took it as such a shock. I thought for a moment it might kill them right there on their front lawn, but the two of them just wept and came apart like beggars. The whole thing was so much more disturbing than I’d imagined. (He takes a drink.) And so on condition that they let Margaret alone from then on, I struck them a separate check for five hundred dollars and I signed. That is how much I loved my mother, Mr. Tóth. We did things for each other.
LÁSZLÓ: What could they expect after the way they had treated you both?
HARRISON: Yes, yes, that’s exactly how I see it. Answer me something: Why architecture?
LÁSZLÓ: Is it a test?
HARRISON: No, it is not.
LÁSZLÓ: Nothing is of its own explanation. (thinks for a second) Is there a better explanation of a cube than that of its construction? There was a war on, and yet it is my understanding that many of the sites of my projects have survived. They remain there still in the city. When the terrible recollections of what happened in Europe cease to humiliate us, I expect for them to serve instead as a political stimulus, sparking the upheavals that so frequently occur in the cycles of peoplehood. I already anticipate a communal rhetoric of anger and fear. A whole river of such frivolities may flow undammed, but my buildings were designed to endure such erosion of the Danube’s shoreline.
