Real people don’t have scripts to read from.
But seriously, listen to the way people talk. It’s chaotic, messy, often unclear and very inefficient. Conversations meander wildly, with dangling threads that are never concluded and often times with people talking past each other as much as to each other. If you wrote dialogue that way it would just be harder for audiences to follow and waste precious screentime.
Realistic sounding dialogue is about writing what a real person would say if they stopped to think for a minute between each statement.
I’ve seen films where they’ve left in takes where people stumbled over their words, and the overall effect was positive, I thought.
As soon as you notice this, it becomes painful every time someone delivers a long monologue without going “um” once.
My colleagues try their best but I have gained a new found hatred of the word “basically”.
Ross from Friends stutters a lot. I’ve often wondered if the stuttering is scripted, an intentional quirk the writers chose for Ross, or if the actor naturally talks that way
It’s a common technique that some actors use, I don’t know what they call it, but I call it the “dub dub dub” because sometimes they say something similar to that when they’re struggling for a word or pretending to struggle for a word.
Fun fact the friends show was written specifically for David Schwimmer and he was the only character who didn’t have to audition because the show was written for him. He’s got some serious entertainment industry connections apparently. And in the state of California for jobs that require sexual harassment prevention training every two years, Schwimmer plays a role as the manager of a company who sexually harasses a new employee. It’s super cringe. And we have to watch it & pass a quiz on it every 2 years 🙄
Well, he didn’t stumble over words but instead over a broken toe, but they still left it in.
Which is why Steven Spielberg’s early movies were so refreshing. The overlapping dialogue of his various breakfast/dinner table scenes were a standout of his style.
If you wrote dialogue that way it would just be harder for audiences to follow and waste precious screentime.
Unless you happen to be Robert Altman, je suppose.
Perfect reaction!
Scripted dialog is usually idealized, not realistic. Whenever a script includes someone getting tongue tied, it’s always to say something about them. There are characters that do often mess up words in a script, like the nervous young person with a massive crush or the constantly distracted old genius
ha, both excellent Futurama references
They usually edit it out.
I like a lot of stuff Aaron Sorkin does (The West Wing, for example, but also The Newsroom) but damn, his dialogue is too perfect. Nobody talks that way IRL.
That’s why one take Jake gets paid the big bucks.
