Just had to try one last installment on my Overheard Dialogue series…including a brand new scene from Chicago’s one and only Blue Line that happened to me just a couple days ago.
- THE ITALIAN RESTAURANT
I overheard a Man, a Woman, and presumably her Son eating dinner at an Italian restaurant. The son was standing on his seat obnoxiously yelling and crying.
WOMAN: (smacks the kid across the head) Sit down!
MAN: (shocked and disapproving) You shouldn’t have done that.
WOMAN: He deserved it.
SON: (sitting down) Mommy, do you love me?
WOMAN: No! Now shut up and eat your French fries.
The Takeaway: Call child-services or grab a pen and write this down? The true writer will make the right choice every time!
- WHO’S STEPHAN?
Waiting in line to the use the bathroom at a house party. About 30 people, and we have the two dumbest girls in front of us.
DRUNK GIRL 1: God, I have to take a piss. I hope this chick hurries up.
A phone rings.
DRUNK GIRL 2: Is that your phone? I love that ring. Who is it?
DRUNK GIRL 1: It’s Stephan. Who the fuck is Stephan?
DRUNK GIRL 2: Well, answer it and find out.
DRUNK GIRL 1: I’m not answering if I don’t know who the fuck it is.
They stare at each other and think real hard.
DRUNK GIRL 1: OHHH! Stephan’s my dad!
The Takeaway: Broad comedy staples—the dumb, the drunk. The dumb AND drunk!
- CTA HUMOR
This one happened to me just last week. On the Blue Line, three Tourist Women with suitcases in front of me, on the way back from O’Hare airport.
TOURIST WOMAN 1: (reading a newspaper, pronouncing it with a ch, not a k) Ch-asm? What’s a ch-asm?
TOURIST WOMAN 2: How do I know?
TOURIST WOMAN 3: It’s a hole.
TOURIST WOMAN 1: Ch-asm? (to 2) Look it up.
TOURIST WOMAN 2:(on her Blackberry, punching buttons like a speed freak) A deep fissure in the earth, rock, or another surface.
TOURIST WOMAN 1: Ch-asm? Never heard of it.
TOURIST WOMAN 2: Wait…it’s pronounced K-asm.
TOURIST WOMAN 1: Ohhhhhh, k-asm!
The Takeaway: Sitting behind them, aching to enlighten them but fascinated by how long it would take for them to “get” it. Deliciously, took a good two or three minutes! You can’t make this stuff up!
- MORE FROM THE FABULOUS BLUE LINE
A Man and a Woman on a train platform, not together, he’s trying to pick her up.
MAN: One time with my friend, we were trying to get on the train but it was packed. The doors closed and I couldn’t fit. He got on, I had to wait for the next train.
WOMAN: Huh.
MAN: (points) Look, a sandblaster.
WOMAN: Aha.
MAN: But it’s not a real one because they have to wear masks when they do that.
WOMAN: Because it goes everywhere.
MAN: That’s what she said.
SILENCE.
MAN: I saw a Delorean this summer. It was at a car show.
SILENCE.
MAN: It was the same day I saw a bunch of puppies for sale.
The Takeaway: The woman is stuck with this idiot waiting for her train. We get it, he doesn’t. That’s the origin of the comedy. Remember that we’re seeing it unfold, folks. Don’t kill subtext. Leave room in the script for the actors to improvise, to bring meaning to the moment with their body language alone. To say it without saying it.
- AND ONE MORE
This time on the Red Line. Woman and a DBag in a wifebeater crammed into a single seat, arguing very publically in a very crammed subway car.
WOMAN: I work too, aight? I don’t wanna come home and have to cook after cooking all day at work.
DBAG: All I’m sayin’ is its bullshit that I work more hours than you and I have to come home to a frozen dinner in the microwave.
WOMAN: You lucky I even put the frozen dinners in the microwave for yuh sorry ass.
DBAG: It ain’t right! I work all godamn day. I wanna come home and see yo ass in a thong cookin’ mah steak!
WOMAN: You keep talkin’ like that I’m gonna call my brother. You know he’s lookin’ for a reason to whoop on you.
DBAG: You call that muthafucka. He still owes me $40 from Christmas. I been lookin’ for his ass too.
The train stops, door opens and they continue to argue as they exit.
The takeaway: Hear it. Use your ears, listen for nuance, for repetition, and for the comic situation. All those folks are stuck in the subway car—you’ve been there, you know what it’s like!—no exit, and two really loud people going at it. The classic Mel Brooks definition of comedy: “The difference between comedy and tragedy is… tragedy is when I get a hang-nail, comedy is when you walk into an open manhole and die.”
