Bad dialogue.

[Bramblethorn]

"Kenner, just in case we get killed, I wanted to tell you... you have the biggest dick I've ever seen on a man." - Johnny Murata, Showdown in Little Tokyo
(This is spoken by a buddy cop to his partner in a B-grade Dolph Lundgren actioner. No, they're not gay, and there is no indication that they've ever been naked in one another's vicinity, so this really comes out of the blue.)

"I'm gonna take you to the bank, Senator Trent. To the blood bank!" - Mason Storm in Hard to Kill
(A true anti-classic of Steven Seagal mumbling. I'm so glad we're past the time of even pretending to take that fucking guy seriously.)

You may enjoy Space Ice's "reviews" of Seagal movies, if you haven't seen them: https://www.youtube.com/@SpaceIce My favourite might be "Stephen Seagal's Black Dawn Is So Bad It Watches Other Stephen Seagal Movies".

Dolph is a very bright fellow; IIRC he was on a Fulbright scholarship doing his Master's in something like chemical engineering when the martial arts and film stuff took off, and I guess the money was good. That "overeducated guy playing lunk" is an archetype I want to use in a story some time.

 

[Lifestyle66]

https://media.tenor.com/r4TTLd5-RxEAAAAd/lotr-so-you-have-chosen-death.gif

I have replied to her instructions with "What the fuck, bitch? The GPS just said the same thing!"

Her response is a sarcastic "But I'm YOUR bitch!" (Paraphrased in our relationship as "Get over it!")

 

[gunhilltrain]

You said with "your" dialogue would've made the movie 5 hours long.
I cracked the joke, that as long as it was broken down in 2 parts, I'm good.

Now I get it. I actually thought back then, "So it's a mini-series!" That idea was briefly considered for Heaven's Gate, I think, which clocked in at four hours.

The documentary about the making (or unmaking) of Heaven's Gate, called Final Cut, is on YouTube and it's well worth watching. Probably better than the actual movie, which I have seen in its full-length on DVD.

 

[Seadog777]

Now I get it. I actually thought back then, "So it's a mini-series!" That idea was briefly considered for Heaven's Gate, I think, which clocked in at four hours.

The documentary about the making (or unmaking) of Heaven's Gate, called Final Cut, is on YouTube and it's well worth watching. Probably better than the actual movie, which I have seen in its full-length on DVD.

"Heaven's Gate" doesn't sound famiiar to me.

 

[gunhilltrain]

With out a doubt, the worst dialog ever was in The Conqueror. The only thing worse was the premise, John Wayne as Genghis Khan.

The only dialog I recall was Genghis Khan, arriving in camp, sees his mother (played by Agnes Moorehead) and says "My Mother!" To which the reply is, "My Son!" witty...

The Conqueror was a masterpiece of weird casting. Besides Wayne and Moorehead, it also had Susan Hayward, Lee Van Cleef, Pedro Armendáriz, and many others completely wrong for their roles. It even had Richard Loo, who was at least of Chinese ancestry (via Hawaii).

 

[gunhilltrain]

"Heaven's Gate" doesn't sound famiiar to me.

I'm showing my age again, like I did with the Godfather movies on another thread. My cultural references are aging rapidly. Okay, here's the link to Final Cut, and you can do with it as you please. Gee, 1980 does't seen like that long ago.

 

[Seadog777]

I'm showing my age again, like I did with the Godfather movies on another thread. My cultural references are aging rapidly. Okay, here's the link to Final Cut, and you can do with it as you please. Gee, 1980 does't seen like that long ago.

Nothing wrong with age.
I wish more people understood that.

 

[Zootonius]

The Conqueror was a masterpiece of weird casting. Besides Wayne and Moorehead, it also had Susan Hayward, Lee Van Cleef, Pedro Armendáriz, and many others completely wrong for their roles. It even had Richard Loo, who was at least of Chinese ancestry (via Hawaii).

The Conqueror is a perfect storm of a bad movie. Bad script and dialog, bad casting, bad acting. Moorehead was a member of Orson Welles' Mercury Players, so no slouch. It's the worst 'A' movie ever done. I dare anyone to watch it.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Nothing wrong with age.
I wish more people understood that.

Of course, but I can't just assume that people will know what I'm talking about anymore.

Now I'm having trouble in the opposite direction, because a lot of pop culture after about 2005 is beyond me.

 

[Emilymcplugger]

The Conqueror was a masterpiece of weird casting. Besides Wayne and Moorehead, it also had Susan Hayward, Lee Van Cleef, Pedro Armendáriz, and many others completely wrong for their roles. It even had Richard Loo, who was at least of Chinese ancestry (via Hawaii).

Terrible casting can also kill films. Sometimes other actors are wanted and aren’t gotten and it just leaves a sour taste in the mouth.

I was never a fan of Sam Neill in Jurassic Park. Sure he’s a fine character actor but he’s a bit…dull. Jeremy Strong in The Gentlemen comes across as a weak villain, as does Christopher Eccleston in Thor: The Dark World. Yes, you can point to a poor script but Christopher Eccleston seems to have had charisma-removal surgery as he endlessly whinges about how rubbish acting is in interviews.

A good actor can make bad dialogue at least fun, a bad actor, or at least a bad one for a certain role can make bad dialogue terrible.

Bond: Mr Kill. Now there’s a name to die for.

BLEEUURRRGHH!!!

 

[gunhilltrain]

Terrible casting can also kill films. Sometimes other actors are wanted and aren’t gotten and it just leaves a sour taste in the mouth.

I was never a fan of Sam Neill in Jurassic Park. Sure he’s a fine character actor but he’s a bit…dull. Jeremy Strong in The Gentlemen comes across as a weak villain, as does Christopher Eccleston in Thor: The Dark World. Yes, you can point to a poor script but Christopher Eccleston seems to have had charisma-removal surgery as he endlessly whinges about how rubbish acting is in interviews.

A good actor can make bad dialogue at least fun, a bad actor, or at least a bad one for a certain role can make bad dialogue terrible.

Bond: Mr Kill. Now there’s a name to die for.

BLEEUURRRGHH!!!

It used to be a problem because they would have trouble casting "ethnic" roles. Not that it has to be a perfect fit, but it really got weird at times. Usually the studios would claim that they couldn't find anybody of the right background to do it, which became a self-repeating cycle.

Jurassic Park was so much based on the dinosaurs - which really were impressive - that the people were mostly there to fill in. They did four sequels to that thing?

 

[gunhilltrain]

The Conqueror is a perfect storm of a bad movie. Bad script and dialog, bad casting, bad acting. Moorehead was a member of Orson Welles' Mercury Players, so no slouch. It's the worst 'A' movie ever done. I dare anyone to watch it.

Most of the cast was actually quite good - in other roles, not in a movie about Genghis Khan.

 

[alohadave]

It used to be a problem because they would have trouble casting "ethnic" roles.

Or they would just pick a white actor and give them makeup. Like Joel Grey playing a Korean man in Remo Williams.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Or they would just pick a white actor and give them makeup. Like Joel Grey playing a Korean man in Remo Williams.

What year was that? At a certain point the studios could have done better than that! In 1963 British actress Flora Robson got away with playing a Chinese empress (although she looked and sounded completely wrong). By 1985, the same empress was played by Lisa Lu, who had been born as Yen Chun Lu in China but she came to the United States in the early 1950's. She had already started acting in China, but she continued that in this country.

 

[Lifestyle66]

What year was that? At a certain point the studios could have done better than that! In 1963 Flora Robson got away with playing a Chinese empress (although she looked and sounded completely wrong). By 1985, the same empress was played by Lisa Lu, who had been born as Yen Chun Lu in China but she came to the United States in the early 1950's. She had already started acting in China, but she continued that in this country.

The character played by Joel Grey in 'Remo Williams' was intended to be a caricature of a bigoted Korean martial arts master. It was a comedy.

 

[gunhilltrain]

The character played by Joel Grey in 'Remo Williams' was intended to be a caricature of a bigoted Korean martial arts master. It was a comedy.

I've never seen it. I'm not sure what the comedic angle has to do with it. The guy was still supposed to be a Korean, I suppose? It's all moot now, anyway.

 

[Bramblethorn]

The Conqueror is a perfect storm of a bad movie. Bad script and dialog, bad casting, bad acting. Moorehead was a member of Orson Welles' Mercury Players, so no slouch. It's the worst 'A' movie ever done. I dare anyone to watch it.

...and shot downwind from a nuclear testing site.

 

[alohadave]

What year was that? At a certain point the studios could have done better than that! In 1963 British actress Flora Robson got away with playing a Chinese empress (although she looked and sounded completely wrong). By 1985, the same empress was played by Lisa Lu, who had been born as Yen Chun Lu in China but she came to the United States in the early 1950's. She had already started acting in China, but she continued that in this country.

1985

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089901/

 

[alohadave]

The character played by Joel Grey in 'Remo Williams' was intended to be a caricature of a bigoted Korean martial arts master. It was a comedy.

That doesn't excuse the practice. The movie itself wasn't a comedy either.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I've never seen it. I'm not sure what the comedic angle has to do with it. The guy was still supposed to be a Korean, I suppose? It's all moot now, anyway.

I'm not dogmatic about these things. In Hamilton, Blacks and Latinos play historical figures who were white. So there are artistic reasons for trying something different. Personally, I'm not sure Hamilton himself was the Founding Father I admire most, but that gets into other political issues I don't want to get into here. If you really want to get into it, Latinos (or Latinx) can be such are wide variety of combinations of European, African, and Indigenous ancestries that the term itself is at best an approximation.

I once had a woman from some survey call me, and I'm often game for such things. She wanted to know if I identified as a "Latino." I wanted to have some fun with it, so I said, "Actually, I'm Brazilian. Portuguese is a Latin-based language, so does that count?" She was taking me seriously, so I had to say, "Wait a minute, I was just kidding you!"

 

[Lifestyle66]

That doesn't excuse the practice. The movie itself wasn't a comedy either.

It was intended as a dark comedy, similar to the movie "MASH".

They showed real world issues, with a dark spin on how to handle them. In "Remo Williams, who can really run across a lake on top of the water? "You must be VERY fast!"

"Chun, You're incredible."
"No. I am better than that."

 

[MetaBob]

So I was watching the new Netflix series The Night Agent and the main female character came out with this absolute doozy of bad dialogue.

MFC: there’s a right turn about two miles down the road.

Which made me think.

WELL TELL ME NEARER THE F#*KING TIME, THEN.

Is there any pieces of bad dialogue in TV or film, that’s made you burst out with a response that made (at least yourself) laugh out loud?

That's how I get us where we need to go, when I'm not driving and the driver is relying on me to navigate: I give advance notice like your MFC did, then when we approach the turn, I tell them, and point it out. It's not either/or.

I don't consider that bad dialogue.

Granted, sometimes even when I point, the "no, your OTHER right" issue can crop up ... THAT would have advanced the plot, I'm sure.

 

[ronde]

Any dialogue is good as long as the reader would recognize it as the words a character would probably say given the situation. Rhett Butler's line in "Gone With the Wind" - "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." was the perfect response from a character like Rhett. He could have said something like, "I don't care", or "You'll have to figure that out on your own", but that response would the the response from either a weak man or a woman and wouldn't have worked at all given his actions in the rest of the movie.

Anything goes in dialogue as well because real people don't speak proper English when they talk.

The two things bother me in dialogue.

The first is if the character is using words that weren't used at the time of the story. Most women up until the 1990's would have never used the word "pussy" to describe their genitalia, and even into the 1950's most women would find it difficult to use anything except anatomically correct terms. Men would have probably used "cunt" when talking with other men, but not when talking to a woman. To write them speaking those words immediately tells me the writer is just writing what comes to mind without thinking about how the characters would really speak.

The other is if an author tries to too hard to write an accent. I live in the South and most accents are easy to understand but very difficult to write so a reader can make sense of what the character is saying. You end up with just a bunch of letters and apostrophes, like, "Hurt like faar w'en I goed hoggin' and an' a l'il snapper got my finner 'stead 'o th' big ol' catfish I's a hopin' ta fin'.

 

[Emilymcplugger]

Any dialogue is good as long as the reader would recognize it as the words a character would probably say given the situation. Rhett Butler's line in "Gone With the Wind" - "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." was the perfect response from a character like Rhett. He could have said something like, "I don't care", or "You'll have to figure that out on your own", but that response would the the response from either a weak man or a woman and wouldn't have worked at all given his actions in the rest of the movie.

Anything goes in dialogue as well because real people don't speak proper English when they talk.

The two things bother me in dialogue.

The first is if the character is using words that weren't used at the time of the story. Most women up until the 1990's would have never used the word "pussy" to describe their genitalia, and even into the 1950's most women would find it difficult to use anything except anatomically correct terms. Men would have probably used "cunt" when talking with other men, but not when talking to a woman. To write them speaking those words immediately tells me the writer is just writing what comes to mind without thinking about how the characters would really speak.

The other is if an author tries to too hard to write an accent. I live in the South and most accents are easy to understand but very difficult to write so a reader can make sense of what the character is saying. You end up with just a bunch of letters and apostrophes, like, "Hurt like faar w'en I goed hoggin' and an' a l'il snapper got my finner 'stead 'o th' big ol' catfish I's a hopin' ta fin'.

I’m afraid I have to disagree with the pussy comment (although this maybe a U.K. thing)

The first thing that comes to mind is the obvious.

PG: my name is Pussy Galore.

Bond: I must be dreaming.

And in the 70’s in the sitcom ARE YOU BEING SERVED the character Mrs Slocombe was constantly talking about being sat by the fire stroking her pussy.

So, maybe in the 30’s and 40’s it was uncommon but Goldfinger was written in the 50’s/60’s so it may go back as slang even longer.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I’m afraid I have to disagree with the pussy comment (although this maybe a U.K. thing)

The first thing that comes to mind is the obvious.

PG: my name is Pussy Galore.

Bond: I must be dreaming.

And in the 70’s in the sitcom ARE YOU BEING SERVED the character Mrs Slocombe was constantly talking about being sat by the fire stroking her pussy.

So, maybe in the 30’s and 40’s but Goldfinger was written in the 50’s/60’s so it may go back as slang even longer.

Agreed. And I'm not sure how common 'cunt' was even for men until the 80s or so. Pussy would be much more likely. Women would use lots of euphemisms like 'down there' or 'tuppence' etc, until they got going.

But dialect is definitely something where less is more, and word choice and grammar are much better signals than loads of apostrophes and odd spelling. I recall someone said only one person can get away with transcribing dialects, and that was Mark Twain - everyone else should ditch 90% of the dialect indicators to produce something readable.

Huck Finn and Trainspotting are the only two books I've had to read aloud to comprehend. I'm not planning on doing it again.

Some nice people have complimented me on my dialogue and dialect recently - I think one thing that's helped with that is keeping lists of what endearments different characters use. If one guy says hen, pal, pet, and another uses darlin', love, sweetheart, you know they're not from the same end of the country. And the other character going 'sweetie' and 'babes' is going to be female, not one of them.

Eventually I've ended up with lists of words certain characters don't use, as the best way to to stop them falling out of character.