I know this is a book blog, but…
Have you folks seen Before Sunset? Julie Delpy & Ethan Hawke reprise their roles as Celine & Jesse, meeting up again 9 years after they parted in Before Sunrise.
Nine years ago, the first one wowed me with its natural flow and realistic conversations…I found myself thinking more than once “I’ve had that conversation!”.
Before Sunset takes place in Paris, starting in the bookstore of bookstores, Shakespeare & Co….right across from Notre Dame [My purchase there: Delta of Venus by Anais Nin and Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote.]
Jesse is a writer, and is touring on his popular novel, based on that one night in Vienna almost a decade earlier.
Of course Celine shows up.
The rest of the movie is shot essentially in real time, as they walk and talk before he has to catch a plane back to the USA.
Again, amazing conversation…Who writes like that? I remember reading that the actors and the director wrote the script together, basing it on their intimate knowledge of the characters.
It is so unusual to read dialogue like that in a novel — why is that?
Can anyone recommend a writer whose dialogue hits you in the gut? It’s not the realism I’m looking for. Too often we speak, uh, you know…like I said yesterday…what’s the word? Yeah. Dumb.
No. I’m talking about the idealized conversations we remember having that were so damned significant — I want that in a novel.
