Whose line is it anyway?

[sunilpal]

Good writing is the life breath of cinema, of television but it is rare to run into a piece of dialogue that you want to polish like a gold coin and stash away in your memory bank.

Its all about bucks, Bud. The rest is conversation,'” says the ice blooded Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas to Charlie Sheen’s rookie in the Wall Street. The line just about sums up the state of writing on TV. Occasionally when a snatch of scintillating dialogue clicks into place in an empty slot of your day, you know you have struck gold. Good writing is the life breath of cinema, of television but it is rare to run into a piece of dialogue that you want to polish like a gold coin and stash away in your memory bank. We still watch incessant reruns of Friends for the salt and pepper repartee between the characters. As far as movie reruns go, Al Pacino’s “There isn’t nothin’ like the sight of an amputated spirit. There is no prosthetic for that,” speech in Scent of a Woman still sends a rush of blood to the soul. As does the sight of Robin Williams telling his young students in Dead Poet’s Society, “Carpe Diem, seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary.”

Doordarshan’s old epics are still remembered despite their tacky production values because writers like Rahi Masoom Raza (Mahabharat) and Manohar Shyam Joshi (Hum Log and Buniyaad) made every phrase count.

Recently, while watching a rerun of BR Chopra’s Mahabharat on Star Utsav, I was once again sucked into the passionate lyricism of even the most ordinary scenes. Like the one where a king tells his crown prince, “Go on, extend a warm welcome to the visiting dignitary from my side.”

“When I offer him a warm welcome from your side, what do I offer him from mine?” says the prince. Now, which assembly line writer today would take time to come up with a line like that?

One of the best lines last fortnight however came from Shahrukh Khan who stopped selling himself for a few hours atleast to address issues bigger than his movie career. Issues like the terror attacks on Mumbai. And the radicalisation of religion. “There is one Islam from Allah and another from the Mullah,” was the simplest, most effective statement made by the star in an environment where blanket statements about religion, nationhood and politics are the order of the day. But Khan’s eloquence on larger issues, before he moved on to other shows promoting his latest release, did not redeem the mind-numbing white noise that TV has become.

Few creative people on TV understand the meaning of these words spoken by a key character in Wall Street, “Stop going for the easy buck and start producing something with your life. Create, instead of living off the buying and selling of others.” While watching TV recently, I tried to note lines which were created and not dashed off in a hurry. Words which came from a place beyond the fear of a deadline and the smell of lucre.

Movies remain some of the best resource zones for rich life lessons and Kevin Costner’s words in The Guardian still ring in my ears. He plays the world weary, Senior-Chief of the US Coast Guard squad who inspires a rookie with a 24-carat stunner, “Honour your gift. Save the ones you can, Jake. The rest, you’ve got to let go.”

And when the Senior is gone to join the people he could not rescue, the rookie’s voice over tells us, “The Coast Guard conducted the largest search and rescue missions for a single man in its history, but the body of Senior Chief Ben Randall was never found. What makes a legend? Is it what someone did while they were alive? Or how they are remembered after they die?'”

Then there’s Dicky Fox, the voice of conscience in the movie Jerry Maguire who says “If this (points to heart) is empty, this (points to head ) doesn’t matter.” The movie is full of simply written but effective lines. As when the harried, overworked Maguire says to his unloved wife, “What do you want from me? My soul?” and she says, “Why not? I deserve that much.” Or that ****er line in the end where he says to her, “I won’t let you get rid of me. I love you. You...you complete me. And I just...”

And when she says, “Shut up, just shut up. You had me at hello,” its like relishing the aftertaste of a warm, gooey fudge for the soul. If only, watching TV could always make one exclaim like Wall Street’s Bud Fox, “Life comes down to a few moments. This is one of them.”