{"id":5605,"date":"2009-09-05T10:35:37","date_gmt":"2009-09-05T14:35:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=5605"},"modified":"2009-09-05T10:35:37","modified_gmt":"2009-09-05T14:35:37","slug":"real-life-movie-dialogue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2009\/09\/real-life-movie-dialogue\/","title":{"rendered":"Real-Life [Movie] Dialogue"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"[Above still depicts the Martian “war machines” devastating the California countryside. In the foreground lies a small propeller-driven spotter plane of terrestrial origin, which has crash-landed — as they are wont to do at the peak of military operations against aliens.]<\/em><\/p>\n

So last night we’re watching the 1953 Hollywood version of The War of the Worlds<\/em>, starring Gene Barry and directed by George Pal. First time I’d seen it in a long time — and, more importantly for me, the first time I’d seen it with closed captioning.<\/p>\n

The first scene I’ll highlight occurs early in the film. Somewhere in the hills outside Los Angeles, a “meteor” has crashed to the Earth. Fearful for some reason (this is around the time we sat down to watch it, so their motivation isn’t clear), the people of the nearest town have picked three men from among them to stand guard around the thing.<\/p>\n

(Obviously they’re not that<\/em> fearful, since all the rest of them then adjourn to a barn dance.)<\/p>\n

The three men engage in some conversation which pegs them as, like, not scientists<\/em>. The “meteor” starts to make a pinging sound, like a sonar device, and one of them draws the obvious conclusion:<\/p>\n

That’s not a meteor — it’s a bomb!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At this point they notice something strange about the “bomb”: it has something on the top which looks like a hatch or manhole cover. As they watch, this hatch cover begins to turn… slowly…<\/p>\n[Following dialogue is all by one speaker.]\n

That’s no bomb. Bombs don’t unscrew!<\/p>\n

[Hatch cover continues to turn… and turn…]<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s the darnedest thing. It keeps unscrewing!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Eventually, of course, the hatch opens and a colored, three-lensed “eye” comes out on a long stalk. So now they know they’re dealing with something pretty seriously odd<\/em> — probably, well, Men From Mars. They determine to approach the meteor<\/span> bomb<\/span> extraterrestrial vessel on foot, with white flags, because “everybody knows” a white flag means the bearer intends no harm. But they still have a problem. Luckily, one of them has an immediate solution:<\/p>\n

Guy #1<\/a><\/em>: What do we say to them?<\/p>\n

Guy #2<\/em>: “Welcome to California.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So things go rapidly to hell from that point forward, as you can imagine even if you haven’t read the book or seen the film. But the US military, with help from their counterparts elsewhere, notices that the big levitating “Martian war machines” behave similarly wherever they land. They always come down in threes, for instance, and then there are those artificial eyes with three lenses — modeled on the Martians’ own three-eyed selves. Perhaps the people of Earth can use these observations to combat the aliens… if only they could figure out some of the remaining mysteries…<\/p>\n

Military officer<\/em>: Pattern-wise, one lands, then two, making groups of threes joined magnetically. Is that possible?<\/p>\n

Scientist (Gene Barry)<\/em>: If they do it, it is.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Eventually, the government and military decide to use the “atom bomb” (which presumably isn’t unscrewing) against the aliens. Everyone in the (surviving) central cast and a bunch of other people (who are a little dumber and hence don’t take cover behind walls and such, and come to be tossed around like rag dolls in the shock wave) don radiation-proof suits and goggles so they can observe the explosion. As they watch, a PA system’s loudspeaker counts down the minutes and seconds:<\/p>\n

Four minutes to bomb time…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Above still depicts the Martian “war machines” devastating the California countryside. In the foreground lies a small propeller-driven spotter plane of terrestrial origin, which has crash-landed — as they are wont to do at the peak of military operations against aliens.] So last night we’re watching the 1953 Hollywood version of The War of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[410,53,196,372],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5605","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-hearing","7":"category-movies-media","8":"category-television","9":"category-style-and-craft","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-1sp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5605"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5622,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5605\/revisions\/5622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}