Just to break things up a bit, I’m going to post something non-eccescopic today.
I attended a talk yesterday by Tim Johnson — the writer of many Dreamworks films. He pointed out that back when he directed Antz, there was a scene where Sharon Stone’s character asks Woody Allen’s character to dance (which in movie terms means she likes him, and that eventually she will sleep with him).
The script calls for Allen just to say “Yes”. But, Mr. Johnson revealed, Woody Allen ad libbed, and replaced the simple “Yes” with the much more effective line “Absolutely!”.
Fast forward ten years, from 1998 to 2008. In the David Fincher film Benjamin Buttton the character of Daisy, played by Cate Blanchett, at one point says to the eponymous character, played by Brad Pitt, “Sleep with me.”
In what turned out to be my favorite line of the movie, he replies “Absolutely!”.
It occurred to me, in that moment, that the writer Eric Roth probably lifted the line from Woody Allen’s ad lib of ten years earlier.
Which might have made it the first time in history that Woody Allen gave dating advice to Brad Pitt.