Posted by missmirandabliss at 209-165-65-100.lightspeed.net on December 14, 1999 at 05:53:15:
I really hate to say this because I know Kevin is known for "realistic" dialogue. However, one of the things that struck me about Dogma was that the dialogue seemed to improve rather dramatically. First I have to say that I've always thought his work is brilliant. That being said, I've also always thought the dialogue was ackward and somewhat unrealistic. Not to imply that the messages are being communicated are unrealistic. To the contrary, when I first saw Clerks I blamed the choppiness on inexperienced actors. When I saw Mallrats I realized this wasn't the case. Kevin seemed to have a tendancy to construct long complicated sentences that, though correct, were difficult to deliver realistically. In short, the words were too articulate for the actors. It seemed that the actors couldn't get the words to fall out naturally. Like I said, I originally blamed the acting, and later realized the the writing style was to fault. This was confirmed by Chasing Amy, because the lines seemed more realistic even then, though I believe in reality people are less prone to long monologues than the characters in Amy. However, in Dogma all of that ackwardness seemed to be gone. My question that Kevin won't answer is this: when you write dialogue, are the words more influenced by the concept you want to communicate, or what you feel the character would actually say? Or is this possibily what changed through more experience writing? Or perhaps my perspective has simply changed and the dialogue flowed equally as well throughout all 4 movies and I'm just an idiot. Always a possiblity.