Armando Fumagalli

Dialogue as action: two examples from Romantic Comedies

Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy

The traditional teaching about dialogue in a script has always insisted in the fact that good dialogue should not be a theoretical reflection on reality, but it should be an action, an element of what a character wants to achieve, and that it should be part of the strategy of a character to achieve a goal. So a good dialogue has an intention, and an obstacle, and –obviously- conflict (Robert McKee, Story 1997; Robert McKee, Dialogue, 2016; Paolo Braga, Words in Action,2015).
This is something quite acknowledged by many authors ant teachers of screenwriting, but you do not find in literature many examples on how this is done, and how much this is true in contemporary films.

Dialogue is always important but there are some genres which rely on dialogue more than others: one of them is the genre of love stories, with its subgenre of romantic comedies.
I would like to show the components of action/reaction, in both cases divided into three clear and different segments in two long scenes of dialogues (each one around 4 minutes) on two very successful and beloved romantic comedies: My Best Friend’s Wedding, written by Ron Bass and directed by P.J. Hogan in 1997 (starring Julia Roberts, Cameron Diaz and Dermot Mulroney), and You’ve Got Mail, written by Nora and Delia Ephron and directed by Nora Ephron (starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan).

Both dialogues are a three act attack and counterattack sequence, with the character who attacks first that at the end is defeated.

In showing and commenting these two scenes I would like to highlight some common features of effective dialogues in romantic comedies and in every genre.

Armando Fumagalli is Director of the Master Program in International Screenwriting and Production at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, a program that has trained a new generation of successful writers and producers in Italy. He also teaches “History and Industry of International Cinema” and “Writing and Producing for Animation” at the M.A. in “The Art and Industry of Narration: from Literature to cinema and Tv”. Since 1999, he is a script consultant for the International projects of Lux vide, like the three seasons of Medici. Masters of Florence and the Tv series Leonardo (2021, Rai – Sony Pictures Television). His last books are L’adattamento da letteratura a cinema, 2 vols. (2020) and –edited with Cassandra Albani and Paolo Braga- Storia delle serie Tv, 2 vols. (2021).