Wellexcusetheheckouttame.
Funny, I knew that was wrong as I was writing it, but I couldn’t remember the actor’s name. Anyhoo, about half of all Law & Order eps end with a two-minute phone call squished into eight seconds or less.
What is the “something else” they should shorten? Screenwriters don’t just throw extra stuff in for the heck of it. If they write something into the script, it’s because they think it needs to be there. If they leave something out, it’s because they think it isn’t necessary. Now, screenwriters vary in talent and even good ones may make bad calls, but it’s not like they just forget to write “Bye”. If the “bye” ain’t there, it’s because someone thought it wasn’t important enough to be included.
It’s easy to look at the page count and it would be a pain to measure the lines of dialogue on every page of every script, so the former system is what is used. It’s not very accurate, but it works well enough.
The “real” answer is always on the Straight Dope. If your friends who are screenwriters don’t know about dead air I think thay are only pretend screenwriters. If they have to question the excision of pointless dialogue I don’t think we are talking about Academy Award nominees, are we?
Name one screenwriter friend and I will check out how generous he/she is with pointless dialogue.
Hi, everyone. Thanks again for the info.
I understand that saying “Bye” isn’t necessary, but don’t writers try to write realistic dialogue/conversations? And don’t people usually end phone conversations with some kind of parting salutation?
If the consensus on the “real” answer here in the Straight Dope is that it’s cut out to save time, then that’s good enough for me.
The more annoying televison convention, IMO, is when the person talking on the phone repeats everything the other person says out loud.
[Ring ring]
Magnum here. Oh hi, Luger what’s the scoop?
He killed himself, did he? cut his own throat? A maid found him? What time? Two am?
Etc.
It’s so contrived it’s distracting. Who does that?
In addition to conservation of running time, there is another reason why characters do not always say goodbye. The two reasons often blur together.
Every action on screen, every line of dialogue, every look is an opportunity to develop a character. How a character says goodbye is just as important as whether he says goodbye. It isn’t uncommon that, for dramatic purposes, a character does not sign off a telephone call—or that a character does so in a particularly humorous, poignant, or interesting way.
It is for this reason that characters also do not order a particular brand of beer or wait for their change from the taxi driver. Most of the time, this particular action doesn’t say anything sufficiently compelling about the character, so we skip it.
Writing “realistic” dialogue is not the same thing as writing down what people really say. If you listen carefully to people around you, you will find that they often say things like “And then she was all…you know…ah…ha ha ha! But I was like, ‘No!’” Even well-educated adults say these sorts of things, but you’d never want to have a charater in a movie talk like that unless he was supposed to be a complete idiot.
Yes, people do usually end phone conversations with some sort of good bye, and everyone knows it. This is precisely why screenwriters can get away with leaving it out. We know people say “Bye!”, so it’s not always necessary to show it happen, just like it’s not always necessary to show characters doing other ordinary activities.