Nothing. Diner (IMDB page) was the first real portrayal of ‘nothing’ on screen, leading the way for Seinfeld, The Office, etc. to show the world what happens in between the action sequences and big dramatic moments--”life’s boring bits--the bits other shows would cut out,” Stephen Merchant (the guy who helped Ricky Gervais dream up the original Office). “You don’t have to have 90 minutes of shouting or fist-fights or blue aliens. Eavesdropping on the people who drink in your local bar can be just as interesting.”
It is just as interesting, and because of that I challenge S.L. Price’s calling this kind of interaction ‘nothing’. I would argue that those moments (realistically, hours) where I have sat around a table bullshitting with good friends are irreplaceable and invaluable to my life and my sanity and the part of college that I miss the most. Even if my life depended on it, I couldn’t tell you half of the things my friends and I talk about. It’s not the ‘what’ that’s important. It’s the mere fact that we were together and laughing and just Today, the people with whom I would spend hours and hours in our dining hall and student union are no longer a two-minute walk away. Having a Diner (either literal or figurative) and a good group of bullshitters available at all times should be a requirement for all.
“In real conversation, no one gets another take. We start off full of it, say ‘er,’ get lost in syntactical hell; our brilliant insight dies because we’re never as smooth as we think we’ll be. In Diner, [Barry] Levinson caught that.: the lines unspool tangled, kinked just enough to be irresistible.”
“I wanted the piece to be without any flourish, without anything other than basically saying, ‘This is all it was,’ ” Levinson says in the Vanity Fair piece. “These conversations that can go on endlessly through the night—bets over the stupid fucking things that you can bet on—is it. Without gimmicks: nothing. Without gimmicks. This is it. Period.”
Another film with incredibly real dialogue that I only wish I could replicate in real life is When Harry Met Sally. Anyone who knows very much about me knows how much this film means to me and how often I quote it in daily life. The stories of the old married couples that break up the story are just one example of the brilliance. The ‘Days of the Week’ underpants bit is fantastic! I have one friend with whom I cannot say ‘pecan pie’ normally and/or without giggling. And every time I go to a museum I think about Harry’s theory about hieroglyphics. This is just a testament to the brilliance of Nora Ephron (writer) and Rob Reiner (director). (I just realized that I used brilliance quite a lot in this last paragraph, but that’s just how I feel about it...)
Sitcoms like How I Met Your Mother also provide similar Diner-like dialogue, and when I see characters like this and dialogue, I feel a sense of...jealousy, perhaps. I’ve always wanted to have that kind of connection with a group of people. I may have that on a small scale with individual friends, but I miss the way things were with my friends in college. Now, we’re all grown-up (whatever that means) and we’re spread across distances and sometimes hours. One day we saw each other every day, ate virtually every meal together and then next we easily go weeks and months without sharing a meal. We used to live within shouting distance, and now it takes big events and/or long-term planning to get us all together around some diner table. I hope that someday I can have more of those hours-long talks about nothing on a regular basis, and for now I will value them even more as they are rarer and rarer.
Again, the Vanity Fair piece: http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2012/03/diner-201203