Genesis Of A Cliché: 'The Interpreter'
The blog For No Good Reason imagines the rewrites that ultimately resulted in Sean Penn's opening scene* in The Interpreter, in which Penn's character pounds a drink in a bar and meaningfully drops his wedding ring in the empty glass, letting us all know that this is a Troubled Man with Emotional Baggage that will Come Into Play as the movie progresses. Also, he may Have A Buzz On:
(Keller enters the bar alone, already hammered, and encumbered with a sandwich board advertising a $4.99 Blimpie "Meal Deal".) Bartender (alarmed): What happened, Keller? Keller (slurring): How does anything happen? (Keller rips off his ring and swallows it. There is a beat, after which he pitches forward and begins puking.)
(Keller enters the bar alone, already hammered. He rips off his wedding ring and unholsters his gun. He tosses the ring into the air, and shoots at it, missing badly and exploding the head of a patron sitting at near point blank range.) Keller (glumly): I am failure.
The movie's heavy-handed ring-in-a-glass scene seems inevitable now, doesn't it? They really should've gone with a compromise between with the puking and the Yosemite-Sam-in-mourning versions.
[*Please, no complaints about spoilers. This happens at the beginning of the movie. Also, we know this blog post is a few days old, but we really loved the idea of Penn swallowing his wedding ring, and with it, his Seemingly Tacked-On-Backstory.]
