Daily Dialogue — June 9, 2020

“Guys like you don’t die on toilets.”

— Lethal Weapon 2 (1989), screenplay by Jeffrey Boam, story by Shane Black & Warren Murphy, Shane Black (characters)

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Bomb. Today’s suggestion by Justin Major.

Trivia: Jeffrey Boam, who took over writing of the script for the film after Shane Black and Warren Murphy’s script was rejected for being too dark and bloody, and because Riggs died at the end, also wrote the script for third Lethal Weapon film, and an unused draft for a fourth film, which had Riggs and Murtaugh dealing with neo-Nazi survivalists, who were launching a terrorist attack in Los Angeles. This script was written sometime in January of 1995, and according to Boam, it dealt with entire real-life neo-Nazi activity in the U.S., that was only superficially dealt with only one movie before, Dead Bang (1989). Despite the fact that everybody liked it, for some reason Boam’s script was rejected, and Boam later said in interviews, how it was much better from the final movie, which suffered some problems with constant re-writes of the script that was chosen for the filming, and actually didn’t have a completed script during filming.

Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary by Justin: “The Lethal Weapon series has some great scenes… this being my favorite. It does a great job at showing just how far their (Riggs and Murtaugh) relationship has come.”