Daily Dialogue — November 3, 2019

“Oh, God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space were it not that I have bad dreams.”

— A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), written by Wes Craven

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Nightmare.

Trivia: Wes Craven first came up with the basic idea for the movie from a series of articles in the Los Angeles Times over a three-year period, about a group of Southeast Asian refugees from the Hmong tribe, several of whom died in the throes of horrific nightmares. The group had come to the U.S. to escape the murderous reign of Pol Pot, and within a year of arriving, three men had died all in similar situations, the young, otherwise healthy man would have a nightmare, then refuse to sleep for as long as he could. When he finally fell asleep from exhaustion, he awoke screaming, then died. Autopsy results revealed that they had not died from heart failure, but had simply died. It was this inability to find a cause of death, that intrigued Craven so much. Medical authorities have since called the phenomenon Asian Death Syndrome, a variant of Sudden Unexpected Death Syndrome (SUDS), and Brugada Syndrome.

Dialogue On Dialogue: Best not to fall asleep in a school classroom or else you may have this kind of nightmare.