Talking Objects

“While a story takes place in a world, it need not show us very much of that world.”

As Mark J. P. Wolf explains in Building Imaginary Worlds, narrative films only show viewers what is necessary to advance the story. World-building, on the other hand, as Wolf explains, “often results in data, exposition, and digression that provide information about a world, slowing down narrative or even bringing it to a halt.” What would happen if I expanded a narrative using principles of world-building? I made an extensive list of unseen graphics in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest and chose moments where dialogue referenced a graphic object. After constructing these objects, I collected them in a website where visitors could interact with the images to reveal the original dialogue that informed the physical form of the objects. It was an exercise in translation.

Send her a box of candy from Blount. 10 dollars, you know the kind. Each piece wrapped in gold paper. She’ll like that, she’ll think she’s eating money. Just say to her, “Darling I count the days, the hours, the minutes...”You sent that one last time. I did? Oh well, put “Something for your sweet tooth baby, and all your other sweet parts!” I know, I know.

Ah, Maggie, in the world of advertising, there’s no such thing as a lie—there’s only expedient exaggeration. You ought to know that.

Say, do I look heavyish to you? I feel heavyish. Put a note on my desk in the morning: Think Thin!

On June the 16th you checked into the Sherwin Hotel in Pittsburgh as Mr. George Kaplan of Berkeley, California. A week later you registered at the Benjamin Franklin Hotel in Philadelphia as Mr. George Kaplan of Pittsburgh. On August the 11th you stayed at the Statler, in Boston. August the 29th, George Kaplan, of Boston, registered at the Whittier, in Detroit. At present you are registered in Room 796 at the Plaza Hotel in New York as Mr. George Kaplan of Detroit. In two days you’re due at the Ambassador East in Chicago, and then at the Sheraton Johnson Hotel in Rapid City, South Dakota.

Mr. Lester Townsend, of UNIPO? Yes.And did you have an appointment, sir? Well yes, yes, he expects me. Your name please? My name? Kaplan, George Kaplan. Give this to one of the attendants in the public lounge, she’ll page him for you.

Well where and when? Oh, I’ve got it all written down for you. You’re to take the Greyhound bus that leaves Chicago for Indianapolis at 2, and ask the driver to let you off at Prairie Stop Highway 41. Mmhm, Prairie Stop Highway 41, good.