I’m not a movie critic by any means. I’m not a movie buff. My Dad did buy a copy of Halliwell’s Film Guide some time in the 1980s and I pored over it but then I was reading pretty much everything in the world back then. So please understand my point of view, which I will explain, when I say that Two Men Talking is a staple of British cinema.
I recently watched the big screen epic of “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” mere days after watching the BBC adaptation starring Sir Alec Guinness. Watching on an iPad or even on the TV means you have to pay attention and you can’t have disruptive noise in the room because most of the action is “Two Men Talking“.
I was reminded of a great TV series from the 1970s called The Sandbaggers which, again, featured Two Men Talking, interspersed with pictures of office buildings and the odd coal pit in Wales.
For Two Men Talking, you need to have immensely powerful dialogue, actors who can convey emotion with a wobble of their jaw and a great shooting setup.
The advantages of Two Men Talking is that if you have an amazing script and great talent, the sets are cheap and the results can still be amazing.
That said, I don’t really want to make a Two Men Talking movie. (Nothing smacks more of white male privilege than two white males in privileged positions talking in private)