marvel." "No substitutions" was a common policy on blue-plate specials. One 1947 Candid Microphone episode features Allen Funt ordering a blue-plate special and trying to talk the waiter into making various changes, such as replacing the vegetable soup with consommé, while the polite but increasingly annoyed waiter tries in vain to explain to Funt that "no substitutions" means what it says. Our Man in Havana (1958) by Graham Greene has the following exchange regarding an "American blue-plate lunch": Contemporary usage In contemporary usage, a "blue-plate special" can be any inexpensive full meal, a daily special, or merely a whimsical phrase for a home meal composed of odds and ends or leftovers. In film and television In the 1973 film The Sting, Robert Redford's character Johnny "Kelly" Hooker orders the blue-plate special at the diner. In the 1974 film The Front Page, condemned killer Earl Williams is said to be getting a "95-cent blue plate special from the greasy spoon across the street" for his last meal. In the 1997 movie Good Will Hunting Matt Damon's character references a "blue plate special" in one of the movie's more memorable monologues when explaining why he does not wish to work for the government. In the television series Double Dare, one obstacle on the final course is called the Blue Plate Special. In The Devil All The Time (Netflix), Willard is offered the meatloaf "blue plate special" by the waitress in the Wooden Spoon Diner in Meade, Ohio; he opts instead for coffee and a doughnut. In The X-Files, Skinner orders a “blue plate special” in a diner, just before getting shot. In print In Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana (first published in 1958), the protagonist, Mr Wormold, is almost poisoned by a rival while eating a blue-plate lunch at a meeting of the European Traders' Association. In the Blondie comic strip for July 8, 1964, Dagwood is curious about the blue plate special being served on a white plate, and the explanation is that it's named after the cook, Oscar Blueplate. Richard Bernstein titled his New York Times review of Andrew Hurley's book Diners, Bowling Alleys, and Trailer Parks (2001), "The Red, White and Blue Plate Special". Mystery writer Abigail Padgett's second novel about amateur sleuth Blue McCarron is titled The Last Blue Plate Special (2001); no meals here, the blue plates are part of the decor at a clinic where