the father who poses as a conversationalist to open his son · S6
A father (Watt), suffering from the delusion that his etymologically precocious son (Smothergill) is pretending to be mute, poses as a ‘professional conversationalist’ in order to draw the boy out.
Context
It Was a Great Marvel That He Was in the Father Without Knowing Him — the filmography's Rosetta stone for the whole Incandenza problem: a father convinced his gifted son's silence is a performance, hiring on as a "professional conversationalist" to trick speech out of him. It is Himself's relation to Hal filmed as farce (the too-fluent boy the father can't reach), and it names the family's governing project — inducing the child to open his mouth — as a job you have to disguise yourself to attempt.