I Found It At the Movies

Movie Cliches.

Hello again, all!
     I love movies.  That's no surprise to any of you who know
me, of course.  We go out as often as we can to see movies, or
stay at home and watch them on video.  After a while, you begin 
to see some of the technique that goes into making what you see
on the screen. For one thing, some of the scenes seem to keep 
popping up in different disguises from movie to movie.  Those
scenes with Yoda in 'Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back' remind
you alot of the training scenes in 'Karate Kid.'  Of course, Pat
Morita never rode around on Ralph Macchio's shoulders, but you 
get the idea.
     Making movies involves some amount of time compression.  It
would be pretty tough to sit through a movie like 'Seven Days In
May' if it actually ran seven days.  So moviemakers use clever
(and not so clever) ways to say things in a kind of visual
shorthand.  Unfortunately, many of these time and character
shortcuts quickly become cliches that you see used over and over 
again.  They often become like reflexes that you don't quite 
realize you have, until someone points them out to you.  They can
also be pretty funny.
     Sunday Funnies Thanks this week go out to: Peter Adler,
Howard Lesniak and Junji Taniguchi for their contributions.  And
thumbs up and a special thank you to Roger Ebert, for generously
giving me permission to quote from his book, 'Ebert's Little
Movie Glossary,' which has many more examples of fun movie
cliches than I have room to include here.  Hope you enjoy it and
see you at the movies!
     Have a great week,


P.S.  Those of you reading this from a web browser program like 
Netscape or Internet Explorer can order 'EBERT'S LITTLE MOVIE
GLOSSARY' from Amazon Books on the Web by just clicking on the
next line:

[ Order EBERT'S LITTLE MOVIE GLOSSARY ]

And, yes, this is a commercial, but I promised Roger.
                         bbb

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 - Air Vent Escape Route. If the hero is imprisoned in a building 
owned by the villains, there will inevitably be an air vent cover 
that is not screwed in and is easily removed.
               DONA KIGHT, Chicago


 - Asian Grandfather Rule (Yan's Law). All elderly Asians in 
movies speak in 'wise sayings' like Sydney Toler in the old 
Charlie Chan movies.


 - Asian Woman Rule. Any Asian woman with a greater than
incidental part in a movie always falls in love with the hero, no 
matter how big a slob he seems to her (or any other) culture.


 + ALIEN STUPIDITY THEOREM.  Despite having the ability to build 
spacecraft the size of asteroids and being able to travel faster 
than the speed of light, movie space aliens are not all that 
bright.  While we earthlings can easily send messages from a cell 
phone in Cleveland to a pager in Kuala Lumpur, they have to wire 
their spacecraft together to communicate.  And their computer 
systems blow up and make showers of sparks in response to the 
least amount of illogic or a simple computer virus.  They don't 
even seem to have heard of backup tapes.


 - Backseat Inviso-Syndrome. Film characters are invariably 
unable to see a person crouched in the backseat of a car (even a 
convertible) when, in the real world, it is an impossible place 
for a person to hide.
               ERIC SKOVAN, Poughkeepsie, NY


 + BAD GUY GUN TOSS.  When a handgun is empty, the villian almost 
always throws it at the hero in desperation, never quite 
understanding that a large, heavy, metal object is still really 
useful as a weapon.


 - Bartender Establishing Shot. All movie bartenders, when first 
seen, are wiping the inside of a glass with a rag.
               DAVID W. SMITH, Westminster, Calif


 - Creeping Doorknob. Any time there is a close-up shot of a 
doorknob, it will start turning very slowly, and usually without 
being noticed by a room's occupants - unless the occupants are 
trying to hide, in which case they will watch in horror as the 
knob turns.
               RICK NEWBY, College Place, Wash.


 - Fallacy of the Predictable Tree. The logical error committed 
every time the good guy is able to predict exactly what the bad 
guy is going to do. For example, in First Blood, law enforcement 
officials are searching the woods for John Rambo. A cop pauses 
under a tree. Rambo drops on him. Question: Out of all the trees 
in the forest, how did Rambo know which one the guy would pause 
under?


 - Feedback Rule. Every time anyone uses a microphone in a movie,
it makes a howling sound just before they speak.
               ARDEN J. COOPER, Warren, MI


 + FEMALE SCIENCE FICTION CLOTHING ALLOWANCE.  In science fiction 
movies, most of the women are dressed in what amounts to 
futuristic lingerie.  The fact that movie producers are mostly 
middle-aged men has something to do with this.


 - "Fruit Cart!" An expletive used by knowledgeable film buffs
during any chase scene involving a foreign or ethnic locale, 
reflecting their certainty that a fruit cart will be overturned 
during the chase, and an angry peddler will run into the middle 
of the street to shake his fist at the hero's departing vehicle.


 + GONG RULE. In many movies and TV shows, the arrival of any
Asian character onscreen is signaled by the sound of a gong.


 - Grafik Artz. Banner, sign, or any other handmade drawing which
purportedly has been made by untrained hands but which obviously 
was the expensive work of professional artists. Use of Grafik 
Artz is usually betrayed by the perfect lines, circles and
randomly reversed letters in a child's drawing, or a picket sign 
at an "impromptu" grass-roots rally which is silkscreened in 
two-color Dom Casual.
               ANDY IHNATKO, Westwood, MA

 - Half Nude Rule. People in movies always undress from the top
down. Especially women.  


 - Hand-in-Hand Rule. In many Hollywood action pictures, the
woman characters are incapable of fleeing from danger unless 
dragged by a strong man, who takes the woman's hand and pulls her 
along meekly behind him. This convention is so strong it appears
even in films where it makes no sense, such as Sheena, in which a 
jungle-woman who has ruled the savage beasts since infancy is 
pulled along by a TV anchorman fresh off the plane.


 - Idiot Plot. Any plot containing problems which would be solved
instantly if all of the characters were not idiots.
               Originally defined by JAMES BLISH


 - Info-on-Demand. Whatever event the character is concerned or 
worried about (the killer on the loose, the police man-hunt, the 
unusual disk-shaped lights in the sky, etc.), when the character 
turns on the radio or TV; there is an immediate news bulletin 
that provides full details of the event in question.
               MIKE BACRERT, Columbus, OH


 - Law of Colorful Chemicals. In scenes set in any kind of 
laboratory, there are always lots of flasks filled with lots of 
bright, colorful chemicals - red, blue, green - when in reality
virtually everything in most research labs is either clear or 
some shade of yellow. I can count on one hand the number of 
organic chemicals that are bright blue or green.
               DEREK LOWE, Scotch Plains, NJ


 - Let Your Fingers Do the Driving. In any movie where the hero 
knows that other characters are in trouble, say because a time 
bomb is about to go off, he must jump into a car and drive like a 
lunatic across town to save them. No hero ever has a quarter for
the pay phone.


 - Miracle Twenty-five-pound Newborn Syndrome. Newborn babies in 
movies instantly look about seven months old, and weigh about 
twenty-five pounds. Their mother seems perfectly refreshed, 
made-up, and comfortable despite the huge child she's just given
birth to.
               BARAK AND ELIZABETH MOORE, Jerusalem, Israel


 - Miraculous Projection Phenomenon. Ability of apparently normal 
computer and movie screens to project their images onto the face 
of an actor. In extreme cases, the audience is able the read the 
crisply focused words from a computer screen directly off an 
actor's face.
               RICHARD ROHRDANZ, West Kennebunk, ME


 + MOVIE LEGAL PRACTICE.  In movies, the legal system is just a 
background, so there is little relationship to real laws or legal 
practice.  Surprise witnesses are almost never allowed in a real 
trial, just for one example.  In the recent Jim Carrey movie, 
'Liar, Liar', the lead character gets bailed out of jail on a 
contempt of court charge.  This can't happen.


 - Mystery of the Levitating 'Ghost'. If the hero can jump
through the wall of the moving subway train, why doesn't he fall 
through the floor?


 + NATIVE LANGUAGE SIMPLIFICATION RULE.  The language used by 
native tribes in the movies is a variation on baby-talk; 
"Oooga-Booga-Da-Hoomba, Bwana!"  In reality, most native 
languages are far more complex and subtle than written languages, 
and may contain literally thousands of verb tenses and position 
indicating words.  By contrast, the writers of 'Twister' only 
used two verb tenses.


 - One-at-a-Time Attack Rule. In any situation where the hero is 
alone, surrounded by dozens of bad guys, they will always 
obligingly attack one at a time. (See any Schwarzenegger movie.)
               BARBARA KELSEY


 - Principle of Evil Marksmanship. The bad guys are always lousy 
shots in the movies.  Three villains with Uzis will go after the 
hero, spraying thousands of shots which miss him, after which he 
picks them off with a handgun.
               JIM MURPHY, New York City

 - Sex-Specific Disintegrating Outfit. When the male and female 
characters in a trashy action movie go to hell and back, only the 
woman's clothing begins to disintegrate.
               DAVE POLSKY, Ottawa, Canada


 - Simultaneous Recovery Syndrome. When a group of movie
characters is rendered unconscious, all characters awake at 
approximately the same time.
               JEFF BRAUN, Seattle, and 
                      BILL RUSSELL, Richmond, MD


 - Unmotivated Close-up. A character is given a close-up in a 
scene where there seems to be no reason for it. This is an 
infallible tipoff that this character is more significant than at
first appears, and is most likely the killer.
               STUART CLELAND, Chicago


 + VILLAIN IN THE DARK RULE.  In many movies, you can immediately 
pick out the villain because he is either a smoker, a sweaty, fat 
guy or the only character in the movie with dark skin.  This even 
applies to animated films; Jafar in 'Disney's Aladdin' has
noticeably darker skin coloring than any of the other characters.


 - Wayne's World Rule. In any movie based on a television show, 
at  least a quarter of the audience will be involuntarily trying 
to change the channel.


 - Weak-Ankled Female Syndrome, The. Whenever a man and woman are 
on the run, the woman inevitably falls and sprains her ankle. As 
a result, the man must drag or carry her and their progress is 
slowed, stalled, or halted.
               BRIDGETTE CLARK, Moundsville, WV


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