Copyright
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1995-2008 Scott Larson
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Only in the movies
Last time I alluded to the fact that there are a number of things that
regularly occur in (mainly, but not exclusively, Hollywood) movies that annoy me.
This is not an idea that originated with me. In fact, some time ago I received one of those humorous
emails that seems to eventually get forwarded to anyone and everyone who has an email account (usually
three or four times) that dealt with this phenomenon brilliantly. Unfortunately, I don’t seem to have
a copy of this email in a place where I can get to it easily, but it was titled something like “Things
We Would Never Know If We Didn’t Watch Movies.” It mentioned all those special laws of nature that
seem to only operate in the film world, like how a man can be shot in the leg with a shotgun but
fifteen minutes later sprint after the bad guys. You know, that sort of thing.
Some of these anomalies are too obvious to complain about. While a hero who can survive a hail of
bullets is not very believable, how many of us want to see an action movie where the good guy gets
mowed down in the very first scene? You suspend disbelief for some things in order to get into the
spirit of the movie. I can live with that. What bothers me are the scenes that run so counter to my
everyday experience that they distract me from paying attention to the film.
In my previous diatribe I focused on a particular pet peeve of mine: the fact that in many movies,
against all logic, everyone in every country and on every planet seems to speak English. There are
other annoyances, but I will focus on three others for now:
Keep your eyes on the road, please: This one really gets to me for some reason. How many times
have we watched a movie or a television program that shows two people in the front seat of a car
engaged in a deep conversation? No matter how many times I see this scene, my heart always stops as
the driver delivers a monologue that seemingly lasts three or four minutes while never breaking eye
contact with the passenger. I keep expecting a sudden crash or, better yet, for the driver to look
forward, scream in panic, and then have a big crash. Sometimes it happens this way, but most of the
time the driver gets away with only a casual glance at the road as he or she drives merrily along. I
guess this bothers me because, by the time the scene is over, I realize I have spent all my mental
faculties focusing on whether or not the car is going to crash and have totally missed the point of
the conversation I was supposed to be listening to.
Waste not, want not: I didn’t grow up in the most lavish of lifestyles, so it bothers me to see
food wasted. Even in a movie. And one thing I have learned is that in a film when two or more people
sit down to a nice meal at home or a restaurant, the nicer and more elaborate the meal the more likely
it is to go entirely to waste. I’m not talking about films that specifically have food as a theme,
like Big Night. I’m referring to movie that are
about relationships. I think I noticed this phenomenon first in the film Ordinary
People. People would sit down to a lovely meal or maybe some drinks. Then someone would
say the wrong thing and set someone else off and that person would have a big emotional
outburst and stomp out, usually with one or more other people following along hoping to smooth
things over. The food or the drinks was left behind, presumably to be thrown in the garbage.
How sad. I am probably the only person in the audience who is not focused on the emotional
turmoil of the characters and is, instead, screaming silently to myself, “The food! What about
the food! You’re wasting all that lovely food!”
Keep the change: This pet peeve is more or less a follow-on to the previous one. When someone
has an emotional outburst and stomps out of the restaurant and their friend/lover/relative follows
after them, the second person usually throws a wad of cash onto the table as she or, usually, he
leaves. For the next five minutes I am totally blanking out of the drama of the situation and,
instead, wondering to myself, “So, did he know exactly how much money he was throwing on the table?
Did he have the exact amount conveniently stashed in his pocket just in case he had to rush out? How
did he know the exact amount? Did he calculate it while studying the menu? Did he correctly calculate
the tax? Did he include a tip? Was it a generous tip? Or did he just throw all the cash he had at hand
on the table, hoping it was enough but not, like, hundreds of dollars too much?” This also happens in
taxicabs. A distraught character yells to the cabby to stop the car, he or, usually, she dashes out of
the car and her companion throws at wad of cash at the driver and follows her. The same questions all
apply, except sometimes we know that our hero has thrown significantly more than the required fare
because we see the cabby’s eyes light up and he appreciatively says, “Hey, thanks!”
Oh yeah, and if anybody happens to have that email about things we wouldn’t know if we didn’t
watch movies, please send it to me. I really enjoy reading it, and no one has sent it to me
for a couple of years.
-S.L., 30 August 2001
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