If there’s a gun, it will be used
Posted on | July 1, 2004 at 10:40 pm | 5 Comments
Last week, I watched Bruce Almighty on HBO-HD. It was a schmaltzy, sentimental, largely-unfunny affair that not even the manic antics of Jim Carrey (whom I’m not that fond of in the first place) or the usually reliable Morgan Freeman could save. I think the best acting job in the movie was done by Catherine Bell’s enormous breasts, which I guess means I should watch JAG. I’m glad I didn’t pay to see it in the theater. But it got to me thinking about one of my Movie/Screenwriting Pet Peeves – all too obvious foreshadowing. Read on, if you want to know what I’m talking about, and if you don’t care a few movies might be minorly spoiled…
There’s a scene early in Bruce Almighty where Jennifer Aniston’s character, for no particular reason, reveals to Jim Carrey’s character that she has a rare AB bloodtype. If, like me, you’ve seen more than a few movies in your life, a comment like that automatically sets the bells of Notre Dame ringing in your head, and you just know that bit of information is going to figure into the climax of the movie. And sure enough it did.
No piece of information is wasted in the edit of a movie that makes it to the big screen. Audiences don’t have time to devote to nuances of a story, or to simple divergences which may enrich the story or the characters, but don’t really matter in the main arc of the story. I find this sad. (Strangely, I’ve noticed that this isn’t the case with made for TV movies, which move at a lot slower pace than theatrical movies and often dwell on details that seem out of place. Perhaps that is because there is usually less story overall in TV movies and they have to pad them out.)
I can still remember when I went to see that Harrison Ford/Michelle Pfeiffer pseudo-horror potboiler What Lies Beneath, a movie whose central “mystery” wasn’t all that hard to figure out. There’s a scene early in the movie where a big point is made of the fact that there is no cell phone coverage when driving over a particular bridge. Gosh, I wonder if that will figure into the climax?? And there’s another scene where the workers in professor Harrison Ford’s lab are experimenting with a drug that paralyzes mice temporarily. The movie cynic in me questioned why they were showing us this, since it didn’t really have to do with anything, but my subconscious kept the knowledge handy to see how this fact would fit into the movie later. Which of course it did.
One of my big beefs with Mystic River was that there were some characters introduced early on which didn’t seem to have much to do with the tautly rendered drama. So of course I knew that they would end up being the key to the central mystery, which made the whole movie way too predictable for me, despite the good acting performances. I much prefer something like 21 Grams, which (as I’ve said in an earlier entry) was more interesting because all the foreshadowing was right out there in the open for the viewer to piece together.
I’m not going to pretend that I’m smarter than most people because I’m able to pick up on these things early when other people don’t. Heck, I didn’t see the Sixth Sense or Unbreakable twists coming, even though I really should’ve. But I have seen so many movies and so many patterns/formulas, that it makes me overanalyze everything that happens. Everything is there for a reason, especially if it seems like a useless detail. Thankfully this doesn’t put me off movie-watching in general, though it makes me all the more pleased when a script does surprise me.
So… I’m interested to know if any of my friends out there have had similar experiences at the movies, where you noticed some seemingly useless tidbit early in the movie and just knew that it was going to pay out later, thereby somewhat ruining it for you. Discuss…
Latre.
Comments
5 Responses to “If there’s a gun, it will be used”
July 2nd, 2004 @ 12:13 pm
If anyone coughs in a movie, it means they will soon find out they have a fatal disease. Most recently, I saw this in the German film "Schultze Gets the Blues," but it’s definitely an overused trope.
In "Can’t Stop the Music," the credit sequence of Steve Guttenberg roller skating down the street foreshadows that the movie is going to suck.
July 2nd, 2004 @ 1:46 pm
Get Hollywood on the hotline – someone’s cracked the code!
Movies have always been ‘optimized’ to one degree or another; otherwise they’d take as long as it takes to read the book. (plus, every minute of film stock costs a fortune when you have to duplicate and ship it to 3,000+ locations) And on the flip side, when plot twists AREN’T foreshadowed, we call it ‘deux ex machina’ and make fun of that too. Poor old Big Media can’t win…
If you wanna see something a bit more refined than the typical mass-market-obvious level, stop looking for it at the suburban multiplex.
Whoops, gotta go, Hollywood’s on the hotline. (now THAT’S foreshadowing!)
July 3rd, 2004 @ 10:50 am
Yeah, Ben, you really know me. I always just go see those popcorn movies at the megaplex – screw those indie flicks that no can understand. Sheesh.
I realize some amount of foreshadowing is necessary so that plot twists don’t seem totally out of the blue, but I’m talking about the kind of bad writing that just makes you roll your eyes at the obviousness of the planted tidbit.
Latre.
July 4th, 2004 @ 11:45 am
Indie flicks? Nah, I meant (and here I’m quoting a puppet, but…) "READ A BOOK!" Something I don’t do enough of myself, but am getting back to at last.
As for bad writing, turns out it pays the same as good writing most of the time, that’s why there’s so much of it I think. We got a WB sitcom script delivered to us by accident last December (there’s ~150 apts in this building; stands to reason some residents will be actors…) and it was just stunningly lowbrow and hack, far worse than we’d have thought possible! Yet half-hour sitcom scripts earn the writer $22,000+ – union minimum rate.
July 4th, 2004 @ 6:12 pm
Not to mention, it doesn’t pay to be TOO good. Look at "Andy Richter Controls the Universe" — brilliant show, cancelled, now Andy is in "Quintuplets," which got a D- in "Entertainment Weekly." Or "Sports Night." It was a miracle that "Arrested Development" hung on for another year. TV is a business that gives the people what they want, and apparently what people want is stupid sitcoms and idiotic reality shows. (Not counting "The Amazing Race," of course!)