(I was going to add more "stuff learned from Horrorthon" but I'm dealing with some trepidation, because I've seen so many fewer horror movies than the other 'thonners and the topic has already been done to death by Wes Craven etc. so I haven't quite come up with anything good yet. In the meantime, here's...)
JORDAN'S TWENTY WAYS TO TELL YOU'RE IN A MOVIE (and not real life):
1) Your car has no rear-view mirror above the windshield -- just the prong where the mirror is usually attached.
2) Every phone number starts with 555.
3) It is never completely dark. If you turn all the lights out, a strange "light from nowhere" will fade in, illuminating you. (This becomes more true further back in time; in the 1940s it was especially difficult to find any real darkness.)
4) When you get home and play your answering machine messages, the machine begins by playing you your own, outgoing message first (before moving on to the messages that got left by others).
5) No matter how much ice is in a drink, it will never make any sound.
6) You can hold a lit cigarette in your lips and the smoke will never blow in your face.
7) When you kiss a girl who's wearing lipstick, none of the lipstick will get on your own face, ever, no matter how rowdy the kiss.
8) If you get an entry-level job at a newspaper or some such, you will move into an apartment the size of a ballroom, with (probably) a terraced balcony and an unobstructed view of the entire city, seen from a great height.
9) When you receive an email, your computer will react by filling the entire montor screen with an enormous graphic depicting graphics of email arriving (probably including an animated envelope of some kind) while the computer's speaker plays loud electronic musical tones.
10) If you frequent any California freeways, you will routinely witness cars tumbling over embankments, flipping over each other and blowing up in tremendous fireballs.
11) The newsvendor who sells you a paper every morning will provide a stream of amusing banter, just for you.
12) You will flatly refuse to believe the most outlandish, ridiculous supernatural claptrap -- and then suddenly believe it, completely, on one other person's say-so.
13) If there's a well-known brand of beverage you like to drink, you will not only drink it constantly, but will routinely walk past enormous illuminated advertisements and posters for said beverage.
14) You will routinely see and interact with very tall, slender, buxom, beautiful women (who perform pedestrian functions like taking your ticket as you enter a movie theater and will smile at you suggestively).
15) At night, a blazing starfield will constantly be visible overhead.
16) Everything will happen to you during the 2-3 hours when the sun is lowest in the sky, before dusk.
17) You will almost never fail to make it through a sentence without stammering, and every attempt to pull off an amusing one-liner will come off beautifully. (Nobody will laugh, but there will be a 10-20 second pause after your joke, during which everyone will silently wait before continuing.)
18) If you have a view into neighboring apartment windows, you will routinely see young women of Playboy-centerfold-caliber looks taking off their clothes and parading around in scanty underwear with all the lights on.
19) If you look through binoculars, you will see the image surrounded by a fuzzy-edged sideways figure-eight shape. Sometimes, the image will zoom in.
20) Neither you nor anybody else will ever go to the bathroom.
"If you frequent any California freeways, you will routinely witness cars tumbling over embankments, flipping over each other and blowing up in tremendous fireballs."
This doesn't go on the list, but one way to tell you're in a TV commercial is the term "toilet paper" is utterly taboo and replaced by "bathroom tissue," a term used in no other context.
#3 Reminds me of a funny Zippy strip, in which it's declared that cartoon characters, either animated or stationary, have a clause in their contracts that allows them one annual opportunity to be portrayed in the dark with only their eyeballs showing.
24) If you live in an apartment building with amusing next-door neighbors, said neighbors will somehow manage to wander directly into your living room uninvited and unannounced, and start talking to you.
(This one, admittedly, tends to show that you're on television, not in a movie.)
25) If something happens in your life, and then there's a follow-up event months later, the follow-up event will always take place in the snow, in front of Christmas decorations, with Christmas music emanating from somewhere.
(This one's a little weird; I admit. But it's true!)
26) Nobody is overweight (except one or two "amusing" fat people). In fact, everyone has extremely low body fat. Additionally, everyone is tanned and everyone has bright white teeth.
29) If you look in a mirror in the bathroom and then look away, when you look in the mirror again there will be someone or something scary in the reflection.
30) If a "bad" person is shot with a large-caliber handgun at point-blank range, they will flail, fall to the ground, and lie completely motionless for minutes — and then suddenly regain full strength and get back up.
31) Any reasonably well-directed blow to the head or face will knock someone out, but probably not bruise them.
(In my life I've taken one blow to the head that definitely would've knocked me out were I in a movie; I think about it sometimes when I see people go down after a sissy hit to the face.)
I took a blow to the face that knocked me down onto the tile floor of the pizza place I was in, with some of my blood spattering on the floor. My face swelled up for days and I now have a small scar above my upper lip. I remerked at the time that, in the movies, there are "fistfights" where the two combatants take swings at each other while everyone stands around in a rough semicircle, watching etc. but in real life you just get hit and you're on the floor.
(This incident was the basis for my description of Peter's beating in chapter 12 of Mirage, by the way, octo.)
On the bright side, I've got this scar above my mouth, so, as my co-worker Anka explained, "Now you can be Harrison Ford."
Which is great! Because it turns Apollo Creed into a Tex Avery cartoon character. Somebody (your Dad) says, "Any one of those blows would kill a person." Apollo Creed scoffs (since the characters aren't actually getting killed). Then he goes into the ring with the Dolph Lundgren character...takes one blow to the head...and gets killed. (Then his transparent, harp-playing ghost looks at the camera in blinking self-pity,)
What am I up to that I'm taking blows to the face? (world-weary sigh) All part of the game, my friend. A game I've played far too long, I'm afraid...
32) You can walk up to a bar and order "beer" (and the bartender will nod crisply and draw one for you with no further questions).
32a) (works better in previous decades) When you're in someone's home or office, they will offer you "a drink." You will accept and, with no further discussion, they will walk over to the dry bar they've got set up along the wall, pour you (and themselves) something unidentifiable, and hand it to you. Then you will both raise your glasses and drink, and you will not be remotely surprised or displeased by what's in the glass;
"they will walk over to the dry bar they've got set up along the wall," That's so true! In so many movies people have these elaborate dry bars in their homes completely stocked. I have a bar in my basement but the only thing on it is a bunch of Star Wars figures.
Television pet peeve; I hate it when people drink out of cups that are obviously empty. You can often here that quick intake of air sound as the character drinks nothing.
In modern movies (not just James Bond flicks) people have taken to actually asking you what you'd like when they offer you a drink.
NYPD Blue had a great solution to the generic "beer" problem (wherein you can't actually name a brand): Rick Schroeder told the bartender, "I'll take a draft."
I mentioned the mysterious "silent ice cubes" before.
What's cool is how much mileage filmmakers and others get out of breaking these conventions.
Two examples:
1) Casino Royale introduces a James Bond who not only bleeds (gasp) but actually carries facial cuts and other wounds forward into the next sequence.
2) Pervy photographer Marco Glaviano (of Sports Illustrated "Swimsuit Issue" and supermodel pinup calendar fame) notes in his book (yes, he wrote a book...it's got a lot of pictures) that he noticed that, as the bikini-clad models rolled around posing in the sand, a tremendous amount of effort between shots went into sending assistants in with brushes to get the sand off their skin. Glaviano is the "genius" credited with leaving the sand on the models. This looked so completely fantastic (particularly on, say, Elle MacPherson) that now everyone does it.
Yeah. The columns of light from the window at least correspond to something real, in that we frequently see beams of light reflected by dust motes or moisture in the air or cloud formations etc. but it's pretty much impossible with coherent light (e.g. lasers) unless you fire them through really thick smoke.
cop cars arrive on the scene, not when the action is taking place, not immediately after it ends, but when the surviving character has had a moment to walk slowly out of the house and down the walkway. then they come in like gangbusters, which is, i guess exactly what they are.
...and then the senior officer on the scene trudges up, accepts a paper cup of coffee from a nameless subordinate without looking, and asks "What have we got?"
that happens early on in the movie. by the time we reach the end of the movie, the senior officer is either (a)fully aware of what's going on, or (b)deceased.
Pacino handled this particular set of clichés in a ferocious style that's either fantastic or ridiculous, depending on how you look at it, in the first half-hour of Heat.
my favorite part of that whole sequence is that he never asks about specific clue-elements. he simply points at things and waits for a response. as in, "we all know what we're doing here. let's just make with the sleuthing."
I was going to say that it's a good thing we're putting this list together, so in case one of us winds up in movieland we won't be spewing unfamiliar drinks all over the babes that are everywhere. Then I realized I had it backwards, I just would like every drink handed to me, and the babes, and the giant apartment, and the lack of pesky rear view mirrors, and the politely silent ice, and all that.
octo: Yeah, but everyone would wonder why you were getting so excited about everything.
notmarc: EXACTLY! I love when he points at the truck cab (with that inimitable Pacino gesture) and the guy starts talking immediately about where it was stolen etc.
I also love his body language when he explains about how "they were on a clock, which meant they knew our response time." (turning around like a dancer; point ing opposite directions) "It's a good spot! A good location...two freeways here" etc. etc.
Michael Mann is such a fantastic director (every other time).
I took a few film courses in college including a film noir class. I recall the professor noting that the streets were always wet down in these films because it was "sexual". Of course, she read sexual cues in almost every aspect of the films we watched. I think it just works better for lighting.
December 02, 2006 2:17 PM
[Image] We have a winner! JPX and Summerisle were the founders of this contest (I still contend that only two brothers could find such a ridiculous way to be competitive, and thank God for that). BUT, this is JPX's first victory. I bet that must feel good, especially after 2003's tragic crap-out of JPX's VHS copy of My Bloody Valentine, putting him one flick behind at the end. And again in 2004 Summerisle beat him by only one movie, but who really noticed while I was setting the still-unbroken Horrorthon record? What? Oh, it was 98. But come on now, this isn't my moment.
Seriously, good work dude. You knew this was your year, and you were right. I don't think I ever caught up to you after Columbus Day weekend.
Anyway, we'd talked about holding off on our Best Ofs until everything's in, and I'm down with that plan for now since I like the idea of all of them in a row. But I do want to keep some fresh writing kicking around, and encourage everyone to do the same. Jordan's zombie reviews were one of the highlights of the month, and extremely welcome during that exhausting post-Horrorthon slog.
Here's something I wrote November 9, 2004.
I know I've got nine more reviews to write, and all of my organizing and sorting and counting (how many movies take place in California, how many people I saw dispatched with an axe) is waiting until after I'm done. But this keeps sticking in my head.
THE WORST JOBS IN THE HORRORVERSE:
1. Camp counselor
Okay, this is pretty obvious, but think about it. As counselor you're supposed to monitor the safety of a bunch of little brats. But they don't need the protection! I saw the kids effortlessly survive enough serial killers to staff a football team and a swarm of mutant piranhas. But what do the guardians get for their trouble? Axes. Lots of axes.
2. Somebody's dog
Again, coming to the aid of those you are meant to protect is a woefully thankless job. Not only does your life end in a quick, off-screen yelp, it also serves absolutely nothing. Your absence will not be noted until the following day when all the bodybags are being loaded up. You don't even get nailed to a doorway to freak out your surviving friends.
3. Old Man living outside of town
You spend all day warning passing vans of teenage kids not to go there, and they always go there. If you decide to get involved, wandering into the woods with a nice bottle to pull on, the killer is bound to do a little warm-up work by tagging your saggy ass. And even if you say fuck it and go home, chances are a blob-filled meteorite will park itself right in your front yard.
THE BEST JOB IN THE HORRORVERSE:
Cop. This is the easiest job! All you have to do is sit at a desk with a phone. If someone calls with a problem, then they're obviously trying to pull off a prank designed to make a fool out of you. Tell them you're not going to fall for it and hang up. Repeat if necessary. Remember, every phenomena known to humankind can be explained as pranks performed by punks. Stay at your desk!
"Things I learned from Horrorthon"
42 Comments -
Along the same lines...
(I was going to add more "stuff learned from Horrorthon" but I'm dealing with some trepidation, because I've seen so many fewer horror movies than the other 'thonners and the topic has already been done to death by Wes Craven etc. so I haven't quite come up with anything good yet. In the meantime, here's...)
JORDAN'S TWENTY WAYS TO TELL YOU'RE IN A MOVIE (and not real life):
1) Your car has no rear-view mirror above the windshield -- just the prong where the mirror is usually attached.
2) Every phone number starts with 555.
3) It is never completely dark. If you turn all the lights out, a strange "light from nowhere" will fade in, illuminating you. (This becomes more true further back in time; in the 1940s it was especially difficult to find any real darkness.)
4) When you get home and play your answering machine messages, the machine begins by playing you your own, outgoing message first (before moving on to the messages that got left by others).
5) No matter how much ice is in a drink, it will never make any sound.
6) You can hold a lit cigarette in your lips and the smoke will never blow in your face.
7) When you kiss a girl who's wearing lipstick, none of the lipstick will get on your own face, ever, no matter how rowdy the kiss.
8) If you get an entry-level job at a newspaper or some such, you will move into an apartment the size of a ballroom, with (probably) a terraced balcony and an unobstructed view of the entire city, seen from a great height.
9) When you receive an email, your computer will react by filling the entire montor screen with an enormous graphic depicting graphics of email arriving (probably including an animated envelope of some kind) while the computer's speaker plays loud electronic musical tones.
10) If you frequent any California freeways, you will routinely witness cars tumbling over embankments, flipping over each other and blowing up in tremendous fireballs.
11) The newsvendor who sells you a paper every morning will provide a stream of amusing banter, just for you.
12) You will flatly refuse to believe the most outlandish, ridiculous supernatural claptrap -- and then suddenly believe it, completely, on one other person's say-so.
13) If there's a well-known brand of beverage you like to drink, you will not only drink it constantly, but will routinely walk past enormous illuminated advertisements and posters for said beverage.
14) You will routinely see and interact with very tall, slender, buxom, beautiful women (who perform pedestrian functions like taking your ticket as you enter a movie theater and will smile at you suggestively).
15) At night, a blazing starfield will constantly be visible overhead.
16) Everything will happen to you during the 2-3 hours when the sun is lowest in the sky, before dusk.
17) You will almost never fail to make it through a sentence without stammering, and every attempt to pull off an amusing one-liner will come off beautifully. (Nobody will laugh, but there will be a 10-20 second pause after your joke, during which everyone will silently wait before continuing.)
18) If you have a view into neighboring apartment windows, you will routinely see young women of Playboy-centerfold-caliber looks taking off their clothes and parading around in scanty underwear with all the lights on.
19) If you look through binoculars, you will see the image surrounded by a fuzzy-edged sideways figure-eight shape. Sometimes, the image will zoom in.
20) Neither you nor anybody else will ever go to the bathroom.
December 01, 2006 2:17 AM
21. When someone hangs up the phone on you it immediately goes to a dial tone.
December 01, 2006 4:28 AM
22. You don't really have to look at the road while you're driving.
December 01, 2006 4:29 AM
"If you frequent any California freeways, you will routinely witness cars tumbling over embankments, flipping over each other and blowing up in tremendous fireballs."
That one's actually true.
December 01, 2006 8:18 AM
This doesn't go on the list, but one way to tell you're in a TV commercial is the term "toilet paper" is utterly taboo and replaced by "bathroom tissue," a term used in no other context.
December 01, 2006 8:21 AM
#3 Reminds me of a funny Zippy strip, in which it's declared that cartoon characters, either animated or stationary, have a clause in their contracts that allows them one annual opportunity to be portrayed in the dark with only their eyeballs showing.
December 01, 2006 8:24 AM
23) Terrorists announce beforehand what they're going to do.
December 01, 2006 9:26 AM
24) If you live in an apartment building with amusing next-door neighbors, said neighbors will somehow manage to wander directly into your living room uninvited and unannounced, and start talking to you.
(This one, admittedly, tends to show that you're on television, not in a movie.)
December 01, 2006 9:28 AM
25) If something happens in your life, and then there's a follow-up event months later, the follow-up event will always take place in the snow, in front of Christmas decorations, with Christmas music emanating from somewhere.
(This one's a little weird; I admit. But it's true!)
December 01, 2006 9:37 AM
26) Nobody is overweight (except one or two "amusing" fat people). In fact, everyone has extremely low body fat. Additionally, everyone is tanned and everyone has bright white teeth.
December 01, 2006 9:41 AM
27) When you're in peril, your car won't start on the first try, if it starts at all.
December 01, 2006 9:51 AM
28) If a bad guy is knocked out, he will regain consciousness just as you're walking past him.
December 01, 2006 9:52 AM
29) If you look in a mirror in the bathroom and then look away, when you look in the mirror again there will be someone or something scary in the reflection.
December 01, 2006 9:54 AM
[variation on #28 (above):]
30) If a "bad" person is shot with a large-caliber handgun at point-blank range, they will flail, fall to the ground, and lie completely motionless for minutes — and then suddenly regain full strength and get back up.
December 01, 2006 10:02 AM
31) Any reasonably well-directed blow to the head or face will knock someone out, but probably not bruise them.
(In my life I've taken one blow to the head that definitely would've knocked me out were I in a movie; I think about it sometimes when I see people go down after a sissy hit to the face.)
December 01, 2006 10:28 AM
I took a blow to the face that knocked me down onto the tile floor of the pizza place I was in, with some of my blood spattering on the floor. My face swelled up for days and I now have a small scar above my upper lip. I remerked at the time that, in the movies, there are "fistfights" where the two combatants take swings at each other while everyone stands around in a rough semicircle, watching etc. but in real life you just get hit and you're on the floor.
(This incident was the basis for my description of Peter's beating in chapter 12 of Mirage, by the way, octo.)
On the bright side, I've got this scar above my mouth, so, as my co-worker Anka explained, "Now you can be Harrison Ford."
December 01, 2006 10:38 AM
I took a blow to the face once...wait a minute, no I didn't. What in the world are you guys up to where you're getting socked?
Whenever a Rocky movie is on TV my father inevitably states, "Any one of those blows would kill a person."
December 01, 2006 11:01 AM
JPX,
Which is great! Because it turns Apollo Creed into a Tex Avery cartoon character. Somebody (your Dad) says, "Any one of those blows would kill a person." Apollo Creed scoffs (since the characters aren't actually getting killed). Then he goes into the ring with the Dolph Lundgren character...takes one blow to the head...and gets killed. (Then his transparent, harp-playing ghost looks at the camera in blinking self-pity,)
What am I up to that I'm taking blows to the face? (world-weary sigh) All part of the game, my friend. A game I've played far too long, I'm afraid...
December 01, 2006 11:06 AM
32) You can walk up to a bar and order "beer" (and the bartender will nod crisply and draw one for you with no further questions).
32a) (works better in previous decades) When you're in someone's home or office, they will offer you "a drink." You will accept and, with no further discussion, they will walk over to the dry bar they've got set up along the wall, pour you (and themselves) something unidentifiable, and hand it to you. Then you will both raise your glasses and drink, and you will not be remotely surprised or displeased by what's in the glass;
December 01, 2006 11:12 AM
"they will walk over to the dry bar they've got set up along the wall," That's so true! In so many movies people have these elaborate dry bars in their homes completely stocked. I have a bar in my basement but the only thing on it is a bunch of Star Wars figures.
December 01, 2006 11:29 AM
Television pet peeve; I hate it when people drink out of cups that are obviously empty. You can often here that quick intake of air sound as the character drinks nothing.
December 01, 2006 11:31 AM
In modern movies (not just James Bond flicks) people have taken to actually asking you what you'd like when they offer you a drink.
NYPD Blue had a great solution to the generic "beer" problem (wherein you can't actually name a brand): Rick Schroeder told the bartender, "I'll take a draft."
December 01, 2006 11:32 AM
I mentioned the mysterious "silent ice cubes" before.
What's cool is how much mileage filmmakers and others get out of breaking these conventions.
Two examples:
1) Casino Royale introduces a James Bond who not only bleeds (gasp) but actually carries facial cuts and other wounds forward into the next sequence.
2) Pervy photographer Marco Glaviano (of Sports Illustrated "Swimsuit Issue" and supermodel pinup calendar fame) notes in his book (yes, he wrote a book...it's got a lot of pictures) that he noticed that, as the bikini-clad models rolled around posing in the sand, a tremendous amount of effort between shots went into sending assistants in with brushes to get the sand off their skin. Glaviano is the "genius" credited with leaving the sand on the models. This looked so completely fantastic (particularly on, say, Elle MacPherson) that now everyone does it.
December 01, 2006 12:28 PM
33) If there's a dog in a suspense film, inevitably a character will jeapordize his/her life to rescue it.
34) If there's a precocious kid in a drama/horror film, he will never be killed (see The Blog remake for a rare exception).
35) Combination locks are easily solved with a few guesses (see also: password guesses).
December 01, 2006 12:58 PM
36) Elaborate security systems (e.g., lasers) are easily overcome through fancy gymnastics.
December 01, 2006 1:00 PM
#36 reminds me of one so important it deserves to be higher on the list:
37) Lasers are VISIBLE as red lines through the air.
December 01, 2006 1:20 PM
(Real lasers look like supermarket barcode readers; you don't see anything except the spot where they land.)
December 01, 2006 1:21 PM
jordan's bit about lasers makes me think of another thing: sunlight always comes into a room in a thick, streaming column
December 01, 2006 1:59 PM
also, according to the moisture on the streets, it's always just been raining.
December 01, 2006 1:59 PM
notmarc,
Yeah. The columns of light from the window at least correspond to something real, in that we frequently see beams of light reflected by dust motes or moisture in the air or cloud formations etc. but it's pretty much impossible with coherent light (e.g. lasers) unless you fire them through really thick smoke.
December 01, 2006 2:06 PM
fair enough, but that leads me to another point which is, daytime rooms are choked with dust.
December 01, 2006 2:23 PM
Right. I didn't mean to create the impression that I disagreed with you! It's a good point.
It reminds me of another one:
38) At a crime scene, all the police cars will keep their "gumball" flashers going the entire time, even while parked.
December 01, 2006 2:29 PM
cop cars arrive on the scene, not when the action is taking place, not immediately after it ends, but when the surviving character has had a moment to walk slowly out of the house and down the walkway. then they come in like gangbusters, which is, i guess exactly what they are.
December 01, 2006 2:31 PM
...and then the senior officer on the scene trudges up, accepts a paper cup of coffee from a nameless subordinate without looking, and asks "What have we got?"
December 01, 2006 2:34 PM
that happens early on in the movie. by the time we reach the end of the movie, the senior officer is either (a)fully aware of what's going on, or (b)deceased.
December 01, 2006 2:36 PM
Exactly.
Pacino handled this particular set of clichés in a ferocious style that's either fantastic or ridiculous, depending on how you look at it, in the first half-hour of Heat.
OTHER GUY: "So what's the M. O.?"
PACINO: "The M. O. is...they're good."
December 01, 2006 2:50 PM
my favorite part of that whole sequence is that he never asks about specific clue-elements. he simply points at things and waits for a response. as in, "we all know what we're doing here. let's just make with the sleuthing."
December 01, 2006 3:02 PM
I was going to say that it's a good thing we're putting this list together, so in case one of us winds up in movieland we won't be spewing unfamiliar drinks all over the babes that are everywhere. Then I realized I had it backwards, I just would like every drink handed to me, and the babes, and the giant apartment, and the lack of pesky rear view mirrors, and the politely silent ice, and all that.
The phones would take some getting used to.
December 01, 2006 3:24 PM
octo: Yeah, but everyone would wonder why you were getting so excited about everything.
notmarc: EXACTLY! I love when he points at the truck cab (with that inimitable Pacino gesture) and the guy starts talking immediately about where it was stolen etc.
I also love his body language when he explains about how "they were on a clock, which meant they knew our response time." (turning around like a dancer; point ing opposite directions) "It's a good spot! A good location...two freeways here" etc. etc.
Michael Mann is such a fantastic director (every other time).
December 01, 2006 5:00 PM
39) People locate numbers in a phone book ater flipping two pages.
December 02, 2006 12:00 PM
40) Police captains are African American nearly 100% of the time and always pissed off.
December 02, 2006 2:14 PM
I took a few film courses in college including a film noir class. I recall the professor noting that the streets were always wet down in these films because it was "sexual". Of course, she read sexual cues in almost every aspect of the films we watched. I think it just works better for lighting.
December 02, 2006 2:17 PM