Yep, They Shot Him – But He's Okay

I always try, like most writers I know, to make my stories as believable and accurate and authentic as possible. After all, mistakes can be jarring enough to snap a reader right out of the storyworld, and make him or her think more about the writing and about the writer than about the story itself. None of us want that.

But in the course of my movie-watching, which probably (and unfortunately) takes up as much time as my writing, I have often wondered if filmmakers worry much about those factual and logical mistakes. It would seem they don't. One of the worst inconsistencies is in the way the characters talk with each other. In current movies, the dialogue's pretty good unless you consider Southern accents (don't get me started, on that), but I recently watched an old, old Western that featured a hero who was in deep trouble shouting to his partner, "Come quickly!" I obviously didn't live in those times, but I suspect he would've instead said something like "Come quick!" There's no doubt "quickly" would've made my high school English teacher happy, but it isn't a word I could see John Wayne saying to Gabby Hayes as arrows are flying and the cattle's being stolen and the cabin's burning down around him.

And it's not only dialogue. Consider the following list of inaccuracies that I see in a lot of the movies and TV series I watch these days, mistakes that might make you say What the hell were they thinking? 

Here are my top 20:

1. Old West streets are usually neat, clean, and poopfree.

2. Explosions in outer space make noise.

3. Sheriff's badges can be removed in the blink of an eye (a handy trick, if the villain's in town looking for the sheriff).

4. Also helpful: People fleeing from bad guys always run down the exact center of the road.

5. Monsters often reappear, over and over, good as new, after being killed. 

6. Private eyes are knocked unconscious at least once per episode, with no lasting ill effects.

7. Good guys' gunshot wounds are inconvenient; bad guys' gunshot wounds are fatal.

8. Following an explosion, the hero always strolls toward the camera as the firestorm rages in the background. (Shrapnel? No worries.)

9. Silencers on movie weapons are more silent than in real life--and handguns remain accurate at long distances. 

10. Heroines can run just fine in high heels.

11. Towns have only one church.

12. Bombs have timers with easy-to-read displays.

13. Waitresses never ask customers what kind of salad dressing they want.

14. Bartenders never ask customers what kind of beer they want.

15. Hacking into computers is easy peasy (worst offender: Independence Day).

16. Air ducts are good hiding places/escape routes. And they're always shiny clean.

17. Schoolteachers are interrupted in mid-sentence by the bell, and shout the next day's assignment to the already-departing students.

18. If you're shot while attacking a house, town, fort, or wagon train, your horse will fall down too.

19. When a crowd (usually of teenagers) hears an ominous sound (usually in a cave or haunted house at night), one of them goes alone to check it out.

20. In very old movies, a hero in a fistfight with the villain will get no help at all from the lady he's just rescued. Also, women fleeing from monsters/dinosaurs always fall down and lie there screaming.

In closing, here is a 36-line observation I made years ago on this subject, back before I realized I wasn't a poet. It's called "A Fantasy World," and first appeared in the Spring/Summer 1995 issue of Mobius:

The only thing moviewise I find obscene
    Isn’t brutal or racial or sexual;
It’s that scene after scene that I’ve seen on the screen
    Could never be factually actual.

For example, in Westerns, the ladies of course
    Still look fresh after months on the range,
No one’s ever injured when thrown from a horse,
    And bartenders never make change.

All heroes bound tightly within villains’ lairs
    With one touch of a knife can be freed,
And the chuckwagon’s crew might as well say their prayers
    Anytime there’s a cattle stampede.

Every car, when it crashes, will burst into flames,
    All cougars are shot in mid-leap,
Most private detectives have rugged last names,
    And night watchmen are always asleep.

Our heroes are blue-eyed, their teeth are white-capped,
    All six-guns shoot ten times at least,
And wrapped gifts and presents need not be unwrapped--
    Their tops just lift off, in one piece.

And when stagecoaches fired on by unfriendly forces
    Are chased twenty miles without rest,
No one ever thinks to shoot one of the horses--
    That’d make things too simple, I guess.

More examples? Okay. Taking showers is deadly–
    It’s better to just stay unclean,
And movie blood glistens a trifle too redly,
    And windows don’t ever have screens.

Drivers don’t watch the road and they don’t lock their cars,
    People never use washcloths, just soap;
And the strength of a jail window’s solid iron bars
    Are no match for a nag and a rope.

So the next time you witness an in-progress plot
    To commit a spectacular crime,
Just step in and save everyone on the spot–
    In the movies it’s done all the time.

NOTE: I once heard that someone asked Stagecoach director John Ford why the pursuing Indians didn't just shoot one of the horses in the team, during the long chase. He said, "Because that would've been the end of the movie." 

Okay, enough of that. To you writers who are fellow movie addicts, what are some differences you have noticed, between film and reality? Were some of them wrong enough to be silly? What movies were the worst offenders? And remember--don't do that kind of thing in your stories!

Thanks for indulging me. See you in two weeks.