Piecès de Résistance in Hollywood Moviemaking

[Joe Carillo]

Piecès de Résistance in Hollywood Moviemaking

I couldn’t resist resurrecting this wryly amusing collection of supposed ground rules for scripting Hollywood movies. I found them lumped with several other humor collections that I posted in the Forum way back when it was just starting in 2009. I just hope that local scriptwriters and movie directors will not fall for these cinematic visual clichés in doing Filipino movies—or is my caveat too late because they may have already been doing precisely the same things over and over again like their Hollywood counterparts?

MISCELLANEOUS RULES FOR LIFE ON THE SILVER SCREEN:

1. During all police investigations it will be necessary to visit a strip club at least once.



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2. All telephone numbers in America begin with the digits 555.

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3. Most dogs are immortal.
 
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4. If being chased through town, you can usually take cover in a passing St. Patrick’s Day parade—at any time of the year.



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5. All grocery shopping bags contain at least one stick of French Bread.

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6. It’s easy for anyone to land a plane providing there is someone in the control tower to talk you down.

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7. Once applied, lipstick will never rub off –even while scuba diving.

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8. The ventilation system of any building is the perfect hiding place. No one will ever think of looking for you in there and you can travel to any other part of the building you wish without difficulty.

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9. All beds have special L-shaped cover sheets which reach up to the armpit level on a woman but only to waist level on the man lying beside her.



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10. If you need to reload your gun, you will always have more ammunition—even if you haven’t been carrying any before now.

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11. Should you wish to pass yourself off as a German officer, it will not be necessary to speak the language. A German accent will do.

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12. You’re very likely to survive any battle in any war unless you make the mistake of showing someone a picture of your sweetheart back home.



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13. If your town is threatened by an imminent natural disaster or killer beast, the mayor’s first concern will be the tourist trade or his forthcoming art exhibition.

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14. The Eiffel Tower can be seen from any window in Paris.

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15. A man will show no pain while taking the most ferocious beating but will wince when a woman tries to clean his wounds.



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16. If a large pane of glass is visible, someone will be thrown through it before long.

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17. The Chief of Police is always black.

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18. When paying for a taxi, don’t look at your wallet as you take out a bill—just grab one at random and hand it over. It will always be the exact fare.



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19. Interbreeding is genetically possible with any creature from elsewhere in the universe.

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20. Kitchens don’t have light switches. When entering a kitchen at night, you should open the fridge door and use that light instead.

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21. If staying in a haunted house, women should investigate any strange noises in their most revealing underwear.



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22. Word processors never display a cursor on screen but will always say: Enter Password Now.

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23. Mothers routinely cook eggs, bacon, and waffles for their family every morning even though their husband and children never have time to eat it.

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24. Cars that crash will almost always burst into flames.



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25. The Chief of Police will always suspend his star detective—or give him 48 hours to finish the job.

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26. A single match will be sufficient to light up a room the size of RFK Stadium.

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27. When they are alone, all foreigners prefer to speak English to each other.


 
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28. Although in the 20th century it is possible to fire weapons at an object out of our visual range, people of the 23rd century will have lost this technology.

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29. Any person waking from a nightmare will sit bolt upright and pant.

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30. It is not necessary to say hello or goodbye when beginning or ending phone conversations.



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31. Even when driving down a perfectly straight road it is necessary to turn the steering wheel vigorously from left to right every few moments.

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32. All bombs are fitted with electronic timing devices with large red readouts so you know exactly when they’re going to go off.

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33. It is always possible to park directly outside the building you are visiting.

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34. A detective can only solve a case once he has been suspended from duty.

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35. If you decide to start dancing in the street, everyone you bump into will know all the steps.



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36. Most laptop computers are powerful enough to override the communication systems of any invading alien civilization.

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37. It does not matter if you are heavily outnumbered in a fight involving martial arts—your enemies will wait patiently to attack you one by one by dancing around in a threatening manner until you have knocked out their predecessors.

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38. When a person is knocked unconscious by a blow to the head, they will never suffer a concussion or brain damage.

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39. No one involved in a car chase, hijacking, explosion, volcanic eruption or alien invasion will ever go into shock.

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40. Police Departments give their officers personality tests to make sure they are deliberately assigned a partner who is their total opposite.



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41. Any lock can be picked by a credit card or a paper clip in seconds—unless it’s the door to a burning building with a child trapped inside.

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42. Television news bulletins usually contain a story that affects you personally at that precise moment.

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43. An electric fence, powerful enough to kill a dinosaur, will cause no lasting damage to an eight-year-old child.



44. Medieval peasants had perfect teeth.

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45. You can always find a chainsaw when you need one.


(This humor collection was drawn from various sources on the web way back in 2009. Owing to the preponderance of the postings of this collection in various websites, no specific attribution for authorship could be reliably established. All of the illustrative visuals are recent additions collected from various sources. My sincere thanks and appreciation to the unknown originators of this terrific humor collection and the accompanying visuals. They are simply too good not to share.)