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“I’m Getting Too Old For This Sh!t!”

Movie Clichés I Never Want to See Again

 

 

 

·        The opening of film on water, panning up to distant cityscape as we fly towards city. So overdone, so lazy, please establish your location in a more original way.

• In an effort to show what a loser/how lonely a character is, they come home and go to the answering machine and instead of reading the digital # readout like we all do, they press the button and we hear the female voice announce “You have no messages.”

·        Person being chased reaches car or home. Door is locked, retrieves keys and drops them.

·        One character has something important to say, something that will change everything but when they are about to say what they need to say, the other person will interrupt but then will say, “Sorry, go ahead.” But will be told “No, you go ahead.” And as a result, whatever it is the other person says will result in main character not saying what they were about to say. Even worse if afterwards the other person says, “I’m sorry, you were going to say something.”

·        If the driver is speaking to the passenger, they will spend an impossibly long time staring at the passenger instead of at the road. Somehow they NEVER rear end the car in front of them.

• “I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you.” Seriously, can everyone PLEASE agree to delete this phrase from our collective consciousness?

·        The person who notices some wet substance on the ground or wherever and bends down to run a finger through it, look at the finger (often rubbing two fingers together) and usually realize it’s blood.

·        If you’re a woman and there is a killer on the loose, just take a relaxing bath and he will find you.

·        If a person with important information to reveal tells the detective to come by at such and such a time and he will tell him all the info, he will be dead when the detective arrives.

·        If a person good person dies with his eyes open, a friend will close them, and they will remain closed. If a villain dies with his eyes open, no one will close them, and the camera will linger on his face.

·        All characters keep detailed newsclippings of important events in their lives, particularly those events that must be painful to recall, such as the loss of the character’s immediate family due to their own negligence. NB: If the news report would have come out while the character was in jail or on the run, all the more reason for the character to have kept it intact.

·        If a person’s clothes get snagged on something, they tear very easily and leave a large, noticeable chunk behind. The Person trying to not be found never seems to realize this has occurred.

·        If the movie is animated, one of the kid’s parents will be dead. This is almost always the mother.

·        If there are three or more sisters in the movie, one of the sisters will be extremely neurotic and married to a lawyer/doctor/shrink, one will be single and looking for love (the lead) and one will be a mother with at least two kids (a boy and a girl or two girls, never two boys).

·        Every sword/knife pulled from a holder always makes a metal against metal sound

·        All movie mothers will prepare a breakfast, usually consisting of scrambled eggs, bacon, etc. Dad and the kids will invariably arrive at the table 30 seconds before Dad has to leave for the office and the kids have to catch the school bus. Each will have time only for a sip of coffee/juice and/or one bite of toast. There must be enough food left over in these homes to feed a third world nation!

·        Beverages are served either half full or completely empty (especially coffee).

·        Coffee is never served steaming hot unless it is for comedic reasons

·        When a helicopter is hit by a bullet or rocket, it’ll explode immediately if it contains a villain, but if the hero is on board, it will loose power, smoke will come out of the doors, and it’ll just reach the ground in time for the hero to get clear then duck just at the moment it explodes.

·        Whenever a hero enters a dark room where he feels confident in being alone, someone (villain) will be sitting in a chair waiting for hero to turn on the lights before speaking. Sometimes intruder will be the one to turn on the light.

·        The hero will always refuse the assistance of friends or medical personnel after a fight. If the hero gets into a second fight, his most injured body part will always be punched or kicked.

·        A hero will show no pain even during the most terrific beating, yet he will wince if a women attempts to clean a facial wound.

·        The bad guy has the good guy in his sights, his trigger finger poised to squeeze off a life-ending round. A shot rings out, and we shudder—but the hero does not fall. As he frantically checks his body for the mortal wound he must have sustained, a dazed look overcomes the villain’s face, and he slumps to the floor. Then, and only then, the camera reveals a gun-toting savior who blew away the baddie before he could kill our protagonist.

·        Like above, only hero and villain are in a life and death struggle with gun, it goes off, who got hit? The same with a struggle over a knife. Any close up struggle with a pointy object will result in death.

·        Walking toward the camera in slow motion as a massive explosion happens in the background, without flinching, and miraculously not being hit by any shrapnel

·        In a scary movie, if someone is looking in the refrigerator for a late night snack, when they close the refrigerator/freezer door, the killer will be standing there OR a friend/parent will be standing there, startling them.

·        Surprise cat appearances. Almost always shrieking for no good reason.

·        Character in vehicle, glances in rear view mirror, nothing suspicious, character reaches for something (radio), sits back up, eyes go back to rear view mirror, killer’s eyes looking back.

·        Character stepping lightly past killer’s body only to have him reach out and grab their ankle

·        Any movie in New Orleans takes place during Maudi Gras

·        The super-sped up cityscape. This scene requires shots of a moving and setting sun, buildings lighting up, and people zipping around.

·        Eight to ten-year-old kids are the best computer hackers on earth and can break into any system.

·        Anytime anybody picks up pieces of a broken glass they will ALWAYS cut their finger. They will also always suck their breath in through their teeth and stick the injured finger in their mouth.

• When someone, usually the hero, appears to be shot fatally but a few minutes later, when the camera goes back to them -What’s This!- they aren’t dead after all. They will ALWAYS groan, reach up with both hands and rip open their shirt (nobody cares about buttons in the movies!) revealing the –SHOCKER!- bullet-proof vest (even though the obvious bulge from a bullet-proof vest was never visible under their clothes in the previous scene). They will then pluck the bullet from the indentation, stare at it and drop it to the ground. Occasionally the person will do something that defies all reason; they will REMOVE THE VEST and go after the bad guy. Because, as everyone knows, when a bullet-proof vest takes a hit or two they are rendered useless. Again, I have two words for all bad guys: HEAD SHOT!

 

·        When ever a person is being chased on foot, regardless of the time of year or city, there will be some sort of parade to try and loose your pursuer in.

·        Any time a secret tracking device is used so the bad guy can track the good guy, the tracking device will have a blinking red light AND when the camera gets a close up we can hear it beeping. An AUDIBLE secret tracking device? Really? See Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls.

·        When the power plant/missile site/whatever overheats, all the control panels will explode, as will the entire building.

·        When the tech guy is given a blurry, extremely pixilated part of an image (i.e. license plate) and they are able to clear it up to crystal clear, easily readable condition

·        Making hacking look cool by making the computer’s mainframe look like some sweet virtual world of colorful corridors and cubes you need to click on.

·        If it’s a tavern in a western, some grizzled old f*ck will spit tobacco juice in response to our hero entering.

 

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WOOD

 

WOOD

• Heroes and villains can successfully use wood, no matter how thin, as a safe shield against bullets of any caliber. Every table is bulletproof.

• When crossing a rotting suspended bridge, with well spaced wooden slats, the slat will always break when a woman steps on it. Also, it is odd that the wood will rot away long before the vine ropes begin to rot!

• Little league teams in movie land still use bats made of wood while every other little league team is forced to use aluminum bats.

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WOMEN

 

WOMEN

• Women will always have shaved legs and armpits, even in Elizabethan, Middle-Ages and Caveman movies.

• Women will be worrying about their nails or dresses while people are trying to kill them. (see also CHASES)

• Women stand wide-eyed, hand to mouth, while hero battles villain. Women never thinks to clonk villain with handy object. Counterpoint: If woman does clonk, she always hits hero instead.

• Women always fight other movie women by pulling hair, falling to ground together, rolling over twice.

• High-powered female executives always wear miniskirts and five-inch heels to work

• Beautiful women will always fawn over an action hero, no matter what sexist remarks he makes to them.

• A female lead with feminist leanings will always despise a macho hero-until the first time he rescues her from certain death. She will then become totally conventional and dependent. Once she does this, the hero will become vulnerable and tell her about some tragic loss that will explain his belligerent attitude.

• Women wear make-up to bed, and wake up with hair and face completely intact.

• Women don’t need to go to the bathroom when they get up but will shower frequently.

• If a woman is ever revealed/shown to be pregnant, she will deliver before the movie ends.

• Women also scream or make some other noise at the precise moment the villain is close enough to hear.

• Women always stand and watch the cars that are about to run them over, OR the bad-guys that are about to shoot them (even if there’s cover close by).

• Women always stuff their fist(s) in their mouths when terrified.

• Women always have to be rescued by the hero, no matter how capable they are themselves.

• Women always have to be taken hostage. To make matters worse, the female’s captivity is always announced at the same point: when our hero has the bad guy right where he wants him (with a gun to his head, hanging upside down outside a skyscraper, etc). Cue the phone call from the villain’s associates, the nervous hostage crying for help. What would have happened if the hero had just killed villain without giving him a chance to inform him of the kidnapping.

• Women are always too hysterical to do what the hero instructs. He has to help/force her/knock her out.

• Ex or estranged wives, if kidnapped or used by villains against hero, will fall back in love with hero ex.

• A woman can become an expert in nuclear fusion/bio-whatever, etc. by the age of 22. But only if she looks like a super model.

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WEATHER

WEATHER:

•   Snow flakes that land on people never melt

• It’s never so cold that people’s breath is visible

• When it rains, it is always a torrential downpour

• When it is extremely hot, only the men pit their shirts

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WEAPONS

 

WEAPONS

• Major characters never run out of ammunition, nor do they ever have to reload. (If the movie does make them reload, they never have to actually carry any spare ammo until that scene) Worse when it’s a person with a six shot revolver in a Western (Open Range).

• Henchmen (even elite types) can not hit the broad side of the barn but hero is a sharp shooter.

• Assassins will always wait ‘till the very last moment to assemble their complex sniper weapon (often a pistol the size of a rifle).

• Guy points gun at person, makes threat. When doesn’t receive response he wants, cocks gun. See, now he’s serious.

• A character is given something of significance and places it in the shirt pocket over their heart; it will stop a bullet from killing him. Photos of loved ones, religious medals, and bibles can stop bullets better than a bullet proof vest.

• If your black, you must hold your gun sideways and you must gesticulate with it to prove your tough.

• The first shot or burst of fire from a bad guy always misses, and is there just to announce that a fight will be taking place.

• Bad-guy hand grenades make noise and smoke, but no real damage; good-guy hand grenades are devastating but selective; they will destroy tanks, but won’t hurt the thrower, even if he drops one on his toe. Bad-guy grenades used by good guys become good-guy grenades, and vice versa.

• When the villain runs out of bullets, he’ll throw away his gun. When the hero does so, he’ll conveniently come across another.

• Machine guns submerged underwater for a long time won’t jam or misfire when the hero pops up to use them. (see any Rambo movie)

• When people aim a rifle with binocular-sight at someone on a very long distance, they manage to keep them in the bull’s-eye all the time even if they move around.

• The good guy will appear to be shot, perhaps dozens of times. He will fall down, and presumably be dead, but will later miraculously turn out to have had the foresight to wear a bulletproof vest, armor plating, or even a silver tray to protect his torso (Batman). No one will ever shoot him in the head, where he is unprotected. Afterwards, instead of learning from his extremely good fortune, he reveals/removes his protection, confident that the same situation cannot recur in his movie.

• When superheroes like Batman or Robocop use high technology to protect themselves, the bad guys never take advantage of obvious weaknesses, such as no face protection.

• Characters use silencers on revolvers… and it works.

• In 50% of action movies made after 1988, “Teflon Coated Cop Killer Bullets” will be referred to.

• Characters do not value their guns. When they run out of bullets they just throw them away.

• No movie character will ever use or refer to a safety on any firearm.

• No movie character will ever use a .22-caliber weapon.

• The cowboy who exchanges a dozen shots with the bad guys without hitting one will nevertheless be able to hit and detonate a stick of dynamite from 150 feet away with a revolver on the first try.

• Once a character has flipped up the long range site on his rifle, he will always make his next shot.

• Bullets removed from shooting victims and displayed to the camera will not be misshapen in any way from the impact – and will sometimes even still have the casing attached.

• Shots fired at the rear of a vehicle will cause the gas tank to explode.

• Shots fired at windshields never deflect; they always penetrate and hit the bad guy in the forehead. If the good guy is driving, he’ll simply have to duck a little to avoid them.

• Shots fired at guys hiding around corners never whiz past; they always strike the edge of the building near the character’s face.

• Shots fired in Westerns that do not hit a character always ricochet loudly.

• If there is a trough of water present in a Western gunfight scene, at least one shot will splash spectacularly in the water.

• Western characters are never shot in the legs while hiding behind wagons.

• No gun will ever jam or misfire after a quick-draw.

• In a duel or in a gunfight between two characters standing in a street, at least one character is always hit on the first exchange of gunfire.

• Shurrikens and thrown knives never miss, (pinning a character’s clothing to a wall or tree not withstanding).

• Horses are never wounded in horseback gunfights.

• Even weapons experts will freeze when confronted with a weapon which is not in firing condition-ie an un-cocked single action revolver or a submachine gun with its breech closed (also un-cocked). The person holding the gun must make several moves to fire the gun, and the adversary could just reach out and take the weapon, but the dope just freezes even though often it is obvious that the cylinder is devoid of any ammo.

• Movie gunmen never lock and load their weapons when anticipating a life-or-death confrontation. Oh they have their weapons drawn, but not charged with a round in the chamber. They usually (always when carrying a pump-action shotgun) wait until they confront their quarry to slam a round into the chamber with a dramatic ca-chunking noise.

• Bullets, even though they are only pieces of lead-sometimes encased in copper, always make little explosions when they strike any kind of inanimate object.

• All sub machine guns sound alike and have the same rate of fire

• If you are a cowboy, aiming your rifle while using your horse as a support will always assure a first round hit.

• All automatic weapons must be cocked in order to be fired, but bolt action weapons can fire two or three times without being cocked!

• You can never un-jam a weapon by just pulling back the bolt and rechambering another round, ‘though that will work 99 times out of 100 in real life.

• If you need a gun in an American house, you’ll find it in a shoe box, under a sweater on the top shelf of the closet.

• Big dramatic moment when one character is going to shoot/kill another but when they pull the trigger the gun goes click and some frantic hand to hand fight or chase ensues. This usually happens after some sort of speech that reveals some important information.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. WEAPONS) above.

WAR

 

WAR

• You’re very likely to survive any battle in any war, unless you show someone a picture of your sweetheart back home.

• Every army platoon has at least one, usually black, member who can play the harmonica.

• All G.I.s know how to make a still out of a jeep radiator.

• If a soldier tries to look up an old buddy who was transferred to different unit, the buddy will be dead, or will die shortly there after.

• If a main character dies, his sweetheart back home will have nightmare at that exact same moment

• New replacements always get killed before you can even learn their names.

• The hero’s weapon is always different from everyone else’s.

• Every unit has a “Scrounge” who can get you anything from an atomic bomb to a date with the general’s daughter for a bottle of cheap scotch, or vice-versa.

• The platoon sergeant never has a grenade on him, so he always asks someone else for the grenade, then pulls the pin out with his teeth. (which will usually cause you to lose teeth before extracting the pin!)

• Everyone who joins an Airborne (parachute) outfit doesn’t understand why anyone would jump out of perfectly good airplane.

• Elite units (Special Forces, Rangers, Commandos) are always recruited from convicts and other socially degenerate segments of society.

• Elite units are always considered expendable even though they cost much much more to train and maintain.

• Roger, wilco-over and out. nuff said. Radio transmissions are always improper.

• The German Army always uses U. S. Patton Tanks.

• Cannons, howitzers, and main tank guns NEVER recoil, unless it’s old documentary footage.

• The battle hardened vet will always fall on a grenade for the new guy, rather than picking up the grenade and throwing it away, or jumping out of the fox hole.

• Fox holes never have overhead protection, or grenade pits.

• Only the “Japs” and the “VC” bother to use booby traps.

• German soldier always wear grey uniforms and jack-boots, though these uniforms were pretty much phased out by mid 1943.

• SS soldiers always wear there dress black uniform.

• Only the Marines fought the war in the Pacific. No Army personnel were involved.

• The military hero always carries a special knife with an 11 inch + blade and a hollow handle with all sorts of gadgets. (most soldiers stick with the standard bayonet [6 in blade], Marine Corps Fighting knife [7 in blade], or air force [5 ½ in blade] survival knife. None have hollow handles because hollow handles break too easily)

• Snipers always know exactly where someone will pop there head out of trench and soldiers in trenches never use mirrors or periscopes, like they did in World War One.

• Any kid, or dog for that matter can wonder around through an artillery barrage and not get killed while half the outfit will always get wiped out.

• No one will shoot the hero and the battle will even come to a stand still while the hero cries in agony and curse that “it should’ve been him” when his best friend steps on the land mine/get blown up/ dies charging the machine gun nest. The battle will resume as soon as the hero gets over his grief and gets angry. The hero will be victorious within 45 seconds of becoming angry.

• Any machine gun nest can be approached from behind without difficulty, but not until half the unit has been wiped out.

• Soldiers will ask for keys for military vehicles even though these vehicles don’t use keys.

• If soldiers start to eat/drink/change socks/go to the bathroom, they will get orders to move out immediately.

• Soldiers will always make a comment about the food, usually something along the line of “I stepped in it but I’ve never ate it” or “if we feed this to the “krauts” we’d win the war tomorrow”.

• Soldiers and sailors must have at least on bar room brawl usually followed by a scene where they come to each others mutual aid the next day.

• There has to be a scene involving giving chocolate to children or nylons/cigarettes to women in a WW II movie. The soldiers never try to take advantage of the situation by asking for sexual favors in return.

• There is also an obligatory scene where a soldier reads a travel brochure about beautiful Italy/Germany/France/Guam/ while the camera pans across the blown up country side.

• If the travel guide scene is omitted, you’ll be treated with the scene where a soldier comments about how nice everything looks, too bad there’s a war going on, he’s going to come back when this is all over. He’ll be shot by a sniper shortly after this scene.

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VILLAINS

 

VILLAINS

• The bad guy is the foreigner.

• Corollary: the foreigner is the guy who speaks English with an English accent

• The bad guy also has a side-kick muscleman, who has some sort of trademark gimmick that he/she uses to eliminate opponents. You must kill or decommission this muscleman by forcing a backfiring of this trademarked gimmick. If the muscleman dispatched by a different method, he/she is not dead. (For that matter, don’t assume that anyone is dead unless their death was spectacular. Beware sequels.)

• No matter how dead you think you’ve killed a bad guy, he can still get up at least 3 more times. Therefore, always make sure to leave his gun in or near his hand after you’ve killed him and you turn away to comfort the girl.

• When a villain seems dead, he never is. He will always be allowed one, and sometimes two resurrections. This is guaranteed to occur if hero is foolish enough to turn his back on villain’s body. The hero will frequently see him coming, even if his back is turned but if he doesn’t, a friend will finish the villain off.

• The bad guy usually kills his henchman for failing, yet don’t seem to run out of loyal henchmen.

• Bad guys lurk until their presence is revealed by a flash of lightning or passing vehicle.

• You can kill the bad guy by taking careful note of any object that the camera has lingered on for an unnecessarily length of time; typically this is something like a meat hook or a jagged bit of glass. You will be involved in a mighty struggle, and at the appropriate time you can become inspired (usually by either an insult from the bad guy or a look of faith from your love interest) with strength enough to force the bad guy into/onto/under/in front of the aforementioned object. Actor’s Equity (Hollywood) requires that within 15 seconds either side of the bad guy’s demise, you utter your trademark phrase.

• Whenever a villain has captured the hero, he will pause for 5 minutes to tell the hero every detail of his plan to destroy and/or rule the earth, including times, dates, and addresses.

• The villain, instead of simply offing the captured hero on the spot, will devise some sort of drawn-out, fiendishly clever method of execution that will take enough time to allow the good guy to figure out his escape. What do you mean Bond used a saw in his watch to cut the ropes and free himself? How unlikely! Perhaps I should have stayed and made sure the laser cut him in half, eh? Uh, yeah.

• You can always tell which nationality the United States and the popular media are currently most unhappy with because that nation sends all their villains to star in Hollywood movies during those times (e.g. Germans in the late 40’s and 50’s, Asians in the 60’s and 70’s, Soviets in the 70’s and 80’s and Middle Easterners in the 90’s).

• Big dramatic moment when villain is going to shoot/kill hero but when they pull the trigger the gun goes click and some frantic hand to hand fight or chase ensues. This usually happens after some sort of speech that reveals some important information. Worse, when it happens to both villain and hero’s guns at same time. See: The Matrix, ‘Desperado,’ ‘Face/Off,’ ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith,’ ‘Mission: Impossible’

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TRAVEL

 

TRAVEL

• Transportation always arrives and leaves on time. Unless used for comedic effect.

• Characters arrive at the airport and get right on the plane. No two hour wait for them.

• Movie characters’ suitcases are always weightless when they have to carry them.

• In emergencies, anyone can pick up flying a helicopter.

• Movie characters never suffer from motion sickness.

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TRAFFIC

 

TRAFFIC

• When a main character has to cross the street (in one of the slower parts of the movie), he/she can always cross the street immediately. Of course, he/she jogs across in order to miss the one car that drives by after they cross.

• If there is traffic, then that means that the movie is at a more intense part (like a chase scene) in which case there are a lot of cars that crash into each other. None of the important characters get hurt, the accident is never heard on the news, and nobody sues anybody important. Very few people even get out of their cars, and yet, no airbags are to be seen.

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TIME

 

TIME

• Movie timing is always exact. If a phone trace will take two minutes, for example, you can be sure that that means 120 seconds, not a fraction more or less. Same for bombs, amount of time to get to a destination, etc.

• Corollary to the above: all characters in a movie have their watches perfectly synchronized.

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STAIRS

 

STAIRS

• Whenever anyone is chased to a staircase, s/he will run upstairs rather than down.

• If someone falls on stairs or is pushed from the top, they will always tumble ALL THE WAY DOWN to the bottom. They never get stuck halfway down or get tangled up with the banister.

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SPORTS

 

SPORTS

• In any type of sport movie, a player on the field can look up into a crowd of 1 billion and immediately spot their loved one.

• The underdogs always make an amazing comeback in the last game and win.

• Final possession always belongs to the underdog team.

• The winning basket/touchdown/goal always takes place as the clocks hits 00:00.

• The mean coach of the enemy team always kicks something after his team looses.

• Prayer is always involved in game rituals.

• The fallacy that on any cheerleading squad there is one whore. Reality: They’re all whores.

• Suggesting that anyone who has desired to be a professional athlete in the past 10 years is motivated by anything other than money and fame.

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SPACESHIPS

 

SPACESHIPS

• Spaceships make noise!

• Spaceships always fly perpendicular to the same axis. When two spacecraft encounter each other, they’re always aligned on a plane and never approach at odd angles.

• If a spaceship runs out of fuel or looses power it comes to a stop. In reality it would keep going at its previous velocity indefinitely.

• All spaceships, no matter how small, have internal artificial gravity and no matter how badly your ship gets pummeled by the evil aliens in the evil alien ship, no matter how many external panels get blown away, no matter how many sparks or how much smoke pours out of your control panels, the artificial gravity will always keep working.

• There are tiny cameras mounted everywhere, on every panel, in your spaceship. No matter what happens anywhere in‘the ship, you will always be able to ask the computer to replay the scene for you later (even if the computer went up in smoke) and unlike those blurry convenience store cameras, your tiny ship cameras always capture everyone’s actions at eye-level with perfect lighting.

• Warp or hyper-drive will always fail at critical moments.

• Inertial dampers will always prevent passengers from being plastered against the walls during acceleration into warp speed, yet any explosion will send passengers reeling across the room.

• In a spaceship battle scene, for a ship to fire a weapon at another, it must be in visual range. Even though the 20^th century saw the advent of weapons that can be fired without visual contact, the people of the future have lost this technology.

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SPACE & VACUUM

 

SPACE & VACUUM

• Explosions in space make noise

• Exposure to the vacuum of space makes you horribly swell up and/or explode within seconds (ex. “Total Recall”, “Outland”)

• There’s a deep humming in space, no doubt about it.

• Space is not Newtonian; spacecraft can’t ‘coast’, but just stop dead if they run out of fuel or power.

• Laser beams are visible in vacuum.

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SMOKING

 

SMOKING

• Smokers smoke only when there is a romantic or dramatic reason to. At other times the smoker has no need of cigarettes.

• All villains smoke.

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SKYDIVING

 

SKYDIVING

• You got plenty of time up there, often a couple of minutes.

• You can almost talk casually to all your skydiving friends on the way down.

• If you don’t have a parachute, just cling on to someone who has got one and don’t let go until you’re down.

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SIGNALS

 

SIGNALS

• If the tapping sound or flashing light represents Morse code, there’s always someone around that can interpret the message.

• When Morse Code is used, the interpreter will call out words as they are being sent, rather than letters. Furthermore, a single word is represented by a few “beeps”, and all words are sent at the same rate, no matter how long the word is. Example:
  beep-beep-be-beep…
  “Help…”
  be-be-beep beep…
  “Us…”
  beep-be-be-beep beep…
  “We’re…”
  beep beep-be-beep…
  “Surrounded…”
  be-beep beep beep…
  “Send…”
  be-be-be-beep beep…
  “Reinforcements…”
  beep be-beep beep…
  “Hurry…”
  etc.

• A message in Morse Code will start several seconds before someone actually interprets it; however, no information is lost, as the message actually begins when the interpreter starts to read it.

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SHOPPING

 

SHOPPING

• When bringing home bags of groceries in a film, it’s required that you spill at least one bagful on the kitchen floor.

• Bags of groceries are never heavy.

• Whenever anyone in a movie goes shopping, they always come back with stuff sticking out of the top of the shopping bag, usually carrot tops and French bread.

• Corollary: every shopping bag contains at least one baguette (loaf of french bread).

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. SHOPPING) above.

SEX

SEX

• All beds have a special L-shaped top sheet, which reaches up to armpit level on women but only to waist level on men.

• No-one ever needs a Kleenex after sex.

• If you’re a woman in a film and have just finished a steamy lovemaking session, make sure to lay back and pull the sheets up to your neck, just like in real life.

• All women moan during sex, but none sweat.

• Regardless of whatever the person was doing up to this point in the day, they are always ready for this most intimate of acts. They never have to go wash anything to prepare.

• Post sex modesty. Hey, thanks for fucking me like there was no tomorrow, now let me wrap this sheet around me like a burqa and go to the bathroom. Or we’ll just lay in bed with the L-shaped sheet mentioned above.

• Men retain their underpants in bed – and replace them after sex (usually whilst sitting on the side of the bed, and before standing up).

• Women (and men less often) either make love with their underclothes on or have put them back on in the immediate aftermath.

• After the fight, one of the people ends up going to the bar, getting drunk, flirting with some chick, cut to next morning, phone rings, it’s the significant other saying sorry, I love you. Person in bed looks over and oops, there’s someone in bed with them! OMG!

• Two total strangers, upon falling into bed together, will always reach an incredibly intense, mutual, and SIMULTANEOUS orgasm on the first try.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. SEX) above.

SCHOOL

 

SCHOOL

• If you’re a high school student in a film, you will always get one of the preferable eye-level lockers.

• In all high school or college classrooms, the teacher or professor will always be interrupted in mid-sentence by the end-of-class bell.

• In every school, there is at least one nerd or wimp that is shoved into lockers that are big enough to hold them.

• High Schools are always either in the middle of a city or a car ride away from the beach.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. SCHOOL) above.

ROPES

 

ROPES

• When people are tied up in the movies, which is usually loosely and incompetently, they can’t escape without finding some convenient device to burn or cut through the ropes.

• Corollary 1: There is always a convenient device at hand.

• Corollary 2: If the method involves burning the ropes, the person’s hands will be tied at least a foot apart.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. ROPES) above.

ROMANCE

 

ROMANCE

• People meeting cute by one character, usually the girl, dropping some stuff and they both bend over to pick up the stuff. Even worse if they bump heads.

• Meeting cute by both reaching for the same thing at the same time. Worse if it is the last one and the man lets the girl have it.

• The two male and female leads, who don’t really like each other (yet), are being pursued and in order to avoid being spotted by their pursuers they make out. This is, of course, their first kiss and will usually be cold but then become hot. The two will inevitably fall for each other.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. ROMANCE) above.

RESTROOMS

 

RESTROOMS

• In film, no one uses the restroom, except as a venue for escape. If there are multiple people in the restroom, expect a minor character revelation while they stand at the mirror

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. RESTROOMS) above.

RADIO, TV & VIDEO

 

RADIO, TV & VIDEO

• § A character turns on the radio just in time to hear a special announcement or some important news item. Then turns the radio off.

CLICK
“Three escaped lunatics have been spotted in blah blah blah.”
CLICK

• § One character telling another (usually in a phone call) to turn on the TV. When they do, TV will be on the exact channel necessary to see the news report that has just started (I guess caller was psychic) revealing pertinent information.

• § All televisions show cowboy-and-Indian chase scenes a large proportion of the time.

• § All VCRs in films are always cued up exactly to the portion of tape you want to show someone.

• § You will always be able to backwind the tape precisely to the beginning of the segment you want to see again.

• § Whenever anyone scans through a videotape or audio tape on home equipment you can hear the audio portion of the tape being fast forwarded or rewound.

• § Freeze frame is flawless.

• § Whenever someone reviews surveillance video taken from a preceding scene, the camera angle is never high above the actors, it’s right up close, and looks a lot like the angle the film camera used when shooting the picture. Additionally, the audio is always crisp and clear, there’s no background noise, because all security cameras come equipped with boom mikes.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. RADIO TV & VIDEO) above.

PRODUCT PLACEMENT

 

PRODUCT PLACEMENT

• Time will stand still when the hero is in the presence of a company logo.

• When a character picks up a bottle of whiskey or a pack of cigarettes, the label will always be clearly visible.

• If the producers find no company to invest into the picture, strange things happen to the world: gas stations have no brand names visible, stars use no-name airlines (they often crash!), all smokers use silver cases for their cigarettes.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. PRODUCT PLACEMENT) above.

PRISON

 

PRISON

• In jail, there must be a brutal guard and an evil scheming warden.

• Inside a prison there is always a boss among the convicts. Usually he’s black, blind and crippled surrounded by tough black musclemen, and he is the one the white hero has to see to get something.

• In a prison or a gym, when someone is about to be threatened, it usually takes place when the subject is on his back pumping iron and the bar is lowered onto his neck thus reshaping the windpipe and driving some point home.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. PRISON) above.

PREGNANCY & CHILDBIRTH

 

PREGNANCY & CHILDBIRTH

• The fact that a woman is pregnant or the fact that she notes her pregnancy is introduced by a scene where you hear the woman vomit.

• The unexpected pregnancy as plot device.

• Whenever a woman announces to her husband/boyfriend that she’s pregnant, it comes as a complete surprise to him, whether pleasantly or otherwise.

• No one is ever in labor for hours and hours… they pop out babies in a matter of minutes.

• No one is ever offered an epidural or medication, everyone uses Lamaze (pant method), but they often scream at & demean those around them.

• Most babies are born clean, with perfectly shaped heads and dry hair

• All movie babies are born HUGE, usually the size of the average two month old.

• Women who give birth are perfectly made up afterwards

• All women want to have the baby naturally but once labor starts they DEMAND that their doctor gives them drugs.

• If a woman isn’t thrilled by the idea of becoming a mommy, she and one of her girlfriends will go to the drug store and buy around ten different pregnancy tests (and these things ain’t cheap!). This will be followed by a scene of the two of them sitting on a bed surrounded by all the open boxes and used test sticks.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. PREGNANCY & CHILDBIRTH) above.

POLICE

 

POLICE

• Police Captains/lieutenants are always angry at their star detective and yell at him, threatening suspension if he doesn’t drop the case.

• Only after the detective has been suspended can he properly crack the case.

• Many police chiefs are in constant contact with their city’s mayor who will often “chew their ass out” about a single criminal investigation out of the thousands going on in a city. (note: See “I Married an Axe Murderer” for a hilarious send-up of the “mean chief” cliché.)

• The police will never question the hero, even if he kills lots of bad guys

• The cops never show up during massive gun battles in city streets that involve bystanders and exploding cars. After the fact, you might just hear a siren in the distance.

• More murders always happen during the investigation of the first one. The last living suspect is the murderer.

• Most homicide detectives are brooding, near-crazed loners, most likely divorced or widowed, borderline alcoholics. Of course, there are more respectable-looking detectives, but they are inept and not nearly as tough as their mentally-troubled colleagues.

• Many detectives are recruited directly from the police academy, therefore accounting for youthful “seasoned detectives” (see “Speed,” “Kuffs,” “Stakeout”).

• If you are a senior detective and are assigned a new partner, for some reason the department always partners you up with someone who is the complete opposite of you.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. POLICE) above.

PHONES

 

PHONES

• § All phone numbers begin with 555.
• § People speaking on the phone never introduce themselves, and never ever say “good-bye” at the end of a conversation.
• § A ringing phone is usually picked up within 3 seconds.
• § Don’t give the person on the other end of the phone time to say what they have to.
• § You also never have to look up a phone number, for anyone.
• § When a phone line is broken or someone hangs up unexpectedly, communication channels can be restored by frantically beating the cradle and saying “Hello? Hello?”
• § Always knock over the phone if it wakes you up. If you are expecting a call, make sure that you pull the covers up completely over your head so that knocking it over becomes easier. All houses have phones next to the bed.
• § There’s a dial tone to be heard on A’s phone immediately after B has hung up on his/her end.
• § The Movie Telephone Time Vortex.
  How often have you seen something like this:
  Phone rings. Hero/Heroine picks it up. “Hello. Yes. O.k. Right. Thanks, Goodbye.” (Total elapsed time on phone: 5 seconds.)
  Hero/Heroine turns to other character: “That was John. He says that the Marilyn left for the lawyer’s office about an hour ago, and she should have been there by now. He’s called the lawyer’s office but Marilyn apparently never got there. He also called Bill’s, thinking she’d stop by there, but Bill hasn’t seen her. John says he’s going to call Anne, as Marilyn said she and Ann were going to go shopping sometime today. If she’s not at Anne’s, he’s going to call the police. He suggests that we drive over to Mario’s and check with him as to whether or not Marilyn told Wally about the statue. However, he thinks this is unlikely as Marilyn doesn’t trust Wally, she only trusts us and Francisco. John also suggests we try to get in touch with Francisco . . . .”
• § Where, in order to relay to the audience what is being said on the other end of the line without cutting back and forth or allowing the audio to be heard, the listening character repeats everything back at the person on the other end, as in: Marilyn hasn’t shown up at the lawyer’s office yet? (PAUSE) And you already called Bill’s? (PAUSE) What did he say? (PAUSE) He hasn’t seen her either. (PAUSE) So, John’s getting nervous? (PAUSE) He’s going to call the police…
  If I’m not mistaken, the conversation must have gone like this:
  “Marilyn hasn’t shown up at the lawyer’s office yet.”
  “Marilyn hasn’t shown up at the lawyer’s office yet?”
  “No, and I’ve already called Bill’s.”
  “And you already called Bill’s?”
  “Yes.”
  “What did he say?”
  “He hasn’t seen her either.”
  “He hasn’t seen her either.”
  “John’s getting pretty nervous about this.”
  “So, John’s getting nervous?”
  “Yes, he’s going to call the police.”
  “He’s going to call the police…

This would be the last phone conversation I would ever have with this person.

• § When phone-calls are traced you can see a map on the screen with a beam closing in on the caller, and the caller always knows how long he can talk before he has to hang up to not be traced down. He always manages to say everything perfectly timed for 2 minutes.
• § Video-phones display pictures of the callers looking straight into the camera. The camera must be in the middle of their screen, in other words.
• § If the hero tries to call someone he needs urgently he won’t need more than three rings to know that he/she is not there.
• § If someone wants to call the hero, he/she will let the phone ring forever before hanging up, especially if the caller does not know that the hero has to fight his way to the phone through a bunch of bad guys.
• § A person is placing a phone call to a company, such as “Sports Illustrated” and the phone at the other end is picked up but we don’t cut to them, the person PLACING the call will say, “Hello, Sports Illustrated?”, as if they are checking to make sure they called the right place. What this means is that at a major company, someone is answering the phone with “hello” and that’s it! Not, “Hello, Sports Illustrated, can I help you?” or anything like that, just “Hello!”
• § Cell phones always showing no signal at just the time they’re needed most.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. PHONES) above.

NIGHTMARES

 

NIGHTMARES

• Any person waking from a nightmare will sit bolt upright (“boing!”) in bed. Instead of just lying there, panting as we try to figure out where the hell we are.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. NIGHTMARES) above.

MUSIC

MUSIC

• Many musical instruments – especially wind instruments and accordions – can be played without moving the fingers.

• Native musicians are highly skilled, and can make simple instrumental bands sound like a full light orchestra.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. MUSIC) above.

MOTORCYCLES

MOTORCYCLES

• Motorcycle engines in movies can inexplicably change from 4-stroke Otto cycle to 2-stroke cycle operation.

• Motorcycles usually change from Harley Davidson choppers when engaged in highway operations to Yamaha Dirt bikes when operated off-road (as in “Then Came Bronson”). Police Harleys will morph into Triumph Bonnevilles when operating in tight quarters (on the ship in “Magnum Force”).

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. MOTORCYCLES) above.

MONEY

MONEY

• Gangster’s Briefcases either contain weapons or banknotes. No one ever got coins at a robbery.

• Briefcases are designed to hold exactly three rows of banknotes. As if it had power by itself money likes to be sorted in nice packs and rows, even if it had been thrown into the briefcase by a terrified casher at a bank.

• When you use a movie taxi don’t ever give any change. Drivers won’t know what to do with it. Just say “thank you” when you pay a bill, reach into your pocket without looking, take out whatever note is in it – it will just fit. (see also CABS)

• Same is true in restaurants. Checks are always designed to be 15 percent under the sum the male customer has in his hands first.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. MONEY) above.

MISC

MISC:

• When someone, usually the hero, appears to be shot fatally but a few minutes later, when the camera goes back to them -What’s This!- they aren’t dead after all. They will ALWAYS groan, reach up with both hands and rip open their shirt (nobody cares about buttons in the movies!) revealing the -SHOCKER!- bullet-proof vest (even though the obvious bulge from a bullet-proof vest was never visible under their clothes in the previous scene). They will then pluck the bullet from the indentation, stare at it and drop it to the ground. Occasionally the person will do something that defies all reason; they will REMOVE THE VEST and go after the bad guy. Because, as everyone knows, when a bullet-proof vest takes a hit or two they are rendered useless. Again, I have two words for all bad guys: HEAD SHOT!

• Countdown is announced over the P.A. (often by a woman’s voice, ALWAYS with a woman’s voice if it’s a sci-fi movie).

• The villain happens to be close to someone that matters to the hero (daughter, girlfriend) when he is most desperate, usually near very end of movie. Villain takes person hostage, saying, “Drop the gun or she dies!” Hero drops gun almost every time.

• Ugly chick gets a makeover to become hot. Ugly chick is played by a super hot chick with a pair of glasses shoved on her face. I guess this trick doesn’t work with fat chicks with bad acne and pug noses.

• Dorky guy wants hot girl, by end of movie manages to finally get opportunity to have her but finally realizes that his female best friend is being played by Jessica Alba and decides he wants her instead.

• Ventilation shafts as means for escape and/or accessing any other parts of the building. How many are even capable of accepting an adult’s body? Also, they are always clean/new.

• The slow individual clapper that leads into crowd applause.

• The leads dance and all other dancers are so impressed/touched they stop dancing and form a circle to watch in appreciation. No one is ever irritated by these attention hogs.

• Person who visits the injured/dying friend in the hospital, apparently just before visiting hours are over, as inevitably a nurse will enter to inform them that “I’m sorry, sir, but visiting hours are over.”

• Kissing in the Rain

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

• A woman’s lip stick will never come off, even during a kiss, unless director is trying to create a laugh

• If you are part of a crew for the hero in a submarine drama you don’t need to worry about the enemy’s depth charges, they always explode 20+ feet away. But while you are waiting to see if you are going to die, stay silent and stare at the roof of the sub.

• In a submarine movie the pressure gauge must explode to show how much pressure the sub is under.

• Streets and parking lots always look like it just got finished raining.

• If someone hangs up on you after saying something hurtful you must stare at the phone for a few seconds before hanging up.

• If anyone goes fishing, they never come back empty handed.

• Handwriting is always improbably neat.

• Incriminating love letters can be found tied up with a neat ribbon in a shoebox or cigarette box.

• Passenger in vehicle with hand out window doing wave motion in wind

• The super-sped up cityscape. This scene requires shots of a moving and setting sun, buildings lighting up, and people zipping around.

• The opening of film on water, panning up to distant cityscape as we fly towards city. So overdone, so lazy, please establish your location in a more original way.

• Character crashing through panes of glass that immediately turns into harmless pebbles instead of artery slicing shards.

• Spontaneous, obviously choreographed group dances. Unless this is a musical, not gonna happen. But, Mattie! It’s Thriller! Doesn’t matter, FuckYou!

• The rousing the troops pre battle speech.

• The parent who wants their child to be a doctor/layer and is disappointed when they want to be an ‘artist’

• If a man has just woken up and is shown wearing boxers, he will always have an itchy ass.

• After fleeing a monster/killer, you will want to call for help from a public phone within ten feet of where you last saw the monster/killer.

• If the hero takes cover behind an average living room couch or chair it will somehow have the ability to stop bullets as if the thing was made of Kevlar.
• Anytime anybody picks up pieces of a broken glass they will ALWAYS cut their finger. They will also always suck their breath in through their teeth and stick the injured finger in their mouth.
• Whichever tree branch the hero has perched on, the person searching for them will invariably pause under it.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. MISC) above.

MINORITIES

MINORITIES

• Minorities such as Native Americans or Asians will always have some sort of mystical knowledge or innate fighting skill. For example, the Native American always knows the course of events to come from some sign in nature, and Asians are all born with Martial Arts skills they can use to battle the bad guys.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. MINORITIES) above.

MIDDLE AGES

MIDDLE AGES

• Medieval peasants always have filthy faces, tangled hair, ragged clothing – and perfect, gleaming white teeth. (cf. Braveheart, any Robin Hood movie).

• If you are a princess, you always have a favorite lady in waiting, and you always send her to warn the hero of the evil king’s intention just in time.

• Corollary: the lady in waiting is never quite as beautiful as the princess; however, she still always catches the eye of the hero’s sidekick.

• In a swordfight, you can always parry behind your back, and you must always find a set of stairs to fight on so that the loser can roll down them and die at the bottom.

• Horses never get winded; throw a shoe, etc., until the pursuing sheriff is right behind the hero.

• Corollary: the wagon that breaks an axle or gets stuck in the creek is always the one carrying the king’s entire treasury, which he totes around with him every time he goes gallivanting through bandit-infested countryside.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. MIDDLE AGES) above.

MEN

MEN

• When men drink whiskey, it is always in a shot glass, and they always drink it in one gulp. If they are wimps, they will gasp for air, then have a coughing fit. If they are macho, they will wince briefly, flashing clenched teeth.

• Men on rafts, jungles, deserts or other extended duty don’t have to carry razors because their beards don’t grow. Counterpoint: Unless they drink, in which case 3-day stubble appears in 3 hrs.

• Male lead is an Architect

• Men grabbing a previously worn item of clothing, giving it a sniff before deciding if they will wear it again.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. MEN) above.

MEDICAL

MEDICAL

• More often than not, the best method to revive somebody after their heart has stopped, assuming that there has already been a lengthy attempt to revive them with CPR, those electric zapperthings, ect., is screaming at them something like:
  • “You never backed away from everything in your life, now fight! Fight! FIIIIGHT!”
  •  or
    “You can’t do this to me! I love you, goddammit!”

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. MEDICAL) above.

LOCKS

LOCKS

• Any lock can be picked with a credit card or a paper clip. Any safe can be opened in a few minutes with a stethoscope or some high-tech equipment with lots of blinking lights.

• A single shot to any padlock will cause it to spring open (calling MythBusters!).

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. LOCKS) above.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

 

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION:

• In Paris, the Eiffel Tower can be seen from any location

• Any movie in New Orleans takes place during Maudi Gras

• Any movie in Brazil will take place during the annual celebration with all the half-naked women and costumes

• Large loft-style apartments in New York City are well within the price range of most people – whether they are employed or not.

• The super-sped up cityscape. This scene requires shots of a moving and setting sun, buildings lighting up, and people zipping around.

• The opening of film on water, panning up to distant cityscape as we fly towards city. So overdone, so lazy, please establish your location in a more original way.

• Obnoxiously adorable haircuts on the precocious kid. Shaggy near-mullets should be grounds for child abuse.

• Standing in the rain in the Christ pose.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. LOCATION) above.

LIGHT

LIGHT

• A malfunctioning or burnt light bulb usually means that someone is hiding in the room, ready to jump on our hero/heroine while he/she’s busy hitting the switch or tapping the bulb.

• When someone lights a match or lighter in a dark old house (etc) and it has as much power as a 1000 watt bulb! Alternatively, they light a match, and then light an old oil lamp which has a vast amount of power.

• When people switch a light off, it will still be possible to see everything in the room, just in a slightly subdued/bluish color…

• Light bulbs blow up when:
• o something psychic happens
• o someone opens the power box, rips out the biggest cable, and touches it to the rest of the stuff in there;
• o If the light bulbs are in a row, they blow in timed sequence.

• A car’s headlights are indestructible, even if ramming another vehicle in front of it.

• At night, outside, in the jungle/forest, everything is easily visible, almost as if lit by a blue light

• Whenever someone uses a flashlight (thanks X-Files) it looks like the batteries in it are just about dead.

• When investigating a crime scene, in order to create the right ambience, the lights will either be left off or will apparently only have 20 watt bulbs in them

• If a person enters a dark room and flips the light switch and nothing happens, they will flip the switch at least two more times to really make sure the lights aren’t coming on. They will never find this suspicious even if they know someone wants them dead.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. LIGHT) above.

LANGUAGE

  LANGUAGE

• Even when depicted as foreigners (including aliens from outer space) all actors speak and understand a common language (usually English) unless the film’s plot depends on a language barrier.

• When foreigners appear in movies (Hispanics in particular) they seem to be able to speak perfect English without making one single mistake except it seems they NEVER manage to learn how to say “Sir” or “Thank you”… they always say “Senor” and “Gracias”

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. LANGUAGE) above.

KNIVES

  KNIVES

• When you throw a knife, the blade will always be the first thing to hit the target

• unless you turn the knife around first.

• It doesn’t matter what type of knife is thrown: Swiss Army knives, butcher knives, table knives or swords.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. KNIVES) above.

KIDS/TEENAGERS

 

KIDS/TEENAGERS

• A kid always knows more than an adult.

• A kid can fend for himself even if his parents have gone to Paris, leaving him with no food, electricity, heat, money, etc.

• No child can ever be killed…even if they’re electrocuted on a high-voltage electric fence that could kill a dinosaur (Jurassic Park)

• Eight to ten-year-old kids are the best computer hackers on earth and can break into any system.

• Girls who can’t find a date to the prom in high school films are usually the girls that, in most high schools, would have almost every teenage boy asking them.

• The walls of a teenager’s bedroom or a twentyish adult’s apartment are always highly decorated, beyond anything sane, with every available inch of space covered with something cool.

• A movie teenager will always have a drainpipe situated next to his or her window. This drainpipe will be specially reinforced to hold their weight on escape.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. KIDS/TEENAGERS) above.

INJURIES

  Injuries:

• When the hero is knocked out, he won’t get a concussion or brain damage. People hit on the head will not throw up.
• When a hero gets a bloody nose, he’ll stop bleeding almost immediately.
• When a hero suffers through car chases and crashes, he never has to worry about unfelt spinal injury from impact.
• A slight blow to the head is usually enough to cause total amnesia
• Characters that get shot will never go into shock.
• The hero will always get shot in the shoulder, yet will be able to use his arm.
• Some sort of facial scar is likely to make you go insane and seek revenge for the rest of your life.
• A man will show no pain while taking the most ferocious beating but will wince in agony when a woman tries to clean his wounds.
• If you lose a hand, it causes the stump of your arm to grow by six inches.
• A lost hand either comes crawling back, or a mad surgeon will replace it with one transplanted from an executed strangler.
• If a person gets shot they have plenty of time to tell all kinds of things except the most important information (like the name of the murderer).
• Anytime anybody picks up pieces of a broken glass they will ALWAYS cut their finger. They will also always suck their breath in through their teeth and stick the injured finger in their mouth.
• A person shot to death will immediately do just that – die. Their bodies do not flop and jerk around for a few minutes as the muscles contract involuntarily and sporadically as the brain dies a slow electro-chemical death (as with real gun-shot deaths).

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. INJURIES) above.

INDEPENDENCE DAY (ID4)

   

INDEPENDENCE DAY (ID4)

• It is reasonable to assume that the quality of the training of United States Marine Corps pilots is such that any Marine fly boy could hop into an alien spacecraft and immediately be able to fly it into deep space.

• The White House press secretary has a listed phone number

• When stuck in a tunnel and faced with Armageddon in the form of a fireball that is capable of obliterating all life in Los Angeles, simply duck into a maintenance closet and let the end of the world pass you by. (Note: the door of the maintenance closet doesn’t even have to be closed as the fireball reaches you as long as the dog makes it inside)

• Despite the fact that we are able to send a fax from a beeper on our hip while walking down a street in San Francisco to a Range Rover in Johannesburg, alien spacecraft need to be hardwired to a satellite to speak to each other

• High class strippers with a heart of gold can operate most heavy equipment

• It is not beyond the realm of imagination that the President of the United States would be a fighter jock and would be willing to return to active duty to do battle with invincible alien bad guys

• Alien spacecraft the size of Australia can be taken out with one well-placed sidewinder missile

• Most laptops are configured with interfaces powerful enough to override the communications systems of the most sophisticated futuristic societies

• Despite the fact that they wear biomechanical body armor that can only be removed with a scalpel and the fact that they possess hyper-developed brains that allow them to destroy their enemies simply by thinking about it, alien fighter pilots have a glass jaw and can be knocked unconscious for hours with one punch

• If you are a woman who: 1)survives a blast from an alien spacecraft that wipes out Los Angeles 2)lives through the ensuing helicopter crash 3)survives while buried by rubble 4)survives despite being transported by open backed diesel truck across the worst terrain ever created…do not check into a military hospital with the best medical help money can buy because YOU WILL DIE

• Despite the fact that no living person, even on a clear day with a map and two state troopers providing an escort, can negotiate the Los Angeles freeway system without getting lost, nearly-blown-up women can drive through the shattered ruins of a decimated Los Angeles straight to El Toro

• When you crash an alien spacecraft into the high desert because you were hurtled back through the earth’s atmosphere by an atomic blast you set off, the fact that you do not have a parachute or any other visible means of slowing your fall does not mean that you should not walk away from the wreckage completely unscathed and straight into your girl’s arms

• The standard trip home from space, when assisted by an atomic blast, lasts approximately two to three pulls on a cigar

• Although aliens possess technological capabilities millions of years beyond our own that enables them to embed secret codes in our satellite network, they can be stymied by Morse Code, which is generally printed on the front panel of a child’s walkie talkie

• The most sophisticated labs in the world have impenetrable vault doors buried 30 stories into mountains but use regular hardware store glass panes for observation rooms in the lab nerve center

• Although aliens possess tentacles dexterous enough to manipulate human vocal cords from outside the throat when the need to speak strikes them, they can not open a door for themselves

• The correct military honor for a hero who saves the world by sacrificing his own life by flying directly into the alien death ray is to clap and cheer wildly in front of the hero’s family immediately after he perishes

• Any vehicle, including clunkers, can make the trip down from Manhattan to Washington D.C. in just a few hours in gridlocked end-of-the-world type traffic

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. ID4) above.

HOUSES

  Houses:

• People never answer the door until the doorbell or knocking has sounded at least three times.

• The hero lives in New York City working at some okay, but not particularly high-paying job, and yet he or she has a roomy apartment filled with nice stuff, generally with a good view, and sometimes a nice, romantic rooftop to go to.

• People never get out of the house when there is obvious danger there (ghosts, murderers).

• People who hear something weird outside will go OUT to look, even if they know there’s a homicidal maniac on the loose.

• At night, when someone’s in bed and hears a sound outside, he’ll get up and turn the lights on before looking out of a window, even if this usually guarantees that he’ll never be able to see anything going on (both because of the blinding effect and the fact that at night, when the room you are in is brighter than the area on the other side of the glass, the glass becomes like a mirror).

• When an intruder is in the house, the occupant will sneak along a wall with his back pressed to it tightly and his arms out a bit from his body, palms flat against the wall.

• When there’s an intruder somewhere in the house, the thing that jumps at the heroine in the dark turns out to be her cat, even if it comes from places cats wouldn’t be, like inside a cupboard! Cat will always shriek for no good reason. As soon as she relaxes, the killer will show up and strangle her.

• Any apartment in Paris will have a view of the Eiffel Tower.

• All serial killers have large, dimly lit, dungeon-like basements which contain a secret room hidden behind some shelving (how about passing a law where all houses with basements are subject to surprise basement inspections on a regular basis. What would serial killers do?)

• If a woman is to be killed in the house, the house will be two stories so the woman can run upstairs (to her doom)

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. HOUSES) above.

HORROR CLICHÉS

  Horror Clichés:

• In a scary movie, if someone is looking in the refrigerator for a late night snack, when they close the refrigerator/freezer door, the killer will be standing there OR a friend/parent will be standing there, startling them.

• Surprise cat appearances. Almost always shrieking for no good reason.

• At tense moment, phone rings (very loudly)

• Person is backing away, not looking where they are going, and will turn and be face to face with monster/killer

• Character stepping lightly past killer’s body only to have him reach out and grab their ankle

• Character in vehicle, glances in rear view mirror, nothing suspicious, character reaches for something (radio), sits back up, eyes go back to rear view mirror, killer’s eyes looking back.

• Hey what’s that noise, I’ll go check it out. If I’m a female, I’ll only be wearing panties and a tiny t-shirt.

• I know, let’s split up

• Let’s see, where should I hide? How about under the bed! Or some other place with no hope of escape.

• Finding a good hiding place but abandoning it so you can run and get killed

• For some reason, when a killer is on the loose, a thunderstorm will cause the power to go out.

• Go skinny dipping and die.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. HORROR CLICHES) above.

HEROES

  Heroes:

• If the hero has a psychological/physical problem which has prevented him from effectively dealing with problems, you can rest assured that this problem will disappear at an opportune time.

• The hero always misses the villain leaving the scene by seconds.

• Stripping to the waist makes the hero invulnerable.

• The hero will always be paired off with a female character. The sidekick never will.

• Whenever a hero enters a dark room where he feels confident in being alone, someone (villain) will be sitting in a chair waiting for hero to turn on the lights before speaking. Sometimes intruder will be the one to turn on the light.

• The hero’s best friend/partner will usually be killed by the bad guys three days before retirement.

• The hero’s new wife will be mowed down by 80 machine guns right after the wedding or during the honeymoon.

• Heroes can go without food or sleep, with no measurable drop in physical or mental faculties, for at least 72 hours.

• The hero will always have a small trickle of blood in the right corner of his mouth after a fight. His lip will never be split in the middle, and his upper lip will always be invulnerable. He will wipe the blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, then look at it. If his face displays any other injury, it will usually be a small abrasion on his right cheekbone. He will wear a band-aid on this for one day, after which it will be miraculously healed.

• The hero will always refuse the assistance of friends or medical personnel after a fight.

• If the hero gets into a second fight, his most injured body part will always be punched or kicked.

• A hero will show no pain even during the most terrific beating, yet he will wince if a women attempts to clean a facial wound.

• When a hero is paired with a weak sidekick, that sidekick will invariably save the hero’s life at a crucial moment, or show remarkable proficiency with weapons in a key scene.

• If the hero is a white male and has an assistant/sidekick who is either not white or not male the assistant/sidekick will die, preferably in an act of heroic sacrifice.

• The bad guy has the good guy in his sights, his trigger finger poised to squeeze off a life-ending round. A shot rings out, and we shudder-but the hero does not fall. As he frantically checks his body for the mortal wound he must have sustained, a dazed look overcomes the villain’s face, and he slumps to the floor. Then, and only then, the camera reveals a gun-toting savior who blew away the baddie before he could kill our protagonist.

• Like above, only hero and villain are in a life and death struggle with gun, it goes off, who got hit? The same with a struggle over a knife. Any close up struggle with a pointy object will result in death.

• If the movie hero has a sidekick and he mentions his family in the first two minutes of the film, the sidekick will surely be killed.

• The movie hero is (almost) always divorced, but he still has some contact with his ex-wife who tells him that she could not stay married to him because she loves him too much.

• Hero is ex super soldier, now leading a quiet normal guy life. (Commando, Under Siege, Con Air)

• Walking toward the camera in slow motion as a massive explosion happens in the background, without flinching, and miraculously not being hit by any shrapnel

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. HEROES) above.

HELICOPTERS

Helicopters:

• In movieland, there’s an abundance of corrupt helicopter pilots. Villains have no problem renting a helicopter complete with pilot who doesn’t mind shooting total strangers, or being shot at.

• When a helicopter is hit by a bullet or rocket, it’ll explode immediately if it contains a villain, but if the hero is on board, it will loose power, smoke will come out of the doors, and it’ll just reach the ground in time for the hero to get clear then duck just at the moment it explodes.

• People standing outside a running helicopter can always talk in normal or just slightly louder than normal voices.

• A pursued hero, with the bad guys just yards behind him, can jump into a shutdown helicopter, run through the twenty-five item startup checklist, engage and spin up the rotors, take off and be out of pistol range before the bad guys catch up.

• Bullets shot at a helicopter bounce off the fiberglass and aluminum “fuselage” components but make neat little holes through the plexiglas bubble.

• When a helicopter’s engine dies, the main rotor immediately stops and the helicopter drops straight to the ground. If a bad guy is flying, the helicopter disappears in a ball of flame, but good-guy pilots just get out, dust themselves off, and walk away.

• When a turbine-powered Bell Jet Ranger helicopter is shot at, it’s engine coughs and sputters, chugs along for a little while as the helo staggers through the air uncertainly, and then crashes using the good/bad pilot algorithm noted above.

• Every helicopter shutting down emits the chirp-chirp-chirp sound of the rubber drive belts disengaging, in spite of the fact that only the famous Bell 47G (the Mash chopper) actually makes this sound.

• Piston helicopters always start up with screaming turbine engine sounds.

• Rambo-style pilots can fly with one hand on the cyclic stick while the other fires an automatic weapon out the door. The helicopter automatically knows when to change altitude to fly over obstacles without the pilot worrying about that pesky collective pitch control.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. HELICOPTERS) above.

FOOD & EATING

  Food & Eating:

• Pastries are always in plain pink boxes. When we see a plain pink box, we expected to know that the box contains donuts or cake or some related item.

• All movie mothers will prepare a breakfast, usually consisting of scrambled eggs, bacon, etc. Dad and the kids will invariably arrive at the table 30 seconds before Dad has to leave for the office and the kids have to catch the school bus. Each will have time only for a sip of coffee/juice and/or one bite of toast. There must be enough food left over in these homes to feed an emerging nation!

• Characters eating during the scene they’re in eat in utterly unnatural ways: nibbling instead of taking a real bite of sandwich, cutting tiny bites of steak, taking very tiny sips of their drink, etc.

• Beverages are served either half full or completely empty (especially coffee).

• Coffee is never served steaming hot

• Characters cutting and ‘playing’ with the food on their plate during the scene instead of eating it.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. FOOD & EATING) above.

FIGHTS (HAND TO HAND)

Fights (Hand to Hand):

• If a character uses martial arts rather than a weapon, his opponents will always face him one-to-one. Spare bad guys may dance around the fight taunting our hero, but none will engage until his predecessor has been disposed of. And if it’s an oriental martial arts film, they will fight in perfect one-two rhythm and form, hit-block-hit-block.

• Everyone appears to know martial arts.

• All chairs in movies are flimsy. Try hitting someone with one.

• Two guys or a bunch of guys go at it, repeatedly bashing each other in the face with massive blows, or hitting each other with chairs, sticks, refrigerators, whatever-and they go one doing this, sometimes for minutes at a time.

• People can be rendered inoperative by bumping them on the head. Beware, though; after you have left the scene, this person will regain consciousness and be more determined to attack you.

• Clasping your hands together and hitting the bad guy’s back will also guarantee unconsciousness

• All fights taking place on the edge of a canyon, tall building, or other high place require at least one bad guy to get plugged by a bullet, arrow, or other missile weapon, causing to fall, but keeping him alive enough to hear his scream of terror echo as he plunges to his doom.

• Corollary: whenever someone falls off of a cliff or building, no matter how much damage they take beforehand, they scream, even if they were shot through the lungs twenty or thirty times, or were apparently unconscious.

• In the West, the favored hand-to-hand combat technique is to throw yourself prostrate on the other guy and hug him.

• After the fight, hero rarely shows any sign that he was in one. No split lip, swollen eye socket, broken nose, etc.

• When a villain is trying to murder someone with a knife, they’ll often use just one hand. The victim meanwhile (usually a woman) is using both hands to restrain the villain’s arm and keep the knife from stabbing her. But the murderer will NEVER simply use his other hand to take the knife and easily stab the victim. (see also Knives).

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. FIGHTS) above.

FENCING/SWORDPLAY

  Fencing/Swordplay:

• Every sword/knife pulled from a holder always makes a metal against metal sound
• At some point in a duel, the hero and villain will cross swords at face level, allowing them to grip each other’s weapon while making nasty/sarcastic comments before they break the clinch and continue fighting. (Why doesn’t anyone just ram the sword guard into their opponent’s face, stun him, and then finish him off?)
• If the hero and villain’s swords cross at or below waist level, they will break the clinch, fall back, and pause-despite the fact that a simple upthrust into the opponent’s belly after the break would end the duel right there and then.
• If there is a candelabra, the villain will show how talented he is with a sword by cutting the candles and watching them fall over; the hero will do the same but the candles won’t fall until after the villain has made a comment about the hero’s lack of fencing ability, at which point the hero will topple the cut candles, showing that he is more skilled than the villain because his candles didn’t fall over from the force of the cut.
• During a duel, the hero will jump or climb onto a table/bench/piano/platform that raises him above the villain. At that point, the villain will swipe at the hero’s legs, which the hero avoids by jumping up in the air over the villain’s blade. Very rarely are the positions reversed.
• Duels usually have one scene where the actors go out of frame and you watch their shadows fighting.
• If the villain wounds the hero in his sword arm, one of three things will happen:
  • o hero becomes ambidextrous and fights with sword in other hand;
  • o hero finds something else to defend himself with (tapestry, chain, Mossberg 12-gauge) that can be used with the other hand;
  • o hero’s girlfriend/sidekick comes up behind villain and impales him, thus saving hero.
• If hero is disarmed by villain, one of three things will happen:
  • o villain will show a trace of honor and allow hero to get his sword;
  • o hero will make mad dash/leap over or around villain to regain sword;
  • o just when it looks like the end, hero’s girlfriend/sidekick throws a sword to him, which he manages to grab easily (for the best send-up of this concept, check out ARMY OF DARKNESS where Ash jumps in the air and his chainsaw magically clamps back onto his wrist-it’s beautifully shot and extremely funny!).
• If there are stairs, the hero will be forced up them backwards by the villain, at which point the hero will either leap to the ground or swing from a rope/chandelier/tapestry to get away. Very rarely are the positions reversed.
• If there is a tapestry or chandelier, the hero will cut it loose and drop it on the villain’s henchmen unless the movie is a comedy, in which case the hero will drop it on his own men by accident.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. FENCING/SWORDPLAY) above.

FAMILY

  FAMILY:

• If a character is suspicious of a family member (including of their spouse/romantic interest) they will find a scrap book with old newspaper clippings that will reveal all.

• Every woman who has a jerk for a fiancé will meet and fall for his charming, funny, sexy brother (played by one of the Wilson brothers). This will never tear the family apart.

• If the woman has a problem with drugs or alcohol, her daddy molested her.

• If the movie is animated, one of the kid’s parents will be dead. This is almost always the mother.

• If there are three or more sisters in the movie, one of the sisters will be extremely neurotic and married to a lawyer/doctor/shrink, one will be single and looking for love (the lead) and one will be a mother with at least two kids (a boy and a girl or two girls, never two boys).

• A good father played catch with his son, a bad father did not.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. FAMILY) above.

EVIDENCE

  Evidence:

• Incriminating evidence can be found either as photograph number four in a stack, or in the next to bottom drawer.

• Be sure to leave your important tapes, such as the one labeled “Incriminating evidence against Senator Smith showing him taking $24 million in bribes and then fondling the drug lord’s daughter” or your computer floppy disks labeled “All the nuclear launch codes are on here” where they can be easily found.

• All characters keep detailed newsclippings of important events in their lives, particularly those events that must be painful to recall, such as the loss of the character’s immediate family due to their own negligence. NB: If the news report would have come out while the character was in jail or on the run, all the more reason for the character to have kept it intact.

• If a person’s clothes get snagged on something, they tear very easily and leave a large, noticeable chunk behind. The Person trying to not be found never seems to realize this has occurred.

• Any image on any photo or video can be blown up to pristine detail.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. EVIDENCE) above.

ENVIRONMENT

  Environment:

• Thunder and lightning always happen at the same time.

• Storms start instantaneously: there’s a crack of thunder and lightning, then heavy rain starts falling.

• Heavy rain causes no loss of long-distance visibility.

• Everything is blue at night-time.

• Caves always have flat floors, and it’s never fully dark.

• There is always someone in the canal or the storm drain when the flood hits.

• The moon is always out at night (except for those cheaper movies where the sun is still out).

• Full moon can occur for several nights in a row.

• Eclipses happen frequently, and without any warning.

• At night, it’s never so dark that you can’t see without a flashlight.

ELEVATORS

  Elevators:

• Movie elevators are always ready at that floor. But if the hero/heroine is being chased, elevator won’t come.

• If hero OR villain takes an elevator, villain OR hero can beat it by taking stairs, even if the trip is 20 floors.

• Most elevator shafts and wires are clean and dust/grease free, and there’s plenty of light so that the hero neither gets dirty nor needs a flashlight or some other equipment to see.

• When one character is pursuing another (good guy after bad or vice versa) and they reach the elevator just before it closes, they never stick their hand in the door so it will automatically open back up, nor do they press the call button to get the doors to open.

• Elevator doors sliding shut on the killer’s reaching arm and after a few desperate grabs it withdraws and elevator continues on its way. The elevator doors would open upon closing on the arm. You’re dead.

• Person lead doesn’t like approaching elevators and they call out to hold the elevator and lead doesn’t or just acts like they do. Usually followed by a helpless shrug at disappointed other through closing doors.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. ELEVATORS) above.

DOORS

  Doors:

• The overhead door, closing at a speed just slow enough for the hero to slide/roll under. Is usually some kind of security door with no security waiting on the other side.

• Doors in sci-fi movies can’t open and close like a normal door. They must slide or spiral or lift or evaporate.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. DOORS) above.

DISGUISES

  Disguises:

• The latex mask that fools everyone who knows the person being impersonated. Regardless of the bone structure, fat tissue, nose size, distance between eyes, distance between mouth nose and chin, of the person wearing the mask, they always look exactly like the person being impersonated. See all Mission Impossible movies.

• Use of the oxegen mask to slip away unnoticed: Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) in ‘Silence of the Lambs’, ‘The Negotiator,’ ‘Ocean’s 11,’ ‘The Professional’.

• A superhero need only cover a portion of their face in order to go unrecognized. In your ordinary life donning a simple pair of glasses is all that’s needed to prevent your friends and coworkers from identifying you as the world renown hero.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. DISGUISES) above.

DINING OUT

Dining Out:

• The hero and heroine in love always get a great table in a restaurant, even in New York City at lunch on Saturday (When Harry Met Sally).
• Characters only return their food for comedic reasons OR to establish that the character is an asshole
• Only three types of women work in Diners:
  • The cold, no nonsense taking, overweight, middle aged, seen it all woman. She will either be a dirty-blonde white woman OR black
  • The kindly, matronly type.
  • The sweet, young, pretty, working mother with the perfect figure. She usually has some ‘hobby’ that will become her real job once some man rescues her or teaches her a lesson by breaking her heart.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. DINING OUT) above.

DIALOGUE

  DIALOGUE:

• “I’m getting too old for this (shit).”

• The phrase used in action movies, “Let’s get out of here!”

• “I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you.” Seriously, can everyone PLEASE agree to delete this phrase from our collective consciousness?

• The statement – “This is not good….” or conversely, “This is bad…”

• Uttering the phrase “What are you doing here?” when a friend or family member or acquaintance shows up somewhere unexpectedly. This phrase is actually surprisingly rude and is unlikely to be uttered even to someone you aren’t fond of. And yet it shows up in sooooo many movies.

• Character saying “Walking away,” as they proceed to do so, often with hands in air.

• The post kill line. Usually delivered by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

• TV: The pre opening credit/commercial break line. Think the obnoxious Gil Grissom on every episode of CSI. I swear it must be in his contract or something.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. DIALOGUE) above.

DEATH

  Death:

• In situations like the Vietnam war, and violent inner city neighborhoods, the person with the most plans, prospects, and hopes will die.

• A dying person’s last words will always be coherent and significant.

• A good person will always die in the presence of friends.

• If you’re a woman and there is a killer on the loose, just take a relaxing bath and he will find you.

• If a person with important information to reveal tells the detective to come by at such and such a time and he will tell him all the info, he will be dead when the detective arrives.

• If a person good person dies with his eyes open, a friend will close them, and they will remain closed. If a villain dies with his eyes open, no one will close them, and the camera will linger on his face.

• The woman with the terminal illness that has a sweet, sex filled romance, which usually results in ‘changing’ the dog she fell for, just before she croaks. A literal tear jerker.

• When your sidekick, lover, or similar acquaintance is on the verge of dying, don’t call an ambulance; instead hold her warmly and whisper words of comfort, or kiss her passionately. Theoretically she may not be much into it under the circumstances, but hey, it may be your last chance! Then, when she relaxes or slumps over visibly, you can say your tearful good-bye to her, because this means she is dead. Alternately, if she is already slumped over when you get to her, check her pulse, but if the resulting music is soft and slow, don’t bother trying CPR. If she doesn’t like this treatment better than a chance to save her life, don’t worry; it’s not like she will be able to do anything about it!

• (see also VILLAINS)

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. DEATH) above.

CRIME SCENE

Crime Scene:

• The supposedly intelligent person enters the scene of a murder and immediately picks up the murder weapon.

• The person who notices some wet substance on the ground or wherever and bends down to run a finger through it, look at the finger (often rubbing two fingers together) and usually realize it’s blood.
• Can nobody turn on a damn light when investigating a crime?
• Can somebody give these cops some new batteries for their flashlights?

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. CRIME SCENE) above.

CONVERSATIONS

  Conversations:

• One character has something important to say, something that will change everything but when they are about to say what they need to say, the other person will interrupt but then will say, “Sorry, go ahead.” But will be told “No, you go ahead.” And as a result, whatever it is the other person says will result in main character not saying what they were about to say. Even worse if afterwards the other person says, “I’m sorry, you were going to say something.”

• Two people will often converse while one stares out the window, with their back to the other. When an emotional point is made, the first person will turn around.

• If the driver is speaking to the passenger, they will spend an impossibly long time staring at the passenger instead of at the road. Somehow they NEVER rear end the car in front of them.

• Any character, whether serious or joking, saying the oh so tired line in response to a question, “I could tell you but I’d have to kill you.”

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. CONVERSATIONS) above.

COMPUTERS/TECHNOLOGY

  Computers/Technology:

• You never have to use the space-bar when typing long sentences.

• Movie character never make typing mistakes.

• All monitors display very large fonts (so the audience can see).

• High-tech computers, such as those used by NASA, the CIA, or some such governmental institution, will have easy to understand graphical interfaces.

• Those that don’t, have incredibly powerful text-bases command shells that can correctly understand and execute commands typed in plain English.

• Corollary: you can gain access to any information you want by simply typing “ACCESS ALL OF THE SECRET FILES” on any keyboard

• Likewise, you can infect a computer with a destructive virus by simply typing “UPLOAD VIRUS” (see “Fortress”)

• All computers are connected. You can access the information on the villain’s desktop computer, even if it’s turned off.

• Powerful computers beep whenever you press a key or whenever the screen changes. Some computers also slow down the output on the screen so that it doesn’t go faster than you can read. The really advanced ones also emulate the sound of a dot-matrix printer.

• All computer panels have thousands of volts and flash pots just underneath the surface. Malfunctions are indicated by a bright flash, a puff of smoke, a shower of sparks, and an explosion that forces you backwards.

• People typing away on a computer will turn it off without saving the data.

• A hacker can get into the most sensitive computer in the world without outside software before intermission and guess the secret password in two tries.

• Any PERMISSION DENIED has an OVERRIDE function (see “Demolition Man” and countless others).

• Complex calculations and loading of huge amounts of data will be accomplished in under three seconds. Movie modems usually appear to transmit data at the speed of two gigabytes per second.

• When the power plant/missile site/whatever overheats, all the control panels will explode, as will the entire building.

• If you display a file on the screen and someone deletes the file, it also disappears from the screen (e.g Clear and Present Danger).

• If a disk has got encrypted files, you are automatically asked for a password when you try to access it.

• No matter what kind of computer disk it is, it’ll be readable by any system you put it into. All application software is usable by all computer platforms.

• The more high-tech the equipment, the more buttons it has (Aliens). Rarely do the buttons have any label as to what they are for.

• Most computers, no matter how small, have reality-defying three-dimensional, active animation, photo-realistic graphics capability.

• Laptops, for some strange reason, always seem to have amazing real-time video phone capabilities and the performance of a CRAY Supercomputer.

• Whenever a character looks at a VDU, the image is so bright that it projects itself onto his/her face (see “Alien”, “2001″).

• When the tech guy is given a blurry, extremely pixilated part of an image (i.e. license plate) and they are able to clear it up to crystal clear, easily readable condition

• Whenever someone needs to download/upload a file they shouldn’t be it will always finish at the last possible second, just before they are caught. Worse if computer is back to normal and person is doing something inconspicuous when they are discovered even though they were seated at the computer staring at the progress bar, no disc/thumb drive in hand just a second before.

• Making hacking look cool by making the computer’s mainframe look like some sweet virtual world of colorful corridors and cubes you need to click on.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. COMPUTERS/TECHNOLOGY) above.

CLOTHING

  Clothing:

• Male characters generally are cold-natured. They need to wear jeans and leather jackets when the female characters are comfortable in cutoffs and a halter top.

• Heroes are the exception to the above. He often is more comfortable in extreme cold after losing his coat or having the shirt ripped from his back. When this is not true (Cliffhanger), swimming in ice water helps.

• Whenever anyone knocks out anyone else and takes their clothes, it’s always a flawless fit.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. CLOTHING) above.

CHESS

  Chess:

• GOOD Chess players are always portrayed as upper class. (Go to any tournament and see how many rich guys there are there. NONE! They’re too busy chasing women and driving fast cars to play chess.)

• Chess players in movies are always all around brilliant and charming people. (With very few exceptions, REAL chess players are introverted and so involved with chess they have little time to WASTE pursuing anything as trivial as LOVE, A PROFESSION, or SOCIAL GRACES. Exception: Computers! Most Chess players are, or will become, Computer nerds).

• Great Chess players are always honored to play on some rich guy’s fancy Philipino Art Set. (In reality, better players are almost always adamant about playing on a plain, unadorned wood or plastic “Staunton” set. No red or blue pieces, no ceramic or metal, no elephants for rooks.)

• The board is usually set up wrong, with the black square at the players lower right, or with one or both of the King/Queen set up backwards. (WHITE SQUARE GOES ON THE PLAYERS RIGHT. QUEENS on thier own color: white QUEEN on white, black QUEEN on black.)

• Supposedly brilliant players usually miss one move checkmates in critical games. This is akin to a professional race car driver backing his station wagon into the garage door.

• On the other hand, good players are often portrayed as seeing 15 or 20 moves ahead in detail from a middle game, when there are still many pieces on the board. (One could more easily predict the next president and all 535 congressmen correctly before the election. In the End Game, when the number of pieces is limited, looking ahead often becomes a question of counting moves, who can get to the critical square first, or of very limited numbers of moves, and is more feasible.)

• Beginners usually beat experienced players, as a mechanism for showing the neophyte’s native brilliance. (This is about as common as a tall, athletic man who’s never seen a basketball beating an NBA player in one-on-one. It could happen, if the pro had a really bad day, but who would you bet on?)

• Players who are really behind (have lost more pieces) come up with brilliant ways to win anyway. (If they’re so good, how did they get behind in the first place?)

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. CHESS) above.

CHASES

Chases:

• Killer walks, victim runs, killer still catches them.

• Woman falls to the ground whilst being chased by a bad guy, even when running over level, unobstructed terrain. Note that when a man and woman are being chased, usually the woman falls, then the man pauses and helps her up.

• Corollaries to the above:
  • Man will then continue to run with woman, holding her by the hand or preferably upper arm, even though this takes them both below the speed either one could make on their own.
  • All movie women must be pulled along by their hands, even if the male puller is short & fat and the woman is a track star.
  • All movie women try to run in heels, never stopping to kick them off.

• Women not only have to be pulled along, they do not have enough sense to run and keep running unless a man touches her elbow, holds her hand or puts his arm around her shoulders.

• Chasees will always stop to throw obstacles (trash cans, lumber, chairs) in their pursuers’ way. No matter that they take three times as long to dump the obstacles as it takes the chasers to simply jump over them.

• Person being chased reaches car or home. Door is locked, retrieves keys and drops them.

• If cops are giving chase in their cop cars they will inevitably crash in a spectacular way that ends up with a few of them on top of the others.

• When ever a person is being chased on foot, regardless of the time of year or city, there will be some sort of parade to try and loose your pursuer in.

• Sooner or later, all movie chase sequences, on foot or in a car, will pass through a crowded market. Vegetables will suffer as a result.

• The police chasing the psychopathic, murderer and yelling for him to stop, as if someone like that would give up for any reason, let alone as a request.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. CHASES) above.

CARS & DRIVING

Cars & Driving:   

·        Movie characters driving in a metro area will get to their destination and will find a parking spot directly in front. There will always be plenty of space to park. Parallel parking is never required. 

·        The person behind the wheel is talking to and looking at their passenger for the entire journey without actually looking at the road, changing gear, signaling etc.  

·        When you are alone in the back seat of the car, make sure you sit in the middle so the audience can see you good.  

·        Film cars do not have inside rear-view mirrors. Most of them do, however, have an appx 1” gray spot on the inside of the windshield where the mirror would normally mount. This is especially the case if there is a person in the back seat, so when they sit in the middle, nothing will obscure their face time. 

·        Vintage cars are always 100% immaculate and freshly polished. They never have any scratches, dents or repairs.  

·        No one wears seat belts 

·        Sudden acceleration of a car (be it forwards, backwards, stopping, skidding, sliding, or whatever) causes a loud screech, even on dirt or wet roads. Be prepared. Each wheel is also fitted with a smoke device to let you know when this happens. Hollywood cars are also special: when you take off quickly, you always leave a skid mark for each drive wheel, regardless of whether you have a limited slip differential or not.  

·        Pedestrians in Hollywood have the world’s best reactions, so don’t worry if you have to drive down a sidewalk. Mr Pappodopolus is quite used to having his fruit cart smashed, and despite his gesticulations and curses, he always manages to get out of the way in time. 

 ·        There are always people carrying around large sheets of glass on the street during a car chase.  

·        Cars just aren’t reliable in the movies. Sure, they’re fine when you’re on a stress-less cruise through the city, but once the action starts, they have a strange tendency to break down or take forever to start for no particular reason. Though you’re more likely to find your car stalling when you’re on the run from a masked killer or zombies, car trouble also tends to strike those who’ve just robbed a bank or need to rescue a hostage. 

·        Cars chasing each other in the middle of a city will not suffer enough damage to stop the chase.  

·        People being chased by a vehicle will always run where the vehicle can be sure to follow (usually right down the middle of the road). If they ever decide to slip into some hiding place, they will always exit back to a location where the vehicle can reappear and continue the chase (even if returning to hiding place would prevent this). 

·        A car will always explode when shot at, unless the hero is driving it.  

·        When you drive a car, you can always recognize all the persons you know that pass you in the opposite direction.  

·        If someone has “fixed” the foot-brakes in the car, the driver never use the hand-brake and the gears to slow down, at least not until the last moment.  

·        Cars often end up on cliff-edges with 2 wheels in the open air. The good guys are saved just before the car falls over, the bad guys join the car in the free fall, often caused by a bird setting down on the part of the car hanging over the edge.  

·        When a car falls off a cliff after a car chase, it usually explodes before reaching the ground.  

·        When speeding cars hit a parked car, they fly up into the air while the parked car doesn’t even wiggle  

·        After a car crash, no movie character ever sits and shakes for five minutes, or becomes incoherent with shock.  

·        All cars seem to run on kerosene rather than gasoline (hence the copious black smoke when they burn).  

·        Watch steering wheels in movie cars, especially in “through the windshield looking at the driver” shots. 9 times out of 10, the spokes of the wheel, which one would think should be horizontal, or close to it, are vertical, i.e., one can see one of the wheel spokes vertical, above the dash, in front of the driver’s face, even when he’s driving straight.  

·        Whenever you see someone driving, even on straight and smooth roads, they are sawing at the wheel hard enough to be running an obstacle course. The car doesn’t swerve at all, of course. The amount of excess wheel-twisting is independent of speed.  

·        Not only do movie cars always park right in front, but they are never locked. Even convertibles with their tops down, in NYC, are still there hours later.  

·        Movie cars have all excellent brakes and can come to a full stop from 80 MPH (with loud screeches, even on dirt roads) in 20 ft.  

·        There’s never an annoying wind disturbing the coiffures of convertible passengers.  

·        There are no stop signs in movie land. Wherever you have to drive, no matter how close or far away it is, you never have to stop before you get there.  

·        Film cars never start the first time when you’re running away from the bad guy.  

·        If there is a large bump in a downhill road, speeding cars will always fly over them and hit the ground in shower of sparks. An interior view will then show the reaction of the passengers at the moment of impact. They will not be injured, even if they are not wearing safety belts. No tire damage, broken axles, or suspension failures will occur as a result of the impact. The car will then execute a sharp left turn at the bottom of the hill. Losing a hubcap at this point will be optional.  

·        Any time you see a really nice, snazzy foreign car or a great old car like a 65 mustang, you know it’s going to be smashed into a million pieces.  

·        All too many times a Hollywood car chase will be interrupted by the emergence of a semi from a driveway, alley, or street, resulting in the escape of the hunted, or the death of an expendable character.  

·        Police cars involved in chase scenes usually tend to suffer more than any other vehicles- they have head on collisions, smash parked cars, fall into water, and of course, experience the ever popular flying-roll, causing the car to land upside down and crush the lights and siren. Usually, we never get to see the unlucky police force member before or after the inevitable accident.  

·        A car that crashes will always explode in a ball of flames, but not until the hero can pull the important passengers to safety, and yell, “Watch out! She’s gonna blow!”  

·        Acid applied by the villain to the hero’s brake lines never has any effect unless the car is heading down a steep, winding road. Cars at traffic lights have invulnerable brake lines.  

·        No one ever runs out of gas (even in long car chases). Corollary: every stolen car has a full gas tank and gets great gas mileage.  

·        No one fumbles for car keys right before a car chase. they always jump right in and start the car up because they’ve left the keys in the ignition. Not a great idea in any major city.  

·        If there is going to be a massive crash/pile up, the majority of the cars will be at least ten years old, and many will strangely be old, retired police cruisers.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. CARS & DRIVING) above.

CABS

 Cabs:

·        People who are paying for their cab (usually in a hurry) rarely even look at their wallet/purse as they withdraw the perfect amount and hand it to the driver, always saying keep the change (unless this will be used to show that person is a jerk).

·        Movie passengers either don’t pay cabs at all, or have the exact change. Same is true in restaurants. Checks are always designed to be 15 percent under the bills the male costumer has in his hands first. 

·        Whenever a person in a movie needs a cab there is always one just coming down the street. Unless they are in danger, whereupon no cab can be found or none will stop.

·        Cabbies are always unshaven 

·        Cabbies are always crabby, unless they are black, then they are super cool. 

·        Cabbies always know exactly how to get to their passenger’s destination. They never have to call dispatch to get directions.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. CABS) above.

BOMBS

Bombs:

• Bombs always have big, blinking, beeping timer displays. Evil geniuses who devise bombs to destroy things/people are always thoughtful enough to include a visible display (usually LED) of how much time remains before the bomb detonates, giving the hero accurate feedback on exactly how much time remains.
• Evil geniuses who devise bombs to destroy things/people always have them detonate after at least an hour, giving the hero ample time to defuse it.
• When you cut the wire to the detonator, the timer display will stop as the evil does has conveniently wired the two together. You will not be able to do this, however, until only one second remains.
• The countdown of a hidden bomb is almost always accompanied by a beeping regardless of the fact that this makes no sense whatsoever.
• The highly overrated TV show 24 uses every bomb cliché ever in every season of the show. As well as just about every action movie cliché. In fact that show has been the same exact show every season since season one.
• All wires have different colors, so the hero can easily differentiate them when he has to cut the right one.
• Bombs detonated with microwave ovens always explode 2 seconds after the timer reaches 00:00 and the microwave oven beeps (ex. “Under Siege”).
• Explosions always happen in slow motion. When an explosion occurs, make certain you are running away from the point of detonation so the blast can send you flying, in slow motion, toward the camera.
• A building that in real life would require several dozen carefully placed explosive charges for demolition can in a movie be destroyed by a single bomb in a car trunk (see “Lethal Weapon III”). This bomb will cause no damage to any other building on the block.
• If a bomb explodes near a car, that car will be lifted ass end up, never the other way around.
• If a person is wearing a bomb, they will always rip open their clothes to reveal it, shouting some foreign bullshit before setting it off.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. BOMBS) above.

BODILY FUNCTIONS

Bodily Functions:   

• People who blow their nose never look at what they just expelled into the tissue. It’s gross but you know you do it.

• A cough is a symptom of terminal illness.

• Menstruation is an unknown phenomenon in movies. Female movie characters are all immune from it.

• No matter how much a character in a movie eats, they‘ll never EVER have to go take a crap.

• If a character does have to take a crap, it will be for comedic effect.

• Any reference or depiction of pooping or farting means the movie is a comedy.

• Whenever a person is about to vomit, when they are shown, their lips will always be tightly sealed (so as to keep the vegetable soup in their mouths) just before they puke.

• A person never vomits more than a mouthful of puke.

• No embarrassing odors or sounds occur during sex

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. BODILY FUNCTIONS) above.

BIOLOGY & GENETICS

Biology & Genetics:  

• People are often exact duplicates of remote ancestors or of their parent at the same age. Same with relatives in the future.

• At least one of a pair of identical twins is born evil.

• Radiation causes mutation not to your future children, but to you, there and then. Mutation is never immediately fatal, but first either makes you into a formless blob, or a functional creature with animal-like features.

• Interbreeding is genetically possible with any person or creature from anywhere in the universe.

• Newborn babies are always HUGE.

• If a baby’s genitals are going to be shown, they will always be male.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. BIOLOGY & GENETICS) above.

BINOCULARS/EYEGLASSES

Binoculars/EYEGlasses:  

• In order to make it perfectly clear we are seeing what the person looking through the binoculars is seeing, what is shown will be in two joined circles. This is not what happens when one looks through binoculars.

• A villain will always commit murder right in front of the window when someone with binoculars is watching.

• The observer’s hands are always surprisingly steady when holding the binoculars.

• Whenever one character spots something in the distance with their binoculars, they will hand them off to another character who will then immediately locate the same object. Go ahead and try this yourselves and see how long it takes the other person to locate the same object you did.

• Eyeglasses never collect moisture when you come in from the cold outside.

• The hero always has perfect 20/20 vision. Only the ‘geek’ or ‘intellect’ who helps the hero wears glasses. If it is a love interest, she will be supermodel hot and will only wear the glasses upon their first meeting.

• If a person wears glasses, they will often remove them when thinking.

• If it is a romantic comedy, the ‘ugly’ chick/best-friend will actually be a super hot chick in glasses.

• The only time the hero is shown wearing glasses is if he has appeared in at least three previous films. The glasses will be used to show how he has gotten older.

• If a person’s glasses get broken, no matter what happened to break them, they will usually still be wearable, but will be missing one lens.

• If a person is a total nerd they will have tape on their glasses and will often adjust the position of the glasses on their nose by pushing the center with their index finger.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. BINOCULARS/EYEGLASSES) above.

BARS/DRINKING

Bars/Drinking:   

• When men drink whiskey, it is always in a shot glass, and they always drink it in one gulp. If they are wimps, they will gasp for air, then have a coughing fit. If they are macho, they will wince briefly, flashing clenched teeth.

• Every time some guy walks into a bar, usually the hero, he gets into a fight. Usually right under a BUDWEISER sign (see “product placement”). Likelihood of fight increases if country music is playing in the background.

• Movie Heroes in a bar will either order strong alcoholic drinks and swallow them down like iced tea or will ask for milk. The latter will always provoke sarcastic remarks and a fight will ensue.

• When a bored attractive woman takes a seat at the bar, she will always be joined within ten seconds by a man with no social skills whatsoever.

• A cup of black coffee/splash of cold water in face is enough to render the most inebriated person stone cold sober in a split second (see several thousand westerns, and “Peter’s Friends.”)

• If it’s a tavern in a western, some grizzled old fuck will spit tobacco juice in response to our hero entering.

• If it’s a western, bad guy will always pause immediately upon entering the tavern

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. BARS/DRINKING) above.

ASTEROIDS

Asteroids  

• Asteroids travel through space making a noise like a powerful but subdued engine.

• Asteroids are usually locked into orbits, but if a comet comes by, they can be bumped out of their rut and become dangerously unstable.

• It’s only the fact that everything is locked into an orbit which prevents collisions in our solar system. Any asteroid that gets loose is certain to crash into Earth within a matter of hours.

• It’s just barely possible to evacuate Kansas City to a distance of 100 miles in 48 hours. This requires lots of airplanes. It also requires martial law, so that “looters will be arrested on sight”. (Have they no mercy?) With 30+ hours to go, people will panic in the streets and run around at random.

• A mile-wide asteroid can mostly burn up in the atmosphere, causing it to do only a relatively small amount of damage (bursting a dam) when it strikes.

• A river from a burst dam can exactly keep pace with a pickup truck for several minutes. It will then obligingly pause as the pickup truck turns around and goes in another direction.

• A four-mile-wide nickel asteroid (which would mass about a *trillion* tons) can be destroyed — literally destroyed, so that nothing remains — by three airplane-mounted lasers.

• But with only two airplane-mounted lasers, it instead instantly explodes into thousands of pieces. Astronomers are very surprised that it wasn’t literally destroyed.

• Laser beams are easily visible in the vacuum of space

• Incoming asteroids spend several minutes in Earth’s atmosphere.

• Asteroids made of softer or more volatile stuff than nickel will harmlessly burn up in the atmosphere regardless of size.

• Asteroids that land in the ocean will do no damage regardless of size

• Asteroids are discovered by astronomers peering directly through their telescopes in brightly lit observatories. Whatever they see will appear on computer monitors, however.

• Asteroids positions are reported in plainly audible 75 BPS Baudot teletype signals.

• Oddly, there will be no dog to be rescued at the last possible moment. Maybe only tornadoes and volcanoes come equipped with dogs. Would you settle for goldfish?

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. ASTEROIDS) above.

ANSWERING MACHINES

Answering Machines:   

• Everyone’s answering machine picks up on first ring so audience doesn’t have to sit there for four rings AND there is either no audible outgoing message or it is VERY short.

• In an effort to show what a loser/how lonely a character is, they come home and go to the answering machine and instead of reading the digital # readout like we all do, they press the button and we hear the female voice announce “You have no messages.”

• If the hero listens to his answering machine and one important message is unexpected then he usually has two very short messages on the tape before, one spoken by a man, one by a women. “Hey John! I’ll see you tomorrow at eight.”…. beep … “This is Sallieeeeee! I’ll call again later.” … beep … and then finally “Ahhhh! The killer is …..” If however the message is expected be sure that it will be the first one on the tape.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. ANSWERING MACHINES) above.

ANIMALS

ANIMALS   

• Crazy loud guard dog type is utterly quiet until person is almost right on top of them and then they scare them with a loud bark and usually give chase.

• Deadly reptiles will always attack a woman first, even if she’s in the presence of thirty men.

• Dogs always know who’s bad, and bark at them.

• Surprise cat appearance in horror films. Almost always shrieking for no good reason. And almost always in some illogical location (i.e. cupboard).

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. ANIMALS) above.

ALIENS

Aliens   

• If there is more than one or two of an alien race, they are always roughly the same size as humans. The physical feature that makes them easily identifiable as alien is usually some sort of bump or ridge on their brow.

• Aliens usually speak English and have same colloquialisms. If they can’t speak English, they can communicate with us telepathically.

• All members of alien species wear the same outfits, including clothing, hairstyles, and jewelry. This makes them readily identifiable. Aliens who do not dress like aliens are hiding something.

• Aliens all have single, monolithic cultures: one language, one religion, one outfit, per planet.

• Regardless of shape or technological advances of an alien species, a human can usually master any of their craft in a surprisingly short time.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. ALIENS) above.

AIRPLANES

Airplanes:   

• If the plane is a bi-plane (two wings, one atop the other) with two open compartment cockpits (one behind the other), at some point one person will have to move from one cockpit to the other while in flight. Apparently, this is the only reason to ever have this type of plane appear in a film.

• If an airplane takes a bullet hit, the hole will always leak some sort of fluid: sometimes fuel, sometimes hydraulic.

• Piston- engine airplanes in the movies are unusually subject to engine failure. This failure mode is unique to filmdom – engine coughs, keeps running, then it sputters, catches again. Hero notices, taps gas gauge, turns lever. Then it stutters exactly three times and stops immediately, including propeller.

• Hero can never get a plane back under control until just before they are about to hit the ground. This is most dramatically shown by having camera on a ridge that shows the airplane disappearing, all going silent, until in an explosion of engine noise it shoots back up over ridge and camera.

• If more than one lead is flying commercial, one of them will profess to be afraid of flying just as airplane’s engines begin to rev up. They will prove this by tightly gripping arm rests. They will also usually request a drink before they are being served.

• ALL male flight attendants are happily out of the closet.

To leave a comment (cliché suggestion) click on the Title (i.e. AIRPLANES) above.