40 Things That Only Happen In Movies

October 2, 2005 12:55 PM

40 Things That Only Happen In Movies!
posted by persia (46 comments total)

haha
posted by cillit bang at 1:01 PM on October 2, 2005

The link and the page title say "20 things" but the there are "40 things" listed. This issue only happens on sites which they just pretend to be smart.
posted by persia at 1:01 PM on October 2, 2005

In "24" they can get from anywhere in the los angeles metropolitan area to anywhere else in the los angeles metropolitan area by driving for five minutes at any time of the day.
posted by bukvich at 1:06 PM on October 2, 2005

This is new and funny.
posted by keswick at 1:17 PM on October 2, 2005

That's a bit mean Keswick.
posted by ClanvidHorse at 1:18 PM on October 2, 2005

Service Unavailable. this also happens on the sites that pretend to be smart.
posted by bonaldi at 1:19 PM on October 2, 2005

That's a terribly annoying color scheme.
posted by Liosliath at 1:26 PM on October 2, 2005

"Serivce Unavailable" happens all over the place not just in movies. See www dot metafilter dot com for an example.
posted by zpousman at 1:27 PM on October 2, 2005

#34 is, I believe, true. Depending on the intelligence of the person involved.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 1:36 PM on October 2, 2005

It's missing something:
All phone numbers start with 555
posted by easternblot at 1:58 PM on October 2, 2005

Is it just Firefox or all browsers where the font fades to black in the black squares and can't be read unless highlighted?

Besides that, I think they turned a chain e-mail into a website.
posted by Atreides at 2:10 PM on October 2, 2005

All big city dwellers will have impossibly huge sunlit apartments no matter what their salary, unless they are on the run, a low level bad guy with valuable information, or an eccentric cop.
posted by CynicalKnight at 2:40 PM on October 2, 2005

[based on a] True Story: I was talking to a friend of mine about how various blogs and websites are dedicated to harvesting and displaying all of the hottest, freshest, newest, funniest links on the web. How if you hesitate even for a moment, you will be scooped by some other site and there goes your pagerank/blogshare/whatever-it's-called. So I thought about making the opposite sort of site, and calling it www.linksmygrandmasentme.com. I was going to start it up with a link to "All Your Base", but feared it was "too new". Thanks to you, I now have the link I needed to kick off my site containing the oldest, tiredest, mustiest of internet memes and e-mail forwards.
posted by Eideteker at 2:45 PM on October 2, 2005

On the off chance that that comment reads as nasty, I would like to take a moment to say I have nothing against persia, myself still a relative n00b on the blue. It was just too uncanny how that link came along so soon after that conversation with my friend. Please read my remarks as a satire of the entire "weblogging industry" and not any particular person. You're all equally nuts.
posted by Eideteker at 2:49 PM on October 2, 2005

I take it someone here's never seen Ebert's Little Movie Glossary.

(First link to Amazon, second to the glossary page on Ebert's site.)
posted by JHarris at 2:54 PM on October 2, 2005

A variation on #10:

The Space Needle can be seen from any window of any building in Seattle.
posted by Anders Levant at 3:02 PM on October 2, 2005

if you really need a hotel room, the clerk will tell you there's no vacancy ... but if you make a big enough scene, one will miraculously be found

i used to work in a motel, and people who've watched too many movies thinks it works that way in real life, too ...
posted by pyramid termite at 3:08 PM on October 2, 2005

pyramid termite : "if you really need a hotel room, the clerk will tell you there's no vacancy ... but if you make a big enough scene, one will miraculously be found

"i used to work in a motel, and people who've watched too many movies thinks it works that way in real life, too ..."

That was the weird thing about travelling in China back in the early 90's: capitalism hadn't quite "hit it big" yet, so hotel clerks had no interest in renting you a room (their hotel stayed in business whether they had guests or not, so renting rooms meant more work for no extra benefit). So you'd regularly go in, ask for a room, be told they had no vacancies, and then do a big long pity-me spiel (no anger, because that would piss them off, but plenty of pleading and deference), and--tada! A room would miraculously be found!
posted by Bugbread at 3:26 PM on October 2, 2005

i worked in a gas station in beverly hills

i didnt have a red towel hanging out of my back pocket, i had a blue one.
posted by tsarfan at 3:36 PM on October 2, 2005

I've always liked Richard Roeper's "Ten Sure Signs a Movie Character is Doomed, and Other Surprising Movie Lists".
posted by mystyk at 3:49 PM on October 2, 2005

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the encyclopedic Movie Cliches List
posted by ori at 4:44 PM on October 2, 2005

I am extremely gratified at #33 - All beds have special L-shaped sheets that reach to armpit level on a woman but only up to the waist of the man lying beside her.

Oh man, that's always driven me crazy: "I've just slept with this man but he must not be allowed to see my breasts!" Adult men who skipped some essential steps of puberty should be exposing themselves either if their bedmates' body parts are so terrifying.
posted by nelleish at 4:44 PM on October 2, 2005

shouldn't be exposing themselves
posted by nelleish at 4:45 PM on October 2, 2005

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the encyclopedic Movie Cliches List

It seems like the items in the posted link are taken from this collection, pretty much verbatim.
posted by StickyCarpet at 5:03 PM on October 2, 2005

Another variation on #10: The Empire State Building can be seen from any window of any building in NYC.

I laughed at a lot of these... maybe I watch too many movies.
posted by May Kasahara at 5:11 PM on October 2, 2005

18. If a microphone is turned on it will immediately feedback.

That can happen in real life, as can:

30. When you turn out the light to go to bed, everything in you room will still be visible, just slightly bluish.


WEAK
posted by delmoi at 5:12 PM on October 2, 2005

I am extremely gratified at #33 - All beds have special L-shaped sheets that reach to armpit level on a woman but only up to the waist of the man lying beside her.

They left out the followup -- if she gets out of bed stark raving naked, he must nonetheless wear the sheet, or towel, or whatever. ("The Doors" has a particularly egregious such scene.)

Ebert's list is better, including e.g. the fruit cart that must be overturned in any car chase overseas.
posted by Aknaton at 6:36 PM on October 2, 2005

What about when someone hangs up the phone, the person they were talking to immediately gets that "phone hanged up" tone.

Does that happen any place except movies?
posted by Iax at 6:54 PM on October 2, 2005

> What about when someone hangs up the phone, the person they were talking to immediately gets that "phone hanged up" tone.

It's even better when it happens with cell phones (e.g. Spider-Man). Sadly, one of my favorite movies (The Big Lebowski) features this gaffe.
posted by neckro23 at 8:35 PM on October 2, 2005

What about when someone hangs up the phone, the person they were talking to immediately gets that "phone hanged up" tone.

You mean the dial tone? If you're on a land-line, yeah...
posted by delmoi at 9:30 PM on October 2, 2005

30. When you turn out the light to go to bed, everything in you room will still be visible, just slightly bluish.

WEAK

I like this one, in fact, I'm thinking of getting a nice blue nightlight now to simulate the effect.

How about tires squealing in dirt?
posted by scheptech at 10:21 PM on October 2, 2005

Is this post your favorite email day?
posted by angry modem at 11:16 PM on October 2, 2005

I'd revise #21 as follows:
21. Cars will explode instantly either (a) when struck by a single bullet or (b) when veering off a road, but only if down a steep hill.
posted by rob511 at 12:27 AM on October 3, 2005

The house will always be trashed during an unsupervised teen party, with no repercussions to the kids who did it.
posted by brujita at 3:43 AM on October 3, 2005

Whenever cops bring takeout to the station it has to be Chinese food. They order at least a dozen dishes, but they never fill a plate (plates aren't allowed with Chinese!) with a few different items -- everyone grabs one Chinese takeout container each. There is no sharing, and everyone is content with the single item they're eating even though there are a variety of dishes on the table.
posted by Devils Slide at 4:01 AM on October 3, 2005

delmoi: Is that how it works in the States? Up here in Canada the line just goes dead.
posted by ODiV at 5:58 AM on October 3, 2005

What about when someone hangs up the phone, the person they were talking to immediately gets that "phone hanged up" tone.

Does that happen any place except movies?

UK landlines.
posted by cillit bang at 6:05 AM on October 3, 2005

Not mentioned, the one that always bugs me the most: When a movie character goes into a bar and orders "a beer," without specifying what kind, they are given a beer, without being asked what kind (or being looked at as a crazy person, since most bars carry a reasonably wide selection of beers).

Though, if you're a regular at a bar, especially one who often gets the same kind of beer, it works, which I was somewhat surprised to find out recently.

The most poignant/amusing thing about moviecliches.com (depending on your outlook) is that many of the posters essentially replace a movie cliche with a real-life one. Their conception of what happens in real life is less accurate than their knowledge of what happens time and again in movies.
posted by gohlkus at 8:42 AM on October 3, 2005

seriously, most of these can be explained by the question: would you watch a movie where Kojak spends 20 minutes looking for a parking space?

movies not real film at 11.
posted by Miles Long at 11:33 AM on October 3, 2005

Metafilter: Fw: Fw: Fw: Best of my inbox circa 1994!
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 12:18 PM on October 3, 2005

seriously, most of these can be explained by the question: would you watch a movie where Kojak spends 20 minutes looking for a parking space?

This is pretty much accurate: dramatically, you don't want to be bothered with going through a random thing like looking for a parking space unless it's of vital importance. For example, if Kojak absolutely has to be in place X at 10:00, a few shots of him in the car looking for a parking spot as 9:50, 9:52, 9:55 roll around on the dashboard clock could be dramatic, but that's the exception that proves the rule. Why waste time and bore the audience to please a couple of pedants? It's all about the drama.
posted by graymouser at 1:09 PM on October 3, 2005

yup. the time bomb thing too. What if there were no ticking clock? What if the bomb just exploded? there's no drama then is there? a moment's thought would get you this.

unrelated: graymouser, who's your Fafhrd? love, miles
posted by Miles Long at 1:20 PM on October 3, 2005

It's all about the drama.

Which is deflated by the distracting cliche. Time for some new cliche's maybe. There must be other, new, ways to indicate a bomb is about to go off than anachronistic ticking sounds.

Besides, surely some things are just too inexcusably dumb: I stand by my all-time dumbest sound effect ever due to it's ubiquity, longevity, and impossibility in the first place: tires squealing in dirt. (To a stop, cornering at speed, or indicating power emotion / urgency while accelerating away.
posted by scheptech at 2:50 PM on October 3, 2005

They covered most of those in The Last Action Hero, not that anyone ever actually saw that movie.

And ditto on the 555 phone number thing, That ruins the 'wall of imagination' (or whatever it's called) for me every time. The old Quincy-Six-Blah-Blah-Blah-Blah worked better.
posted by HTuttle at 10:07 PM on October 3, 2005

The old Quincy-Six-Blah-Blah-Blah-Blah worked better.

That's what phone numbers sounded like in real life, not just in movies. The name referred to the local exchange, which was converted to the first two digits of the phone number when the Bell System switched over to all-digit dialing in the late 1960s.

The first part of my family's number growing up had been ALpine 1, but then it became 251. My dad to this day often gives only five digits when asked for a local number: "hey what's the number for Conrad's Pizza?" "44443." "What?" "GLenview 4-4443!" "Oh."

Meanwhile, the fake movie phone-number prefix we now know as 555 existed back in the day, too. In old movies every phone number is "KLondike Five-Blah-Blah-Blah-Blah," just like every phone number in movies today is "555-Blah-Blah-Blah-Blah."

More info can be found at one of my favorite links.
posted by notclosed at 5:29 AM on October 4, 2005

22. No matter how savagely a spaceship is attacked, its internal gravity system is never damaged.

That one seemed to really stand out from the rest. not funnier. but the most true of all.
posted by JokingClown at 10:46 PM on October 5, 2005