Forty-two things I have learned from movies and TV that might or might not be true:

1. Some actors and writers get paid millions in the hopes that they won't make another movie any time soon.
2. Fear is a factor in otherwise intelligent, well-paid executive's who have severance packages that would keep Namibia afloat for a decade's lives. What are they afraid of? Writers.
3. Time has a way of making all old scripts fresh again, no matter how well they previously did at the box office.
4. Time has a way of making young directors and executives wish to recreate the favorite movies of their youth, only with different titles, different plots and different styles, except when they use the same title to make a different movie and call it an 'homage'.
5. Bad films that have become cult icons can never be left alone. They have to be filtered and referenced until everybody's heard of them, but nobody really understands why anyone watched them in the first place.
6. Bad films that no one considers classic have a way of bobbing to the surface just because they are old and the clothes or sets were quaint.
7. Bad actors who were in classic films coast along on the coat-tails of their almost-fame until everyone gets tired of them or they finally do something decent.
8. Actors often become stars because they can repeat the same performance with different scripts and directors. They are known as dependable, even when they phone in their parts.
9. There is no such thing as a bad premise, just ideas who are ahead of their time.
10. Plagiarism is okay as long as it is cross-cultural or pan-generational.
11. Horror means less than it used to and it didn't mean much then.
12. Comedy has to wait its turn while the studios crank out fresh fart jokes and experiment with the other bodily fluids and the words used to describe them.
13. Nudity is something you throw in to get a segment of the audience into the theatre that might otherwise not show up.
14. Sex is so ubiquitous that watching clothed people eat is more interesting.
15. Violence has become dance. Death has become a plot device.
16. The day when a teenager directs a script written by a teenager for a movie about teenagers is almost upon us. And Sundance and Cannes will wet their pants about the verite...
17. Fashion has not only crept onto the screens almost at the moment of inspiration, but the movies and shows cycle back the fashion within weeks, so that clothes and their movies can become out of date within six months.
18. Music has no 'contemporary' slot anymore. Every style and artist that has ever been recorded or transcribed can be found anywhere at the same time, sometimes in the same show.
19. History has no meaning on the screens. It is a toy to be played with, not to ask 'what if?', but 'as if'!
20. Time has no meaning on the screens. An event that originally took place or should take place in days, weeks, or months, blips by us in a series of jumpcuts in seconds, without even benefit of a calendar effect.
21. Audiences have become so indiscriminate in their watching that it is possible, with modern technology, for some people to watch the same shows and movies over and over from birth to death.
22. Although the wheel had been around for a few millenia, movies about the times of Christ invariably seem to fail to show wagons. I don't know much about the technology of the times, but if the Romans and the Philip's Eunuch could wander about in chariots, then Christ could certainly spare his tootsies every once in a while with a ride, couldn't he?
23. The future as presented by the effects bozos and the directors is just Thirties 'B' serials clothed in brighter colours.
24. Retro is futuristic... yeah, right. Only because it is strange to people who think the Encylopedia Britannica is less authorative than the Guinness Book of World Records or the Sun...
25. Movies create the reality of the next generation of movies. This self-reverential attitude has created a cult with no god but a whirring machine that spits images and noise, which takes us back to the Oracles, whom I have it on good authority were either blocked up by fumes from a natural spring, or quite thoroughly stoned on Mother Nature's chewable bounty.
26. While millions are being spent on restoring silent black and white films from the early days of the industry, three generations have sprung up who have to have Dolby sound and computer-generated colours, paying more for a single movie than some of their grandparents spent at the movies in their entire lifetimes.
27. Movies and special effects with regard to violence and gunplay have influenced politics and lawmaking to the point where actors who wouldn't have a career without violence and gunplay are actively working to make sure that no child can imitate them with a toy or a real weapon. Hypocrisy, thy name is pay check-laden liberal.
28. Sexism and Racism make good copy. If you can't honestly espouse a philosophy of discrimination in public, make a movie or a TV show about someone else's pet bete noire and make yourself look 'responsible'.
29. Utopias and distopias are one and the same to a film maker or a film crewman. Make the pretty images dance for the pretty people and the pretty money will dance for you in the bank account.
30. People get killed making movies and TV shows. You have to look for their names at end of the credits.
31. The suspension of disbelief necessary to watch a film or a show is carried over into real life. A hypnotic subject is always ready to go under. Witness the commercial success of the Hummer and the AK47.
32. The TV writer's ability to 'recreate' real life is tested by the fact that real life people want to see something else. Thus, 'drama' is needed. How dramatic can you get? We're still waiting to find out, because the same six plots:
    
    • a. amnesia
    • b. unwanted pregnancy
    • c. wanted pregnancy
    • d. wanted but unrealized pregnancy
    • e. the wish to impregnate someone
    • f. suddenly revealed parenthood in the past
    
    keep getting thrown into the blender of the 'variations on a theme' writer's philosophy, sometimes in several different shows at the same time and often in the same show at the same time... And evidently, people will 'watch' it, over and over again...as long as people will 'write' it over and over again.
33. You can't go wrong plagiarizing a plagiarist. Communicating stolen property apparently doesn't make you an accessory after the fact in the writing world.
34. It is not a 'variation on a theme' when you completely ignore every part of the theme but the plot.
35. The current resurgence of religious groups producing entertainment tailored to their own philosophies ignores the fact that religion was originally popularized through its entertainment value in the first place. Of course, there is also the 'sizzle before the steak' advertising angle.
36. 'Good family entertainment' applies to both sappy chick flicks with enough testosterone to keep the man from going to sleep and sports. Figure that one out. Nice cheerleaders.
37. 'Good wholesome family entertainment' is always some variation on the plot of Lassie, Come Home or How Green Was My Valley, leading me to the conclusion that Roddy McDowell is to blame for a whole lot.
38. The American film distributor's habit of taking almost bearable Japanese or other foreign animated series and ripping them to shreds to make them suitable for five year olds has led to a generation of Hentai freaks because, while their stupid parents may have shut themselves off from a full realization of the carnal nature of the human infant's psyche (think about the true meaning of 'bottle feeding'), the childrens' brains are working just as they should and when they get out on their own, they buy the uncensored version of Sailor Moon and learn that their own imaginations were more creative than the real thing. So, I guess there is an upside. On the other hand, all that bowdlerized dreck is still floating about out there.
39. The intelligent design idiots who hate witchcraft should realize that any film that says that any deity created the earth or any part of it is actually doing part of their job for them. Evolution only works in films when dosed with a heavy dollop of magic.
40. In many ways, Dr Who, the Tom Baker years, is hard to beat, when compared with the movies and the TV shows of the last decade. I'm not saying that those episodes were the best of the series or the finest visual images available. I'm saying that in comparison to the other stuff from that time period, it truly shines.
41. NO movie or TV show has ever truly rivalled the best that radio programming had to offer. The radio version of Star Wars proves why any movie version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is bound to be disappointing. The human mind likes to shape it's own images. It has it's own box of paints. No manufactured image can do anything but provide a pale imitation.
42. Visual entertainment will never be as useful as playing catch with your children or a friend.

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