Learned from the Movies

Anne Hathaway with her movie baguette

• All grocery bags contain at least one French bread stick {Most lessons we can learn from movies are already all around us in real life. I learned of the baguette rouse when I was 17, from one of my first girlfriends. She always carried one under her arm when out and about. I eventually asked her about it and mentioned that I’d never seen her eating the bread. She looked at me aghast and informed me that they weren’t for eating but were there to make her look worldly and sophisticated. She was 16. [Thomas Johnston]}
• A detective can only solve a case once he has been suspended from duty
• You can run faster than the supersonic shockwave and flamefront in an explosion [Patrick Uden]
• You can survive the battle as long as you don’t show anyone a picture of your sweetheart back home.
• No-one will ever think of looking for you in the ventilation system of a building
• Beds have special L-shaped top sheets covering women to their armpits but the men beside them only to the waist
• Never be at the back in the jungle… [George Falconer]
• No married or romantic couple can redecorate a flat without playfully starting to flick paint at each other. [Peter Bradshaw]
• The Eiffel Tower is visible from every window in Paris.
• More often than not colliding cars burst into flame.
• A single match can light up a room the size of a football pitch.
• All bombs are fitted with timers with large red numbers – just in case you need to know when it’s going to go off
• That bomb with the red numbers counting down, it also has a red and a blue wire. Don’t worry which you cut with 2 secs to go – you’ll always snip the right one.
• All police investigations involve visiting a strip joint at least once
• Police departments have special personality tests so they can assign officers a partner who is the exact opposite
• Women have shaved their armpits throughout all history [Catherine Bray]
• You don’t need to say goodbye on the telephone, just hang up when the relevant information has been conveyed[Catherine Bray]
• There will always be a free parking space right where you need it [Catherine Bray]
• No one ever goes to the loo [or cleans the home] – it just happens by itself… [Sarah Haque]
• When you close a mirrored bathroom cabinet, there’s always a monster / bad guy behind you in the reflection… [George Falconer]
• The protagonist can never go for posh dinner at any restaurant anywhere without seeing his nemesis on another table [Jason Loader]
• If you’re being chased in an underground car park you’ll probably be alright but it will be a close shave [Jason Loader]
• When you drop your books, papers or groceries in public, there’ll always be a good-looking, kind-hearted, awkwardly romantic person ready to help you pick them up [Juliet Landau-Pope]
• And when they drive to a restaurant, they always find a parking space right outside [Juliet Landau-Pope]
• No-one ever needs a wee no matter how long they are chasing or being chased. Unless the script calls for toilet humour. [Deborah Mules]
• Women never carry handbags [Caroline Ratner]
• We gain profound philosophical insight in the moment before death [Irshad Ashraf]
• evil has a foreign accent [Irshad Ashraf] or British/English English
• In the absence of the L-shaped sheet, it doesn’t matter as both lovers have usually – in the heat of passion – totally forgotten to take the lady’s bra off [Moray Coulter]
• Nobody uses parking meters [Geoff Langan]
• high heels are suitable footwear for running from dinosaurs [Zoe Collins]
• You can always reload your gun even if you haven’t been carrying any ammo. That’s if you need to reload it at all. Ever.
• To pass yourself off as a German officer, don’t waste your time learning the language – a German accent will do. (Altogether now: I luff chess musik.)
• Although mothers cook eggs, bacon and waffles every morning, husbands/children never have time to eat it.
• The Chief of Police will give you 48 hours to finish the job before you get suspended/reassigned/in big trouble.
• Any job in a romcom based in London or NY can afford you a lovely flat in a swanky area of the city. [Helen Newton] Or a broom cupboard. Which by the end is replaced with a swanky apartment.
• iPhones in the movies don’t need to be plugged in every three hours. Unlike the real world. [Helen Newton] ditto Apple laptops
• Your average laptop is powerful enough to hack into most alien systems.
• Everyone’s computer is an Apple Mac
• Mediaeval peasants had perfect teeth.
• When you wake from a nightmare you sit bolt upright and pant
• You can always park straight outside the building you’re visiting
• If you can’t pick the lock with a paper clip, then a credit card will do
• TV news bulletins always contain a story that affects you personally at that exact moment
• When you switch on the TV, the news will be talking about your story at that very moment, but you will still switch it off again half-way through the report (although you show no symptoms of acute ADD in any other part of the film) [Moray Coulter]
• All albinos are evil
• At least one of every pair of identical twins is born evil
• You won’t show any pain when taking a ferocious beating but when a woman tries to clean the wounds you’ll wince like hell
• If you decide to start dancing in the street, everyone you come across will know all the steps
• Don’t worry if you are outnumbered in a martial arts fight – your enemies will patiently wait to attack you one by one by dancing around in a threatening manner until you’ve disposed of their colleagues
• When you turn out the bedroom light, everything will still be visible, just bluish
• Honest cops get shot within a week of retirement
• Beer is always drunk with the brand label clearly on display. Ditto all bottles of champagne, spirits etc. [Catherine Considine] and Coke
• Why waste a bullet when a complex contraption with laser beams or a rotating saw will do?
• just bribe the bell boy / receptionist / valet and they’ll break data protection laws [Irshad Ashraf]
• A sharp knock on the skull will always render the victim unconscious for a short period, after which they will wake up otherwise unaffected [Moray Coulter]
• The etiquette is to answer the telephone with a stacatto announcement of ones surname [Irshad Ashraf]
• If your life is in danger you should always walk into a dark room and wait a bit before you turn the light on and/or have a shower [Helen Milner]
• The single biggest TV drama cliche of all is perhaps one that no- one really notices. The drinking of whisky, miraculously produced from beneath a desk, or handily sitting on a kitchen top, in anticipation of a difficult conversation. Not wine, not gin, not beer (that’s the American version) but the golden spirit, whisky. [MT Rainey]
• There are no black people in Notting Hill [Irshad Ashraf]

This post began as an idle conversation on my Facebook page. I’ve preserved here some of the ones that most resonated with a view to adding to the list, especially in the wake of Christmas movie viewing. And of course I’d love further suggestions below if any occur to you.

What else have you learnt from the movies…?

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