Is 30 seconds of research too much to ask of screenwriters?

Cafe Society
1

Obviously, the answer is “yes.”

Now I know criticizing Serving Sara* is like using a bazooka to shoot paralyzed fish in a barrel, but this is an example where the entire premise of the movie rests on an error that could have been avoided with literally less than a minute spent on Google.

The entire point of the movie is that Sara is trying to serve her husband divorce papers, rather than vice versa, so that rather than Texas laws, which are “some of the most conservative divorce laws in the country,” “New York law will apply” and Sara will thereby “get fifty percent” of her husband’s money. Now, I don’t necessarily expect them to do a research memo on what law would apply, what is considered substantive versus procedural law, and so on. But a tiny effort would be appreciated.

Sure, Texas is a pretty conservative state in many ways. However, it is also a community property state, you numbskull writers! Ya know, those nifty states where you’re guaranteed fifty percent of the wealth accumulated during the marriage.

Don’t get my husband started on computers in movies, either. I’m not that computer savvy, yet even I realize that, for instance, computers don’t beep every single damn time you press a key. How irritating would that be?

Why oh why don’t they get someone who knows about the subject matter to consult? I bet plenty of knowledgeable folk in various disciplines would be happy to do it just for a credit and the satisfaction of having one movie they don’t have to groan and grumble through.

*I had to watch this because my boyfriend, Bruce Campbell, was in it. Come to think of it, I suffer a lot for my love of Bruce.

2

Well, maybe Sara is a dumbass, and dumbasses do dumb things like misinterpret divorce law.

3

True, but Matthew Perry’s character was a lawyer, and it was he who hatched this “brilliant” plan. Also, every other character is motivated by this misconception, including the presumably high-priced lawyer of the rich husband.

4

Maybe Perry’s character orchestrated everything in a devious plot to get into her pants!

5

Small hijack.
I had some friends in the movie business (actually, spoiled children of people in the movie business). Two of them decided to write a screen play (for daddy to produce)
It was to be a medical thriller. They asked if I would be their consultant, because, “they wanted to get the medical stuff right” HA!
They finally decided they would pick & choose from my suggestions and just take whatever was exciting.
I finally just backed out and asked they not put my name in the credits. (that was to be my “payment”)

6

The computer inconsistencies are what really get me.

Face it, screenwriters: the day when you could fiddle and improvise and fudge the computer details—assuming that the vast majority of your viewers didn’t have a computer and therefore wouldn’t know that you were full of bullshit—are OVER. Most people can tell when something is way off. You can’t pull that bullshit anymore.

Like in that Al Pacino movie “S1m0ne.” Some of the hardware details were absurdly wrong. (Long-winded, minor but geeky spoilers ahead.)

Granted, we can suspend disbelief and accept that the character could make a realistically human virtual reality character from some software. But what the hell was the 5" floppy drive (ancient and outdated by today’s standards) doing in this guy’s fancy computer? Why did he need it, and what was the point of using a special ancient 5" floppy disk for a crucial scene? Why couldn’t he have used a more standard 3 1/2" floppy drive, the ones that most PCs still use? Huh?

And how many personal computers do you know that have complete hard drives that you can slip into your computer like you would a CD? Gee, I wish I could add a new hard drive that easily. Just slip it into the slot that doesn’t exist on any computer I’ve ever seen.

And who uses an application with that much unique power without backing it up on CD or DVD? Or at least a removable firewire or USB hard drive? Why the hell (and how the hell) could someone run and rely on such one-of-a-kind software without once worrying about what he’d do if the data got corrupt, the hard drive crashed, or an electical storm took out the computer? Like he’s really gonna just have that one copy of the software, all that time, and never think to copy it or back it up? That’s insane.

I’m by no means a computer expert, but the whole premise, just the nuts-and-bolts parts of it, were so off-the-wall.

7

I haven’t seen that movie, so this might not be exactly what was shown, but easily removeable, hard drives do exist. -Here is Pricewatch’s list of pluggable disk.

8

Wow, you learn something every day.

To elaborate, the computer in this movie had an open slot in the front, right above or below where the CD or DVD drive would be. If I remember correctly, the Al Pacino character took this drive (if I recall correctly, it looked to be an open hard drive, not enclosed—you could see the spindle thingie) and slipped it into this open slot. I think the open slot had a little shelf that came out and then he placed the drive on this shelf. When the drive slid into the open slot, it connected immediately and ran this special software. Almost as if it were a CD instead of a regular hard drive.

Does such a thing exist? And if so, how mainstream is it? How come I never see any PCs with these open holes in the front, where a hard drive can be inserted? I’ve never seen the like.

9

The hard drive had an open spindle? Now that is stupid - even a little bit of dust getting on the drive would ruin it. More normal removalble hard drives are fairly rare, you mostly see them at high end computer centers(Server HD crashes? - take out harddrive, insert good harddrive to get it working in minutes), or areas where you need high security(remove hard drive at night, lock in safe.) You don’t see them in consumer computers because internal ones are cheaper, and external(USB+Firewire) are more common as well.

Another computer related thing that bugs me in movies is hacking- apparently a computer expert can hack any computer from any other computer in a manner of minutes, when it really takes much longer, if you can do that at all.

10

Now, I don’t have the DVD of the movie in front of me to review it, but yes, I am almost 100% sure that there was an open hard drive. That was the way that we knew it was a hard drive, instead of just some box. I remember thinking that it didn’t make sense to have it exposed like that. I don’t think that it had any transparent covering over it or anything.

This computer looked like a more usual consumer level computer, with that 5" floppy drive and all. But I suppose that if they stretched it, they could claim it was a server. But it didn’t look that unusual to me (not that I am an expert!).

Yes, I always wondered about that. I don’t know anything about hacking, but I always figured that it couldn’t be that quick and easy . . .

11

If you’re upset by that little mishandling of the law, whatever you do don’t watch the Ashley Judd vehicle Double Jeopardy. Your head will explode.

12

I don’t think you can blame the screenwriters for the problems you mentioned. They are at fault when the story revolves around computers doing impossible things, but the appearance of these computers is the responsibility of the director and the set and design people. Scripts say things like “Bob saves the file and stands up” not “Bob inserts a 5” floppy disk into the drive…"

13

Writers should do research too. I just read a baseball novel (Sometimes You See it Coming, by Kevin Baker), in which a crucial scene involves a batter taking a swing at a wild pitch… this is an idea I’d toyed around with using in a story, because if the batter has two strikes and the pitch is in the dirt, he can take a swing and advance to first. Unfortunately, in Baker’s novel there is a runner on first base. I re-read the passage several times hoping that the runner on first had managed to get second on a steal or defensive intereference, because these opportunities are there, but it’s not explicit in the story that he does. A writer composing an entire novel around those final scenes in “the big game” should know that a batter can only advance to first on a dropped strike three pitch if first base is unoccupied.

14

I think a writer’s common comeback is “Yes, but I can’t spend 30 seconds on everything”. Which is true - I accept computers portrayed are going to be entirely made up, for instance - but it would piss off fans a lot less if you spent 30 seconds on the MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THE STORY!

OTOH, I’ve learnt to just not listen. At least if they have a stupid premise you can just accept it and forget it - the REAL premise is that she has to serve papers on her husband, or that people need to be kept in a virtual reality world, or whatever - what’s MORE annoying is when they pull out this crap in the last scene. Yeah, real clever way out, there, no wonder I didn’t spot it - that’s because you just made it up!

15

Meant to write “interference,” of course (not “intereference”), and really meant “defensive indifference” anyway. :smack:

16

Yeah, I can’t imagine that screenwriters have much to do with computers beeping every second like R2D2 on ecstasy.

Perhaps a lot of directors don’t deal with computers personally?

17

No, it is NOT true. A good writer’s job is to spend 30 seconds on everything.

Getting the details right for a screenplay or story is not that hard. Stuff like police procedure… every time I see the Detective Hero in some crime drama showing up at the murder scene and staring at the chalk outline, for instance, it ruins something small about the product.

Computers are another thing that’s not too difficult to portray realistically… and the UNrealistic portrayal is downright insulting, because it assumes that the audience is stupid.

18

I agree I’d be a lot happier if they spent a lot more time checking than they typically do now. For instance, you’re right: finding out the basic procedure to be followed at a murder scene should be necessary for a story about that. And anything that’s as easy to do right as wrong really grates.

But there’s always going to be some mistakes however carefully you check. And a couple of those have to be shrugged off.

(I draw the line in a different place nowadays. I used to hate all mistakes, but now I’ve just come to accept some things. For instance, using a computer with a stupid smily-face OS. We know it’s unrealistic, they know, EVERYONE knows. The same with running from street to street that aren’t next to each other, or allowing really large insects. I shrug, and say ‘poetic license’. OTOH, getting basic detective or medical procedures wrong, cracking modern encryption by thinking really hard for 5 seconds, or being able to jump the height of a building for no reason is just lazy and wrong.)

19

Oh yes, you just put me in mind of the premiere of Monk (a show I really like regardless), when the police prevent a suspect from leaving the summation, and Monk makes him confess by pointing out how he did it. Very dramatic - too bad the confession is inadmissable because they didn’t Mirandize him.

(Yes, I’m a lawyer, so what, wanna fight about it? </Paddy Tanniger>)

20

the biggest thing i can’t stand is when a bunch of people are staring at an encreadably fuzzy image on the moniter, then someone hits the “enhance” button, and the image is as clear as it could be. I cant wait untill i find the enhance button on my computer