# Movies that can't possibly be real
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-cant-possibly-be-real/929289
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Tags:** movies
**Created:** [December 30, 2020, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-cant-possibly-be-real/929289 "2020-12-30T19:22:10Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@mcgato](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mcgato)
#### Post date: [December 31, 2020, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-cant-possibly-be-real/929289/21 "2020-12-31T14:13:15Z")
> [@lissener](#):
>
> The fact of Gary Old man playing a dwarf on his knees while Peter Dinklage was standing right fucking there
There is the 1981 movie “Neighbors” with John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd playing against type. Belushi plays the meek neighbor and Aykroyd plays the psychotic new neighbor. They decided before filming to both play against type, with predictable results.
I’m thinking that something similar may have happened in “Tiptoes.” Oldman and Dinklage may have gotten drunk and decided to switch roles.
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### Author:  [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)
#### Post date: [December 31, 2020, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-cant-possibly-be-real/929289/22 "2020-12-31T14:19:10Z")
Seriously. Compared to the plot of Monster’s Ball how could this not have been done? Barry was no sure thing draw at that point, she had Catwoman to live down if nothing else, but as producer I’m sure she ponied up some of the cost. And likely wanted to reestablish her serious movie acting cred. Bad choice in Sax as director but consensus was that she delivered on her performance.
Easy to look at bad movies and in hindsight wonder what they were thinking. Which is why we see more boring safe things done.
Then again someone listened to a pitch for a show about a drug addled woman with a problematic childhood who, get this, is a _chess_ wunderkind (!) boy that will make for exciting tv, c’mon … and not only said sure but threw lots of production money at it. So good thing some ideas that sound wtf get someone saying do it.
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### Author:  [@joebuck20](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joebuck20)
#### Post date: [December 31, 2020, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-cant-possibly-be-real/929289/23 "2020-12-31T15:06:15Z")
> [@Alpha\_Twit](#):
>
> _Space Truckers_ - Dennis Hopper as an interplanetary truck driver hauling a stolen load of bio/cyber killing machines. Charles Dance as a cybernetic pirate with a pull start penis. Debi Mazar and Stephan Dorff for…reasons?!
This sounds fucking awesome.
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### Author:  [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)
#### Post date: [December 31, 2020, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-cant-possibly-be-real/929289/24 "2020-12-31T15:22:29Z")
Two “how on earth did these pitches ever get accepted” films that turned out to be quite good:
_The Lobster_: In the future, all single people are forced to stay at a hotel, where they have 45 days to find a romantic partner or else be transformed into an animal of their choosing and released into the wild.
_Being John Malkovitch_: An unemployed puppeteer discovers a tunnel that leads into the mind of real-life actor John Malkovitch, allowing one to occupy his body for a short time before being ejected into a ditch by the New Jersey Turnpike.
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### Author:  [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)
#### Post date: [December 31, 2020, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-cant-possibly-be-real/929289/25 "2020-12-31T16:00:16Z")
**Rubber** : A sentient tire rises from the junkyard and goes on a murder spree, making heads explode at will. Next stop: Hollywood. There, I just saved you wasting 90 minutes of your life.
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### Author:  [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)
#### Post date: [December 31, 2020, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-cant-possibly-be-real/929289/26 "2020-12-31T16:15:51Z")
Unfortunately, it isn’t.
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### Author:  [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)
#### Post date: [December 31, 2020, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-cant-possibly-be-real/929289/27 "2020-12-31T17:36:52Z")
Two great examples!
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### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [December 31, 2020, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-cant-possibly-be-real/929289/28 "2020-12-31T17:57:12Z")
The elevator pitch for _Swiss Army Man_:
“Okay, so our hero is a castaway on a tropical island. And he goes through all the usual survival stuff. But here’s the twist - a dead body washes up on the beach and becomes his imaginary best friend.”
“Are you insane?”
“Daniel Radcliffe has agreed to play the corpse.”
“Okay, we’ll greenlight it.”
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### Author:  [@Toxylon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Toxylon)
#### Post date: [December 31, 2020, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-cant-possibly-be-real/929289/29 "2020-12-31T18:05:14Z")
I have no entry, but I just have to say this thread is proving to be a goldmine of movies to see over the New Year and beyond. I detest films with ho hum, cliched scripts, and these are an antidote to that. I’ve seen some already for proof of that.
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### Author:  [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)
#### Post date: [December 31, 2020, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-cant-possibly-be-real/929289/30 "2020-12-31T18:29:35Z")
John Mulaney’s Back to the Future bit applies.
[ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKwMnnuN7-g)
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### Author:  [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)
#### Post date: [December 31, 2020, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-cant-possibly-be-real/929289/31 "2020-12-31T18:54:25Z")
One notable exception is 1945’s _Picture of Dorian Gray_, where they actually commissioned a Great Artist, [Ivan Albright](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Albright), to paint the after [portrait](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/49/The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray-_Ivan_Albright.jpg). The original hangs at the Art Institute of Chicago.
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### Author:  [@Reno\_Nevada\_Jr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reno_Nevada_Jr)
#### Post date: [December 31, 2020, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-cant-possibly-be-real/929289/32 "2020-12-31T19:03:16Z")
My go-to movie of this sort is **Southland Tales**. Here is an earlier thread on it: [holy crap, "Southland Tales"](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-southland-tales/442476). I will note that **lissener** in that thread said
> It’s one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen, but I just couldn’t look away.
Which sums it up pretty well. My ranking for this film, on a scale from 1 to 10, is _mauve_ or maybe _plaid_.
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### Author:  [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)
#### Post date: [December 31, 2020, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-cant-possibly-be-real/929289/33 "2020-12-31T20:27:06Z")
On a scale of one to ten, _Southland Tales_ is minus potato
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [December 31, 2020, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-cant-possibly-be-real/929289/34 "2020-12-31T22:34:27Z")
> [@DSeid](#):
>
> Then again someone listened to a pitch for a show about a drug addled woman with a problematic childhood who, get this, is a _chess_ wunderkind (!) boy that will make for exciting tv, c’mon … and not only said sure but threw lots of production money at it. So good thing some ideas that sound wtf get someone saying do it.
Yeah, but. The guy who wrote the novel, Walter Tevis, wrote only five other novels but three of them were _The Hustler_, _The Color of Money,_ and _The Man Who Fell to Earth_. It may not have been as hard as you think to find someone to bankroll a movie with a woman as hero from this guy.
In fact, I’d put down money to get one of his unmade novels that I’ve never read into production.
> _ **The Steps of the Sun** _ is a 1983 science fiction novel by the American author [Walter Tevis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Tevis).[[1]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Steps_of_the_Sun#cite_note-1) It is about a future [energy crisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_crisis), and a world in which China has become the leading superpower.
More timely now than it was in 1983.
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### Author:  [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)
#### Post date: [January 1, 2021, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-cant-possibly-be-real/929289/36 "2021-01-01T02:52:58Z")
> [@Dropo](#):
>
> _Seeds of Evil_ (1974) – Everyone talks about the gardener (Joe Dallesandro) as if there was nothing of equal importance in their lives. And then
Isn’t every movie Dallesandro was in pretty much an excuse to get naked?
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### Author:  [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)
#### Post date: [January 1, 2021, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-cant-possibly-be-real/929289/37 "2021-01-01T12:58:38Z")
I thought it was interesting that the shots of the portrait of Dorian Gray were in color, while the rest of the film was in B&W, a fact I appreciated only recently. I first saw the movie as a young teen, on the B&W TV my mother insisted we have at home, because she thought color TVs gave you cancer (she had probably read something once about early experiments in color broadcast using red uranium, but no TV was ever manufactured with anything radioactive).
I didn’t see the film again until very recently, and finally was aware of the shots of the portrait being in color.
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### Author:  [@whitetho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whitetho)
#### Post date: [January 1, 2021, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-cant-possibly-be-real/929289/38 "2021-01-01T14:30:51Z")
It could be argued that:
[ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0QVJOEwXac)
begat:
[![]( " - YouTube") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjBjUF4Tb_k)
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### Author:  [@Cayuga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cayuga)
#### Post date: [January 1, 2021, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-cant-possibly-be-real/929289/39 "2021-01-01T16:04:14Z")
My tastes are fairly mainstream, but I enjoyed _Rubber_ (although the fact that we started watching it at 1:30 A.M. may have had something to do with that). And I’ve watched _Monkeybone_ several times — one of my favorite movies.
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### Author:  [@Kelby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kelby)
#### Post date: [January 1, 2021, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-cant-possibly-be-real/929289/40 "2021-01-01T16:10:47Z")
> [@Larry\_Borgia](#):
>
> Loqueesha takes the cake. How this flick got greenlit is beyond me. **It has to be seen to be believed**.
>
> [Loqueesha - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loqueesha)
Well, there you go.
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### Author:  [@DorkVader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DorkVader)
#### Post date: [January 1, 2021, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-cant-possibly-be-real/929289/41 "2021-01-01T17:23:42Z")
> [@Alpha\_Twit](#):
>
> _Space Truckers_ - Dennis Hopper as an interplanetary truck driver hauling a stolen load of bio/cyber killing machines. Charles Dance as a cybernetic pirate with a pull start penis. Debi Mazar and Stephan Dorff for…reasons?!
I saw this space truckers, years ago, it was awesome, yeah, a dumb movie, but still fun to watch.
Square pigs 🤣
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