Remove any reference to ‘based on a true story.’ Everyone knows it ends up being bullshit anyway. Entertainment value trumps reality every time.
What I want is for the writers to write around it. Some of us find the fake physics, convenient news reports, and unrealistic conversations just as distracting, if not more so, than waiting a paltry few seconds for a movie to show something accurately. Any decent writer should be able to get around a scene where a character just waits. Add in some dialogue, banter, a brief time skip, anything.
When you show the starry night sky, use a photo of the damn real thing. 2 minutes research on an astronomy forum and bam! you got the real thing. And probably for free if you play your cards right. Hell, you probably spent more time and money to make that fake piece of shit you were using.
And all these CSI/crime series/ movies. When the detectives go to the Megalow Mart to investigate the murder do all the workers and managers always have to be too busy/self absorbed/sociopathic to not bother giving you more than a sentence or two of trivial info about their coworker before itching to get back to work?
And the phone/goodby thing. I know someone that actually pulls that shit. Not just no “goodbye”, they will say one last sentence that has not indication of being such, then just hang the fuck up. Which is irritating as hell when you were waiting your turn to convey some important information to them. My brother calls them back when they do this and then just hangs up on them 
I have a theory about this - not so much about men instead of women, but whites instead of nonwhites; either they hire somebody of color who speaks without any sort of accent, or the viewers detect the accent and, for some reason, are suddenly “pulled out of the movie/show and back into reality.”
It’s more noticeable now because a prefix (not area code - those tend to be accurate) being 555 is no longer enough; the number has to be between 555-0100 and 555-0199. The producers of American Dad! were fined by the FCC because they had a 555 number where the next two digits were not 01.
Anyway, tell anyone who has ever owned the phone number 867-5309 how this isn’t a problem.
There’s a reason for that; we need all of the phone numbers we can get. This is why there are more and more area codes. I remember when the San Francisco bay area, except for the extreme northern and southern parts, was all 415; now it’s 415, 650, 510, and 925. (I once had a prefix of 925, and got my share of calls from people trying to call area code 925 and forgetting to dial 1 first.)
Also, unless every studio does this (and even at that, what do independent filmmakers do?), then any number that is used will be called by people who think that they can get free stuff from it, even if it’s only the URL to an extended trailer on YouTube.
Whenever you have a group of people, no matter if it’s a SWAT team or the bad guys, there is a young guy, an old guy, a black guy, a Latino guy and a woman in black leather that can kick any 3 guys asses, oh yeah, and the guys who are going to die.
Well, it seems to me that they can keep re-using the same bank of numbers, and recycle them for different movies. For independent filmmakers, I don’t see why whoever’s in charge of such things couldn’t set aside a small bank of numbers reserved for that purpose, and let those be recycled as well. As far as people calling into the numbers, trying to get free whatever, that’s kind of the idea: they call the number, get an automated message telling them to go to the movie’s official social media page for further details/instructions. Repeat ad infinitum, until a predetermined amount of time, and then the number goes back into the bank until it is assigned to another movie.
But, if it’s a bad idea, it’s a bad idea: I’m not really that strongly wedded to it.
Bonus points if the Latino is good with knives.
Another one is where the bad guy blows away everyone except the good guy who he misses every time and then they have a fist fight.
I agree. I’m looking at How I Met Your Mother, here. Characters are into Star Wars as if it was the defining movie of their generation, not their writers. Glee, too, with the characters desperately upset about Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson.
If you are stranded on a deserted island, an alien planet, or a zombie apocalypse, sit down and share information so everyone is on the same sheet of music. If one person has information and says something weird or cryptic or vaguely threatening, make them sit the fuck down and explain what they meant to say so that everyone is communicating clearly.
Seriously, shows like LOST would be over in like five minutes if people would just talk to each other instead of screwing around. This is pretty much why I quit watching that show.
And mentioned in Family Guy’s “Blue Harvest” parody of Star Wars, in the scene in which two technicians are seen working on a control panel next to a long drop with no safety railing (as in the original):
Or at least give them names that start with a different letter.
They were fined? For what, having a fake number?
I don’t doubt that it could be a problem for a couple of people a year, I just doubt that those people are enough to change movies forever. In my years of watching TV and movies, I’ve hardly ever heard them name a number out loud. Just have the actor scribble it on a piece of paper unseen to the audience, or have on person say “Ok the number is…” and then cut to the other person nodding “Ok I got it”. There’s tons of ways to not actually name a number on screen and I really don’t believe that we should make this a permanent feature of movies just because a few people a year are inconvenienced.
No, the Asian guy is the one good at knives. The Latino guy is the one who, before he gets killed, takes out a cross and talks about his Catholic mother
Does that mean the 555-0200 and above are being used as real phone numbers now? If you get assigned one of those numbers, good luck giving it out to anyone and being believed.
No - for using what is not a fake number any more. The only “fake numbers” now are 555-0100 through 555-0199.
Actually, numbers beginning with 555, but not followed by 01 (with the exception of 555-1212, which is the same as 411 if you are in that area code), can be used for some sort of call forwarding, although I am not entirely sure of the details. The only time I have seen this used is on a WWE wrestling program, where they were calling viewers at home, and were using 555 numbers to mask the viewers’ actual phone numbers.
I’m caught between the proliferation of easily checked and corrected inaccuracies regarding the military, or the far-too-frequent romantic pairings of old geezers with sweet young things.
As an aside, I was watching Foyle’s Law and it struck me that all the characters in the show looked like ordinary people rather than all being gorgeous and well-coifed. Quite a difference from American series where the main characters always seem to be model-perfect while frumpy folks are added for comedy effect.
The May-December relationships bother me too, but I attribute that less to bad screenplay than powerful men who want to make out with a 20 year old model. If I could force the issue, I’d make it so that no on-screen romance, other than one that specifically calls for it, can be cast with actors more than 10 years apart.
Well, there’s also this to consider…
Whoever’s making that decision is a dickface
Can we at least agree to get rid of the schwing sound when a human throat is cut ;)?