Clichés in american movies

Always a favorite scene in any movie or TV show. The bigger the "drink spit"
the funnier the scene.

 

Wet streets at night.

 

Another variation of this was one was used on Law & Order all the time. In the course of an investigation, a DA would go to either an insurance agency or another type of record intensive business, and request a file that was (at the very least) several years old. Then an employee of said company would get up, walk all of two steps to the nearest file cabinet, rifle through it for two or three seconds and produce said file, as if all companies keep all their business files dating back to the Eisenhower Administration on hand everyday for just such an ocassion.

 

Not just USA but a universal film cliché.


An act of stealth, downloading computer files to usb stick is always managed under incredible stress.
The menacing sound of approaching footsteps compete against the download progress window.
Always and just in the nick of the narrowest margins of time, the downloader completes task and is gone, just leaving a scent of dust in the air or the faint rustle of a curtain covering an open window.

 

When detectives investigating a murder go to interview a family member the next day and they
are at work or school as if nothing uneventful had occurred.

 

Never break wind either.
Cept, Blazing Saddles...darn beans.

 

Watching "Perry Mason" episodes, it's amazing how often Mason and Paul Drake can discover a body visiting some place where the front door has been left open. Or the inevitable "I confess, I killed him" by someone in court which never happens in real life.

Two WWII cliches.
The local English teacher in a French village is inevitably a pretty woman in her 20s.

When American soldiers come face to face with a German tank, it's usually a Tiger. Which existed but not in the numbers you'd think. Also the Germans always used horse-drawn carts more than depicted. "Patton" makes a big deal out this, saying he knows they are beaten. Actually they always relied heavily on them.

In baseball the last out is a strikeout. Even in well-researched movies like "Eight Men Out" with Dickie Kerr's two wins or the Ronald Reagan as Grover Cleveland Alexander "The Winning Team" and the 1926 World Series.

 

Which goes back many decades. I credit Michael Mann as re-popularizing this in his 1981 film Thief, and again in his 1980s TV series Miami Vice. Vice also popularized the idea of heroes with 5-day beard growths, which is a trend that continues to this day.

Note there are actually special trucks in the movie business that tow water tanks with street-wide spigots to evenly disperse a thin layer of water all the way across the pavement. The advantage of it is that it covers up any skid marks and damage in the street; the disadvantage is that it's a cliche that yells "this is a movie!"

 

A time bomb is always defused with two seconds left.

 

Unless it is a James Bond film , in which case there are 007 seconds remaining.

 

Indy did it first!

 

I think Bogart beat him by a couple of decades...

 

Except Dobbs wasn't a hero, now was he?

 

Well, he was the hero of The African Queen in 1950...



And Lucas and Spielberg have admitted they borrowed the "Indiana Jones" look from Charlton Heston in Secrets of the Incas, 1954...



But I give credit to Michael Mann for re-popularizing the idea of wet streets, colored backlighting, and a 5-day beard.

 

"Willie the Weeper" Windom had the unshaven look as Matt Decker on Star Trek:TOS....showing Kirk how to destroy the planet eater
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/William_Windom?file=Matt decker.jpg

 

The worst of them involve violence.

1. Blunt force sufficient to knock some body unconscious for several minutes causes no actual injury.
2. Being shot does not cause any lasting injury.
3. Being kicked in the groin causes no actual injury, and is often humorous.
4. Being severely beaten is not emotionally traumatic.
5. In a car chase, multiple high-speed crashes cause no injuries.
6. In a car chase, the good guy who plows through a crowded intersection or drives on a crowded sidewalk injures nobody.

Now pardon me, I have an exploding fireball to outrun.

 

I didn't read the entire thread so maybe someone used this:

"The End"

...I know it's friggin' over

 

How about the guy who gets hit (very hard) on the head, gets knocked out, and when he awakens has "temporary amnesia?" And then later on in the show, he gets hit again... and all his memories come back. In reality, the second concussion would land him in the hospital with brain damage.

 

I've seen quite a few bog-standard that seem to think that the US liberated Auschwitz!?

 

A character taking a blow to the head and forgetting everything and then that being reversed by a second blow to the head.

 

It was wonderful in Veritgo but is annoying in everything else

 

that has to be fake...right??

 

Guy gets shot, gets up, then ALWAYS opens shirt or coat to show bulletproof vest.

 

Bob Eubanks always smokes after whoopie.