There are many cliches in filmmaking. Some are genre specific while others are more mechanically a part of filmmaking. One of my favorites of these is the "Oh no I won't" cliche. It goes like this. Character is strongly motivated not to do something. His friends try to convince him otherwise. Finally, the character is reduced basically to saying "Like hell I will!" Next scene character is doing exactly what he vowed not to do. There's no scene inbetween to show how he was convinced to go against his better nature. It's basically a short hand to get the filmmaker out of a jam without destroying the nature of the character. We the viewers assume that he was either blackmailed/tricked/or convinced to do what he didn't want to do, but the writer is not pressed into thinking of just how.
Now, we've all seen these scenes, they are a part of many classic (and admittedly not so classic) films. My bad idea is to build an entire film around this cliche. Just have every scene end with someone saying "Like hell I will" and then next scene just blissfully pick up in that scenario without explaining how it got there. I would end the film with the main character dead and meeting Death and death saying well I gotta take you to hell. And the character saying nope you'll take me to heaven. And Death saying "Like hell I will."
Roll credits.
Brilliant! Love it. Better than using a dream to get out of writing a decent ending, just continue with the theory of they will be doing the opposite (or what they say they won't) in the next scene!!!
ReplyDeleteIf you can pull it off the joke would just continue to grow and you can get wilder and wilder.
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