Night Moves: How To Quickly Get Over Being Dumped by Your Girlfriend or Wife.

There are currently, many, many ways available that can help you get over being dumped by somebody.  It is, however, extremely important to note and understand two hard facts before you attempt to employ any of these methods.  
1. None of them ever work. 
2. All of them are guaranteed to cause you more pain than being dumped in the first place.  
The thing is, we are motivated by instinct to do something.  Whatever that is, it likely begins with you brooding in what is now an incredibly bleak, extremely tiny living space.  What used to be cozy suddenly feels like four walls no more than an inch away from your nose at all times.   You are also certain the oxygen/carbon dioxide ratio is terribly out of whack.  Simply put, you can't get enough air into your lungs and that automatic air intake reflex we humans have so proudly evolved to has somehow been put on temporary hold.  
You then suddenly find yourself entering your neighborhood Barnes & Noble.  You're not sure how; you don't remember the walk over at all.  For all you know, Mr. Scott has beamed you there.  Worse, while you once swore up and down you'd never sink this low, you realize you're headed for the self-help section.   You instantly find it crammed full of thin, snappily written books which are each in turn crammed full of helpful suggestions to get over being dumped.    
In the back of your mind, you picture yourself a little misty-eyed and there standing next to you is a cute (equally misty-eyed) and she instantly starts a conversation which progresses to a cup of coffee (one flight up), which progresses to a sharing a chocolate chip cookie, which simultaneously dawns on you both that this is the first real intimate moment you've enjoyed in five years.
Of course, since there is no girl or chocolate chip cookie or intimate moment, you stay your hand before it can open one of these books and you get jammed on the escalator because it's loaded with couples plastered to each other.  They are all buying a book of poetry which they will take turns reading out loud to one another before retiring for a full night of bliss. 
When you get back to your cell, you check for the 50th time to make sure there are no messages.  Then you use Google.  In quotes, "Getting Over A Breakup" produces a ton of results.  Even counting for duplications - not even Google is completely perfect -  your credit card can instantly arm you with thirty thousand solutions to your problem.  Before you do, please see the two salient facts listed above.  They have not changed since you began reading this.
There is, however, one thing you can do.  It's not going to change your current situation.  But it is going to get you to the next best place.  You will emerge with a realization that you will somehow get through all of this.
Yep, it's a movie.  Night Moves.  We're not sure why, but we've heard from a lot of people who have turned to Night Moves to help get through being dumped - and it always delivered.  We'll make some quick suppositions, but we don't think analyzing the "why" is going to matter much.  
You simply need to watch Night Moves to see how well it works.
Gene Hackman, one of the greatest actors of his (or any) generation, plays Harry Moseby, a private detective.  Without revealing too much, we can say he is not a happy guy, either with his job or his marriage.  Now, we know that if you just got dumped, you're thinking - all you need now is a downer movie.   The odd reality is that this movie actually lifts you up.  Besides being completely entertaining, Night Moves has a twisty plot that keeps you engaged while it moves forward at a breakneck pace that feels like it's been shot from a howitzer.
As to the why this movie works well for the recently bereft, we'll put forth one theory.  Gene Hackman plays pain so realistically, you feel it.  He does it so well, you pretty quickly start to understand that pain.  And due to true craftsmanship of great acting, directing and writing, you even start to feel it yourself.
Obviously, don't take our word for it.  Seeing is believing.  But what is really nice about Night Moves is that while you'll watch it to feel better about your situation, you'll find yourself drawn to this movie enough to watch it a whole lot more times.  Maybe, sometime soon, you'll enjoy it with someone new.  

Double Indemnity: What Makes An Oldie A Goodie?

Double Indemnity is an example of pedigree working to the nth degree.  The original book is by the great novelist James Cain, the screenplay by Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder.  Wilder directed the movie, which stars Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G. Robinson.  Everybody is operating at the very top of their game. 
  
It simply doesn't get any better than this.  Still and all, in the history of movies, there have been films with a pedigree close to this one - that have vanished for good reason. So let's call Double Indemnity a product of pedigree - with a minor miracle mixed in.  


As to why this movie from way, way back is great for modern movie audiences to watch again and again?  It's just pure fun.  There isn't a moment Stanwyck is on screen that you're not focused on some neat little thing she's doing.  (And yes, Stanwyck herself.)  Edward G. Robinson, who normally played nothing but tough guys, is still a tough guy.  Only this time he's an Actuarial Accountant in an insurance agency.  Nothing against actuarial accountants, but you have to ask yourself - how many movies could turn this particular profession into something so incredibly compelling and fun to watch again and again?


Let's not forget Fred MacMurray.  The truly lovable, trusting dad from Disney movies ("The Absent Minded Professor") and TV's "My Three Sons" plays a decent guy who somehow lets himself go  rotten as an egg you forgot to refrigerate.  MacMurray makes it so real and believable, no matter how many times you watch this film.  He turns in a performance that still works like gangbusters 70 years later.


Finally, there's Billy Wilder.  He always made comedies with a dark edge.  Think "Stalag 17", "Some Like It Hot" and "The Apartment".  Funny stuff - but full of evil and ugly behavior.  Double Indemnity gives us a kind of reverse-Wilder; a dark movie with a comedic edge.  You can't help but laugh out loud at scenes between Robinson and his boss.


All of which is why, sometimes the right pedigree produces a movie that stands out and makes it almost impossible to stop watching over and over again.

Before You Write The Screenplay, Write The Trailer.

  The great detective fiction writer Mickey Spillane came back to me several years ago when

   I thought back long ago to when guys like Mickey Spillane used to be interviewed on TV shows hosted by guys like Mike Douglas. Mike asked Mickey how he came up with his ingenious plots and Mickey said, “Mike, I go fishing.” After some appreciative laughter, Mickey said, “I put my line in the water, and the first thing I wonder - even before I know what the book is about – is ‘how does it end?’”

  Mike Douglas, a gently perceptive host, asked, “After you write your ending, do you then work backward until you have a book to go with your ending?” Mickey, that famous tough guy twinkle in his eye, said, “By the time the fish bites, I have my dinner – an ending - and a book to write!”

  I envied Mickey Spillane because he had worked out a simple scheme to create his fiction – and he sold millions of books. More so, you could tell Mickey Spillane was a guy who had fun doing what he did.

  Jump cut to a few years ago. I was asked to rewrite a screenplay with no beginning, a lame middle and an ending so patently stupid, it pretty much guaranteed the movie would never get made. Needless to say, I wasn’t having any fun. Which brought me back to Mr. Spillane, sitting at the beachfront with his line in the water. At which point, it came to me that there was a way to have more fun writing a movie. A way I could structure the movie so I knew it would appeal to audiences.

Write The Trailer First!

  I perked up, an extremely rare occurrence in those days. I thought back to my first job; a film editor cutting low-budget trailers. And I asked myself: “What would the trailer for this movie look like?”

  Unlike Mickey, I knew I needed more than simply an ending I could work backward from. I knew I had to figure out the many key elements that make a screenplay – and a movie trailer – work for an audience.

  I sat back for a second, and imagined I was in the theatre. The 64 minutes of commercials had just ended and the audience was informed the feature would begin after a few previews. I then actually heard a voice. The voice. Not from above. It was that guy you hear in almost every trailer. With that unique sonorous tone, he boomed: “In a world where men were men and women wished men were scarce…” 

  I then wrote down a few lines of narration for the trailer and described a visual I figured was key to getting people to want to actually see the movie.

  I remembered a line of dialogue in the script that sounded great (there weren’t a whole lot to choose from) and I used it for the next scene.

  I knew I had something I could work with when I laughed out loud at a sequence I had written for the trailer – the good news being that the screenplay was supposed to be a comedy.

  More importantly, by the time I was done, I had a five page document that a director could use to make a pretty nice trailer – for a pretty good movie.

  I then used that document to help me structure the entire movie – as well as provide me with specific ideas as to how to get from one point to the next. In other words, I knew the guts of the story that led to all those fun high points a trailer uses to get an audience excited.
  Of course, it’s not a perfect or be-all-end-all solution. The magic of great screenplays is in figuring out all the little moments we remember when we watch great movies – and creating characters we need to get involved with and stay with for a couple of hours.

  None of that hard work changes a bit. What The Trailer Method, as I’ve taken to calling it, does is help you figure out what this movie is going to be. It tells you why you should be excited about it and best of all, it serves as a great guide. Outlines and treatments tend to talk about the movie. Trailers are the movie. They give you the guts and the reality of the movie and they tell you if it’s working and why it’s working.

  You’d be surprised to learn that most of the rewrites I’ve ever been handed were screenplays that had no idea of what they were really trying to be.

  If you’ve read this far, you deserve to know how the screenplay turned out. The producer loved the draft and gave me some notes for another rewrite. He then got fired, which of course meant that I got fired, after which another writer was brought in and told to change the script back to the draft I was originally handed. The film never got made, but I’m still proud of the way my version turned out – and I knew I had a figured out a way to work that actually made writing a fun experience.

  The days of Mickey Spillane fishing for his dinner while concocting a million copy bestseller are long gone. But I can assure you, dinner (surf, turf or even both) the night after you first try The Trailer Method is going to be a whole lot more productive. Most of all, I believe you’re going to actually enjoy yourself!

The Secret To Every Great Movie Is Under The Hood Of A Car.

When the Earth had recently cooled from molten lava and I was a young man, I found myself in Los Angeles adapting a novel for the screen.  My script for a horror film had just finished shooting and a studio producer figured that was enough experience to qualify me to adapt this book.  I doubt the producer ever read it, because the closest the book came to the horror genre was that it was horrible. 

Hedging his bets, the producer also assigned a veteran screenwriter to guide me.  The word “grizzled” is overused, but it fit this guy beautifully. He drank Kentucky Bourbon from a leather hip flask and smoked four packs of unfilted cigarettes a day.  He had enough Raleigh coupons for a new Cadillac, but had lost his license after a string of DUI’s back in the 50’s.

This man lived high up on Sunset in a cottage he somehow never paid rent on.  The winter we worked together, he also stopped paying his utility bills, so they turned off his water the same day they turned off his electricity.

If you’re thinking “Barton Fink”, you’re right.  The difference being Fink worked with a guy based on the novelist William Faulkner.  My co-writer had never wrote anything more meaingful than a grocery list.   

I’m not being metaphorical here.  After he passed out one afternoon, I drove him home and after dumping him on his couch, I perused a cupboard in what passed for a kitchen.  Flintstone Jelly Glasses, empty bourbon pints, a half-snifter of what tasted like Tabasco and a box of cereal.  I peeked inside the box and the cornflakes were in frenzied motion.  

Our work on the screenplay was, as you may suspect, a bit on the tedious side.  I held the book in one hand, typed a key at a time with the other -  while he squandered his few lucid moments describing getting fired from a three-picture deal at Paramount Pictures.  Sometimes, Burt Lancaster was involved  and sometimes it was a five-picture deal, but when it came to getting fired, his tale remained doggedly consistent      

One day, despite everything, I learned something about screenwriting from this man that has worked gangbusters for me to this very day. 

While struggling with boiling the first 100 pages of the book into a first act, I was instructed by this man to stop typing and drive him to the store for more cigarettes.  When we returned, he insisted on lifting the hood of the Roadrunner, a souped-up “muscle car” I had borrowed.  He asked me to turn the car back on and rev it.  I did so, but feared he would get his throat cut by the whirring fan blade.

After deftly avoiding this gristly fate, he slammed the hood home and pronounced: “This is an engine.  That book and our script - has no engine.”

It was then that I learned that every script, story, novel – must have something that keeps driving it.  An engine that never stops moving a reader or movie audience from Point A to Point Z. 

The Bourne Identity, both book and movie – is an excellent example.  The engine is Bourne himself, trying to find out who he is and why he does the things he does.  It’s such a powerful engine that you happily follow Bourne through three movies.  You can watch them each 100 times and that engine always hums you along.   (Of course, it helps immeasurably to have a great star and supporting cast and vastly talented screenwriters and directors.)

The book we adapted, alas, had no engine.  It meandered from one scene to the next.  Under his occasional guidance, I tried to create an engine, but it was instantly and vociferously rejected by the book’s author, who happened to be married to the producer.

I returned the car to my friend, who had mysteriously survived his stint as a forward gunner on a riverboat crusing The Mekong.  I moved back East to take another assignment, but am frankly not sure what happened to my co-writer.  He is one of those people you’re afraid to Google, because the search engine in this case can only confirm your worst suspicions.

These days, I still tinker with screenplays and vastly enjoy watching movies created by people know how to expertly craft engines that take us to great places.  I’ll quote the Al Pacino character in “Scent Of A Woman”.  A cop has halted his 90 mile mph joy ride on an urban street and is admiring the car.  Pacino says, “Don’t she purr, though?”

1969: Meditative Relaxation. 2010: Dirty Harry Callahan.

Recently, at a party, we overheard a guy saying: "I remember watching TV and mindlessly eating potato chips. I loved how I used to just veg out."


We all stared into the middle distance, realizing nobody much used the word "veg" anymore.       The guy then said: "Now if I watch, I have my iPhone nearby. If I get email, text, a tweet or a call, I need to answer."


While this guy no longer "vegs" out, the one healthy thing about his new life: he's quit potato chips, fearful of getting his iPhone screen greasy. Vegetarianism, it seems, is gone, at least in this sense of the word.


Nobody in the group could think of a TV show they recently watched front to back without a pause - unless you count pushing the pause button on a DVR.


All of which made us think that the world we currently live in can hardly be called The Age of Relaxation and Quiet Contemplation. The good news is, before the conversation got too depressing, our attention was drawn to another side of the room. A group of guys were comparing Blu-Ray collections.


You read that right. While it sounded like a new version of "Who's the biggest?", when we listened more closely, a starting difference emerged. A guy stated happily: "I come home. I feed the cat. I order Chinese. I then stoke up my Blu-Ray of Dirty Harry." The capper? "I turn off my phone and relax." Everybody nodded, the middle distance this time happily populated by fistfights, car chases and gunfire.


Another guy added, "I like to make it a theme night. If I watch Dirty Harry, I followed up with "Magnum Force". Then "The Outlaw Josey Wales." Yes, he meant all in one night. It sounds nuts but this guy came across as the most supremely relaxed soul we've ever met.


The talk shifted from how many Blu-Ray's they owned to how many times they'd watched these movies. 145 was the lowest number, for "The Godfather II". 257 seemed high - for DeNiro & Pacino in "Heat" - but the guy actually claimed he was probably underestimating.


We felt strangely elated upon hearing this. Perhaps there are still pockets in today's world that include genuine relaxation. Quiet Contemplation might be a stretch, unless you happen to be quietly contemplating if Harry's giant.44 Magnum pulls a little to the left.


Which makes us wonder: does Clint realize he is responsible for lowering the blood pressure of so many men? Should the American Heart Association feature a clip of Clint's famous line: "You gotta ask yourself, do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do you?" - followed by a serenly relaxed man in his barcolounger easing his troubles away while Harry pulls the trigger on his empty gun - an inch away from a bank robber's ear.


We thought back to earlier times and deep relaxation techniques, Tai Chi and Zen - and we realized that the real question is: who needs a mantra when you've got Dirty Harry Callahan?

The Fugitive: One Shot Is All You Need To See!

Naturally, we think a lot about what turns a movie a 191 movie - one you can watch over and over and still have fun with it!  Sometimes, the answer is right in front of you.  Sometimes, it's all in a single shot.  There are probably lots of good examples, but the one that comes to mind the fastest is from The Fugitive.  Dr. Richard Kimble is back at Chicago Memorial Hospital, looking for the one-armed man.  He's in great danger, but another doctor (beautifully played by Julianne Moore) asks him to help out - and take a young patient to an examination room.  Harrison Ford, as he always does, plays it intensely and delivers the scene on the money.  He quickly diagnoses the kid and takes him instead to surgery.  As they wheel the kid off, director Andrew Davis plays it all on Harrison Ford's face:  he goes from a hunted killer back to what he really is:  a great doctor.  It doesn't last long, but it's all there and you thrill to how Ford pulls off that transition so perfectly. He makes it believable and real.  It takes a great actor playing at his best and a great director who trusts the actor to just deliver what's needed.  We're not sure, but we get the feeling that all 191 Movies have a scene like this.  The scene that keeps you following this character throughout the entire story.  The scene that makes you realize this movie is worth watching - again and again!

Want Great Movie Quotes? Look No Further Than Stewie, Brian and Peter!

The gang at 191 Movies tends to hang out with guys who watch, quote and even live their favorite movies.  Shef, our very good friend and peerless movie authority, recently pointed out that there is a single great source for the best movie quotes around.  
Yep.  It's Family Guy.  The good news is, as Shef says, what you see on Family Guy is way, way more than simply movie quotes.  Seth MacFarlane and his talented band of writers, directors and animators take the time to lovingly recreate their "movie quotes" with an almost obsessional attention to detail.  Every shot, edit, sound effect, sountrack music and inflection the voice actors use - is always faithful to the original movie being quoted.
The real challenge is figuring out the movies being quoted while you're watching Family Guy.   The great news is, Seth MacFarlane uses new movies and then also will go way, way back in time to resurrect Bogart and other stars of the silver screen from long ago.
191 Movies remains dedicated to listing only the great movies you love to watch over and over.  It's great news that Family Guy is out there every night (on practically every station!) to keep these movies fresh and alive.