A fun game to play while drinking is to take turns coming up with movie titles but replacing one word in the title with the word "Butt." You can play it with any other word of course. Here's a few examples.
Hot Butt Time Machine
Butt Tub Time Machine
Hot Tub Butt Machine (man that movie is gold)
Requiem for a Butt
A Butt Runs Through It
The Thin Red Butt
Butt With the Wind (think about it)
Butt Gump
Another fun game is to come up with imaginary sequels to existing movies.
Forrest Gumper
Air Force Two
Apollo 14: Everything Goes as Planned
We are trapped in time itself. How very
deep of you. Get it. A giant fish, deep.
And another variation is to simply remove 1 letter from a movie title:
Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dad (Aka Mrs. Doubtfire)
12 Angry Me
Ack to the Future (starring Admiral Ackbar)
This is all a big lead in so I can make fun of Back to the Future 2.
Earlier this week I analysed the cliched goals of male characters in Hollywood movies. The gist of it is that their goals typically come down to "Give me back my family!"
Why was BTTF 1 So Good?
Within the first 20 minutes of BTTF we meet Marty's girlfriend, learn his dream of being a musician, and meet his wacky scientist friend. Before long Doc is murdered by terrorists and Marty is accidentally sent back in time to 1955. So here's two clear goals. Get back to the future and save his friend's life. We keep tacking on more complications like how Marty's mom starts to fall for him instead of his father. So now failure for Marty isn't just that he'd be trapped, but he very well may make himself not exist. So then he has to make sure his dad still hooks up with his mom (and this is a tall order since his dad is a total loser. Imagine if his dad was just normal, way less daunting a task). Plus he has a hot girlfriend in 1985 he'd like to get back to.
So that covers the Goals and the Stakes, what about the Urgency? Think about it, if you have a time machine in a story, it's going to be hard to put the main character in a pickle with a ticking clock. The lightning strike is a brilliant idea that works perfectly.
BTTF 3 works pretty well since it follows the plot of 1 pretty closely. So what happened with 2?
BTTF 2
It's like they came back to an alternate universe...
2 Opens the moment 1 ended. Marty's back in 1985, and everything's dandy, including his girlfriend (who has morphed into a new actress). Then Doc shows up, sweeps up Marty and his girlfriend and takes them to 2015 rambling on about how "something has to be done about your kids." Oh boy, here we go.
So BTTF 2 begins with about a 30 minute adventure where they try to prevent Marty's future son from getting entangled in some gang bullshit. During this, Marty's girlfriend (and future wife) starts asking tons of questions about the future, almost all of them related to what her wedding and kids will be like. So Doc knocks her out with some sleep ray thing and she becomes an unconscious prop. Marty and Doc have to then rescue her after the police mistakenly take her to her 2015 home thinking she's the 40 something version of her. She discovers wedding pictures in which Marty is wearing a tuxedo shirt, then becomes an unconscious prop again when she runs into her future self.
So the Goal for the first 3rd of the movie is to fix Marty's family or something. Not only do we not understand what's really at stake since we don't see the consequences of the family sucking, it runs totally counter to Doc Brown's whole thing about not changing things.
That's not Crispin Glover!
So while it's fun to see their vision of the future, the Goal/Stakes/Urgency just isn't there, and to top it off, it seems to imply that the only goals people have are related to having a perfect wedding, great kids, and a spectacular family. That's all we care about.
The 2nd third of the film is set in an alternate 1985 where the bully/villain has become a mogul because he stole the time machine and gave his 1955 version of himself a sports almanac that let him make millions. They don't stay in this 1985 very long, it's just to set up the third act. Doc and Marty have to go back to '55 and stop Biff from changing the future to this alternate '85. Why? Well in this version of the world, Marty's dad was murdered, his mom married Biff and got big fake titties, and Doc was committed.
Mr. Plot Device
So the 3rd act in '55 is based on the goal of stealing that sports Almanac. Good so far. The stakes are high as failing means that huge shit storm in alternate '85. In addition, they go back to the exact same date that Marty came back to the future from in the first film, because that's the day that Biff gave his young self the book. Got that?
So the climax of the film is about Marty trying to steal the book from Biff while at the same dance he was at in the first film. The other Marty can't be interfered with or else he'll never get back to the future like he did in the first film, thus creating a time paradox and destroying the galaxy. Huge stakes. So two Marty's are running around this dance and almost running into each other. Lots of tension.
BUT...what's the urgency? Why do they have to steal the book on that particular night? They went to that day because it's the day Biff got the book, but it's established that Biff waits 3 years before he uses it. So they have 3 years to get that taken care of. They can just wait through this night, since changing even very minor things can completely destroy the universe because Marty HAS to complete the lightning strike time travel bit that requires very precise timing. So why don't Marty and Doc just hang out that night and steal the book from Biff the next day? Is there nothing good on tv? Oh wait, they have a time machine, they can just go to tomorrow and do it then (remember at this point they have the Mr. Fusion and can time travel as often as they please).
Remember when the Ghostbusters risked crossing the streams
cause they were listening to Pink Floyd and it looked cool?
So there's no Urgency. There's no ticking clock to make them do what they are doing, and doing it then risks destroying the universe. And it provides a valuable lesson. If you're going to write a time travel plot, you need a way to create urgency. In 1, with no Plutonium, the lightning strike plot fixes this. In 3, the Delorean has Mr. Fusion but they can't get any gasoline so they have to find a way to accelerate the car to 88 by stealing a train, plus they know that Doc will be killed by a certain date, so they accomplish the urgency that way.
BTTF is about an accident that sends Marty back in time and he has to save himself from ceasing to ever exist in the first place, get back to his own time, and save his best friend from being murdered by terrorists.
BTTF2 is about Marty and Doc unnecessarily putting the universe at risk so they can make Marty's kids not suck so much.
Yesterday I wrote about goals for male characters in Hollywood films. Today I'm doing women.
I see films with Female leads as fitting one of these three categories:
1. Ass Kicking Leather Fetishists
The most obvious female stereotype is the "Damsel in distress." The damsel is almost never the main character (except in Twilight, where her goal is to be an object of male desire. Way to aim high. You go girl).
Idiots think they will be edgy and subversive by having their female characters be ball-smashing superheroes. Basically these writers show that they think of women as being either props for men to take hostage and rescue or to avenge OR they must be action heroes with titties and one-liners.
She walks AND carries things!? WHAT!?!
The most egregious violator is the film Sucker Punch. Go here for a complete breakdown.
2. Super Business Woman
Every other chick flick is about a woman trying to make it in a man's world, expertly juggling a family or love life with her high powered career as a journalist, photographer, publicist, or running an art gallery.
The film hinges on her being able to be successful in her job and her love life.
I want you to think about this: When was the last time you saw a movie that was about a man simply trying to make it in the business world and maintain a family?
Not many films fit that bill, and most of them that do are boring ass Dennis Quaid movies where his entire goal is to pay for his kids' college.
Another subset of this stereotype is the talented but reticent girl from a small town that tries to make it in the big city. Think Coyote Ugly. The whole film is just about her trying to survive in the big scary city.
3. The Vaguely Spritual, Searching for Meaning, Blank Slate Woman
What would the male version be?
Eat, Fuck, Sleep? I'd watch that.
Think almost every Julia Roberts or Meg Ryan movie. They are down on their luck and suffering from the mildest white people depression that can only be cured by going to Europe, having Mr. Right sweep her off her feet, and life affirming platitudes that make Agnostics look like fundamentalists.
What really gets to me is the fact that films with female main characters essentially are about the fact that she's female. Like it's remarkable for a woman to be outside of the kitchen, so much so that we need to stop and make a movie about any time a woman gets a real job.
Where's the female Apocalypse Now, or the female Fight Club, Donnie Darko, Blade Runner, The Graduate, Back to the Future, or Cast Away. These movies aren't about what it's like being a man, they're about culture and clash between generations and what it means to be human.
Can you imagine if they made Cast Away with a female lead? They'd be making period jokes before she'd been on the island for five minutes. The real problem I'm getting at here is that female characters tend to have no depth. Strong characters are flawed people struggling against some kind of opposition.
The Ass-Kicking, Tit-Armored, Superhero woman has no flaws. She's just a super bad ass and the only flaw is that she's a woman, let's see if she can kick ass which obviously is man's domain.
The Super Business Woman (or the reticent small town girl) both have a flaw...They're women trying to make it in a man's world. That's really it.
The Julia Roberts/Meg Ryan "Spiritual" woman doesn't really have flaws. Put Carrie Bradshaw in this category. These women are writers or have some excuse to speak in introspective voice-overs about finding meaning or small victories in life. Her flaw is that she doesn't have the perfect life or perfect man she wishes she had.
Honestly, if you really get down to it, female main characters' flaws are that they are female, and so the stories are about them overcoming the fact that they are women. That or they just make her clumsy, or as Mindy Kaling put it in this article from the future, "She can’t be overweight or not perfect-looking, because who would pay to see that?...So they make her a Klutz...The Klutz clangs into stop signs while riding her bike and knocks over giant displays of fine china in department stores. Despite being five feet nine and weighing a hundred and ten pounds, she is basically like a drunk buffalo." There was a lot of hype about Bridesmaids being a great movement towards female films. This was a raunchy high-concept comedy usually reserved for guys but it's about women, Progress! Or was it?
Protags need a Goal, an immediate objective and a "dream" or a long term objective. In Back to the Future, Marty wants to be a musician, that's his dream and it comes up repeatedly.
She's a deep character since she has
a tragic flaw: a reproductive system.
Annie's dream is to make a living creating fancy cupcakes. She even opened the store and had it fail hard. She's also fuck-buddies with a sexy but total douchebag guy from Mad Men. She wishes there was more to it, but he is only interested in meaningless sex with her, but she puts up with it and does nothing about it. Since losing her company she's gone to work selling engagement rings at a jewelry store.
So this is her background. Can you think of a more stereotypical background?
Here's the formula for a chick flick: Jon Hamm + Puppies + Cupcakes + Weddings + Jewelry = $
I can't even imagine how you could have made this as stereotypical and demeaning if it was about men...but I'll take a shot at it.
This is Groomsmen:
Tim is 30 and worried that his rugged good looks are fading. He is fuck-buddies with a mega-hot chick and is secretely in love with her, but she wants no more than to use him for his large penis. He opened a restaurant called "Hot Meat, Beer" where he engineered the awesomest hot wings ever. But his restaurant went under and now he works as a paintball referee where he watches dudes with perfect lives have fun all day. Then his best friend Jimmy is getting married and asks him to be his best man.
Tim and Jimmy's rich friend Steve compete for Tim's approval as they try to one-up each other in making the coolest bachelor party ever. Tim is like, I'm getting crazy Cuban hookers, but Steve is like, nuh uh, I'm getting expensive French whores, they're classy. Meanwhile Tim starts flirting with a cute girl that works at a coffee shop, they hit it off, but then Tim screws it up. He tries to make it up for her by making her bad-ass buffalo wings and leaving them on her doorstep.
Howcome they haven't made Hooters: The Movie yet?
Before the wedding, Jimmy goes missing to have a crying fit about only getting to fuck one pussy for the rest of his life. So Tim and Steve, former enemies, now have to team up to save the wedding. Steve invites Tim's cute and flirty love interest to the wedding, thus insuring that Tim never has to actually accomplish anything himself. Then Limp Bizkit plays the wedding ceremony. The end.
See what I'm talking about? Even this movie, written by women, about women, for women, still treats women like stereotypes. Don't get me wrong, I thought Bridesmaids was a decent movie and was still pretty funny, but a feminist example for future filmmakers it is not.
We should be more like Japan where they admit that their females aren't so much characters as they are boob-delivery systems:
That's why I'm embarking on writing a film with a female main character. It's about Sierra, a quirky waitress who dreams of being the perfect mom with the perfect family and being a neurosurgeon, but her angry vagina keeps murdering the men she has sex with because they're premature ejaculators. She has to go on the lamb to Europe and be swept off her feet by capable Italian love-makers and learn platitudes she can whisper to her vagina in order to tame it.
A character needs a goal or goals. They need to be important or have some meaning (the stakes). And he/she can't have forever to accomplish it (urgency).
A lot of stories have clear goals and stakes, but no urgency, so they'll often introduce "the ticking clock." For example, American Pie is based around trying to get laid before graduation. Does it really matter if they don't get some before graduation?
No urgency, goals, or stakes? Then point a gun at the main character or his family.
Movies can be about cloning, sports, romance, sexcapades, virtual reality, breaking into dreams, hitmen, space adventures, conspiracies, war, or whatever the hell Donnie Darko was about, but it's alarming to me how often films about such varied topics essentially boil down to "I have to save my wife/kids."
Fucking Monogamous-Heterosexual Patriarchy.
Can we seriously not think of any goals that are about more than creating/protecting/avenging the family?
Let's break it down.
Wouldn't it be great if he knocked the pie up and
they got married then their fritter got kidnapped?
Creating Family - This would include shit like American Pie, any movie where the goal is nothing more than to get the girl.
Protecting Family - Air Force One is a good example, as is most Harrison Ford movies. The MC's wife and kid is kidnapped and he has to find a way to get them back alive in the next 90 minutes.
Avenging Family - The Fugitive is a good example here. Harrison Ford's wife is murdered, he is wrongfully convicted, and when he busts out he tracks down the guy that did it. There are countless "Revenge plots" out there. Often the Avenge plot is given to a kid who seeks vengeance for his parents.
With those three subsets of the "Family" goal, you'll find a shockingly high number of films fit it.
I'll use Inception as an example. While it's about a reverse heist, planting an idea in someone's mind, ultimately for the main character, the goal is to get back to his kids in America and that's why he pulls the job. I think this detracts from the film since it rings so hollow. We don't ever see the kids but for a few glimpses and they just seem like boring-ass kids to me. Do you think the film is better because Cobb is trying to get back to his kids? The goal of the heist was to convince a mogul to break up his father's empire. What if the heist had a better goal that the audience and the main character was more invested in. Then we wouldn't need to tack on the kids.
To illustrate my point, I'm going to go through IMDB's top films and look for positive rather than negative examples. Think about the main character's goals in these films.
1. Shawshank Redemption - For a while you think this would be an Revenge plot, but it never pays off. This film is a bit of a mystery since it really doesn't have goals for most of the time. Andy has goals, but the audience isn't let in on it till after the fact.
2. The Godfather - The main character wants to stay out of the family business but it keeps bringing him back in. His woman isn't down with it so it creates a dilemma. So the family aspect is pulling on him from both sides, but nobody kidnaps his wife, so I'm going to check this one in my column.
3. Godfather Part II - Again, this film is ABOUT family, but the goal isn't so simple as "save my kidnapped wife." And again, family is tugging on the main character from both sides.
4. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - It's been so long since I've seen this, IIRC it's really about money.
5. Pulp Fiction
6. 12 Angry Men
7. Schindler's List
8. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
9.The Dark Knight - Here's the first film on the list that really fits into the cliche's I was talking about, and again it's Christopher Nolan. He's notorious for using female characters as basically 1-dimensional motivators for the main character. Also, this film should fall down the list as scores tend to decrease over time.
10. LOTR - The Return of the King - While I don't think it deserves to be anywhere near this high, you won't find a family plot for Frodo.
11. Inception - see above
12. The Empire Strikes Back - Ah, a good example. Luke is the main character and his goal in the film is to become a jedi, confront his nemesis, save his friends (Leia is his sister, but he doesn't know that yet...). While his friends are held hostage, this doesn't become the storytelling engine for quite some time into the film.
13. Seven Samurai
I just want to get a nice house in the
burbs with her and make her squeeze out my runts.
14. Fight Club - Another great example. This is my favorite film. What's the main character's goal? Well at first it's to be able to sleep. Then it's to "hit bottom." Ultimately it's about searching for meaning and a purpose in a flaccid consumerist society. This is about the ultimate example of how to not make a cliche plot. Yes there is a love interest, but she wants to have his abortion.
15. Goodfellas
16. Star Wars - Superb plot about becoming a man, confronting evil, and adventure. Sure there's sort of a romantic tension going on, but there's not even a kiss on the lips in this film IIRC.
17. LOTR - Fellowship - See above
18. City of God - I haven't seen this one.
19. Casablanca - While certainly about a romance, look at how it ends.
20. Once Upon a Time in the West.
It's a birth control metaphor
21. The Matrix - Great example. For a while the storytelling engine is the mystery plot. What is the Matrix? Once we figure that one out, then it's about Neo becoming the One by moving the letters around in his name.
Yes there is a romantic sub-plot, but it's kind of Trinity's plot, not as much Neo's. Contrast this with The Matrix Reloaded where Neo's goal for the entire film is to save Trinity.
22. Rear Window
23. Raiders of the Lost Ark - Again there's a romantic subplot, but it's almost single-mindedly about finding the Ark of the Covenant, that is the storytelling engine.
24. The Usual Suspects - Crime drama plus mystery plot plus twist ending.
25. The Silence of the Lambs - Clarice doesn't even have a romantic interest in the film, which leads people to see her and Lecter has having a romantic connection. I don't think it's romantic (and yeah, I know how the novel Hannibal ends).
26. Psycho
27. Se7en - Spoiler Alert - While this film is about chasing a serial killer, at the end it suddenly becomes an "Avenge Family" plot. I think this one works better because this isn't used as a storytelling engine, hunting the serial killer is the engine, so this ends up only coming up with a few minutes left and so we get an entire film's worth of story-telling engine in just a matter of minutes, which is why I think it's such a powerful ending.
These are some of the greatest films of all time. Now let's look at truly disappointing films. I've just googled "most disappointing films of all time" and culled a list of the most popular entrants. Here goes:
Guys in Skinny Jeans are so dark and mysterious
The Phantom Menace - Ugh, all the prequels are going to make this list, so I'll adress them all at once. The Goal of the whole trilogy is essentially for Anakin to get the girl, then fuck the girl, make the family, then kill the girl, and spend the next trilogy as the villian who redeems himself. The latter part is interesting. The beginning part is the tedious family plot.
Spiderman 3 - Peter Parker is again trying to juggle the girl and the superherodom. That's fine, but then comes the revenge plot when he discovers who realllly killed his uncle in the first film (even though he totally got revenge in the first movie), plus there's Sandman, a villain motivated by trying to save his daughter. Add that all up and you've got a trifecta of all three family plots. That and Peter Parker becomes an emo lounge singer.
Hey, remember when it was Harrison
Ford and Sean Connery fighting Nazis...
Indiana Jones 4 - The hate for this film has a lot to do with the Aliens and the massive amounts of CGI, vine-swinging, and shit like that. However, if you look closer, it also is based on a family plot. The Indiana Jones trilogy has love interests, but they're little more than side-kicks he occasionally kisses. In 4, the love interest from Indy 1 shows back up along with their son he never knew about. The rest of the film is a family romp through the jungle with his woman and Even Stephen.
Terminator 3 - The goal in Terminator 1 is for Sarah to avoid being killed by a robot from the future (and conceive John Connor) but the storytelling engine is The Chase for sure. T2 is again a chase, with John Connor being the target. The goal here isn't simply to avoid death, but they also try to prevent the post-apocalyptic future from happening, and they succeed...or do they? What's the goal in T3? To avoid death and to prevent the apocalypse...again. Only it turns out that's not the goal, the goal was actually just for John and his woman to hide away so they can make babies and get ready for the future where they will become important. Basically what they've done is rip the 2nd movie's balls off and slapped a pair of baby-making ovaries on it. (No offense to ovaries, they just aren't balls.)
We can't wait to get married!
Wedding Crashers - Finally, a non-sequel. This one had high expectations because of Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson, and Will Ferrell, plus it seemed to be an anti-romcom, where the goal was to use weddings as a way to get lots of one night stands. It sounds like a great subversion to the family plot. Then it turns into nothing but a romantic plot with a few jokes. That's like if you saw previews for a movie about a superhero saving the world and went to the theater and saw an emo guy with powers mope around because his girlfriend had some other dude's kid.
Superman Returns - Oh for fucks sake. Superman returns to Earth to discover Lois Lane has a kid that's not his, but then it turns out later, very obviously, that it IS Superman's kid. Lex Luthor comes along and kidnaps both the girl and the kid. Yay.
Little Fockers - Yeah, this surprisingly made quite a few lists. Meet the Parents is interesting because Ben Stiller HAS the girl. Now he just has to make an impression on her parents and everything goes hilariously wrong. Little Fockers is about Ben Stiller and his wife and kids going through troubles and blood started pouring out of my ears 35 minutes in so I couldn't really tell you what it was about.
Shrek the Third - Haven't seen it, but apparently it's about Shrek becoming a father. Sounds like a whimsical story to me.
The Godfather Part III - Need I say more?
If Jurassic Park has taught me anything, it's that every
character either gets eaten by a dinosaur, or has babies.
Jurassic Park III - Our kid was kidnapped. By DINOSAURS! - Contrast with Jurassic Park which is about Man playing god, and then the chase, and yes, the Main Character spends a good portion of the film trying to keep some snot-rags alive, but they're not even his kids, nor does he have a wife, he has a girlfriend who he doesn't marry we learn in later films. So take that Monogamous-Heterosexual Patriarchy.
To really drive the point home, let's look at few examples of family plots that are original.
Eternal Sunshine
(spoilers of course) Is set inside Jim Carrey's dream as his memories of his ex-gf are being erased. He decides that he doesn't want the memories erased and wants to call it off, but he can't wake up. So he tries to get his mental projection of his ex-gf to safety so he can keep the memories of her and their relationship, flaws and all. It's about appreciating things for what they are. Then there's the ending where they meet and kind of hook-up again, destined probably (certainly if you've read the script [they discover they've erased each other multiple times, not just once]) to relive the same doomed relationship. Now that's an interesting goal.
How about Solaris (2002 version) (Spoilers) George Clooney is called to a space station around a distant planet because he's a psychiatrist and something's gone wrong with the crew. So at first the story is driven by a mystery. What's happening?
There's even this: "I could tell you what's happening, but that wouldn't really tell you what's happening." Which is entirely unlike "Unfortunately no one can be told what the Matrix is, they have to see it for themselves." Which is quickly followed up by a verbal explanation of the Matrix. But I digress.
So Clooney starts to experience what's happening, and the what is that dead loved ones from your memories appear on the space station as living breathing people, just as you remember them. So Clooney's dead wife shows up and is all like, hey George, what's happening? The idea behind this is that Solaris either is or has some sort of Alien life on it and this is how we make first contact, not with humanoid beings with lumpy foreheads or pointy ears, but with beings that defy all of our understanding of what life is. So for the rest of the film Clooney tries to cope with his fake wife. Is she real? What is real? She thinks, therefore she is, right? Do you stay here and live with her? Or go back to Earth and risk taking this phenomenom with us? How do I know I'm real and not a projection too? So again, this takes the relationship plot but makes it about an idea, not physically getting the girl.
Being John Malkovich
The 15 halfths floor.
What if there was a portal that let you live inside John Malkovich? John Cusack wants Catherine Keener (and who wouldn't?). He can't have her as himself, BUT, if he's Malkovich, rich, famous, tall, older, handsome, then he can have her. Or so he thinks. Then there's the shemale/lesbian thing. Again, the goal might be to get the girl, but it's saying so much more than that. John Cusack (Craig Schwartz) is willing to completely lose all of his identity and become someone else in order to get the girl. At the end he is left a nobody because of it.
The most egregious abuser of the ticking clock and the hostage family is the show 24.
This all happens in season one, AKA 24 hours.
Jack's wife Teri suspects that their teenage daughter Kim is in trouble. They think she was run over by a car and go to the hospital but discover it was one of Kim's friends, and Kim is still missing. Jack suspects that her disappearance is connected with terrorists.
Teri goes searching with a man she thinks is the father of Kim's friend, but he turns out to be a terrorist. Teri smashes him over the head with a rock and escapes to be rescued by CTU agents who actually turn out to be terrorists who recapture her and take her to the compound where they are holding her daughter Kim.
A terrorist is gonna rape Kim, so Teri offers herself up instead. He then rapes her offscreen. The bad guys are about to kill both women, but then they miraculously are saved.
Teri and Kim are now safe and go to a hospital. Teri has abdominal pain and takes a pregnancy test which comes up positive.
Liam Neeson fucks you up for kidnapping his daughter only once.
Jack Bauer's too busy, he's got a three strikes rule for that.
They go to a safe house but it is attacked and they have to escape via a car chase, which ends with the car rolling over and exploding while Kim is still inside, she survives, suffering from amnesia, but Teri believes her to be dead.
Teri is rescued and lies to Jack, telling him that Kim is okay, when she thinks she's dead. They then learn that Kim is alive, but has been rekidnapped. Jack tells Teri this and then she tells him that she's pregnant.
Jack then rescues Kim and is taking her back to CTU HQ, but en route, Teri, who is back at CTU discovers that one of Jack's colleagues is a double agent. The agent takes her hostage. The agent destroys all evidence of double-agentness then shoots Teri in the stomach and leaves.
Jack comes back to find Teri slumped over in the chair, he verifies that she is dead as the ticking clock closes out the season.
Yes, that all happened in 24 hours.
Oh and the main plot of the season is an assassination plot against a presidential candidate, this was just a sub-plot.
These aren't women so much as they are professional hostages/baby-machines.
They made 7 more seasons of this...
So if you want to avoid cliche, then have your male characters care about something more than just getting/saving/avenging the girl.
You can buy a t-shirt with a Reddit
comment I wrote on it...I'm like famous
Try googling "Lesbian Porn Paradox" or "Lesbian Pornadox." You'll find links to Reddit, Urban dictionary, various forums and message boards, twitter, and many many more sites that all essentially refer back to this post I made on Reddit over a year ago (including all kinds of merchandise on Urban dictionary, which I have nothing to do with).
It seems that this is the most famous and widely read thing I've ever written. So here's apparently what I'm famous for:
Try this scenario: Girl 1 is born at 1:30 am in Paris, France on January 2nd. So on every document her birthday is listed as January 2nd.
Exactly one minute later, Girl 2 is born in Boston. In Boston it is 6:31 pm on January 1st. So Girl 2's documents all list her as being born on January 1st, while Girl 1 is listed as born on January 2nd, even though she (1) is older.
Girl 1 and Girl 2 meet up in Los Angeles on January 1st and decide to make a lesbian porn the minute they are both 18. So on January 1st at 3:32 Pm West Coast Time (6:32 PM Boston Time, 1:32 am Paris Time) the cameras start rolling and they get to some hot lesbian action.
Since they are in California, where it is the evening of January 1st, Girl 1 is considered 17, since her documents list her birthday as January 2nd (Though she is exactly 18 years and 2 minutes old). Girl 2 is considered 18, since her documents list her as being born on January 1st.
If the girls make 3 copies of this tape and hand the first copy to Friend A in LA, mail the 2nd copy to Friend B in Boston, and e-mail 3rd copy to Friend C in Paris. Are any of these copies not child porn?
From now on I will add to all of my works "From the author of The Lesbian Porn Paradox."
I do regret that I didn't spend more than a few minutes writing the original post. I could have made it so much more convoluted and confusing (have a third girl join in via webcam from a different timezone, send a copy back several timezones, send a copy back in time, etc.).
It's called "Starship Troopers 2"
But the real crux of the issue is that child porn laws are pretty ridiculous. Making porn one day is horribly illegal, making it the next day is totally kosher. Is there something magical that happens the instant you've made 18 laps around the sun? But I suppose you have to draw a line somewhere. But the issue goes beyond that.
You Digital Slut! Ones and Zeroes aren't for Titties.
If I (25 years old) were to have crazy wild sex with a 17 year old girl, it would be perfectly legal (at least in this state). Yet if we were to take pictures or videos of us having sex, that would be child pornography and I would be a sex offender. Think about it. Having sex is fine, just don't take pictures.
Anal sex? Fine. Sexting? Registered sex offender. And not just me, the both of us.
There's actually a nationwide problem now where underage kids are being charged with sex crimes for sexting. Girls have had to register as sex offenders because they sent naked pictures of themselves to their boyfriends.
How did we end up with laws like this?
1. Politicians are dicks.
Politicians will create laws that "sound good." They'll try to toughen these laws. It sounds good to be "tough on crime." So they'll continually try to make stronger and broader laws with stiffer penalties. It doesn't matter if the laws are already too strong, too overreaching, and the excessive punishment has filled our prison system. It makes no difference, "Tough on crime" always sounds good.
This works the same way with taxes. To a whole lot of voters "We need to lower taxes" sounds great. You'll hear politicians make all kinds of arguments for lowering taxes (stimulate the economy, foster job creation, get the government off our backs, etc.) but what you won't hear from them is an argument about the actual numbers. When was the last time you heard a politician break down the figures and say anything like "With the current tax rate at such-and-such percent, this means that yaddayadda trillion dollars in revenue is taken in but we only need such-and-such billion dollars, so we should cut this yaddayadda percent to put such-and-such billion dollars back into your paycheck." Arguing for lower taxes is essentially an argument over numbers, and yet all the arguments you hear have little to do with any numbers. Just as when politicians get "Tough on crime," they mean to say "tougher" and that should make us wonder "Tougher than what? Is the system tough enough on crime?" So given that we've had decades of politicians all trying to get tougher on crime, it's not a huge surprise that the US imprisons a larger portion of its population than any other nation ever has. We are the toughest on crime that anyone has ever been, and yet "Tough on crime" still sounds good. Dicks.
2. Selective Enforcement
Even rapists secure their wi-fi.
Selective Enforcement basically means that you create laws and rules that are so far reaching that everyone is breaking them. Then you aren't looking for crimes, you're just picking which people you want to harass. For instance, it is illegal to use your neighbor's Wi-Fi if they leave it unsecured EVEN IF YOU HAVE THEIR PERMISSION. Yeah. That's illegal.
When I was in high school the school instituted a new dress code. The dress code for girls was completely ridiculous. It sounded like they got the rules from an Amish community. If you were to examine every girl in my high school, I'll wager that on any given day, probably 85% of girls were in violation of dress code. Then we would crowd into the gym for an assembly and they would trot out the cheerleaders to perform for us. These future strippers violated nearly every part of the dress code, so why is this acceptable? The consensus amongst the students was that the administrators were stupid, they didn't think their rules through, and they were hypocrites. The truth was that they were implementing selective enforcement deliberately.
Think about it this way: if a student is being annoying, slap them with a dress code violation. Think a girl is hiding drugs in her locker? Slap her with a dress code violation. See how much easier it is to harass the students now that they're all in violation of a rule?
We do the same thing with drugs and black people. Who gets busted with weed? Black people, how often do you see blonde sorority girls doing 5 years for drug possession? If you make laws that a lot of people are going to break, then you can pick who to punish.
Child pornography laws were created with the idea of catching sexual predators, child molesters, and people who create, distribute, and consume child porn. In order to make it easier to prosecute, they make the laws vague so that they can apply it to whatever they see fit. That way people can't get off on technicalities (rule 34?). Make the laws vague, broad, and strong, that way the DA can prosecute the bad people. Well, then you get Prosecutors that go after people that don't fit the spirit of the law. Many people have been convicted under these laws for possessing sexual cartoons. Simpsons porn. It's still child porn even if it doesn't depict a real child or ever actually harm any children.
In fact, it doesn't even matter if the photographer is an emo 16 year old girl who wants to send a picture of her boobs to her boyfriend. The law treats her the same as a sexual predator.
Think this doesn't apply to you? Congress has passed laws to stop online fraud, and they made the law so vague that if you've ever made a facebook profile that didn't use your real name, you could be convicted of a felony. It's just up to the prosecutor to decide if he or she wants to harass you or not. So much for checks and balances.
3. America is Sex-Retarded
The age of consent is too damn high!
Just watch some PG-13 movies. You'll find gruesome murders, torture, serial killers, but only maybe some boobs, but no bush, and definitely no sex. Go watch This Film is not Yet Rated for many more examples of hypocrisy in our film ratings. Violence is fine, just don't show an orgasm for god's sake (literally, god cries everytime lesbians fist).
Or turn on network TV at 8 pm on a weeknight. Murder shows, all of them. Hell, they even kill people off on Two and a Half Men (which is a show about amputation, I think). I can't even begin to count the number of murders, rapes, serial killers, and tortures I've seen on television. When was the last time you saw two people have boring vanilla sex on TV? Or a man go down on a woman in a movie (a proper film mind you)?
American is still pretty puritanical when it comes to sex. Hell, it's illegal to sell sex toys in Alabama. Opposite sex cohabitation (living with your girlfriend/boyfriend as long as you are straight) is illegal in Mississippi, Florida, Virginia, and Michigan (though it is likely unconstitutional, but the laws are still on the books). Polygamy is illegal everywhere in the US. Why? If three consenting adults want to have a three-way marriage, what's the problem? And of course gay marriage isn't legal very many places.
Take that you bundle of sticks!
AND YET, you can own a flamethrower. You don't even need a permit. (Go to Cracked for more ridiculous yet legal things, including grenade launchers and anti-tank guns).
I mean honestly, you hear uproar all the time about how legalizing gay marriage will ruin our country, and yet rednecks can stockpile grenade launchers and flamethrowers legally. We're a power outage and a twelve-pack away from a good old fashioned fag burning. Yay merka.
But we can't let 17 year old girls show people their nipples via text message. This must be stopped. Trust me, I'm the author of the Lesbian Porn Paradox.
