I’ve been a film buff for as long as I can remember, and as well as being entertaining they’re often highly educational. Here are a few things I’ve learned over the years (from TV as well as from movies).
1) If you want to discover a dead body, go walking along the beach, and pay particular attention to tidal pools. Early morning walks in the forest are also surprisingly fruitful when it comes to stumbling across murder victims. To be extra sure, take a dog with you; they’re particularly helpful at unearthing bodies that have been buried just below the surface, or covered in dead leaves. If your dog does uncover a dead body, it will always do so by unearthing just one hand.
2) According to every zombie/post-apocalypse show or movie ever made, gas in the fuel tanks of vehicles never goes stale or evaporates, and is still absolutely fine even years later.
3) Also according to every zombie/post-apocalypse show or movie ever made, women never have any problem finding eye makeup.
4) It is almost impossible to make the working life of a writer look interesting on screen. Painters, sculptors, actors, singers, and even composers can be made to look visually compelling while they are creating, but there is very little dramatic mileage to be got from someone staring morosely at a computer screen, typing a few words, hitting the delete button, then wandering off to the kitchen to see if there’s any coffee left in the pot. Things were a bit easier in the days of typewriters, but there are only so many ways you can show someone ripping a sheet of paper out of a typewriter, crumpling it up, and angrily throwing it into a steel mesh wastepaper basket.
5) All writers have steel mesh wastepaper baskets.
6) English country churches are hotbeds of violence and murder. They may look bucolic and charming, but if people aren’t getting hit on the head by falling brickwork from the roof or being cold-cocked with a candelabra from the altar, they’re getting attacked by a homicidal vicar with a guilty secret, drinking poisoned communion wine, getting drowned in the baptismal font, or being hanged from a bell rope.
7) Someone who knows they’re alone in a house and hears a strange noise always asks “Who’s there?” as if they actually expect an answer.
8) People from long ago always over-explained when a famous person entered the room, in case the person they were speaking with didn’t instantly recognize the famous person, who is incredibly famous. “Oh look; isn’t that Oscar Wilde, the celebrated wit whose plays are the toast of London but whose scandalous private life threatens to destroy him?” “Yes, and I do believe he’s talking to Lillie Langtry, the renowned beauty, socialite, and actress who is the king’s favourite mistress!”
9) If a movie’s protagonist resides in New York City, he or she lives in a top-floor luxury apartment with a view of the city’s skyline regardless of their income level.
10) A bomb cannot be defused until there are fewer than five seconds left on the timer. It will also take at least one minute for those five seconds to count down.
11) If you walk into a bar and order “a beer”, the bartender will magically know whether you wanted an IPA, a stout, a lager, a bitter, or a pilsner.
12) The more idyllic a location is made to look (a picturesque farmhouse, a quiet middle-class suburb full of happy kids playing in the street, a quaint main street in a quiet village), the more likely it is to be hiding a dreadful secret.
13) If someone is standing by a headstone in a cemetery, they will always address the headstone in a way that makes it clear what relation the dead person was to them. “Well, Dad, you always said I’d never amount to anything, and I guess I proved you wrong.”
14) No one making a phone call ever says goodbye when it ends.