Emilio's Hot Box Thrust, or Writing for Crying Children III [Guest Comic]

A third Randall Nichols-penned "Pictures of Crying Children" has gone up today, which I encourage everyone to go check out before reading the rest of this, if for no other reason than for the added surprise.

Back now?

This was one of my favorite scripts I wrote for PCC, and CheriAnn gave me pretty much exactly what I had in mind for it, short of the screen-capping, which was a bit of genius I didn't consider. I am not one of those people who are enamored with the 80s, but there's something about the movies from the era that I will admit to being fascinated by. As a writer, plot holes drive me insane -- not only do I feel like it's my responsibility to explain how things happen, but also why, and it absolutely never fails, even when I'm writing something with say, vampires [re: The Familiar] in it, realism always feels like one of the most important things.

Movies from the Eighties really don't care. Whether it's the Illinois Nazi's car falling from above a skyscraper in "Blues Brothers," or Emilio's amazing hot box thrust in "The Breakfast Club," these things just happen, whether the screwball tone fits the world the movie's set in or not. And every one's pretty much okay with that -- I've seen film students destroy something like"Memento" or "The Matrix" for the tiniest plot inconsistencies, but anything made from 1980-1989 tends to get an immediate pass [Kevin Smith's "Mallrats" is a good example -- very much an 80s movie, and often derided for the things that were quite common in 80s comedies at the time]. I'm guilty of this too, and there are a lot of different explanations for it, from people today being too anal about realism, to just loving these old movies enough to forgive them their flaws. Myself personally have always felt like 80s flicks have an almost folklore like quality, where maybe John Henry couldn't really beat the steel driver, and maybe Emilio couldn't actually shatter that glass -- but these aren't the details that are important, these are just the incidentals of a meaningful story.

Whatever you believe, it's really rad sitting around on a couch with people talking about it. Ridiculous, but absolutely always rad.