Our Lives Have Plots
A few nights ago, I watched part of Disaster Zone: Volcano in New York on the SciFi channel. This was not the...best movie I've ever seen but it was repulsively fascinating. It starred the doughty Costas Mandylor and Alexandra Paul. They played a divorced couple thrown together in life-threatening circumstances. Said circumstances were caused by a scientist on fire to create a geothermal source of energy. *Spoiler* He was on fire figuratively and literally at a couple of points.
Here's my point of post (POP): This movie didn't skimp on the plot clichés. Over-reaching to the point of madness scientist. Divorced couple. Politicians, self-serving bureaucrats who wouldn't/didn't listen. City saved in nick of time by divorced couple and other doughty blue-collar types [I wouldn't write type unless there was the stereo attached
I really didn't have to watch it to know what would happen. It was utterly predictable. Now, you don't either.
Our real lives are like that. I find it interesting that most people don't see most of the situations and/or people in their lives as plot devices that even the most hackneyed writer would blush to put to paper. We all know the cliche of the young woman walking alone in a dark alley in a horror movie? How about the cliche of meeting some attractive guy with no job, no prospects and three children with three different women? How about the cliche of the woman who cheats on her husband to have sex with you? How about the cliche of the man sorry, really, really sorry that he hit you?
If we're all going to watch so much television and so many movies (it's nearly pointless, at this point, to mention reading), why not learn from them?
About age 30, I decided I'd read, and watched, enough to keep me out of trouble if I listened to myself. Of course, it hasn't always worked out. But it's not like I didn't see the crap I got myself into coming.
I mean, Jesus Christ.
She prayed.
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