Screenwriting : Suspension of disbelief by Jeffrey Knepper

***the first question mark isnt supposed to be there and don't know how to edit in this app

The inexplicable Houdini-esque handcuff-escape trick in Promising Young Woman was impossible for me to buy into. Try writing something like that into a script and see what kind of a reaction it gets. Hint: evisceration!

The movie "X" with Mia Goth, Jeffrey Knepper. I like the movie, but it was hard sometimes to suspend my belief that a woman in Pearl's physical state could do what she did.

Jeffrey Knepper You can edit your post by clicking the downward arrow in the top right-hand corner of the post (underneath the time that you made the post), then clicking "Edit Post."

Joe Eszterhas publicly apologized "forgetting" to include DNA testing as a part of police VIP investigation (already widely engaged for murder investigations back then) when writing "Basic Instinct", yet no one complained as we were all up to seeing the (in)famous "beaver" scene...

And the studio didn't forgot to pay him couple a mill for the script too as it broke major numbers...

“liquid sky”, don’t watch it, trust me.

Nine Days

28 days later Jeffrey Knepper

Trashing peers wont win you favors in any business when you're on the outside desperate to play...

However, I feel asleep watching the last John Wick movie; the whole movie looks cool and a world I could never do but all them dead bodies on screen got me bored.

(And that's a compliment to JW ppl; they make hard to do stuff look simple).

Dan MaxXx, no one is silent if they buy a defective product. It's the same everywhere except in the movie business.

You're wrong. in fact, the goal of any film is to surprise the viewer. To give him a sense of insight, discovery. Unfortunately, in modern cinema, they try to achieve this feeling with the help of spectacle, computer effects, and not with the help of drama.

Dan MaxXx trashing peers? First you don't know the context of someone leaving a comment that I was replying to. Second I have the right to an opinion on a film just like you falling asleep to JW

It's certainly always worth reminding ourselves that it's okay to write the implausible, but we should always avoid writing the impossible.

That said, our love for a film tends to dictate our tolerance levels. I find most Christopher/Jonathan Nolan stuff full of ridiculous moments, but I tend to be enjoying the film enough to just about forgive them.

Some stuff can just come across as ridiculous when filmed too. There's a scene in Tokyo Drift where one of the main characters drifts a car up the spiral ramp of a multistory car park that a lot of movie goers thought was so stupidly impossible it was insulting to include - yet the stunt was done for real. The bus jump in Speed suffered a similar reaction.

While it's fair to say many of us would be torn to shreds for doing the same, that's perhaps because we are too focused on readers and critics who tend to be too introspective to represent our actual audience.

The point about publicly trashing movies when trying to break in in always worth heeding. You never know who you may end up across the table from. I was literally in a meeting last week with the person who greenlit one of the films mentioned in this thread.

CJ Walley which genre do you think writers can get away with more?

Good advice as always CJ Walley. You never know who is reading what you write on these threads.

May be a bit off topic, but many films are RUINED by not having faith in its audience. It drives me crazy whenever the narrative wastes time (and money!) with an over abundant explanation for every minute detail. When I witness this at the cinema, I magically revert to age 6.

Bill Brock as in not pushing the imagination of the audience?

Jeffrey Knepper, that's a good question. I think you can get away with things a lot more within the action genre as people are watching those films for thrills more than anything. I also think romcoms are less strict as the plots are based so heavily in emotional situations.

Thrillers are perhaps the least forgiving, since people are watching those to try and solve puzzles in their heads.

As ever, this is all subject to tone and the target demographic.

I think you have to make people WANT to suspend disbelief. And that usually means giving them characters and worlds they want to explore.

CJ Walley also I would say comedy...example I have been dabbling now and then in a comedy about all G-20 world leaders getting trapped in a rural stripclub with an aspiring costume artist and only having 48 hours to evacuate before getting global media involved their predicament. Obviously this is insanity lol which requires a long stretch of the imagination and creativity

CJ Walley meant to add with comedy people expect to laugh so are more forgiving

Jeffrey Knepper Exactly. It doesn't happen very often, but when it does, I get a body full of CRINGE. "Okay, got it. Let's move the story forward. No need to mention it aga---- Oh, great. They just mentioned it again!"

CJ Walley this reminds me of those CSI hacking scenes where TWO people are frantically typing on the same keyboard.... like guys - wrong type of keyboard! you're hacking, not playing chopsticks on the piano FFS

Tamara Rees, with regard to the infamous CSI hacking scene. I believe the writers were interviewed and admitted they started putting the most incrediloud stuff into the scripts that they could come up with just to see if it would make it in. There was another scene where firmware is found hidden within the bones of a skeleton.

Most horror movies these days are like this. Way too cliche or filled with behavior that no human would display in real life. Things you can’t suspend disbelief on because they already make no sense. Horror is ridiculous in a lot of ways but it seems years ago it was still done well enough you could forget about it entirely or at least until the movie was over.

@Mark Deuce - I agree. The Rage Virus was un-believable in the extreme and yet the film grossed almost $85m on an $8m budget.