What Screenwriters Want

Watching What Women Want last night, Barbaloot and I wondered whether the story line originated from a man or from a woman. After batting that thought around for a while, I wondered why Mel Gibson's character was not hearing any bitter, catty, harsh, or even downright evil internal dialog through his accidentally acquired womans'-thought-reading powers: "It's about time Nina found a few new dress. And those shoes!" "God these cramps are killing me." "Bill wants to get together tonight? Oh come on, he can't service a cat with that thing." "One or two more 8l0w708s on that guy in accounting and I can launch my suit and own this company."

It's as if women never think bad things---they're chronically misunderstood victims of the blundering inattention (or inattentive blunders?) of us competitive penis-driven Y-chromo-bearing oafs. I beg to differ. In fact, victimhood often begets evil, if one chooses to embrace victimhood and turn it to a claim against the world.

Barbaloot also noted that Shallow Hal is built on a very similar premise, that chronically misunderstood women not only think only wholesome thoughts, but that they are all wonderful people on the inside, regardless of outward appearance. (We both enjoy that movie, BTW.)

Hal saw only beautiful people, male or female, child through senior, because their outward appearances no longer distracted him from Humanity's Universal Internal Beauty. There were no hotties whom Hal saw as repulsive wart-ridden demons because their internal evil was visible only to him. This represents not an ability to see things as they are, a lifting of the veil so to speak, but trading glasses of one color for another color equally or more distorting.

So now there are two movies I'd like to see, instead of seeing What Screenwriters Want and how Shallow stereotypes are. A movie wherein the subject hears the bad as well as the good, and another wherein the subject sees the bad as well as the good. We don't mind whether the subjects turn out to be Really Nice Changed Guys in the end, or even whether they Get the Girl in the end either. In fact, such experiences are likely to challenge any person's ability to stay sane, let alone choose the right path.

If any cinephile knows of such films already made and waiting for us, Barbaloot and I would appreciate the pointer.