In the memorable opening sequence from Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, the already fortyish James Stewart, playing a high-ranking detective in the San Francisco Police Department, leaps across an alleyway to a sharply sloping, tiled rooftop approximately five feet away while pursuing a criminal.
Immediately losing his grip, Stewart slips off the rooftop, and only escapes plunging to his death many stories below by securing a shaky hold on a rain spout. His flatfoot companion, seeing Stewart's plight, abandons the rooftop chase, and comes to his aid. Gingerly clutching one of those flimsy roof tiles, the cop sticks out his hand, only to lose his own grip and fall to a horrible death, triggering Stewart's subsequent vertigo for the remainder of the film.
Ever since I saw this movie at age 10, I have been troubled by this heart-stopping sequence. At first I thought that my problem was the absurd physical setup of the scene: When Stewart first leaps across the void, the gap between buildings is only around five feet, but when his cop buddy plunges to his death far below, the alleyway is clearly some 20 feet wide. Equally perplexing is Stewart's dubious motivation for attempting such a dangerous acrobatic feat: Why would a middle-aged man who is hoping to be the next Police Commissioner of San Francisco risk his life attempting to collar some small-time hood?
But as I watched the movie for perhaps the 10th time recently, I realized that neither of these things were what really bothered me about the sequence. What bothered me was the doomed cop's rescue attempt. Jesus, what on earth was this bozo thinking of? How could a 185-pound middleaged man leaning down from a sharply sloping roof, clinging to a chintzy ceramic tile, possibly think that he could haul another man of the same size and build to safety-- with just one hand? Rarely in the history of cinema have viewers been subjected to such aerodynamic and hydraulic lunacy as Hitchcock serves up in Vertigo.
Which pretty much brings me to my central thesis: that movies all too often rely on scams, tricks, .stunts, gambits, ploys, ruses or gags that are logically or physically impossible, and often both, and therefore no intelligent person should fashion a lifestyle based on things he has seen stars do in the movies. That would be dumb.
To illustrate my contention, I recently selected pivotal scenes from a dozen motion pictures and went out and made a real-life attempt to recreate them in the real world. Some of these scenes involve scams (Paper Moon, What's Up, Doc?), some involve sex (9 1/2 Weeks, When Harry Met Sally...), some involve feats requiring immense physical prowess (Vertigo), and some involve practical jokes (Bananas, Annie Hall). One film (Spellbound) required me to apply for a job, another (Dial M for Murder) to enlist a friend in a planned murder, a third (Pretty Woman) to seek out the services of a prostitute who would accompany me to a formal dinner at which I would discuss the hostile acquisition of my guest's corporation. Almost without exception, my findings confirmed my original thesis: Things that work in the movies simply do not work in real life. So if you're thinking of lending some glamour to your impossibly dreary existence by imitating things you've seen in the movies, think again.
Here's why:
Freeloading In the 1972 Peter Bogdanovich film What's Up, Doc?, Barbra Streisand picks up a phone in a hotel lobby and says, "Room Service, please. Hi, Room Service, this is Room 1717. I would like a double-thick roast beef sandwich medium rare on rye bread with mustard on the top, mayonnaise on the bottom, and a coffee hot fudge sundae with a large bottle of diet anything. You got that? Yeah, Room 1717. Oh, and Room Service, would you put it in the hall outside the door. I mean, don't bring it in or knock on the door because I'm just putting my little one to sleep. Thank you."
In the movie, the scam works like a charm: Room Service delivers the food without Streisand ever actually checking into the hotel or even signing for the order. Seeking to establish once and for all whether this scam would work in real life, I trekked down to the Vista Hotel in the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, picked up a house phone and mouthed Streisand's order verbatim.
"You'll have to repeat that," the woman from Room Service said. Then, when I got to the part about the "large bottle of diet anything," she said, "Twelve ounces is the largest size we have; would you like me to send up two of them?" Yes, I told her, I would. But in response to my request that Room Service leave the food outside the door, the young woman said: "He'll knock lightly, but you have to sign for the check." She then said the food would arrive in 25 minutes.
I hung around the lobby for around 20 minutes, then went up to the 17th floor. Sure enough, a few minutes later, the bellboy appeared with my order. He knocked very lightly at Room 1717, not wishing to rouse my young 'un. No answer. He knocked again. Still no answer. After a third knock, he went away. I dialed Room Service and asked where my sandwich was.
"We brought it up to you and he knocked lightly, but there was no answer," the woman said. "Somebody has to sign for the check."
I paused for a few seconds to consider the implications of all this. On the one hand, I was surprised that Room Service had even delivered the food; I felt for sure that they would have called back to confirm the order. And in a certain sense the ruse came near to working: I could have simply walked up to the bellboy and signed for the check in the hall while pretending to be the occupant of Room 1717. But he probably would have become suspicious if I had not immediately gone into my room to eat the food.
Moreover, ordering food is merely a prank, whereas signing for it is theft. And while I may be a prankster, I am not a thief. In any case, the scam did not work the way it worked in What's Up, Doc?, which is all we are really concerned with here. Proving, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that a freeloader cannot avoid starvation by tricking Room Service personnel in major metropolitan hotels into leaving food unattended in the hallway. It just won't work.
Changing Careers
The entire plot line of another Alfred Hitchcock movie, Spellbound, hangs by a single, fragile thread: No one at Green Manors Psychiatric Institute has ever met the world-famous Dr. Anthony Edwardes, author of "Labyrinth of the Guilt Complex," before he accepts a job as new director of the prestigious institution.
In reality, Dr. Edwardes has already been murdered by the demented Leo G. Carroll, and has been replaced by the out-to-lunch Gregory Peck, recently demobilized from the Army, who doesn't know anything about psychiatry or medicine, yet is called upon to participate in major surgery by his newfound colleagues. Since nobody, it seems, has ever seen the real Dr. Edwardes, nobody objects when Peck starts futzing around with the scalpels. The health-care ramifications of all this are too terrifying to contemplate.
Seeking to determine if it was possible to obtain a job as director of a famous psychiatric institution where I would be able to perform brain surgery on complete strangers without any medical training and without ever having to appear for a face-to-face interview, I called Bellevue Hospital in New York and asked about the top job.
"We're not hiring," barked a woman in Human Resources. "But I'm a world-famous psychiatrist," I shot back. "I'm the author of 'Labyrinth of the Guilt Complex.' "
"We're not hiring," she replied. "It's a matter of money. We have no money."
"Not even for a world-famous psychiatrist?"
"No. We're facing layoffs here."
Purely in the interest of bi-coastal scientific balance, I next called the Betty Ford Clinic in Rancho Mirage, California, to see about the top spot. The Betty Ford Clinic was not facing layoffs, doubtless having plenty of spare cash, and the woman from Human Resources was a whole lot friendlier and more helpful than her East Coast counterpart.
"This is Dr. Anthony Edwardes," I explained. "I'm the author of 'Labyrinth of the Guilt Complex.' I'd like to apply for a job as director of the clinic."
"Well, I'll send out an application today."
"Would it be necessary for me to come in for a face-to-face, in-person interview?" I inquired.
"Usually, but they would let you know," she replied.
"But I would probably have to come in for an interview, right?"
"Yes," she replied.
See?
Breaking and Entering
About halfway through The French Connection, Roy Scheider knocks on the door of Gene Hackman's New York City apartment. Hackman, who has been chained to his bed with his own handcuffs by a young woman he has picked up, tells his partner to let himself in. So Scheider extracts a credit card from his wallet, slides it through the crack in the door, jiggles it around a bit, and enters.
Let me make this perfectly clear: This trick will not work. Oh, maybe it'll work in Trenton, Ontario, or Chippewa Falls, but it will not work in New York City. New York City apartment owners have big thick Medeco locks--usually two of them--plus chains, grates, alarms and tables stuck up against the door handles. I tried Scheider's ploy on four different friends' apartment doors, with MasterCard, Visa, American Express and even my Citicorp ATM card. No dice. The trick will not work now, but more to the point, it would not have worked 20 years ago when The French Connection was being filmed. It's just another example of the incredibly idiotic stuff that passes for realism in movies.
Sleight of Hand
In another Peter Bogdanovich movie, Paper Moon, small-time con man Ryan O'Neal gives a cashier a $5 bill to pay for 15 cents worth of hair ribbons for his daughter Tatum, then distracts the cashier with small talk to camouflage his convoluted con game. After she hands him the $4.85 (while resting the fiver on the top of the till), he tells her he'll give her the four ones plus another single for the five; then, distracted by his chatter, she is tricked into giving him a $10 bill for the five ones plus the fiver from the top of the till. All told, he comes out $4.85 ahead on the deal.
I was less successful. I went to three parts of New York City on three different days, and could never get this scam to work. Every time I gave a cashier a five, she immediately put it in the till. Whether I talked about the heat, the humidity, the economy, or life in these here United States, they just put the money in the till. No matter how I tried to cajole them, beguile them, distract them, they all just put the money into the cash register. This stuff probably only worked back in the Depression Era of Paper Moon because cashiers were a whole lot dumber then than they are today.
Grifting
I took in The Grifters hoping to cadge some angles to raise the scratch to put my brats through the College of Knowledge. Forget it, Freddy. Numero Uno, if you're going to bilk bookies out of big bucks, you should have the brains to put the moolah in CDs or variable rate money market funds, instead of stashing the swag in the trunk of your Cadillac the way Al bimbo Anjelica Huston does.
(For purposes of stylistic decorum, the rest of this section will be written in English.) As for John Cusack's folded $20 bill trick, well, just can that idea. I hit three bars and two diners in Manhattan, flashing a $20 bill when ordering a drink, then replacing it with a folded $10 bill, hoping I would get change for a $20 bill just like Cusack did the first time he tried it in the film. No Way, Jose.
For starters, bartenders and waitresses don't hop to attention just because you flash a $20 bill, and for another thing modern cash registers have separate compartments for ones, fives, tens, and twenties, so when the cashier puts the money away, he or she tends to put it in the right place. Nobody gave me change for a $20 bill. Nobody said, "Hey, what the fuck are you trying to pull here, asshole?" On the positive side, nobody did what they do to Cusack, either--no one rammed a billy club into my guts, causing near-fatal hemorrhaging. Which is good, because this magazine doesn't pay for gastrointestinal surgery resulting from freelance assignments.
Ordering Take-out
In Bananas, Woody Allen goes into a diner in the middle of a South American jungle and orders coffee. Then he says: "I also want something to go. Do you have any grilled cheese sandwiches?"
"Yes sir," the counter man replies.
"Well, let me have a thousand, and 300 tuna fish and 200 bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches."
Without blinking an eyelash, the man at the counter asks Allen if he wants the cheese on rye. "490 on rye," replies Allen, "and let me have 110 on whole wheat and 300 on white bread, and one on a roll." He also orders 700 regular coffees, 500 cokes and 1,000 7-Ups. Finally, his fellow soldier asks for 900 side orders of coleslaw.
The budget for the story you are reading was not large enough to pay for a trip to a South American jungle, so I went to the next-best place: the Lower East Side of New York. At a grungy diner on Avenue A, I ordered coffee, then nonchalantly said, "Do you have grilled cheese sandwiches?"
"We don't have grilled cheese sandwiches," the young man behind the counter replied. "We make them."
"Fine, I'd like a thousand," I said. "And 200 tuna fish, and..."
"We don't do catering," the waiter said. "We deliver lunch, but we don't do catering."
"Well, I need a thousand grilled cheese sandwiches and 500 Cokes and a bunch of other stuff..."
"Well, you need a caterer then. Caterers do that. You have to look in the Yellow Pages."
Getting a Prostitute to Accompany You to a Business Dinner at Which She Will Have to Pretend to Be Somebody Sophisticated Named Vivian Just Like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman
Of all the experiments I attempted for this article, this was the one that I felt had the best chance of succeeding. That's because prostitutes are famous for doing anything you ask. In fact, one of my fantasies has always been to go to Times Square on April 14, approach a hooker who says she "will do anything" and say, "Do my taxes."
I should start off by saying that none of the women I saw on Eighth Avenue bore even a remote physical resemblance to Julia Roberts. If anyone had made a movie about any of these tragic individuals, it would have been called Pretty Ugly Woman.
Moreover, it isn't always easy to establish whether the woman you are talking to is a woman. Anyway, I finally singled out a twentyish hooker with Julia Robertsish black boots and said, "I'm having dinner with a CEO whose company I'm taking over. How much to come with me to dinner?"
"Thirty dollars in your car," she replied.
"No, I want you to come with me to a business function and pretend to be a sophisticated woman named Vivian."
"Thirty dollars in your car. Fifty if you pay for the room. Come on, sugar, you want a date?"
Well, actually, no.
Eliciting Sexual Advice from Elderly Strangers
In Annie Hall, Woody Allen walks up to a total stranger--an elderly gent--and says: "I have to ask you a question; don't go any further; with your wife in bed, does she need any kind of artificial stimulation, like marijuana?"
"We use a large, vibrating egg," the man replies.
It took me a while to work up the nerve to ask anybody this extremely personal question, but I finally buttonholed a harmless-looking old geezer getting off a bus on Eighth Avenue. "I have to ask you a question; don't go any further; with your wife in bed, does she need any kind of artificial stimulation, like marijuana?"
"I'm not from New York," he said, making every effort to get away as quickly as possible. Then, over his shoulder he volunteered, "Ask the bus driver; he might know."
Inducing Women to Swallow Numerous Unappetizing Things
In the unfailingly charming 9 1/2 Weeks, future pugilist Mickey Rourke persuades Kim Basinger to sit on the floor with her eyes shut while he force-feeds her olives, cherries, strawberries, pasta, Jell-O and jalapeno peppers, washing it all down with champagne, Perrier and milk, before finishing up by dripping honey onto her tongue and all over her legs. My wife being a Catholic, I knew she wouldn't go for any of this kinky, produce-oriented stuff, so I called a good friend who is known for her spirit of adventure.
"Are you asking if I would let anyone do it?" she inquired.
"Anyone."
"Yeah."
"You would?"
"Yeah."
"Even the jalapeno peppers?"
"Yeah, why not?"
"Well, did you see 9 1/2 Weeks?
"Yeah."
"Well, don't you remember that it really hurt Kim Basinger's tongue a lot?"
"Well, it depends where you bite into the pepper. If you just eat the skin of the pepper and not the seeds, it doesn't burn."
"No, I think it burns no matter where you bite into them. But never mind, let me ask you another question," I said, recalling another of the film's fun couple scenes. "If a man threatened to hit you with a belt, would you agree to crawl across the floor like a doggie and pick up $10 and $20 bills he'd strewn on the ground?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"I just wouldn't."
"Because it's too humiliating?"
"No."
"Well, why would you let someone feed you jalapeno peppers that are going to set your mouth on fire, but wouldn't agree to crawl across the floor to pick up money?"
"Because the one involves food, and I like food, but the other involves money, and I don't like money."
Why ask why!
My other female friends were flat-out opposed to any of the salacious Mickey Rourke-isms I suggested. None of them were interested in being blindfolded and fondled by a prostitute, spreading their legs for Daddy while lying on a king-sized bed in an upscale department store, or looking on submissively as I tried out riding crops in an equestrian-goods shop. Still, I was astonished and a bit unnerved to find that at least one woman of my acquaintance was willing to let a man stuff a whole cornucopia of fruits and vegetables into her mouth as she sat on the floor with her eyes closed. But New York is that kind of town.
The list of things that work in movies that will not work in real life goes on and on. For example, if you stand up to corrupt union officials the way Marlon Brando does at the end of On the Waterfront, your body will never be found. You cannot drive a car around San Francisco the way Steve McQueen did in Bulhtt or the way Dan Aykroyd does in The Blues Brothers without killing pedestrians or ruining your car or both. If you hit people with a pistol butt on the back of the head "to make it look good" the way they do in the old Westerns, they in fact will die. As for the famous scene in When Harry Met Sally... where Meg Ryan fakes an orgasm in a Manhattan deli as Billy Crystal looks on, that would never work in real life because I can spot fake orgasms a mile away. Every woman who's ever been with me has gone directly to Jupiter, so I would know. Frankly, the humorous thrust of Meg Ryan's performance was always completely lost on me.
And then there is Vertigo. Seeking to recreate Jimmy Stewart's death-defying leap from one 15-story ledge to another, I jumped from my front porch to my neighbor's, a yawning chasm of, oh, about eight feet. I managed to sprawl safely onto his porch, but not without scraping my knee. However, when I proceeded to the next part of the experiment--having a friend the same size as me lean down and attempt to hoist me up onto his porch--the attempt failed miserably. And this was on a level surface, where my friend got to use both hands, and did not have to worry about plummeting hundreds of feet to a messy death. Proving that the entire opening sequence from Vertigo is just incredibly stupid and that anyone who would risk his own life trying to save another person by attempting to hoist him to safety while gripping a chintzy tile high atop a sloping building in San Francisco probably deserves to die.
In all of my experiments did I find any clever trick, gambit, ploy, scam, ruse or stunt that actually did work in real life? Yes, but only if you count the jalapeno peppers. Other than that, no. But I did find one incredibly cunning ruse that actually failed in a movie and--get this!--also failed in real life. A few weeks ago, after a ferocious argument with an editor, I began to toy with the idea of murdering him. After much idle rumination, I finally settled on the ingenious plot hatched by Ray Milland in another Hitchcock movie, Dial M for Murder.
As the reader will doubtless recall, Milland's scheme involves a set of latch keys, one in his wife's handbag, one concealed beneath the stairway carpet outside the apartment door. The killer hired by Milland is supposed to let himself in with the latch key, then hide behind the curtains in the living room, and then, when Grace Kelly comes to answer Milland's call from his club, sneak up from behind and strangle her. He is then supposed to put the key back in its place beneath the carpet and get the hell out of there.
Unfortunately, Grace Kelly kills the killer, who had already put the key back in its place after opening the door, so when Ray Milland comes home, he take a key out of the killer's pocket and puts it in Kelly's handbag, never realizing that it is actually the killer's own latch key, and not the latch key to Milland's apartment door. This creates problems for Milland later in the film, when his latch key ends up in a raincoat picked up by the indefatigable Scotland Yard detective played by John Williams. Milland then tries to use the key in Kelly's handbag, which doesn't work on his door, since it's the killer's key. This chain of events forces Milland to open the door with the latch key left under the hall stairs by the killer, who was supposed to keep the key until after he had disposed of Grace Kelly, but who messed up the whole plan. As a result, Milland is caught out and, presumably, fries for it.
I invited a friend over to the house one afternoon and we ran through this key thing several times. I didn't tell him that I was thinking of killing anybody; I told him the little stunt was something I'd planned for a surprise party. Well, to make a long story short, we screwed up completely. As complicated as Milland's scheme is in the movie, it's even more complicated in real life, and neither I nor my friend could ever get the hang of it. This being the case, I would suggest to readers who are contemplating the murder of employers or business associates or even spouses that they stick to blowtorches or AK-47s, and try to make the murder look like the work of an intruder. The movies are really no help at all in handling practical, everyday affairs. They're just incredibly stupid, and you're far better off running your life normally, like me.
Joe Queenan wrote about Barbra Streisand for our August issue.