You won't believe this story

A lively discussion ensued from Saturday’s post about breaking the 4th wall. My big problem with it in the case of our movie VOLUNTEERS (available in remainder bins everywhere) is that it changed the tone of the movie two-thirds of the way in. One minute it looks so real it could be a National Geographic documentary and then the next it turns into ROAD TO UTOPIA.

You have to establish your world (whatever it is) and then just stick to it. Breaking the 4th wall is a fine convention if used correctly. I’ve seen it in movies, plays, musicals, and my favorite example is George Burns on the old BURNS & ALLEN television show. Not only did he address the audience, he also would turn on the TV in his office and watch along with us as the other characters played out the story. In a sense he was the only one of the cast who knew he was also in a TV show. I know it sounds confusing but it worked. And was hilarious. I’ve yet to see a more original bending of the sitcom form in the last fifty years.

But if Frasier suddenly turned on the TV and watched Niles having dinner with Daphne you’d go WHAT THE FUCK?!

Flashbacks and time travel are established in LOST. But on 24 if you interrupted a chase scene to show a flashback of Jack torturing a kitten as a kid, it would throw you right out of the show. A few years ago I would watch 24 then THE SHIELD. And whenever Vic would leave the station and they’d cut to him pulling up at his destination I thought, “Hey, how’d he get there so fast?” and then I’d remember, oh yeah, this isn’t in real time.

You can make your world as crazy as you want as long as you stick to your own rules. In the SEINFELD world and CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM world absurd coincidences are commonplace. If Diane Chambers was having trouble writing a paper on terrorism and Osama Bin Laden just happened to walk into Cheers at that exact moment you’d throw your shoe at the screen. But on Seinfeld that would be perfectly plausible. And Osama would be eating the same box of Junior Mints that Carla lost on the train two years ago.

It is because of that coincidental world that SEINFELD and CURB established that the following REAL LIFE story is so utterly astonishing.

In 2003 Juan Catalan was tried and convicted for murder. He had claimed he was at a Dodger game at the time of the crime. But he had no proof and the evidence was strong enough to convict him. His lawyer went back through the telecast of that game and tried to see if by some miracle he could spot Catalan in the stands. Of course he couldn’t.

Then the lawyer learned that the night in question CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM was shooting a few scenes of Larry David at the game. He obtained the outtakes and talk about finding a needle in a haystack, there was his client in one of the shots. The tape was time coded which proved conclusively he was not at the scene of the crime at the time of the murder. Catalan was released and sued the city for police misconduct and received $320,000.

Can you believe that? It’s absolutely true. What do you think the odds are? A billion-to-one? Twenty billion-to-one?

But what if the lawyer was Sam Waterston and this was a plot for LAW & ORDER? You get my point.

Houses can fly, ghosts can return, people can break into song, DeLoreans can take you back to the 50s. Just don’t do all these things in the same movie.