And yeah, if you make normal behaviour interesting/about character/unusual then of course you can use it – and you’ll probably get more of a positive reaction out of having a quiet conversation and then screaming goodbye than just dropping in a normal goodbye.

That’s exactly why I said honest. In my last post, by ‘real’ I meant ‘natural/honest’, and I will continue using those words from here on.

Hanging up without any goodbyes is not how people usually behave. Then again, for Ethan Hunt or James Bond it is very natural, especially if they’re in the middle of defusing an armed nuclear bomb and have to be finished before lunch.

“No, it’s a reasonable technique, which is why it’s used so often. Nothing on film is real, except perhaps documentary.”

Not real, but it should be honest in the story’s own universe. There’s an endless amount of situations where calling someone by their name is very natural (the example in comment 17 is not one of them, except for maybe the first line). Why go down the unnatural road, when you can use them or come up with new natural ways to make your character’s name familiar? There are many films that do this well and I think this is very much a question of respecting the audience vs. laziness.

If the character and situation alone don’t make such behavior natural, the overall style of the film should support it strongly. But I don’t believe you should write unnatural behavior just because it’s so much easier. By “reasonable technique” do you mean “a way to avoid spending time writing it better”? The audience might let you get away with it because they’ve seen it done so many times (“oh, this trick”) but it’s still dishonest writing and might unconsciously diminish the believability of the story.

So why not do it better, make it natural and honest in the story’s own universe?

Just wondering if you get the same deal with things like an add for a “Charlies Angles 2 Happy Meal”. I always see clips of movies on McDonalds and Burger King adds when they have a meal deal running in sync with a film’s release, so do you get paid for that too?

Thanks.

Yeah. Honest character behavior. Not real behavior. Real behavior is boring. Real behavior is a person taking a long half an hour shit when they get up in the morning.

I’ve been aware of the lack of goodbyes in films for a while and they don’t stand out to me. Because I’m not looking for them. I’m permitting the story to have it’s own momentum, and thus artfully smoothing over the unreality.

“Don’t justify it by saying ‘but I’ve seen this done so many times before’”

Who was doing that? No, it’s a reasonable technique, which is why it’s used so often. Nothing on film is real, except perhaps documentary. It’s a story, in a medium with special constraints.

If the goal is to strive to make things “real” then remind me to never see movies again. You’d never understand what was going on in films, they’d go on for hour. They’d be like boring Robert Altman films.

The goal is to make acceptable, even inviting unreality. Otherwise we’d just watch people on the street.

If you don’t need the “bye” or “talk to you later” and can’t add anything to the character or plot by ending the call in a normal manner, cut away from the scene before that or make someone take the phone of the character’s hand and throw it against the wall. Let the audience know before the call that this character would never spend time saying goodbye, he’s too busy saving the world. Something.

Same goes for calling people by their names. Don’t justify it by saying “but I’ve seen this done so many times before”. If it’s not real, it’s not real. You have to either make it real by setting it up or find another way for the audience to remember who’s Gary and who’s John.

Otherwise you’re just tricking yourself with excuses, making it easier for you to write and the minor problem you overlooked on page will magnify itself on the screen.

You should always aim for honest character behavior.

And why the names pop up so often is to somehow introduce the character to the audience by giving that person a name. The audience doesn’t read scripts. They WATCH movies.

You notice in movies you almost never see people paying the cab driver. It just doesn’t add to the story or anything. It’s boring stuff.

My idea of writing, I think of many others too, is to have absolutely nothing unnecessary in the script and everything that is in the script has a right to be there.

P.S. I thought a little about the goodbye stuff during the writing of this post and I think there’s two sides. The script and the movie. While in the script the writer did it right and left out the goodbye for reasons like it adds nothing to it, the director of the movie films how the actor hangs the phone up and doing nothing for two more seconds. If that is the case, why didn’t the director, if he had to add two more seconds for the hang up, not just add the words goodbye too?

So either the director didn’t understand why the goodbye was left out or he did it intentionally for whatever reasons. Or the writer left out the goodbye but has written the hang up.

Anyway, it all depends on the script and context of the scene. You should maybe pick up an example.