10 Sure Signs you’ve watched too many movies

We need relief from all the turmoil out there – the political rallies, the natural disasters, the fourth season of The Simple Life. We need to escape from the all-consuming media once in a while, stop and smell the roses, and take a closer look at the important things, the things that really matter in life.

Such as: "Movies in Which Ben Affleck Cries Like a Big Fat Baby."

This is one of the completely useless but quite entertaining movie lists compiled by Richard Roeper, one half of TV’s Ebert& Roeper film critic team. The main qualification to write a book like 10 Sure Signs a Movie Character is Doomed (which weighs in at a somewhat hefty 289 pages but can be read in less than half an hour) is an ability to watch movies. Hey, you’re probably saying, I can do that! But wait: you also have to be keen enough to notice the many things that don’t quite add up in movies – like, how characters in horror or action films do the same, stupid things, over and over, yet never learn their lessons. Meanwhile, those in the audience are busy shouting at the screen: "NO, PUT THE LIGHTS ON FIRST!" Or: "JUST GET THE HELL OUT OF THE HOUSE, IDIOT!"

Roeper knows all about this. He has studied his medium well, and he understands that:

• The spunky little kid or the wizened old soul who befriends a main character in the hospital has no chance. We’ll find out the kid (or the old-timer) has died when the main character stops in to visit, only to see a nurse’s aide stripping the bed. Nothing says death in a hospital scene like a nurse’s aide stripping the bed.

• The fresh-faced soldier who talks endlessly about his girlfriend, looks longingly at her photo every night, and tells everyone, "We’re going to have a baby!" will be coming home in a body bag.

• The popular veteran cop who has travel brochures on his desk and is a week away from retirement – he’s never going to see that condo in Arizona, is he?

Like a cinematic bean counter, he charts important data, such as variations in "The Age Difference Between Michael Douglas and His Leading Ladies" (Biggest gap: Douglas’ 54 to Gwyneth Paltrow’s 26 in A Perfect Murder). He can rattle off the famous "Actresses Who Have Played Prostitutes," and it’s interesting to note how many of them actually earned Oscars by doing this (Elizabeth Taylor in Butterfield 8, Jane Fonda in Klute, Julie Christie in McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Mira Sorvino in Might Aphrodite, among others). Talk about sleeping your way to the top!

He lists the "Best Porn Titles Based on Legit Movies" (Okay, here are 10 of them: Free My Willy, Driving Miss Daisy Crazy, Edward Penishands, Glad He Ate Her, Forrest Hump, Good Will Humping, On Golden Blonde, There’s Someone On Mary, Saving Ryan’s Privates, Position: Impossible).

Pop culture is the driving force behind a book such as 10 Sure Signs a Movie Character is Doomed. Roeper wants us to know that he’s been watching the trends. He notices, for instance, the large number of "Pop Songs in Permanent Rotation on the Movie Soundtrack Jukebox" (which include Rock and Roll Part 2 by Gary Glitter, Takin’ Care of Business by Bachman Turner Overdrive, and Walking on Sunshine by Katrina and the Waves, all of which appear in at least four movies. Hmm. Forgot to mention I Feel Good by James Brown and Gimme Some Lovin by the Spencer Davis Group). He’s apparently noticed Tom Cruise’s habit of playing facially-deformed or masked characters to earn acting credibility (as in Eyes Wide Shut, Mission-Impossible, Vanilla Sky and Minority Report). And he spots the trend of "Movies with Wisecracking But Caring Gay Best Friends Who Usually Live Right Down the Hall and Are Always Available to Lend a Shoulder to Cry On" a mile away. (Also known as: Julia Roberts movies.)

Roeper’s a good guy to have at a party if you want to know all the Meg Ryan movies in which her character is named either "Maggie" or "Kate" (nine, by his count).

He’ll let you know which movies feature horrendous plane crash sequences ("Movies That Never Played on an Airplane"). And he’ll be the one to tell you (along with comedian Dave Chappelle) why most phone numbers given out in movies start with the non-existent "555" prefix. This is because if a real phone number were used, "thousands of bored losers would dial it and harass some poor schlub whose private home line is in the latest Adam Sandler movie."

My personal favorite in the book is the list of "In-Jokes," such as the presence of R2-D2 dangling from one of the UFOs flying over Richard Dreyfuss’s head in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, or the fact that all the license plates in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off are acronyms of previous John Hughes films. (Check it out: it’s true!)

His catalogue of "Red-Carpet Flubs and Blunders by Joan Rivers" is also priceless, including the comedienne misidentifying Ben Kingsley as F. Murray Abraham, asking Jim Carrey "Are you investing well?" and Barbara Streisand responding to one of her questions by calling it "ridiculous."

The nice thing about such a book is that I don’t feel bad at all about plundering it for material for this column. After all, in the "Sources" page at the back of the book, Roeper credits "the dozens of incredibly useful web sites" that provided him with most of his research. Hey, I’ve always been a big fan of recycling.

Okay, now you can go back to the turmoil.