Unpacking

Quaid unpacks the heat.

Zeitgeisters,

I was channel-flipping last night and hit upon THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW (2004) the only other feature apart from AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH (2006) to star climate change. TDAT also has Dennis Quaid in it and I’ll usually take out a few minutes to see what Mr Quaid is doing. He is a very reliable actor. Even in quite terrible films.

Quaid was sitting in a station wagon with two other hapless actors and they were iced in, unable to travel any further in the car. Quaid’s eyes were slits, he looked out into the tundra-like landscape, then back to the guys. In a voice of pure command he said, “Unpack the snowshoes. We’re walking from here.”

It’s the word snowshoes. You can’t really put it in a sentence and expect an audience to take the rest of the line seriously. For example: “My uncle died slowly and painfully in a freak snowshoe incident.”

So a word of advice to new screenwriters and directors out there. Don’t make your actors say ‘snowshoes” even if your movie is about climate change. Even if it stars Dennis Quaid.

Elevate the Insignificant

Mr Trivia