How I Should Be Depicted in the Movies

Never show me looking through binoculars at a nudist colony. Show me looking at a bird, then slipping and falling into a nudist colony.

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A good thing to have in the movie would be to show me look at a newspaper and be shocked by the date, because that’s what I do every day.

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To show passage of time, show me as a boy petting my dog, then show me as an adult petting a dog skeleton.

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Leave out the “prison years.”

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Feel free to make me strong and handsome. But if you can only have one trait, lean toward handsome, unless it gets to where I’m really, really good-looking but I can’t even lift a pencil.

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Show me fighting big things and miniature things, but when I fight miniature things there should be a lot of them, so you don’t feel sorry for them.

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Don’t ever have me just standing there, doing nothing. At least have me run and dive behind a log.

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Maybe there could be a fantasy sequence where it shows what the town would be like if I had never been born, and for some reason everyone goes around nude.

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If you show me doing my funny cowboy dance, don’t show it in slow motion, because then people can figure out how it’s done.

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I don’t need to have a big fancy car, but I should at least have something fancy.

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When I meet someone new in the movie, I should be shy, even if I’m a general.

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A good dramatic part would be me out deer hunting. I see a big, beautiful buck, but I can’t bring myself to shoot him. Then, when I get home, I discover my whole family has been killed by the same deer.

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I should never be shown begging for something, except maybe candy. And by the end of the movie I should get the candy.

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Kids should look up to me, or at the very least, not beat me up.

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If I am in a crowd scene, have an arrow pointing to me.

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Never show me afraid of a bug, unless the bug makes a weird clicking noise that anyone would be afraid of.

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At the end of the movie, show funny outtakes from the nude scenes.

Illustration by Bob Eckstein