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Write About What You Know

© John Lovett

One of the things I harp on about in my columns is that if you are going to do something in a movie, do it right. If you have the time and budget to get the starlet's hair just right, then you have the time and budget to get the uniforms, weapons, etc correct. The process is not that hard. Well, at least for some of us the process is not that hard.

Part of that process is writing about what you know. In other words, if you write about World War I you write about those things that were involved in that conflict. One would write about machine guns, barbed wire, and trenches. Conversely, one would not write about Nazis and B-17s. However, that simple rule is not always followed in movies. Equally unfortunate is that when people do catch the producers, writers, and directors in making blatant errors of fact these people are said to be nit - picking. The excuse is usually along the lines of, "Three million people saw that film and you're the only person who said anything."

Well, if I am to be the only gadfly in the soup so be it. The following paragraphs encompass a blatant error of fact so horrendous that while it has nothing to do with the military its existence is indicative of how things are done in Hollywood.

I just saw the new Arnold Schwarzenegger picture END OF DAYS (Official Site http://www.end-of-days.com/ ). During one scene, Arnold is reading from a book that describes why the "bad guys" are trying to kill the good girl. He reads that the "bad guys" are part of an ancient, secret masonic society that has been sent out from the Vatican to kill Satan.

Excuse me Messrs. Hyams (director) and Marlowe (writer) but there are no ancient, secret masonic orders and certainly none sent from the Vatican. Allow me to explain.

Firstly, the Free and Accepted Masons (F&AM) was founded in 1715 in London. Hardly what one would call ancient. Secondly, the Masons are not and have never been a "secret" society. Perhaps one could say that the Masons are a society with secrets, but those "secrets" have been published widely and have lost everything but their ritualistic effect. Thirdly, for various reasons the Masons, like several other fraternal orders, have been put under interdict by various Popes and Catholic Church officials. Therefore, I do not think a Pope would send out members of some organization he, and his precedents, had interdicted.

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