Matt Damon is wondering why we aren’t talking about the “preponderance” of men who do not commit acts of sexual misconduct and whose lives will not be affected by women coming forward and revealing years of abuse in the entertainment industry. And he’s right, where are the stories that actually don’t technically qualify as stories? Why aren’t we exploring those? Here are a couple of film ideas that tell great stories that are not actually, technically, stories:
1. Danny Ocean Thinks About Robbing a Casino
Danny Ocean, a convicted felon out on parole, learns to re-enter society and nothing of consequence happens to him because he is a white man and this is about as seamless as re-entry gets. At one point, he considers rallying a gang of eleven men to rob a casino but he decides against it. Instead, he shows his ex-wife he’s changed and no longer leads a life of crime. She hugs him and they do not reconcile. That’s all he wrote!
2. The Man Who Went to Mars and Then Came Back With No Issues
A man goes to Mars with a crew. He then successfully returns from his mission to Mars with the crew. There are no glitches in the mission. At one point, he explains that he could grow food with his own poop if say, he got stranded on Mars and he had to, but he doesn’t have to because nothing, at all, has gone wrong on the mission. And then that’s it, the film is donezo!
3. Everyone Departs at Some Point, But No One in This Movie
A cop in Boston is corrupted, but in the regular way: by systemic racism. He and his precinct make some arrests, disproportionately arresting black people, but that’s just the criminal justice system in America. The cop has a nice therapist girlfriend. She doesn’t cheat on him with a colleague who is deep undercover because no one in this movie is deep undercover. At the end of the film, the cop’s girlfriend is pregnant with what is certainly his own baby.
4. Regular Will Hunting
A janitor at MIT named Will Hunting diligently cleans the halls. Everyone is respectful but distant towards him. Sometimes he draws on the whiteboards because it’s fun. The janitor likes apples. He also considers therapy, but nothing of consequence has ever happened to him, so he decides not to go. And then FIN!
5. Jason Bourne: That is Unquestionably My Identity
A man named Jason Bourne wakes up one day. He gets ready for his job as a CIA desk jockey. He loses his wallet intermittently throughout the film, causing people to ask him if he is, in fact, Jason Bourne. He confirms that he is “unquestionably” Jason Bourne and his wallet is returned to him each time! At one point, Jason hears a rumor about a program where the CIA wipes people’s memories and turns them into super spies, but then he doesn’t hear any more about that. A few wallet losses later, that’s the end of the movie!
