Backward Movie Plot Word Game

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett, and on the line from New York City is our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hi, John.

Hi, Grant. Hi, Martha.

You know, I so miss going to the movies. It’s been such a long time since I’ve been in the movie theater. I’m really looking forward to doing that again soon.

I have a great respect for screenwriters and directors. Besides having mastery of plotting and characterization and such, they have to know when they’re going down the wrong path and when to make a course correction.

For example, it’s not very well known that in the original version of a beloved Pixar film about an old widower and a young boy, their adventurers take them into caverns deep below the surface of the earth. It was probably a good idea that they changed the concept of the movie down to the movie Up.

Up.

Got it?

Okay.

That’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to give you movie opposites. How many of these movie opposites can you figure out from the descriptions? Okay?

Okay.

All right.

Let’s see.

All right.

Cary Grant is chased by good guys and bad guys, but instead of ending up at a national monument in the Dakotas, he ends up at Disney World. South by Southeast.

South by Southeast.

That’s right. Instead of North by Northwest.

It’s 1957, and on a comfortable, temperate day, a jury sits and quickly decides a simple and easy court case. Everybody goes home to their families. Twelve Happy Men.

Twelve Happy Men. A really short movie. They changed it to Twelve Angry Men, and it was much longer.

In an alternate universe, two reporters are unable to find any evidence that anyone in the Nixon administration had anything to do with the break-in at the Watergate complex. None of the president’s men.

None of the president’s men. Absolutely none of them. Instead of all the president’s men, right?

Jimmy Stewart has an uneventful two-week recovery, spying on people coming and going on his Greenwich Village street, completely ignoring anything that happens in the backyard. Front window.

Front window instead of rear window, the classic Hitchcock film. Yes, he should mind his own business.

A disparate group of high schoolers really get to know each other at a fancy restaurant. Dinner club.

Yes, the dinner club, as opposed to, of course, the breakfast club.

Finally, this 2010 film tells how Facebook allowed misanthropes to distance themselves from everyone throughout 2020. The anti-social network.

Yes, the anti-social network instead of the social network, of course.

Thanks, John. Really appreciate it.

Thanks, you guys. Talk to you next time.

Thanks, John. And we invite you to get in on the conversation. Just call us 877-929-9673 or send your emails to words@waywordradio.org.