The Guy Who Knows Things

This character doesn't have to be a 'Guy,' and half the time isn't. The Girl Who Knows Things is just as good. It really doesn't matter since it takes so long to type I'm just going to use "GWKT" from here on out anyway. You can imagine the 'G' to mean whichever you please.

The GWKT serves an import and thankless task in horror films: exposition. Everyone hates exposition and it is very hard to write (which pretty much guarantees that it'll suck in most horror movies). For those who don't know, exposition is the setting forth of important facts, the telling of back-story and so forth. It is how the audience receives pertinent information not otherwise obvious or provided by the unfolding plot. Sometimes it'll come in the form of voice-overs or a TV news segment one of our characters is watching. More often than not though, it comes simply from one character explaining something to another character.

Unfortunately, horror and sci-fi movies usually involve a lot of boring exposition because they are dealing with an unknown - an ancient creature come back to life or a giant animal running amok or what have you - things that normal people don't know shit about, either because it's something no one cares about (moths, fungus) or because the filmmakers made it up (Michael Myers, Godzilla). Some movies, like Tremors (1990), decide that you don't need to know anything about their made up creatures to enjoy the film - and they were right. But sometimes the movie just won't make sense if we don't have some exposition. Would Nightmare on Elm St. (1984) have worked without the Freddy legend? No. Someone has got to tell the story. Someone has got to inform us that the lake monster is blind or that crazed hunchback is afraid of the color pink. Thank God we've got the GWKT!

The GWKT is an interesting sort of character. Sometimes they're also another character within our movie spectrum. A Hero can be a GWKT. If they're the person who spreads the pertinent information to the other characters (and thus the audience) it counts. This usually isn't the case though, because it's always a nice mini-crisis when the GWKT dies, leaving our Hero without an easy source of info. A surviving Hero usually becomes a GWKT in the sequel. Who better to tell our new characters about the monster? During Predator 2 (1990) I kept thinking the government should really have hired Schwarzenegger, not Gary Busey. You can't trust the Busey.

There are four basic categories of GWKT: the Expert, the Know It All, the Prophetic Local, and the Folk Teller.

THE EXPERT
The Expert is a professional, either in reality or purely in practice. The two varieties of Experts are the Scientist and the Fanatic.

The Scientist gets paid to know all the shit he/she knows. Think government agent sent to investigate the meteorite crash or the chick that studies ants at UCLA and is called in when giant ants attack Los Angeles. The Scientist usually works for a museum or something else boring and stuffy. That way they'll be completely and humorously unprepared for the adventure the movie sends them on. A lot of the time this character is a really hot chick who'll be partnered with our small town sheriff or park ranger Hero. Sometimes the Scientist is even the person who created the monster, such as Kevin McCarthy in Piranha. Richard Dreyfuss in Jaws (1975) is my favorite Scientist. Gotta love the Hooper.

The Fanatic doesn't get paid. They've learned all this stuff out of personal interest or obsession. Sometimes they'll come off like a Scientist, but I can't bring myself to consider crypto-zoology a genuine field. This is the sort of person who shows up in a movie about the Yeti. The Fanatic is often independently wealthy, which allows them to use all their free time learning about Yetis. They're also rarely connected to anything reputable. That way we can sometimes get both a Scientist and a Fanatic in one movie, like Bridget Fonda and Oliver Platte in Lake Placid.

Sometimes the Expert is only in one scene. He's just someone our Hero seeks out at some point to get info, like Tony Todd in Final Destination (2000) or Dick Miller in The Howling (1981).

THE KNOW IT ALL
The Know It All can often know just as much as an Expert. The difference is they didn't come by their info as part of a life pursuit. It's a complete coincidence that they know all this crap. They're almost always young, as Scientists obviously can't be sixteen, but in a movie staring only teens, one of our characters still needs to know things. The two varieties of Know It Alls are the Random Know It All and the Inexplicable Know It All.

The Random Know It All usually found a book or, in a current annoying trend, was watching the Discovery Channel recently. An Expert is usually brought in specifically because they've studied the problem at hand. If she didn't know so much about, say, killer bees, she'd still be in her office. Both kinds of Know It Alls just happen to be there and it is pure dumb luck that they have this wisdom.

Another key difference between the KIA and the Expert is that when we first meet the Expert we know they know this crap. With the RKIA it often comes as a total fucking surprise. And for some reason the RKIA always seems to have come by their random information either very, very recently or an unrealistically long time ago. So when the giant Komodo dragon bites one of our college kids, our GWKT will either say:

"Wait! Last week I was watching the Discovery Channel and there was a special about Komodo dragons on! Their saliva is poisonous!"

Or:

"Wait! When I was a little kid I took a vacation to Komodo Island with my family! My uncle was bitten by a Komodo dragon! Their saliva is poisonous!"

So forth.

Sometimes we do get "set-up" for the RKIA; we'll first see them watching TV or reading a schoolbook about the kind of animal that will end up terrorizing the town. Such foreshadowing is so lame that it's really not necessary. Of course, as preposterous as the RKIA can be, they've got nothing on the Inexplicable Know It All. Holy shit...

The IKIA didn't learn. They just know. We don't even get the bogus Discovery Channel thing. This is a character that inhabits only the most poorly written movies. In the real world people can know things. I mean, I know shit about Komodo dragons. I don't know why. I'm a nerd. But movies can't work quite like real life. For whatever reason there needs to be a qualifier.* The previously moronic sex-addicted sidekick to our football captain Hero shouldn't randomly know how long it takes army ants to devour a human corpse. And if he does, he'd better have been watching the Discovery Channel last night.

THE PROPHETIC LOCAL
Being a stranger in a strange land is always a little scary. You don't know anyone and you don't know where anything is, so, in the days before cell phones, if something went wrong, you wouldn't know what to do. It only makes sense that most horror movies are fish-out-of-water tales about tourists, college kids on a weekend camping trip, or an unfortunate roadtripper with a flat tire. Who do they turn to for directions? That's where Prophetic Locals come in. They are cautionary GWKT. They give our Hero a warning, about something only a local would know. These are the people that the Hero wishes he'd listened to later, but didn't.

There are three kinds of Prophetic Locals: the Concerned Samaritan, the Ominous Townie and the Crazy Guy. All very different, they agree on one thing: You kids shouldn't go to the ______ (insert location our kids go to and die.)

The Concerned Samaritan is usually a shop/gas station owner or hitchhiker friendly driver. Our stupid twenty-somethings will either stop for gas and directions or are thumbing it along the road when they all encounter each other. The Concerned Samaritan is always upset to hear where the kids are going. "Camp Crystal Lake? You don't wanna go there." That kind of thing. They'll then inform our Hero that wherever they're going is haunted or was the site of a grizzly mass-murder (and the killer was never apprehended). Our group of idiots will shrug off the warning and continue on their way. Pretty much any movie like Friday the 13th has this character.

The Ominous Townie is very similar to the Concerned Samaritan. The difference is that he doesn't like to be completely open. He has secrets. He seems nervous talking with our kids. Usually there will be several of these characters hanging out together in the mechanic's garage or bar. That way when our kids ask about the abandoned house on the hill, they can all look back and forth uneasily before one of them answers. They'll try to get our kids to steer clear of their destination without out actually showing all their cards, but still leaving a few hints in the process, "You might want to carry something pink if you're going up there." Things would go a whole lot better if they were simply more forthcoming: "On, no, don't go to the abandon house on the hill. There's a crazy inbred hunchback who lives up there who is afraid of the color pink. He's constantly killing the travelers we fail to properly warn about him." Probably the best and most well known Ominous Townies are the Slaughtered Lamb patrons in American Werewolf in London (1981): "Stay on the road." "Beware the moors."

The Crazy Guy is always fun. Usually a hobo or town drunk, he knows just as much as the Samaritans and the Townies, but is so completely nuts that no one has any reason to heed his warnings - especially since unlike the CS and the OT, our Hero never asks the Crazy Guy anything. The Crazy Guy jumps out in front of cars, or stumbles up to our kids while they're pumping gas, then proceeds to ramble nonsensically about how they're all going to die. One of our stupid kids will be made nervous by the encounter and usually later on asks the group something like: "Do you think that could be true? That there's a crazy inbred hunchback living up there?" "Oh, that guy was just crazy." Then they all die.

THE FOLK TELLER
The Folk Teller deals with local mythology, either true or made up for the movie. In their mind it is common knowledge, which is what separates them from a Fanatic. Folk Tellers often don't even think what they're saying is true. They might think they're simply telling a spooky ghost story to little kids or drunken friends. Of course, the Folk Teller is actually giving us, the audience, the villain's backstory and sometimes letting the Hero know how to kill it, or in the case of Candyman (1992), how to summon it. Folk Tellers often inhabit movies with another GWTK. That way we can get the spooky local legend backstory and then later on when they're all trapped somewhere, the other GWKT can reveal that he's known the real story all along.

* Often to a stupid degree, such as in Salem's Lot (1979) where nearing the climax our Hero says, "I called my friend in San Francisco. He's turned on to the occult..." And this is how we learn that Hero needs to stake the head vampire during the day in his coffin. This is probably going too far with the knowledge qualifying. Even a lousy screenwriting teacher will tell you, "Don't tell. Show." Since we don't see this phone conversation it seems pointless to even bother with the qualifier. The "occult" angle is clearly meant to indicate that our Hero was talking with a Fanatic, but any 9 year-old could have told him to stake the vamp in his coffin. This is making the Hero a little too stupid, me thinks - especially since there's another character, a 13-year-old, who figures out to try and do the same thing by himself.

An additional rant for filmmakers...

Dear Filmmaker,

The GWKT is supposed to give pertinent information, but we aren't always so lucky. A majority of horror movies are written by shit-eatingly lousy writers, and one thing shit-eatingly lousy writers will often do is assume their audience is as completely retarded as they are. Haven't we made it far enough as a society that everyone knows how to kill a vampire? Sure, you can have a quick little confirmation among characters but we really don't need a complete rundown on vampire lore every time.

I'm also sick of movies that get way too involved with trying to rewrite standard monster rules. If you begin a line of dialogue with, "Forget everything you've seen in the movies..." stop right there and think seriously about going back to business school like your parents want. Sure, maybe you have some cool new ideas. Most likely you don't though. And having characters reference existing horror movies in your horror movie was fun for like two seconds in the 90's, please stop doing it now.

But my biggest GWTK pet peeve is the filmmaker who is still spinning with excitement from all the research he just did for the screenplay and thusly masturbates pointless facts all over us. Decided you're going to make a horror movie about a giant killer slug, eh? Went on the Internet and learned some interesting facts about slugs, eh? Well, we don't need to know all of them. Just some. And please, please don't use any of these worthless facts as plot points unless it makes sense cinematically.

In Jurassic Park we learn that the T-Rex can't see you if you're not moving. Neat. It makes for a great scene – Dr. Grant standing there, trying to keep cool as the giant dinosaur breathes in his face. Sharks digest really slowly? Interesting. Let's go cut open the shark and see if it ate the Kintner boy. Funny, gross, and guess what? No kid. Wrong shark. We must find the real shark! Good scene.

If your fun fact doesn't add something interesting to the movie, don't put it in! They aren't watching the movie to learn (that's what that damned Discovery Channel is for.) How much did we really learn about sharks after watching Jaws? Not that much. How much did we learn about ancient Egypt from The Mummy remake? I think I walked away knowing less. And sometimes fact is not as interesting as fiction. In the book Jaws the shark dies from exhaustion. Very realistic, sure, but come on, it was way sweeter to just blow its ass up. So in your giant killer slug movie don't have our Hero randomly happen across a salt mine. Just blow it the fuck up. It's a movie about a giant slug. No one cares, bro.

Best wishes,
- me