I drink a bit. I'm no boozer, but I've been in more than a few bars. Similarly, I assume, and I think fairly, that in the aggregate, the types of people who write, direct and/or act in movies also fall somewhere closer to the lush/libertine/louse end of the spectrum than the teetotaler side. So how and why are the bars that appear in movies so unlike the bars of real life?

Bar scenes are unbelievable because the bar is more than another location for a scene. A movie bar is a backdrop instrumental in the development of a character or the moral of the story. A dive bar means depression, reaching rock bottom, being a bad parent/husband/wife, or it can be a landscape conducive to the kind of introspection the protagonist needs in order to turn his or her life around. A local pub is a place to bond, warmly, but not embarrassingly so. A club is where sexual tension is fostered, people cheat on each other, or characters fall deeper into drug addition, alcoholism, or general amoral oblivion. And a honky-tonk is for fightin', or to highlight how people of different classes are all really the same, or conversely, how they are very different. In other words, unlike Freud's cigars, in the movies, the bar is rarely just a bar.

Because a movie bar is an abstraction - more an idea than a place - a screen writer can be excused for not reaching for absolute realism. But the writers of these scenes seem to take this artistic license too far, and then don't even keep the details true to life which would have no effect on how they are using the bar to help drive the story. I guess they figure as long as the bar in their movie is sort of phony, why not go whole-hog. So what are the most common avoidable mistakes screenwriters make when it comes to writing the bar scene? Let's consider.

"Bar-keep, can I get a beer?"

You can not go to a bar and order "a beer." I've actually made this mistake, and the bartender looked at me like he was smelling a fart. You have to order by brand and if necessary, brand and style: Bud . . . Light. Movie writers don't put in brands names for free so they rely on the old, "a beer" order. This seems like a bad compromise, and one easily avoided with a non-beer order. Ex.: "Can I get a scotch and soda?" The trouble is, in a movie, not only do different type of bars mean different things, drinks carry meaning as well. A beer is a beer. It's ordered to kill time. Its statement is a non-statement. But any hard alcohol, even mixed with soda, is "Drinking" with a capitol "D." Sans mixer, and the character means business - either the business of looking tough or killing himself or whatever. An exception to this rule is that hard alcohol can be consumed by an Irish character, and this only means that he's Irish - i.e: a drunk (but not an alcoholic) Wine, any kind of wine, means the character is either a snob or fey. Finally, any drink like a Sex on the Beach means the character is white trash, or an amateur drinker. (Actually this is the case in real life as well.)

Do you have a light?

Just as the different kinds of drinks carry meaning in movies, so does the act of smoking. In real life bars are either smoke free due to ordinance, or they are smoky due to . . . well the cigarettes being smoked in them. Lots of people smoke regularly, and lots of people smoke only when they drink. As a result, if they let you smoke in a bar, people do. In movies the only people smoking are depressed or highly stressed protagonists who would otherwise not be smoking, naut-TEE girls looking to get laid, haggard old bar-flies, Johnny Roughnecks, and protagonists trying to quit (which is generally symbolic of an overall struggle.)

Whaaat?

If a screenwriter wants the characters to look cool, but also wants them to be able to hold a conversation with each other, he should put them in a swanky lounge. Luckily, movie makers are catching onto that fact. But, on occasion, you still see movies where characters go to intimate bars where rock bands are playing, stand 18 inches apart and carry on in depth conversations elemental to the plot's development. This is impossible. In real life, interchanges that take place in these conditions generally go something like more like:

"WHAT?" "I SAID . . . HOW'S THE ROOMATE SITUATION!?" "OH! IT'S BETTER. MUCH BETTER!"

How much does it cost them to replace the furniture every night?

In action movies, the bar does not represent some personal purgatory or anything like that. It's just a great place to have a fight. In reality, bars are spooky bad places to have fights. Unlike bar fights in the movies, real bar fights involving more than two people are nothing short of complete chaos. A few wild punches get thrown, and then it's frothy mouthed grappling full of hatred and ill-intent. Chairs are not broken over backs, because no bar owner would be stupid enough to have those type of chairs in a bar. Also, in real life bouncers respond en mase and with more than reasonable force when a fight breaks out.

However, it's not the relative order or length of movie bar fights that makes them so unbelievable, it's the participation rate. You can go to the worst bar in the US - and you won't see the type of all inclusive donnybrook you see in a movie. The reason being, some people sitting next to each other are actually friends who are not at all interested in fighting each other or getting involved with the conflicts of anyone else in the bar. And no matter how rough a place is, you will still find individuals who would rather kick their grandmother down a flight of stairs than get involved in a fight. At the first sign of conflict, this type will be searching for a way out. I call this the "guys like me" group.

Of course, there are countless other small details the movies get wrong. Bars in real life are dimmer than movie bars. People who want to drink don't get rude with the bartender, and no one knows who the "best cooler in the business is" much less the second best. But the most important point I want to leave you with is that when a group of cute college girls leaves a bar, they RARELY go back to their dorm, and have pillow fights, and giggle, and then maybe, you know, kiss a little. Granted, this has absolutely nothing to do with movie bars vs. real bars, but . . . they don't do that do they?