Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into…one that looks like that?! I have no idea what gin joints looked like back in the 1940s but I'm guessing it was nothing like the obvious studio set which served as Rick's Café Américain in Casablanca. Hollywood may be great at creating a verisimilitude of just about everything--Wall Street, the Wild West, even outer space--but there's one setting they always fuck up: bars. No matter the quality of the movie, no matter the pedigree of the cast and crew, cinema simply cannot depict a bar that looks and feels like anyone you've ever visited in the real world.

1) THEY'RE TOO BRIGHT

Movie bars are always lit up as bright as big box electronics stores. Maybe if we looked like Ryan Gosling or Emma Stone in Crazy Stupid Love we'd go to crazy stupid bright bars like their characters do. Unfortunately, we don't and, thus, bars in the real world are dimly-lit to aid our romances (I mean, beer goggles).

2) THEY'RE TOO LARGE

Bars in the real world are cramped and crowded places where people have to shuffle sideways simply to get from one side to the other. But movie sets need ample space for cameras and equipment and, thus, movie bars are big as gymnasiums: Cafe Americain, Jack Rabbit Slim's (Pulp Fiction), The Titty Twister (From Dusk Till Dawn). Why, it takes Henry Hill a good minute-and-a-half to walk from one side of The Bamboo Lounge to the other. I could do an entire Manhattan bar crawl in that timeframe.

3) THEY'RE TOO QUIET

Now I don't particularly like loud bars. It's one reason I go during the"real"happy hour. But even quiet bars during quiet hours are loud. Music pumping, TVs blaring, people yakking, and bartenders shouting "Whassa name on that tab?" Not in the movies though, where characters like Will Hunting easily have lengthy conversations using their "inside voices." How do you like them apples? In the real world, in a real bar, we'd reply, "COULD YOU PLEASE SPEAK UP?!"

4) THEY'RE TOO GLAMOROUS (OR WAY TOO FILTHY)

Movie bars are never the sawdust and beer-soaked places most of us frequent. Even their bathrooms are spotless places for doing your makeup...or coke. (I said goddamn!) That's another reason real-world bars are so dark--you ever stumble into one when the house lights are still up? It looks like a biohazard scene. On the other end of the spectrum, though, if a movie bar isn't glitzy and glamorous then it's so intentionally disgusting (like in Trainspotting) it's hard to fathom even a fictional character wanting to drink there. Unless, they have, like, really good specials.

5) FELLOW PATRONS ARE NEVER NORMAL

Besides the main character, movie bars are always filled with the biggest degenerates, perverts, unemployables, alcoholics, and all-around fuck-ups in town. In fact, the only reason our presumably "normal" main character is drinking in the movie bar is because he (or she) is also a fuck-up...or his (or her) life suddenly got fucked-up.

6) THE BARTENDERS ARE WAY TOO COMPETENT

Let's be honest, despite all the highly-skilled mixologists in the world today, the barkeep at your average watering hole is still a twentysomething bozo who can't remember the contents of a rum and Coke. Movie bartenders, on the other hand, aren't just brilliant drinkmakers, they're sages, able to offer stunning insights about the world after just a few moments of chatting with a stranger. That one guy you think likes you? Yeah, he's just not that into you.

7) THE BOUNCERS ARE WAY TOO MENACING

Whenever I encounter a bouncer plunked in front of a bar, he's usually too busy playing QuizUp on his Droid to hoist his fatass of the tiny stool to check my ID. But in the movies bouncers are men so musclebound, so focused on the job, they should surely be working security for the Sultan of Brunei, not guarding the Roxbury.

8) EVERYONE WANTS TO FIGHT

Then again, maybe these menacing bouncers are necessary, because, in the movies, people don't go to bars to socialize and get shit-faced, nope, they're only there hoping to fight. An accidentally spilled drink, an incidental bump or shove, even asking someone about their former profession as a shoeshine boy will sooner or later lead to a fist fight at a movie bar. Perhaps more characters should follow Dalton's credo from Roadhouse: ''Be nice...until it's time to not be nice.''

9) CUSTOMERS CAN DO AS THEY PLEASE

Though, when customers are ostensibly being "nice" in movie bars, they're kinda being drunken assholes in my book. On what planet would anyone, even that lackadaisical bouncer playing QuizUp, be pleased if two patrons jumped on the bar without permission and loudly started singing "Bennie and the Jets," impeding every other customers' ability to get to the bar and order a drink?

10) GETTING A DRINK ISN'T THAT IMPORTANT

Then again...getting a drink just isn't that important for movie characters. In the real world, sure, people go to bars to mingle with friends and flirt with the opposite sex, but they're mainly there to drink. And, if a bartender hasn't acknowledged us after a few minutes we start losing our shit. Not in movie bars, where people have all the time in the world to watch their bartenders dick around with bottles or dance atop the bar. Believe me, kids, even in the '80s people didn't prefer watching their bartender toss bottles around than pour them a drink.

11) BUT GETTING "A BEER" IS

Of course, movie bars are also the only place that, when your bartender asks you what you'd like to drink, you can answer in the generic...and, amazingly, he'll still go fetch you something. Even Stanley Kubrick, famous for his excruciating attention to detail, was guilty of this. I was stunned the first time I watched Eyes Wide Shut as Tom Cruise's Dr. Bill character took a seat at the Sonata Cafe and ordered "a beer" without stating a brand name. Then again, in a world where most bars nowadays have a good two-dozen taps, Tom Cruise does seem like the kind of guy who simply asks for "a beer," so maybe that was an ad-lib on his part.

12) ...AND THEY'RE NEVER CROWDED

Finally, movies want you to believe their characters only drink in bars during hours when they're completely empty. More likely, the production simply doesn't want to pay any extras to fill out the scene. Then again, as we've learned, movie bars are overly large and bright joints full of generic "beer" and people who want to fight you. Maybe there's a reason no one goes to them?

Aaron Goldfarb Aaron Goldfarb lives in Brooklyn and is a novelist and the author of 'Hacking Whiskey.'

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