I'm gong to chew on this Ham Sandwich just a little more.

Thanks for all the emails pointing out what looks to be a flaw in my reasoning.

It's a valid point. If you have to be so much better to compete these days, how do films like 'Transporter 3' manage to get made?

Because 'Transporter 3' is a film the way a Big Mac is food. It does a lot of things a film is supposed to do, but it's made in a factory and sold to an audience that doesn't care a whole lot about quality. Or, rather, likes quality just fine, but cares a lot more about consistency: seeing a big-name movie star hitting all the beats of a story that's familiar enough to keep them comfortable.

You, my friend, don't own the factory. And even if you did, I wouldn't tell you to make films any other way. This is America. Like it or not, the formula for making the best-selling films is going to be exactly the same as the formula for making the best-selling hamburgers. The business of Hollywood is to make money, which means minimizing costs and maximizing profit.

So your movie has a big fat hole in it. So what? The movie is but one part of a marketing entity that involves several overlapping brands: The studio, the star, the director, and the franchise. Sure, you want to make a decent movie. But is an additional investment in quality materials really going to improve your return?

No.

I'm not saying all Hollywood films are crap, by the way. Some are utterly spellbinding. But that's because they're created by talented, super hard-working people who manage to apply their craft without costing the studios extra time, effort, or heartache.

But back to you.

Presumably, Aspiring Filmmaker, you want to make 'real' films. Meaning films that actually play for an audience beyond the 5 friends and other aspiring filmmakers who show up to see your masterpiece at a film festival. Which means your audience, until you break in, is Hollywood.

Take a minute to mull on that. Go on. I'll wait right here.

You ready? Let's go back to the food thing. You think the chairman of McDonald's has a Big Mac for dinner? Oh sure, whenever his picture is taken he does. But do you really think he doesn't "research" the latest uber expensive restaurant any chance he gets, just to, you know, see what those impetuous artists are up to?

My point is this. In order to break into Hollywood, you have to get Hollywood's attention. And there are two ways to do that. One is to be Hollywood –– meaning make a film that finds an audience so massive that Hollywood knows you can do what it does. The other is to be what Hollywood envies –– meaning make a film that's so good that Hollywood knows that you could make an acceptable piece of crap in your sleep.

I can't tell you how to do the first. Hell, even Hollywood doesn't know how to do the first, beyond throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at star salaries and marketing and advertising.

But I can tell you how to do the second.

A Ham Sandwich isn't what it used to be.

The world is a different place since Hitchcock either did or didn't come up with the idea of the Ham Sandwich (if you don't know what I'm talking about, read my last post).

Hitchcock died in 1980; VHS (a video recording format using tape, for those of you too young to remember) wasn't introduced in the US until 1977. What that means is that Hitchcock made his films for a world that couldn't rewind them to take another look at something.

More critical, people couldn't collect movies and watch them at their leisure. If people wanted to see a movie, they went down to the one movie theater in town and saw the one film that was playing. Period. Except at Christmas time, when 'Miracle on 34th Street' and 'It's a Wonderful Life' got broadcast on that newfangled contraption, television, most movies played in theaters and were more or less forgotten. Or remembered. But never really shown over and over again.

Today, as just about every media outlet enthusiastically exclaims, we live in a world of digital media. Technology has given us not only the ability to collect movies, but to realistically make them ourselves. It's also given us access to myriad channels to find stuff to watch. Not just everything that's being made, from the $200 million studio epic to the latest video of a dog sending a text message, but everything that's ever been made –– good stuff and crap –– all the way back to the first film ever made of a dog sending a telegraph.

What that means for you, Aspiring Filmmaker, is that you're going to have to work a lot harder to get –– and keep –– your audience's attention than Mr. Hitchcock ever did.

In the old days, a gaping hole in the plot might cause people to walk out of the theater, grumbling that they'd wasted 99¢. Today, it'll cause them to click over to something else, grumbling that they'd wasted, well, 99¢.

See how far we've come?

Jason Statham could use a decent Ham Sandwich.

I just rented the latest in the 'Transporter' series, which should put to rest any notion that I'm some kind of a film snob. I can't help but like Jason Statham, even though he's made an entire career as an actor –– movie star, really –– without ever once cracking a smile.

This is, of course, a blog dedicated to lessons in filmmaking and the lesson I want to deal with today is internal consistency. Or to put it in simple terms, The Ham Sandwich.

The Ham Sandwich is capitalized because it's a concept I learned about in film school. The notion was attributed by my professor to Alfred Hitchcock, although a quick Google search didn't bring up any relevant hits. So take it as an idea that may or may not have come from Hitchcock, by way of a teacher whose name I can't remember.

Enough premumble. The story, as I heard it, was that Hitchcock screened his latest masterpiece only to have somebody point out a logical flaw in the story. Hitchcock told him (or her, who knows?) that it was okay because it was a Ham Sandwich. The idea being that sure, it was a flaw, but it was the kind of flaw audiences wouldn't notice while they were watching the film. It was only later, while they were eating a ham sandwich, that the flaw would become apparent.

Which brings me to 'Transporter 3'. Frank Martin is coerced into transporting Valentina, the minister's daughter who's been kidnapped. He doesn't know she's been kidnapped, but she does. And she doesn't tell him until 3/4 of the way through the film, even though they exchange not only conversation, but bodily fluids.

My point is this: There are two flaws in the story. (Okay, there are a lot of flaws in the story, but I'm only going to talk about two of them.) The first is that a kidnapped minister's daughter needs to be transported in the first place, the second is that a kidnapped minister's daughter wouldn't think to mention to the guy who's clearly been coerced into transporting her against his will that she, too, has not chosen to be put in this situation.

The first flaw is excusable because, well, it's called 'Transporter'. I'd allow that to be a Ham Sandwich. The second flaw is a hole. A big fat hole. The kind of hole that doesn't wait until after the film to present itself to you.

I'm okay with a Ham Sandwich. Where I draw the line is with stuff that takes you out of the experience of the film.

No wonder Jason never smiles.