If you’re working on a screenplay or teleplay that features an evil genius as an antagonist, you might want to visit Peter Anspach’s Evil Overlord Inc. for a few tips that will give your villain a fighting chance, and bust some common clichés in the process.

Anspach’s hilarious list – which originated on an early Internet mailing back in 1994 – looks at the common mistakes evil geniuses and overlords make when setting up their secret hideout and capturing their nemesis.

The list includes such gems as:

* I will design fortress hallways with no alcoves or protruding structural supports which intruders could use for cover in a firefight.

* I will not grow a goatee. In the old days they made you look diabolic. Now they just make you look like a disaffected member of Generation X.

* My Legions of Terror will be trained in basic marksmanship. Any who cannot learn to hit a man-sized target at 10 meters will be used for target practice.

* I will not shoot at any of my enemies if they are standing in front of the crucial support beam to a heavy, dangerous, unbalanced structure.

* If I am fighting with the hero atop a moving platform, have disarmed him, and am about to finish him off and he glances behind me and drops flat, I too will drop flat instead of quizzically turning around to find out what he saw.

There’s 100 clever observations in all, but only breaking one of these clichés in your story is bound to add some originality to it.

Welcome to Sophisticated Hokum.

Aside from acting as a showcase for my work, think of this website and blog as a virtual notebook where I will record anything interesting or useful that I encounter.

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And in case you were wondering, Sophisticated Hokum stems from the critique a story analyst at Warner Bros. gave to an unproduced play called Everybody Comes to Rick’s back in 1940. The analyst described it as an “excellent melodrama” and “sophisticated hokum”, and suggested the studio purchase it at once. That play became the basis for Casablanca, one of the best movies ever written.