Movie Cliché: Manuscript pages in the wind/water (spoilers?)

[gmoney]

Watching Woody Allen's "Celebrity" and there's a scene where the jilted girlfriend scatters the pages of her ex's novel manuscript into the wind off the back of a ferry, and of course it's the only copy.

With word processors, the idea of "an only copy" is getting more and more implausible, so maybe this cliché will run its course, but it's still an inevitablity.

Off the top of my head, I can think of a few movies that use this device... which ones am I missing?

Celebrity
Love Actually
Wonder Boys
World According to Garp

I could swear there are plenty of others, but it's getting late... any suggestions?

[dysfunctional press]

1. the cliche has been updated-

to the computer virus that irretrievably destroys the electronic copy.

see: sydney white.

[gmoney]

2. no takers?

can't believe I named them all!

[Tyrone Slothrop]

3. I don't think it's that implausible

Even with the prevalence of PCs and word processors, I still know a goodly number of writers who prefer to do things by hand or with a regular typewriter.

My hard drive recently crashed, and I thought I had lost a bunch of my articles -- until I remembered that I had Gmailed the final drafts to my editor, and, so, still had copies of everything saved in Google's servers somewhere.

[gmoney]

10. Oh sure...

I'm sure there are writers who still live by the Olivetti or Smith-Corona (or Mont Blanc or Bic Stic) and will continue to do so as part of the romantic charm of being a writer. Of course, now that you can get a copier for your home office for under $150, I'm not sure there's an excuse for only one copy of anything, unless your screenplay or novel demands it. :)

Somehow, I can't see Robert Frost or T.S. Eliot composing poetry on a PC, even it if had been available at the time. (Although, wasn't "The Waste Land" remarkable at the time because Eliot wrote it on a typewriter? And I guess the same goes for Huckleberry Finn, no?)

[joeybee12]

4. I think this was used in a novel by, I think, Wallace Stegner......

...so the contrived movie plot is actually a recycled novel plot.

[Orrex]

5. It also sort of happened in Allen's "Husbands and Wives"

Juliette Lewis' character left "the only copy" of his new manuscript in a taxi, but they retrieved it pretty soon thereafter.

Bart Simpson trashed the only copy of George H W Bush's memoirs. And James Caan burned his manuscript in Misery.

[Bucky]

8. Also that Moses coming down Mount Sinai scene in "History of the World, Part 1"

you know, the one with the 15... oops, make that 10 Commandments

[Bucky]

6. It's a major plot element in the 1st & 2nd seasons of Californication

And, no, it's no more plausible there. It's one of the reasons I quit watching it after the first season.

[gmoney]

7. There was a reason to watch besides the 'fornication part of it?

I've not seen it at all... on the library waiting list for the first season DVD though.

[Bucky]

11. I wouldn't bother. Duchovny is kinda interesting at first, but the whole set up is cloying

Eventually the main conceit gets tiresome and implausible: he's obsessively in love with his ex-girlfriend, but she's marrying someone else so he's like, "oh what the heck I'll bang every actress in Hollywood willing to do a nude scene with me." That's pretty much the plot of 90 percent of the shows. The guy playing his agent is a brilliantly intense dramatic actor (Evan Handler) who is wasted on a "George Costanza" character. Ridiculous.

[JVS]

9. Misery

[mitchum]

12. Nick Cave lost the original early draft of his novel And the Ass Saw The Angel...

and he had written it in his own blood.
Or so he claimed. Cave is a wonderful fabulist.

[Richardo]

13. Paper Chase

I just remembered that one today.