Gilligan Cut / Literature

Gilligan Cuts in Literatures.

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• City of No End: When Chandler Pa is confident that a heretic ringleader will give up his secrets during interrogation, the POV immediately shifts to Setheus lamenting that the heretic killed himself before interrogation.
• A Series of Unfortunate Events: The illustrator's biographies at the end of The End and Chapter Fourteen:
  The End: He [Brett Helquist] is hopeful that...he'll be able to step outside more often in the daytime, and sleep better at night.
  Chapter Fourteen: Unfortunately, he gets out rarely during the daytime, and sleeps very little at night.
• X-Wing Series: Happens once in Starfighters of Adumar. Red Flight steals four sets of women's clothing, Hobbie asks Wedge to tell them that they're not going to wear it, Wedge says, "Very well, I'm not putting us in women's clothing"...
  Hobbie: You lied to me.
  Wedge: You knew, when I said we needed four sets of women's clothing, that we were going to end up in them. You knew. So any hopes you had to the contrary were just self-delusion.
  Hobbie: I understand that. But I'd rather blame you than me.
• The Dresden Files
  • From Grave Peril:
    Michael: Don't worry. Let me do all the talking.
    [chapter break]
    Michael: I can't believe they arrested us.
  • During Dead Beat, Butters wants to take his polka suit with him:
    Butters: I'm not leaving it here for God-knows-what to mess with.
    Dresden: Yes you are. We are not taking it with us. We don't have time for this.
    [break]
    Dresden: That stupid polka suit filled up most of the back of the SUV.
  • Harry appreciates it later, though.
  • From Changes:
    "Good," Sanya said, grinning. "Now we know where to go and have someone to rescue. This part I know how to do."
    [chapter break]
    "Admittedly, normally I do not storm headquarters buildings of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And in broad daylight, too."
• One chapter of the novelization of Gremlins ends with Pete swearing he won't forget to feed Gizmo while Billy is away. The entire next chapter is two words: "Pete forgot."
• My Family and Other Animals
  • Happens in the two last paragraphs.
  • Also at the shift from Part 1 to Part 2:
    "We are not moving to another villa," said Mother firmly.
    [Next chapter starts]
    The new villa was enormous...
• In Shadowplay, Briony absolutely cannot play the lead in a theater group. Next paragraph, she has only ten days to learn her lines.
• Happens surprisingly often in Tom Clancy's books, though they are infrequently humorous in nature given the tone of the books.
• In The Secrets of Droon, Keeah, Eric, and Neal have to disguise themselves as two girls and a boy to get into Maliban's court. With only one girl in the group, we get this:
  Neal pulled a blue gown off a rack and draped it over Eric's shoulder.
  "This one even matches your eyes. How about it...Erica?"
  Eric stomped his foot and began to shout.
  "I won't, I won't, I won't—"
  (End of chapter, next chapter...)
  "Are you sure this dress matches my eyes?"
• Dr. Seuss' "The Zax" (from his book The Sneetches and Other Stories) featured a Gilligan cut in the last few pages:
  "I'll stay here, not budging! I can and I will
  If it makes you and me and the whole world stand still!"
  Well...
  Of course the world didn't stand still. The world grew.
  In a couple of years, the new highway came through
  And they built it right over those two stubborn Zax
  And left them there, standing un-budged in their tracks.
• When Locke, the Gentleman Bastard from The Lies of Locke Lamora, encounters the Falconer, a Bondsmage, for the first time, we get a short flashback in which his old mentor explains that one must always be very respectful to a Bondsmage or horrible retribution will occur. The first line of the next chapter is Locke addressing the Falconer with the words "Nice bird, asshole."
• A Song of Ice and Fire
  • There're some from Tyrion's perspective. At one point when things are going very badly, another dwarf who performs a comedy act asks him to join in, and he refuses blatantly. Guess what he's doing the next time we see him?
  • A decidedly un-funny one happens mid-chapter during Tyrion's trial for murdering Joffrey. Tyrion thinks to himself how unfortunate it is that Shae has been forced to testify, but reassures himself that she doesn't know anything that can harm him. The next sentence has "the girl he loved" lying to the court about how he planned the assassination and horribly mistreated her (both of which are totally untrue).
  • And back to funny, Jon Snow breaks his oath of celibacy and beds his Love Interest. He then swears that it will never happen again.
  It happened twice again that night and once in the morning.
• Discworld:
  • In Hogfather, a posh restaurant has had all the food replaced with old boots and mud. The manager is blase, saying all you need is to get the sauce right and give it a foreign name, but the head waiter insists "We'll never get away with it, sir. Never". A row of asterisks later, the new dishes are proving so popular that the waiter is having to relinquish his own boots.
  • Subverted in The Last Hero, when Rincewind volunteers for a dangerous mission while explicitly stating that he doesn't want to volunteer. He knows that if he refuses or tries to hide, some improbable series of events will occur, sending him on the mission anyway. Since the Discworld runs on narrative, Rincewind knows he is helpless before the power of this trope, so he saves time and effort by volunteering.
• In Stephen King's IT, Bill wants to kill the monster who killed his brother. His plan is to steal his father's gun and break into the haunted house where he believes the monster lives. Bill's best friend Richie tries to talk him out of this plan by pointing out that a gun might not kill a monster like this. In an effort to try to convince Bill how wildly out of their depth they would be, Richie says, "After you shoot it and it keeps coming, you can try your slingshot on it. And if that doesn't work, I'll throw some of my sneezing powder at it." Cut to the next section where Bill and Richie are about to head to the haunted house, and Bill reveals that not only has he brought the gun but the slingshot too. The boys laugh about that, then Richie reveals that he brought the sneezing powder too. And on this trip, the sneezing powder proves to be the most effective weapon. On a later trip, one of their other friends uses Bill's slingshot to shoot the monster with a silver slug and nearly kills it.
• Catch-22:
  • The narrator gives a description of how great Appleby is and asserts that everybody likes him. In the very next line, Yossarian says, "I hate that son of a bitch."
  • Another example occurs in the fourth chapter.
    "Know what I mean? You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours."
    Yossarian knew what he meant.
    "That's not what I meant," Doc Daneeka said, as Yossarian began scratching his back.
• This moment in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in which the trio discuss how they can get permission to get a book out of the restricted section of the library.
  "Oh, come on, no teacher's gonna fall for that!" said Ron, "they'd have to be really thick..."
  [Next chapter]
  Since the disastrous episode with the pixies, Professor Lockhart had not brought live creatures to class...
• In the novel version of Erich Segal's Love Story, when Oliver and Jennifer first meet, she doesn't think he's as intelligent as she is. This exchange takes place:
  "What the hell makes you so smart?"
  "I wouldn't go for coffee with you."
  "Listen — I wouldn't ask you!"
  "That is what makes you stupid."
  [That closes the chapter. The next one begins.]
  "Let me explain why I took her for coffee."
• The Martian:
  • As NASA tries to figure out how to rescue stranded astronaut Mark Watney, the benighted soul in question listens to music and watches TV shows his crewmates left behind.
    Teddy swiveled his chair and looked out the window to the sky beyond. Night was edging in. "What must it be like?" he pondered. "He's stuck out there. He thinks he's totally alone and that we all gave up on him. What kind of effect does that have on a man's psychology?"
    He turned back to Venkat. "I wonder what he's thinking right now."
    LOG ENTRY: SOL 61
    How come Aquaman can control whales? They're mammals! Makes no sense.
  • Watney also experiences this from one day to the next:
    Things are finally going my way. In fact, they're going great! I have a chance to live after all!
    LOG ENTRY: SOL 37
    I am fucked, and I'm gonna die!
• This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It: Dave breathes a sigh of relief and asserts, "There will be no outbreak." The next chapter heading is "15 Minutes Before the Outbreak."
• In Assia Djebar's 1985 novel Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade, two 19th-century Algerian rulers, Mohamed ben Kadrouma and Si M'hamed, have a conversation in which Si M'hamed is clearly trying to talk up his son to ben Kadrouma, who has a beautiful and marriageable daughter named Badra. Ben Kadrouma sees right through Si M'hamed's matchmaking scheme and says to himself, "I will never give him my daughter." In the very next scene, Badra is told she is to marry Si M'hamed's son within the week.
• Happens to Bertie Wooster in "Jeeves and the Song of Songs", after he refuses to sing at a concert:
  "Once and for all, Aunt Dahlia, nothing will induce me to let out so much as a single note."
  And so that afternoon I sent a pre-paid wire to Beefy Bingham, offering my services in the cause, and by nightfall the thing was fixed up.
• Armadillo Fists: When Mr Slick finds June and Tony holed up in a hotel, he resolves that "he wasn't going to rush in guns-blazing as usual. He was going to be patient. He was going to play it smart." The next chapter has Mr Food and Rape Face hearing on the radio that "some crazy guy [is] shooting up a hotel."
  Rape Face: That fucking idiot. He went in guns-blazing as usual. Why couldn't that asshole be patient? He should've played it smart.
• Villains by Necessity: Quite often. One particular note is when sneaking into Mizzamir's tower, Valerie remarking how odd it is that such a powerful mage has no defense against prowlers. The narrative then cuts to Mizzamir's office, where a proximity alarm is going off, explaining that he would hear it if he weren't attending a magical symposium.
• Emberverse: Early on, Eric Larrson and Mike Havel travel alone. The testosterone-laden Eric starts trying to push Mike. Bad idea.
  Mike: *dodges Eric's fist and hits him* Kill one. *stops a kick and pushes Eric down* Kill two...
  (Ninety seconds later)
  Mike:' *holds Eric against a tree by the throat* Kill six.
• Deathstalker: In Deathstalker Rebellion, a Prologue catches us up to the start of the book, explaining not only the general galactic situation but the events of the first book, leading up to the opening action scene.
  Prologue: Owen Deathstalker, that reluctant hero, headed for Golgotha in the company of Hazel d'Ark, on a strange golden ship run by augmented men once known as the Enemies of Humanity; and though posterity has no access to his thoughts, they were probably "Why me?"
  Chapter One: Golgotha, Opening Gambit
  Narration: Why me? thought Owen Deathstalker as he headed to the toilet yet again.
• The Wind in the Willows: Toad steals a motorcar and drives off in triumphant high spirits. Cut to him in court being sentenced to a lengthy prison term.
• In Final Cut, Steve Bach's book about the Troubled Production of Heaven's Gate, he and fellow United Artists executive David Field ponder whether to allow director Michael Cimino to cast French actress Isabelle Huppert as the female lead or put their foot down and get him to cast someone else.
  Field: "Let's call and tell him no. No one's going to Paris.''
  The Next Paragraph: "The Concorde landed at Charles de Gaulle at ten-forty on a drizzly Sunday night in late February."
• In Zoo Quest for a Dragon, David Attenborough's memoir of an expedition to Indonesia to film a documentary about the Komodo Dragon, he recalls that one of the officials who helped them obtain travel permits was bemused by the idea of traveling to distant places to film animals and kept hinting that it would be easier to arrange for them to go and film Borobodur^note The largest Buddhist temple in the world, one of Indonesian's biggest tourist attractions like all the other foreign film crews.
  "Njonja [ma'am]," I said, "please, for the last time, we are zoologists. We look for animals. We will not go to Borobodur."
  [section break]
  Standing in front of Borobodur, we were glad we had succumbed to njonja's persuasions.
• In Brotherband, when the heroes discover that the only way to escape the town they're trapped in is to sail through a series of dangerous rapids:
  Hal: He said he never saw the river. Maybe it's better than it sounded.
  [paragraph break]
  Stig: [staring down a chute of violent water] That's a whole lot worse than it sounded.
• Two in rapid succession are seen in No Quarter:
  • King Theron of Shkoder is summoned from his breakfast by his current chancellor who states that she has been informed of something urgent by the diplomatic courier from his ambassador at the Havakeen court, then nervously tries to find a way to put it before blurting out:
    Chancellor Rozele: "Majesty, the Empire has sent an assassin into Shkoder."
    (paragraph break)
    Bardic Captain Liene: "Majesty, the Empire has not sent an assassin into Shkoder."
  • After not-all-that-effective efforts to convince him that they were merely dealing with a retiree and private Havakeen citizen coming of her accord to help the Bardic Hall research recent discoveries about the Kigh, King Theron demands that the so-called-ex-assassin and the body surfing serial killer sharing her headspace be kept away from his niece. The next paragraph is from the POV of Magda i'Annice a'Pjerin, a trainee healer with an exceptional affinity for the Fifth Kigh and a hopelessly romantic sixteen-year-old, as she muses on how much harder it is to talk "sense" into the King in a remotely official situation than it is to privately bend her Uncle Theron.

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