Howard Dean's Scream Was In Breaking Bad

I just can’t take anything seriously if it has a Wilhelm Scream in it

Reading the nonsense you write all the time must be like a Wilhelm Scream to everyone reading, then.  What is a Wilhelm Scream anyway?

You may or may not know that I enjoy watching movies.  It's a great way to pass the time, be entertained and unwind at the end of a long day.   Hollywood lives and dies by one very simple premise...you need to disregard reality for a while and live in the world of the film.  This is easier done in some cases than others, where either the film's reality is so far off base that you can't possibly submit to it, or else something happens to jolt you back into the real world where you say, "oh yeah...I'm watching a movie."  I've discussed this in the past, when some goofy thing like a phone number starting with 555 is the cold blast of reality which shocks me out of Film-Land and back into Jeremy-Land.  Sometimes, I'm more easily taken out of Film-Land than most film directors would like me to be...and quite honestly...more easily than I would like to be sometimes.  

So far, this has nothing to do with Wilhelm Scream.  Good job, Jeremy.

One of the little things that won't bother most people that does ruin a film for me is a poor job by the Foley Artist.  A Foley Artist, not to be confused with a Mick Foley Artist, is the guy who adds sound effects to a movie during post production.  They use many amusing techniques that you may not expect to create sound effects, and learning about those is left as an exercise for the reader.  

Foley artists often use standard sound effects for various commonplace actions.  A guy getting punched in the face sounds pretty much the same in every movie since the 1970s, because the "guy getting punched in the face" sound has been the exact same sound file ever since it was invented.  It sounds nothing like a guy actually being punched in the face, but when you see and hear it in a movie, you don't give it a second thought.  One remarkably common stock sound effect currently found in the Warner Brothers Stock Sound Library is known as the "Wilhelm Scream."  While the sound first appeared in 1951s "The Distant Drums," it didn't gain notoriety until 1953, when it was used three times in the film "The Charge At Feather River."  It became known as the "Wilhelm Scream" after Private Wilhelm, the first character from that movie to be shot with an arrow, causing him to cry out in pain.  It has been used in over 200 movies and TV shows since then and has become partially a staple and partially an inside joke for Foley Artists all over Hollywood.

Whether or not you recognize it by name, you have definitely heard the Wilhelm Scream.  Here It Is In Action.