Local Hero, Rush Hour seems like classic FOOW stories. Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Transformers also because the protagonist is thrown into a world he doesn't understand (wamp rats not withstanding). What about Good Will Hunting? Isn't part of Will's conflict driven by the clash between the two worlds he strides? Or Silence of the Lambs where the alien world Clarice is trying to understand is actually Lecter's and Buffalo Bill's mind?

I always thought "Crocodile Dundee" was a better example than "Splash." In "Dundee" you have two fish-out-of-water stories - the woman in Australia, and then Dundee in New York. Almost everything in the movie is based on the fish-out-of-water concept. The latest example would be "John Carter."

Actually, the latest latest would be "Dark Shadows."

A high school teacher once told us there are two main types of stories: (1) a stranger comes to town or (2) someone goes on a journey to a new place. You can fit just about any story into that context. The stranger and the sojourner are the FOOW. If you think of "being a FOOW" as "being thrown out of equilibrium"... seems like most stories told through film would have to have this element (the Big Event, the First Plot Point, whatever you want to call it) in order to move forward.

Nearest would be "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" or maybe "Cast Away" (pun intended!), i think.

A few ultimate FOOW come to mind. Coneheads. The Little Mermaid and Edward Scissor Hands. I would love to do A FOOW screenplay about a family going from Earth to live on a space colony. I just can't figure out the conflict and the journey. It could be as simple as the father rejecting the new lifestyle and then embracing it but that doesn't have enough depth and scope to last 100 pages.

Once again Rango proves to be a true storytelling masterpiece. Rango is quite literally a lizard out of water tale. He starts his journey by being thrown from the fish bowl he lives in!

I started to do a whole series of Screenwriting Lessons based on Rango, but I got diverted. I'm going to watch it again and do that series. It's such a fantastic movie, and I still can't believe Paramount green lit it.

It's the new "Chinatown"! When you rematch it - I'm especially moved when he realizes he's a fake and a loser and he's just walking across the deadly highway unscathed. He's so consumed with his failure that he doesn't realize that he just crossed the highway - which is in fact his goal- "To get to the other side, amigo"