And nobody raises an eyebrow

Worse yet, it leaves no room for serial scenes, that is, action scenes which follow in sequence without ever knitting into the same flow.  For instance, two men are fighting in the street.  Not far away, a child eats an ice-cream and is poisoned.  Throughout it all, a man in a window sprays passers-by with bullets and nobody raises an eyebrow.  In one corner, a painter paints the scene, while a pickpocket steals his wallet and a dog in the shade of a burning building devours the brain of a comatose drunk.  In the distance, multiple explosions crown a blood-red sunset.  This scene is not interesting unless we call it Holiday in Sarajevo and divide the characters into two opposing camps.

- Raoul Ruiz, Poetics of Cinema
on the failures of "central conflict theory" as a structuring principle for making films  (Of course,