Over at Anthony Lee Collins blog I followed an idea down a rabbit hole. The traditional adage that "every scene must serve' to advance the plot - or actually the story - falls within the Hawks's quote.
http://u-town.com/collins/?p=3640
"'m always leery of the advice I read here and there to get rid of any scene in a story that doesn't advance the plot. You could very easily end up with a very efficient engine that goes straight ahead, never slowing to look at the scenery and never turning to follow any interesting side roads."
Once again someone has overshot Occam's Razor.
Back to the tangential rabbit hole.
Another way to look at the '... and no bad ones.' is the poker truism that it's not the hands you win that count; it's the hands you don't lose.
In Absence of Malice, the Sally Fields character and subplot undercut the main plot.
In Alien vs Predator: Requiem spent too much time on the Pizza Boy and His Wayward Brother teen movie subplot which stalled, then overbore, what should have been the main plot - the returning vet trying to reconnect to her daughter and a small town sheriff dealing with missing hunters and a rash of pet, then homeless persons, disappearances.
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