What stuff has affected your life, things you always do, after copying it from a movie you saw.
I have two stories.
In the UK A Clockwork Orange was banned for many years because Kubrick was afraid that people might copy Alex. Well, after his death, the film was re-released anbd I saw it for the first time. It didn’t inspire me to commit rape while singing “singing in the rain”. But it DID inspire me to buy a boxed set of Beethoven symphonies, and from there develop an interest in classical music generally. Totally true, I’m not joking.
Now, Pulp Fiction contains a lot of violence. I was not inspired to copy any of it. However, I did try putting mayonnaise on my chips instead of ketchup, and found that I liked it better. I’d never thought of it before. Now I always do it.
While driving I tend to hold long, drawn out conversations with my passengers while barely watching the road, and turning my steering wheel at random moments. I still manage to get where I’m going.
When Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman discover radioactive material hidden in wine bottles in Claude Rains’ cellar in Notorious, they accidentally drop and break a bottle. They try to clean up the mess, and replace the bottle with another, but they weren’t thorough enough. Rains finds debris they didn’t sweep up from under the wine rack, the nearby sink is wet, and the bottle they’ve replaced the broken one with has left a gap in another part of the wine rack.
It’s taught me that a cleanup job isn’t really done right until you’ve done a Claude Rains level of cleanup.
Both Superman and Dirty Harry had the hero use the word “swell”, so I use it, when asked how I am. Both joyfully like Supes or sarcasticly like the Inspector.
When I was a young lad, I tried to be like Evel Knievel and do a motorcycle jump. I used a wooden ramp I found at an abandoned sawmill. It didn’t go as badly as his Caesar’s Palace jump, but it was close enough to disabuse me of the notion to emulate Mr. Knievel.
I’ve taken to lounging around the castle in high heels, torn nylons and a boa, and asking my hunchbacked butler to invite in newlyweds with car trouble on rainy nights.
Alas, the only fare I can offer them is humble; usually nothing better than meat loaf.
Seeing the movie “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension” inspired me to get a PhD in physics, go to medical school to become a brain surgeon, form a band, and race cars.
OK, not really, but I do say “bite my shiny metal ass” just like Bender from Futurama.
I guess you could just call it “quoting” movies but I did greet a lot of my female co-workers (once I got to know them) with “Well hey there groovy chick.”
From the Brady Bunch movie.
Not one movie in particular, but from watching several movies I started using a knife and fork “European” style in my 20’s. That is, holding the knife in my right hand and the fork in my left, with the tines pointed down. Cut with the right, stab with the left, move fork to mouth.
Now I can’t imagine doing it any other way. The “American” way of moving the fork from your left hand to your right to take a bite now seems amazingly clumsy.
Just wanted to point out, on behalf of my fellow sinister folk, that this is not only the “European” style, but the general “left-handed” style as well.
After watching Pulp Fiction for the 12th time in the theater, my friends and I went into a year-long phase of snorting heroin, ball-gagging and ass-raping crime bosses, and ordering flavored Cokes in restaurants.
Well, the flavored Cokes part is true, anyway. Looking back, it was nasty.
“Moving the fork from your left hand to your right”? Who in the hell does that? Knife in right hand, fork in left hand. Stab food with fork, cut food with knife, place forkfull of food in mouth with left hand. Why would someone switch hands just to lift a fork?
ETA: In fact, ignore this hijack…this needs to be an IMHO thread of its own.
Well, to continue the hijack: I have no idea, but I see it all the time and that’s how I was taught. Please feel free to open another thread. I’d love to find out if I was just weird.
I’d say it’s more important to hold the knife with the dominant hand, to minimize the carnage to yourself. I do what Hal describes as well, but I know it’s non-American.
I remember seeing The Believers and noticing that Martin Sheen, while authoritatively striding down a hallway, put on his jacket a way I’d never seen before: throw both your arms in, and do one fluid swivel over-the-head and boom, you’re done. I thought it was the coolest thing ever and did it constantly for months (years?) afterwards. I don’t really own a jacket/windbreaker anymore, but if I did, it wouldn’t surprise me if I still would put it on just like that.
I learned from the commentary on The West Wing DVDs that that’s how Martin Sheen always puts a coat on, due to some injury which leaves him without the same range of arm motions as most people have. It’s very cleverly worked into TWW as a character trait.
Every time I go down an aisle of seated people to get to my chair, I always say, “Pardon me, excuse me, pardon me, pardon, pardon,…” But no one ever gets the reference.
