I’ve basically found it’s impossible to watch a movie at anyone else’s house because inevitably at some point they’ll just get up and just start wandering around. Everybody I know does this, friends and family members. Friend asked me to watch John Wick at his house in anticipation for the new one so I agreed. Literally 20 minutes after the movie started he got up and just started doing stuff around his house for absolutely no reason despite the fact we were suppose to watch the movie together and comment on it. Took a movie over to my cousins house to watch since me and him use to have a movie night when we were younger and wanted to recapture some of that fun. Literally 10 minutes into the movie he also began to just wander around his house despite the fact he claimed he liked the movie (and he picked it) but he said he just needed to do some minor chores around the house. I even tried to watch a movie with my grandma the other day since she claims she’s lonely but guess who started to get up and start wandering around 30 minutes in?
Basically now whenever I watch a movie with friends, I always make sure it’s at my house so I can guarantee they won’t have an excuse to wander around.
Has anyone else experienced this when watching movies at other people’s houses?
Occasionally. So I pause the film when they get up, and when they say I can keep watching, I say, that’s OK, I’ll just wait for you to finish. Passive aggression: it’s not just for breakfast.
Based on the title and then the example of John Wick I thought you were going to describe nervous pacing. During an exiting football game I might get up and pace back and forth, but it’s not to do chores, it’s to work off nervous energy from the suspense of the game. Getting up to do things, however, is a different story and that would probably annoy me.
I hate it when you’re with like four people watching a movie at someone’s house and then one random douche decides to just stand up and watch the movie and won’t sit back down on the couch. I understand getting up and stretching but not just standing for 30 minutes at a time, it pulls me out of the movur and I can’t enjoy it.
Some people just need to have something to the TV at all times.
I didn’t really get this myself, my TV is on when I am there is something that I want to watch on it, and it is off if I am not.
However, there are people that just need to have the TV on. I was out with a friend, and we got back to his house, and the first thing he did was to pick up the remote and turn on the TV to a random channel, then walk out of the room. Not watching it, not paying any attention to even what it was that he had turned on.
I can relate. When I was a kid, and my mother wanted to “watch” a TV show in the evening, usually a TV movie or a basketball game, she would watch the show for maybe 10 or 15 minutes, and then either fall asleep or go into the kitchen and putter around. We still couldn’t change the channel.
My wife doesn’t get up and walk around. But she does sit in the recliner staring at her phone, only half-listening and maybe once every few minutes actually look up at the screen. And of course then there will be questions, because she’s been paying more attention to her phone than the movie. Yes, it does get frustrating sometimes.
(A few weeks ago we watched “Being There” on TCM and she didn’t look up once in the last ten or so minutes of the movie. When Peter Sellers stood up and left the funeral and started walking through the trees, I had to tell her “This is the end of the movie. You really need to watch this.” I was tempted to just let her miss the entire ending.)
I will put in two cents as one of the unpopular walker-around-ers: I don’t think it is necessarily a matter of ADHD (although I may have that,) but some movies are simply…**unbearable ** to watch, be it their cheesiness, boring-ness, or whatever it is about them. (Some, not all.) I don’t try to walk around where people can see me (if I were to get up from the couch, I would then stay behind others so that I am not a visual distraction to them) but asking me to sit through 2 hours of a movie in which I can already tell, after half an hour into the movie, is an unbearably boring or just “not-my-type” movie is just something I cannot do. So what I might do is wait until I have a “legit” reason to get up (i.e., needing to use the restroom) but then not returning to my spot on the sofa.
I do that sometimes too, but I just don’t come back. Back when I smoked, it was a bit easier. “Gonna go smoke, don’t bother pausing it.” then step outside till the movie is over.
There are people who do like this movie, however, which is why they are watching it. Just because you are not in their site line doesn’t mean that they don’t know that you are there. Standing behind them seems to me as though it would be even more distracting than just pacing around.
Depends. Given that at one point I happened to be living with my grandparents, does “my maternal grandmother couldn’t pay attention to a movie for more than three seconds” count as other people’s house?
According to her daughters, she would even wander off mentally when all three of them went to the movies together. “Who’s that?” “The protagonist.” “Why is he familiar? I’ve seen him before.” “He’s Robert Redford, he’s pretty famous. He’s also in the poster.” “Who’s that?” “The chick.” “Oh.” Three cutscenes later: “Who’s that guy?” “Robert Redford…”
We used to joke that we should freak out if Grandma’s attention ever stopped wandering.
With other people, well, back when there were only one and a half channels* and no such thing as VCRs, sometimes someone needed to get something to eat or go pee. That person would simply be as discrete about it as possible and the rest of us would ignore it unless we got asked for help.
And sometimes, I’ll be in the same room in which my mother is watching a movie, or she’ll be in the same room in which I’m watching videos, but we’re not watching together. The one who isn’t watching will move around as needed; again, trying to avoid stomping about like an elephant and being ignored by the watcher.
TVE2, which was on UHF, was only received in part of the country and only ran about half as many daily hours as TVE1, which was VHF and could be seen in the whole country.
A friend of my mother’s timed her afternoon naps to Dallas. When her husband’s working hours changed and he started coming home mid-program, it took her months to train him to NOT switch off the TV. She fell asleep within seconds of the show starting and woke up to the final tune.
Are conversations about the movie OK? For me that was one of the best parts of watching movies with Dad (specially if we’d already seen it before, or once we got VCRs); analyzing it together. Now, if I’m watching something and I’m asked “what should we have for dessert on Friday?” then yeah, I get a bit, uh, cranky. Lord, give me half a minute to move my brain from “Trevor Noah” to “canned peaches”.