Does it bother anyone else how dialogue moves so lightning fast sometimes in movies and tv-series. Especially when someone who is shown to be competent in their job seem to be relaying complex information and making decisions left and right in a matter of seconds.
I understand it is for exposition, and it makes the characters seem very competent, but it just takes me out of the movie. No one can possibly be that fast. It just seems like they are reading from a script.
Seriously? I was notorious for doing this IRL on the jobs as both an Electrician and for much longer as an IT guy/Programmer. It isn’t just a trope. It is reality. Especially in/near places like NYC.
Sure, I’m a programmer too, and if two people are on the same page conversation can go really fast. What I am talking about is when someone offers new and unexpected information, or if big decisions need to be made.
You don’t just decide to make a big change to a production database after fast-talking for 10 seconds in a hallway.
I can’t think of many examples where it takes me out of the show. But as I grew up on Star Trek and Scotty & Spock did this all the time, I guess I’m use to it.
Can you point to an example?
I can actually think of some real world things where a quick rapid fire conversation did lead to fixes for an electrical issue, an HVAC control issue or computer hardware problem or even Excel/Lotus macros for a Controller.
Not so much actually programming.
Older movies or television shows seem unbearably slow to me today. And more distinct. I can catch all the dialog easily, while today people whiz through words. Scripts must be 50-100% longer.
I think it started with science fiction technobabble. Characters seemed smart if they said all that stuff. Then people remembered how great the snappy dialogue from 30s’ movies was, so any lead pairs - couples, wannabe couples, boss/employees, buddy cops - bantered more, which sometimes helped fill out their characterization.
Now shows with slow talking come across as creakily old-fashioned. The rest require subtitles on.
Katherine Hepburn, Rosalind Russell, Groucho, and some others were well known for fast talking all the way back to the 30s. So not just a Sci-Fi thing, but I do think the Star Trek/Doctor Who Techno-babble info-dumps really helped to mainstreamed it.
Kevin Smith movies often have examples of some rapid fire conversations, and sometimes about almost nothing but pop-culture.
One example I am watching right now is the first episode of The Diplomat on Netflix.
The plot is believable enough, it just seems to go on fast forward. She meets a person, has rapid-fire dialogue for five seconds, then unexpectedly meets someone else for 5 seconds and has another rapid-fire conversation.
They also seem to be cracking jokes and go through different emotions in a matter of seconds.
I think when watching, I will just in my head assume that it happened slower.
I enjoyed that show. I thought it fit the main character well along with on-station London CIA person. She also indulged in this type of talk. They’re both harried tech-type people so I thought it fit. They’re use to putting out fires and so no waste words or time when they don’t have to.
Carol Lombard in My Man Godfrey. But is was portrayed as a character trait, and perhaps an indication of her attitude towards Godfrey.
It was extremely common in screwball comedies. So also several Barbra Streisand Roles like “What’s Up Doc” and “Hello Dolly” and these days Anna Kendrick is prone to it.
“Hudsucker Proxy” was an example of Jennifer Jason Leigh channeling some hybrid of Hepburn & Russell.
It’s really no different than a million other stylistic choices films make to set a certain tone. Film shouldn’t mimic reality anymore than any other art form.
I haven’t seen the show but it sounds like the writers were heavily influenced by (or ripping off) Aaron Sorkin.
Other genres too:
IIRC, a few years ago, before I routinely used subtitles on TV (but was approaching grumpy old man status over how actors gabbled and mumbled), one channel was showing His Girl Friday. It was noticeable that the speech got faster and faster, the nearer they got to the execution Rosalind Russell* was trying to stop - but I could hear every word.
It’s about articulation/elocution as much as speed.
*Great flying tackle, too, as I recall.
I agree. I don’t complain about people not saying goodbye on phones for instance. It’s just that in some movies I feel like the fast talking is a little vit too fast, so it has started to take me out of the experience.
Maybe slowing it down by 20% or so would be better for my tastes. I think part of it is that everything is just too slick. It goes by so fast, with no mistakes. I just want a little breather now and then.
On the one hand, I would disagree. I work in a tech / finance / sales heavy profession and we can often have fast, detailed, often esoteric conversations about our work, particularly if there is a fire to put out. In fact, I found this to be a problem with some of the more junior members of my team. I felt they would often get lost and not be able to keep up or contribute. Other than giving them as much background as I can, really the only advice I can give them is “get smarter”. Sure, sometimes you can go back and analyze and think things through before coming up with a plan of action. But other times, you need a response now.
Maybe that’s the sort of vibe the shows you are talking about is trying to convey?
OTOH, I would agree that TV shows often portray characters having uncanny, almost superhuman recall and problem solving abilities. Like they flashback to where they remember some obscure bit of conversation that suddenly leads to great insight. No one ever forgets or misremembers anything. That’s not realistic.
I think it’s more that they have conversations with many different people, jump topics and emotional states constantly.
It’s like a dance and rythm that everyone they meets seem to be part of.
Also, everyone seems like an encyclopedia of facts, that they recite like they are reading the encyclopedia right there. They have no approximate figures.
A group of tech-people having a fast paced conversation about something that everyone knows is different.
I agree that there have always been fast-talking film and TV characters (the hard-boiled editor in a few episodes of The Simpsons is just one, and it’s a throwback) as well as actual people. Leaving that aside, it’s well known that, for decades, action films have been pushing the number of scenes per minute to nearly incoherent extremes. Not exactly the same thing, but it seems logical to me that the dialogue of such films would have to be faster, too.
In any case let’s not forget that everyone slows down as they age. You drive more slowly down the same highway, and it’s going to look like everyone else is going faster than they used to.
As spoofed on SNL:
How were you able to embed that clip in your post??? 