We all know how people worry that movies influence the gullible and weak-willed masses but do you have any examples where you have to hang your head in shame and admit that, yes, you really did take a bad lesson from a movie?
Nothing too major but looking back it did have potentially unpleasant consequences, young easily influenced me was struck by the ‘knife trick’ scene in Aliens where the android Bishop displays his insane reflexes and accuracy by doing the knife game and stabbing a knife between his fingers.
“I can do that!” I thought and with many many hours of practice, starting with the blunt side of pens and working my way up to the real deal I can indeed, ‘do that’.
Not proud of it but it and I haven’t tried it for some time (being older, wiser and a lot more keen on keeping my fingers intact) but it did make a good party trick back in the day.
“Hey DH, do the thing with the knife!”
Seriously though, don’t try this at home, its not big and its not clever! But I was wondering if anyone else has similar stories of their young (or not so young) vulnerable mind being shaped by the bad influences that are movies.
Every Christmas Eve I watch Bad Santa and try (and fail) to keep up with Willie. I think that the year that I succeed will be the year I die of alcohol poisoning.
I was working technical support at Target HQ and needed to talk to the TRL at a store…
Me: “Hi, could I talk to your TRL? This is Ethilrist, from Headquarters.”
Store person: “Headquarters? What is it?”
Me: “It’s a big, brown building with a lot of computers, but that’s not important right now.”
She didn’t get it. I had to explain. She still didn’t get it and thought I was insulting her. There were particularly-retentive, frowny letters of managerial consternation concerning a lack of professional courtesy and decorum, and I was given the warning that if I did not straight up and fly right, I was not long for that job.
Fortunately, none of the managers said “Surely you see how this is an issue?”
My friends and I were totally unnerved by the sight and could only hope that no unfortunate soul would draw their attention that night. These guys were criminals - thugs - even without the costume. We could only imagine the ‘rush’ they were on as they strutted about à la Alex and his droogies.
It was the only time in my life that I was willing to consider some form censorship of the media!
I did the thing with the knife because I saw it on Beavis and Butthead and cut my finger but now I have a scar and scars impress the ladies so overall it wasn’t bad
When I was in 6th grade, West Side Story was on broadcast TV for the first time, split over two evenings. I missed the first night, for some reason; the split was just after the “gonna have a rumble tonight”, with all the Jets and Sharks heading off to almost certain bloodshed.
I got to school the next morning and found that a whole bunch of the guys (no girls) had split up into two groups of kids and were marching purposefully around the playground. I asked what they were doing and they said “We’re playing Jets and Sharks.” I asked what happens next and they had no clue.
I imagine there were a few phone calls home that afternoon.
I was a 14 year old Beatles fanatic when HELP! came out in '65. Early in the film when the Fabs are performing “You’re Gonna Lose That Girl” there are a couple of strongly backlit closeups of Ringo, laid back drumming, easygoing grin, cigarette hanging out of his mouth. I thought that image was SO cool. It was boss.
Wanting to be that person was one of the stronger influences on me to experiment with tobacco.
Fast Times at Ridgemond High
Me and my dumbass friends were actually stupid enough to try that bit were you roll up all the (Car) windows, get two joints a blaze’n and by the time you get to the school and open up the doors, it looks like a smoke bomb went off inside your car.
I can only imagine what we must have smelled like.
To make matters worse, I was the idiot driving. :smack:
I think The Big Lebowski is probably the absolute worst movie for contagious profanity. The dialogue is somehow brilliant despite using some variation of the F word 2.5 times per minute.
When Fight Club came out I watched it twice at the cinema, and I remember winding up a large Leeds bloke on the top floor of a double-decker bus to the point where I narrowly escaped down the stairs - but he did land a blow, so I succeeded in the mission to ‘lose a fight’.
And if I ever find myself photocopying I can drift off as every day becomes a copy of a copy, of a copy…
