boring people who recount movie plots to you in great detail

while you stare at them with dead eyes. i think this is the worst kind of boring you can be. the people who do it aren't always boring people but seem to think this is acceptable behaviour. i seem to have known a lot of these people. what makes them do it?

are these the same people who tell you their boring dreams in grest detail? cuz i think that might be even worse and more tedious.

Anyone telling me about something I’m not interested in usually make me glaze over. If they carry on, I’ll just get angry and have to excuse myself.

sometimes there can be an interesting gem in a recounted dream though. it's rare but it can happen.

xp

movie reviews tht do this are even worse still

One step down: "let me dictate to you the plot of the book I haven't written yet."

My last post in another thread makes me feel I'm being bullied here. I guess I didn't wiffle about plot so much, though.

im staring at u all w/dead eyes

in terms of reviewers phillip french is the absolute worst for this. that's a different thing though, if a reviewer does it you just put down the paper and stop reading it. if someone you know does it you are trapped.

http://slantmouth.com/articles/freedomThighs/images/eyeballs.jpg

uh-huh

It gets to me more in casual social situations more than in online reviews: "Have you seen this? Heard it might be good but probably won't get around to seeing it? Well in that case! *lengthy detailing of arc of entire first season*"

are these the same people who tell you their boring dreams in grest detail? cuz i think that might be even worse and more tedious.

oh definitely. especially if it's supposed to include me: "and you were in it but your arms were super long bla bla". the worst.

haha I ws thinking about philip french, but yeah yr right

my brother does this a lot, he's not boring and obv I love the guy but sometimes it's just like "I did not see programme x/film y, therefore being told about what the jokes were is not going to work for me." mostly I just think also "i'd rather just talk about normal stuff like how people are and did you speak to dad recently etc."

My last post in another thread makes me feel I'm being bullied here. I guess I didn't wiffle about plot so much, though.

Nooo, that was a good review dude. besides, reading something is choice, whereas someone standing in front of you telling you this can be difficult to walk away from.

OTM re French.

The French go and on about films too.

at parties i like to describe for strangers tattoos that i havent got, but am planning to get

I almost did this last night and I stopped myself. Close one!

they think theyre cool for being able to recount it in such great detail.

When my daughter was a child, one of her little friends did this. (I hope she outgrew this behavior.)

I guess I associate an ability to recount movie plots in great detail with an inability to realize that doing so is a bad idea.

the ability to summarize a movie plot in a sentence or two should not be underestimated. what with shrinking wordcounts yada yada, a lot of times they've spent 2/3 of their space on the plot. but you need a sense of it for the rest of the review to work.

my brother does this a lot, he's not boring

it's more annoying when people you like do it. there's no way to tell them how bad an idea it is to do this!

i do this all the time w/ seinfeld plots

i have a good friend who does this a lot but, i swear to god, is so charming and funny that it usually works. he does a really good tina fey. kind of an art form if you can pull it off, but no one else i've ever known can do it, certainly not me.

I was recently speaking to a kid (who it transpired is autistic) at a party when he, without warning, started recounting the plot of Cars to me in massive detail. It was really quite unnerving until I realised what was going on. I'm not that good at following plots and I'd normally be quite a poor conversation partner for this kind of thing, but he didn't seem to mind.

my movie plot appraisals usually consist of: "man, getting married, needs a best man, it was quite funny" or "dog thinks he has super-powers, I thought it was a good film, I liked the songs."

Swedish vampires, it all felt a little bit wrong.

Oh, I'm even worse:
My dad: "What's The Simpsons about?"
Me: "Uh, it's a satire"

"let me dictate to you the plot of the book I haven't written yet."

I don't mind this one at all, cause I find it fun to imagine what the thing would be like, but obviously that's based on being into book-writing in the first place.

Yeah, so, this is an issue for me: whether it's movie plots or dreams or just what happened that day, it seems weirdly difficult to convey to people whether they're providing too much detail. If non-verbal cues aren't doing it ... I can't find a way to convey that without causing offense or looking mean/hypocritical. (NB I am not long-winded in person, I don't think.)

There was a line I noticed recently in something of DFW's where he refers to (paraphrasing) "the way that all incredibly passive people lack the ability to sort the meaningful parts of a story from the others" -- I'd never ever thought of this as having anything to do with being passive, but now I keep thinking about it that way.

Why 'passive'?

I dunno! I think maybe the association has something to do with being unwilling to, like, impose your own order and thrust on an experience? (I've been thinking about this a lot lately.)

The other problem with too much detail is that you no longer know what to pay attention to -- you wind up focusing on a part of the story that's all red herrings and totally missing the important parts.

I've got friends who do that but I've never put it down to passivity, more down to 'focuses on details' being a characteristic of its own. It's kind of the opposite of how I am, as I put things into their widest possible context immediately. It can make me seem very cold I think, but it's probably the better side to err on - my 'details' friends are very talented, but people often perceive them as ineffective or a bit dim because their initial choice of conversation is effectively random.

I never think of people whose stories run too long as being "details" people, cause surely someone who focused on details would, like, edit. It's usually, like, someone who's trying to tell you their apartment got robbed while they were out at lunch, and they're telling you what they had for lunch and whether it was good or not. Which feels less like a wealth of detail and more like the person is just kind of expelling their experience at you as it comes, without making any effort to organize or shape it or package it.

- "So the point is you came home and your TV was gone?"
- "Yeah."
- "And you think the waiter did it?"
- "Wait, what? No, why would I think that?"
- "There was the whole part about sending back your BLT."
- "That has nothing to do with it!"
- "Why was it in the story, then?"
- "BECAUSE I AM TRYING TO SHARE SOMETHING ABOUT MY LIFE WITH YOU"

see, i kinda like digressions. but yeah it does make for confusing stories.

Oh lord, it's like talking to my mother.

Is this turning into a discussion about synthesis vs. analysis?

One way to get rid of them is to tell 'em stories that dont go anywhere. Like the time we went over to shelbyville during the war, I wore an onion on my belt....which was the style at the time...you couldnt get those white ones, you could only get those big yellow ones.................now where was I........oh yeah, the important thing was I was wearing an onion on my nelt, which was the style at the time, you couldnt get those...

Give me five bees for a quarter, BLAM

last night on the train i sat next to a guy telling another guy the plot of his entire novel! it was pretty crazy--i didnt catch the whole thing but it involved a gay guy, and a crime boss, and a dog (?) and possibly drugs--but the best part was that after his friend got off the train he pulled out a spiral bound notebook and whipped out a ballpoint pen and began to work on the novel right then and there on the train

i guess i was shocked/amazed that a) people still wrote novels longhand and b) given my own attitude towards my creative output, that this guy could just pull out his in-progress novel and pick up where he left off without a whole host of terrible anxiety-induced rituals like making coffee, re-reading the entire thing, making more coffee, checking ilx, etc

unfortunately from what i was able to read over his shoulder it wasnt very good, though i think it probably had a chance at publication

Yeah, I'll admit that I am somewhat prejudiced against novel-sharing as somehow ... saying poor things about the seriousness of the project in question. Which is probably unfair, though it does seem to hold up, somewhat.

all of these novels sound awesome, guys--get cracking

I'm living in fear of my workmate doing this re "Twilight", because for a week or 2 now, she's kept asking me "have you seen the movie yet?". Despite the fact Ive told her not only have I not seen it, I have no interest in it or the books and will not BE seeing it.

So now she's taken to saying things like "would you see it if it was my dying wish?". WTF? So I said "nah, dont think so", and she got all pretend-offended.

If she starts reciting the plot to me I'll lose mine.

What about the Amazon book reviewers who write a detailed plot synopnis as if they were writing a grade-school book report, even though the preceding one-thousand reviewers have already done the same!
Do they get such a kick out of reliving their school days that they just can't stop themselves?

I don't even like to read the back of the movie box at the store. Surprise is underrated.

Plus, people who remember plots of movies aren't smoking enough weed.

Re: Max's novelist, his novel was probably on sale at the Fulton Mall the following day.