Seven Movie Social Skills You Should Use Or Avoid – Like The Plague

When you settle in for a movie or your favourite TV show you are signing a mental contract to suspend reality for a little while in order to give yourself over to the drama and be entertained by a fantasy version of life, and perhaps indulge in wishing you were more like the main character. Wishful thinking is relatively harmless but what if, while that movie or sitcom was giving you some much needed escapism into a more exciting world than you currently inhabit, its ultra filtered dialogue was also stealing your social confidence and contributing to a sense of insecurity?

Many articles have been dedicated to a similar phenomenon in the fashion and beauty industry where a gulf is created between reality and the fantasy of becoming more like the slim airbrushed cover models. In movies and TV it’s the dialogue that’s being airbrushed, but because it’s far less visible, it mostly bypasses our conscious awareness like a Trojan horse and goes straight for the subconscious where it quietly spreads its seeds of insecurity.

In the space of one movie or one episode of your favourite TV show, hundreds of these dialogue seeds can spread across your subconscious with the message that this is how interesting, funny, charismatic people naturally speak. These are the levels of social skills you should be aspiring to if you want to be liked, noticed, and accepted by others.

The most significant thing about all this is that unlike your conscious working memory that can distinguish reality from make believe, the subconscious cannot filter fantasy from reality, truth from lies, which is why we can so easily suspend reality for a film and allow ourselves to be drawn into the story and plight of the characters.

In this article, we’re going to expose seven different movie social skills that are quietly seeding these confidence stealing messages, and ask which ones we can actually adopt and use for our social interactions, and those we should avoid – like the plague.

The Gulf Between Movie Dialogue and Real-World Conversations

1. Delivery

On the big screen, dialogue flows like a river of silk—smooth, witty, and utterly flawless. In other words, airbrushed. Characters manage to deliver profound statements in neat little packages just as their coffee arrives or another character enters. But in real life? It’s the complete opposite and our sentences often end up resembling a stoned panda bear.

The thoughts you hold may be as smooth and undiluted as movie dialogue but by the time they arrive at your mouth, and the verbal word version of your thoughts have been launched from your lips into the conversation, a lot of pollution and filler has entered your sentences.

There is of course good reason why movie dialogue has all the fat removed from it. A movie run time is limited to about ninety minutes, therefore the characters must deliver a concentrated version of their humour, intellect, empathy etc. in order to connect with the audience as well as make their love interest fall for them in a much shorter space of time. Even when they seem to be complete opposites.

Back to reality. Here you have three obstacles between you and a perfect delivery:

First: is your timing. You have almost definitely had those times when you launched into speaking only to find others were not listening.

Second: your ‘thoughts into words’ translator may be pumping to many filler words into your sentences because you are speaking faster than your brain can convert.

Third: your inner translator may be jumbling your key points, due to lack of speaking practice or anxiety, forcing you to backtrack and lose your audience – If! you ever had them in the first place.

2. Interrupting

Just imagine for a moment if you could step into your favourite TV show or Movie and have a conversation with someone there using movie etiquette. You would certainly have a very different social experience. One where every time you spoke, the other person or group of people, listened and waited until the very last drop of your sentence had landed before speaking themselves. If you’ve never noticed this before, it’s because good movie dialogue is going straight to your subconscious where things are not analysed or challenged as they are in the conscious working memory, therefore airbrushing is less likely to be noticed.

The next time you watch a show or movie, pay attention to how disciplined all the characters are in waiting their turn to speak. Even those speaking in groups such as a certain TV sitcom where the characters get a sofa in the middle of a busy coffee shop, seemingly for their own exclusive use. Give this group of friends a regular and abundant amount of news to share with each other, such as a breakup, a new romance, a pregnancy, a job interview, a job sacking, becoming a surrogate mother for your long lost brother, and still they resist talking over a friend to share. Now, in reality we all know how messy and undisciplined conversation can be in a group, even with the most banal gossip, but put this level of juicy movie gossip into the hands of mere mortals navigating life in the wild and you would probably get trampled by the interruptions.

Of course, TV and movie gossip is not real so the urgency and sense of competition to get their news out is absent, whereas in real life the sense of excitement and urgency to speak can feel akin to a crowd waiting for the doors to open on the first day of black Friday sales.

3. Material

If you still think its fair to compare your own level of social skills against movie social skills then this one more than all others should put things into perspective. Take your top most successful sitcoms like 'Friends' who act out their scenes with perfect timing, and just know those scenes were brainstormed and scripted, not just by one good script writer, but a team of world class writers, bouncing ideas off each other, then testing them out to see if they get a big enough laugh to make the cut.

Contrast that a real-life raw conversation, operating with no test runs, no rehearsals, no team of script writers, but instead where you have to rely on your own brain, your own limited set of experiences, and your personal ability to think on your feet.

If small talk and everyday conversations seem boring to you it’s no wonder, nobody can compete with movie social skills. And the chances of you having Phobe Waller Bridge on speed dial to call for help to spice up your dialogue, like the makers of the last James Bond movie did, is very slim indeed.

4. Giving advice

Any time anyone is upset, has a problem, or is in some kind of crisis in the movies, how do movie friends respond? With compelling anecdotes naturally. Once you start noticing them on the screen you wont be able to stop noticing because characters dishing out anecdote advise is everywhere. And it comes down to this, whenever someone is facing a crisis in TV or Movie land the other person in the scene somehow always has a memory of a similar experience and can instantly recall and deliver it with maximum impact.

Okay, so that’s how its done in the movies but what about real life? Well the exchange usually happens in one of three ways.

1. We start throwing out our own solutions to the other persons problem, which is apparently more of a male thing, and admittedly annoying at best and patronising at worst. After all, it’s highly unlikely we are qualified to solve your problem, and chances are, our solution is probably the first thing you thought of for yourself.

2. We start scrambling out reassuring platitudes and cliches like – ‘there’s plenty more fish in the sea’.

3. Which is to stay silent and hope you think we’re just being a good listener, when in reality we got awkward and didn’t know what to say when stuff got real.

Of these three approaches, silence is probably the best because lets face it, the other person wasn’t asking for advise or hollow platitudes, they just wanted to be heard and their pain acknowledged. What makes the movie anecdote so powerful is because listening to a story or anecdote is a form of escapism that can divert and provide advice indirectly. Problem is, in the real world, who has a relatable anecdote that has a suitable learning point or message of hope, let alone can recall it on the spot when a friend is sharing their troubles with you?

5. Connecting

If, so far you can say that you were fully aware of all the four previous movie social skills we have covered, then maybe this is the one that’s truly been flying under your radar. The way two strangers make a connection in movies is often very different to how we connect in real life. The reason is the same as for number one – delivery.

A movie only has a few hours of your attention for its characters to connect, form relationships, break up, learn something about themselves and life, then get back together again, whereas forming a new connection in real life can take place over a period of weeks or months and several meetups.

So here’s how it happens. Generally speaking there are at least five levels of communication, starting at surface level one where small talk begins by commenting about something in your environment such as the weather, followed by the information level where we learn about each other, work, hobbies, interests etc. three is opinions, four is emotions. And here is as far as we need to go because in real life, socialising moves fairly sequentially through these levels until we are familiar enough and trust the other person enough to share our level four emotion based material.

Connections will normally happen around information level two when we discover a common interest.

Now contrast this to the movies where the early levels are often bypassed in order to get to the drama and emotion at level four, so here is where our movie characters often connect. For example, when our two characters discover they have both experienced a similar emotional pain in the form of a breakup, a loss, or some kind of tragedy. But if you are thinking you can take the movie connection formula and apply it to real life then forget it. If you keep watching the movie you will inevitably see the relationship that burst into life at level four, die out just as quickly like a sugar rush.

6. One Liners

This one may just have the most harmful influence of all to real life interactions. This is the ‘first contact’ one liner where the boy wants to introduce himself to the girl, or visa versa, but is afraid of saying the wrong thing and blowing his chances. So far the movies and real life are matching each other right?

The problem arises when the scene unfolds in one of two ways, either the boy comes out with a very smooth introduction and the girl is swept off her feet, or he comes out with a mediocre, average, cheesy, or boring line and the girl dismisses him to the sound of her friends mocking laughter.

Approaching and making contact with someone you like for the first time in real life can be spring loaded with anxiety. What movies have done by portraying first contact through such a crash and burn lens is to magnify the idea that its going to take nothing short of a perfect introduction with equal parts humour, intelligence, and charisma all wrapped up in a single sentence that doesn’t sound like it’s trying too hard, just to get your foot in the door.

In reality, all it takes is a bit of courage to approach, or twenty-one seconds of insane courage as Matt Damon said in ‘We bought the zoo’, and a simple explanatory introduction like ‘Hi, I thought you looked interesting and wanted to come over and introduce myself’.

7. A Soundtrack

The presence of canned laughter and background music is not a movie social skill but it is included here because of its influence on TV and movies. Mostly this one cannot be translated to real life, after all, just imagine if you said something funny in a social setting then pulled out your phone and started playing a recording of canned laughter. Or you said something emotional then wheeled out a piano.

It would be absurd, fake, and the quickest way to earn a one-way ticket to the nearest asylum. But in sitcoms like Friends, Big bang theory, Two and a half men etc. the laughter of a live audience is a constant presence. In the movies something heartfelt said is often accompanied by swelling music to amplify the emotions being expressed. This background sound direction is shamelessly manipulating us yet you never see the men or women in white coats frog marching the characters away.

Okay lets summarise. Consider for a moment if you brought all seven of these elements together in a single scene, you would have witty, clear, concise insightful statements, delivered uninterrupted with perfect timing, a brief anecdote to help someone move on from, or resolve a problem, all accompanied by some background music to reinforce the emotions being expressed. And if the scene was well acted, which it would be because it would have been rehearsed and shot multiple times before you, the viewer, ever saw it, you would be so engrossed by the drama that you wouldn’t notice any of this.

When a character in a movie asks for a date and drops a dramatic line like “I’m just a girl standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her…” we are completely drawn in and emotionally invested. However, in everyday situations, professing your love is probably going to be full of anxiety, because the outcome is unscripted, unknown, and a lot rides on the outcome. You’re self-conscious, your sentences become confusing and littered with filler words, and the best you can hope for is that the person you are asking out, or perhaps proposing to, somehow finds your tongue-tied delivery as charming as Hugh Grants awkward Englishman signature deliveries.

That all said, there’s nothing wrong with learning from, and modelling movie social skills where its practical. So let’s wrap up by recapping the seven movie social skills and seeing which ones we can use to enhance our own social skills and confidence.

Which of the Seven Movie Social Skills Can We Adopt for real life

1. Delivery. We can probably all improve on this one in several ways. One of the key ways is to become more present and aware of the others you are interacting with. Formal social skills training is something very few people invest in, so their own skills and presence may be low. This means many people will be unable to focus on what you’re saying while they have something of their own to say. If you can train yourself to recognise when the other person has something they want to get out, allow them space to do so, they will then be less distracted when you speak.

2. Interrupting. We can control our own impulses to speak before the other person has finished, but can we control the other person? There are several things you can do to curb this interrupting behaviour, the most effective is to make yourself more compelling to listen to by ramping up the energy of your tonality and delivery. Purge the monotone from your voice and inject a bit of intensity and vibrance into how you sound.

3. Material. Your history is an extraordinary tapestry of material, but it can have a tendency of getting buried by the sands of time. Lets circle back to this one.

4. Giving advice in the form of anecdotes from your own past. Same answer as number three, lets circle back to it.

5. Connecting. As I said previously, movies have a habit of forcing their characters to connect and bond over personal issues and tragedies. In real life don’t go there too soon, its over sharing and makes people uncomfortable.

6. One-liners. Keep it simple and stay away from trying to give a perfect introduction. The simple intro is the confident one and that’s great news.

7. A soundtrack. This doesn’t translate to real life of course, unless you’re at home cooking for a date and want to put on some romantic background music. Otherwise, wait until you’re an eccentric billionaire and can afford to have a symphony orchestra and studio audience follow you around all day, then we’ll talk again.

Hi, my name’s Richard A.K.A The Social Skills Doctor. I’ve devised a brand new approach to building and fuel-injecting your social skills in ways that would frankly have been impossible until now with what I call ‘The Conversation Maestro Method’. It’s a social skills and personal brand activation system built on a fusion of specially developed conversation strategies and adapted memory techniques.

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Until next time, take care and keep self-developing.