Quoting Movies and TV

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When I was younger (long before I knew I was an Aspie, or even what Aspergers even was), I used to have a tendency to quote things I had heard in a movie or on TV and expect it to get the same reaction in did in the movie/TV show I got it from. It never does, as these things are highly dependent on the situation, and it used to cause me all kinds of trouble.

Most people who do this are NT geeks who are just trying to impress people with their knowledge of cinema (as if quoting Evil Dead 2 is going to get them any respect), but I find myself doing it almost reflexively, like someone will say something that happens to be the first part of a quote from a movie and I'll instinctively finish it.

If this is an aspergers thing, every person I know has aspergers.

Echolalia.

I have it too.

I don't mean referencing movies. I mean like in high school when some kid would get in my face and try to bully me, I would repeat something some badass character had said in a movie and expect it to intimidate just like it did in the movie.

I wasn't aware of it at the time, but looking back now, I did this a lot.

I'm still doing this, & I quote entire monologues from vintage tv shows such as Leave It To Beaver, Andy Griffith, Bewitched, & of course Star Trek.

Of course no one but me has any idea what I'm talking about, and for years I thought it was something everybody did, especially if the show was historically & artistically important.

There is a great disturbance in the force. I have felt it.

Yes I used to do this obsessively with Harry Enfield and other comedies -- they often did get the same reaction (laughter) as TV. That really helped my confidence and self-esteem but after a while my special interest changed to computers and I went from being the funny kid to the geeky kid, ah well.

I used the phrase "Grease eating slimeball" from the A-team. Oh, man, people on TV were so badass, if only I could be like them! I also used to quote song lyrics, thinking it was cool and that other people would like me, but people just thought I was crazy and I didn't even get them right.

Last edited by sgrannel on 07 Aug 2011, 11:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

No, my three year old son quotes totally random phrases from videos that have no relevance to the situation. I'm sure he's not trying to impress anyone, but he does have numerous aspie traits.

Interesting. I'll often be thinking of a movie during a conversation, since one of my problems is racing thoughts and I'm always thinking of ten things at once, but if I have a habit of randomly blurting out dialogue from the movie I'm thinking of, I haven't noticed it.

I still do this. This isn't the case for everyone who repeats movie quotes (I too know a lot of NTs who do this occasionally), but I also have mild echolalia.

HAHAHAHAHA. YES. At last, people who do the same thing.

Back when I was a toddler I used to repeat the line "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." over and over and over. Recently I recall doing Jean Claude Van Damme's Street Fighter monologue complete with the Belgian accent, Boromir's description of Mordor, and the opening scene of Master Chief in G.I. Jane where he quotes D.H. Lawrence and someone else. This is awesome.

I try to do this when appropriate, but I probably overdo it now and then. Most recently, I've taken to quoting the Big Bang Theory. I've even got Sheldon's laugh down (and since everyone already thinks I'm...peculiar, they accept it as funny). I also quote a lot of books and movies, though.

Yeah, he doesn't have much for self-censoring. When he thinks of something he says it out loud, oftentimes regardless if anyone is listening or not.

I did a lot as a kid too. About 90% of my language as a kid was just scripting.