What I learned from Johnny Caspar...

My favorite film of all time is ED WOOD, and there is a scene in that film in which Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi is teaching Johnny Depp as Ed Wood how to make hypnotic gestures with his hands and fingers. Bela's reply:

"You must be double-jointed and you must be Hungarian."

In _Proof_ (1991, Jocelyn Moorhouse) there's useful advice by a blind man on how to pour wine into a glass if you can't see: listen to the sound it makes as it reaches the top.

I know what they call a quarter pounder in France! (Because they use the metric system.) We all know where that comes from...

But!

I learned from Tyler Durden that water will not take care of a chemical burn (in this specific case lye) what will neutralize it is vinegar. - Fight Club

That recipe for egg toast Dustin Hoffman messes up in the beginning of Kramer vs. Kramer, but does well near the end. Might be a common thing in America, I don't know, but I'd never seen anyone do it like that before.

well...honestly Jim...ever since I saw Johnny Casper explaining the cold-water-rule I'v shaved that way...

I learned (and not being from that era didn't know) that the 60s weren't the 60s. The 60s, as we think of them, "was just '66 and early '67. That's all there was," according to Terry Valentine (played by Peter Fonda) in Steven Soderbergh's "The Limey" (1999).

I couldn't help but think of this exchange from the episode of "The Simpsons" where Mel Gibson enlists Homer to help him retool his version of "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington":

Homer: Movies aren't stupid. They fill us with romance and hatred and revenge fantasies. "Lethal Weapon" showed us that suicide is funny.
Gibson: That really wasn't my intention.
Homer: Before "Lethal Weapon 2" I didn't know there could be a bomb in my toilet, but now I check every time.
Marge: It's true, he does.
Gibson: Do movies mean that much to you, Homer?
Homer: They're my only escape from the drudgery of work and family.
[to family] No offense.

I guess we all take from the movies things that nobody else but ourselves may find valuable. With me, my most recent example of this came from, of all places, an obscure martial arts movie called "Twin Warriors" starring Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh. Jet Li's a Shaolin Monk and it occurs to him that the harder he makes contact with a pool of water, the harder it splashes back; therefore, to conquer his enemies he mustn't strike hard but approach them softly if he hopes to exert any control over them. Perhaps that example didn't originate from this particular movie, but the lesson I took was articulated well by it I felt.

Clemenza in "The Godfather" is my favorite source of pragmatic advice in the movies. Not only does he demonstrate how to make an excellent red sauce then neatly sum up American foreign policy of the last 70 years ("They shoulda stopped Hitler at Munich"), he also eloquently states a simple, practical rule for happiness: "Leave the gun. Take the cannolis."

There are many cooking tips in Pixar's Ratatouille (plus it inspires one to learn how to cook).
I wish Roger or yourself had reviewed it, instead of relegating it to the 1-star "Film potluck" category; it's as if Pixar's excellence has become expected and predictable - perhaps only a bad Pixar film would warrant a review from one of you, nowadays.

From "Everyone Says I Love You" (1996):

It's about pasta sauce:
"Bovarians don't use sauce. The Italians do--the Italians were weak!"

Cleaning the Pipes? (Not going out with a loaded gun?

I remember Ebert in his review of Hard Eight (or Sydney) being impressed that it shows you how to get a free room at a casino (have any Anderson fans or otherwise seen if it works?).

Great Thread. I have a few off the top of my head.

1) In Wargames, Matthew Broderick's Dad butters his hot corn on the cob by buttering a piece of bread, then wrapping it around the corn. Very clever, works well.

2) In Driving Miss Daisy, the cook mentions the secret to her fried chicken is to cook it very slowly, at low heat. All my chicken since has been cooked this way, with improved results.

3) I learned how to make "eggs in a basket" after watching V fo Vendetta. (apparently this was cooked in Moonstruck as well, though I don't remember it from that film)

Gee, anyone notice a food motif here?

and finally...

4) "Don't get emotional about stocks" - Gordon Gekko

Good Advice.

I have two:

In the movie Goodfellas when they're in prison and Liotta's character explains their system for slicing garlic cloves so it dissolves in the pan.

The second one was from a Sopranos episode when Ralphie shows Richie Jr. how to put a little sauce in the spaghetti pot after it's drained and mix it around so the noodles won't stick together.

What is it about Mob movies and food?

Juror #8 (Henry Fonda) in "12 Angry Men":

"It's always difficult to keep personal prejudice out of a thing like this [a trial]. And wherever you run into it, prejudice always obscures the truth. I don't really know what the truth is. I don't suppose anybody will ever really know. Nine of us now seem to feel that the defendant is innocent, but we're just gambling on probabilities - we may be wrong. We may be trying to let a guilty man go free, I don't know. Nobody really can. But we have a reasonable doubt, and that's something that's very valuable in our system. No jury can declare a man guilty unless it's SURE."

Don't really like the movie but I live in the D.C. area and after seeing Broadcast News where Holly Hunter tells the cabbie to drive between 35 and 40 to catch all the green lights I tried it. It works about 75% of the time.

Also the Wargames corn trick already used by Todd earlier. I also learned from that scene that you should take vitamins and cook the corn.

MOONSTRUCK is a font of wisdom on many subjects. The part that sticks with me is this practical household hint from plumber Cosmo Castorini, played by Vincent Gardenia (this is from memory, BTW):

There's three kinds of pipes. First, there's the kind of pipes you've got, which is garbage. Then there's bronze, which is pretty good, until something goes wrong... and something always goes wrong with bronze. Then there's copper, which is the only pipe all I use. It costs money. It costs money because it saves money.

Whenever I'm fixing my plumbing, you'll hear me muttering this little speech to myself from under the sink.

Jim, the grin on my face when I first encountered this post has not yet diminished. I changed my entire approach to shaving based on Johnny Caspar's advice to his young driver on that ill-fated night (though I never went all the way to using a straight razor).

What a great question-- I wish I'd seen it before posting the latest quiz!

As far as the ones I can think of off the top of my head, I, like Todd, also thought of the actor William Bogert playing Matthew Broderick's dad in WarGames and the way he buttered his corn with a piece of already-slathered bread. (I think Pauline Kael even refered to the moment in her review.)

Richard Castellano as Clemenza is the natural go-to man for spaghetti sauce, but when I tried it I honestly didn't like it much-- it wasn't nearly so distinct as the scene itself. So I was thrilled to discover the moments in Martin Scorsese's ItalianAmerican when his mother not only shows us how she makes spaghetti sauce, but when the recipe itself shows up in the end credits. (It can also be found here.) It's way better than Clemenza's, and though it can be augmented with various ingredients, such messing around is not necessary to reach the particularly Italian kind of saucy nirvana this recipe promises. I dare say it's even better than the sauces my Italian grandmas used to make-- they routinely used (shudder) canned mushrooms.

But truthfully, at the risk of being accused of brown-nosing the host, for me there really has never been a moment that has edged its way into my everyday life the way Johnny Caspar's shaving tip has. How nice to be able to reminded of a movie I love during such a routine chore, and it happens every time I reach for my can of Edge gel.

However, thank God I didn't take Johnny's parenting advice to heart!

JE: After I posted this last night, I thought of you, Dennis. Because it seemed like such a natural quiz-type question that I worried you'd already done it -- in which I would have to plead George Harrison/"He's So Fine"!

Like Dennis, mine is truly mundane, which is probably what makes it so enjoyable as part of my routine: ever since I saw Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) chide Vincent (John Travolta) in Pulp Fiction, I wash my hands incredibly thoroughly so I won't get in trouble for getting blood (or dirt) all over the towel.

The Karate Kid was the movie that taught me you should maintain eye contact when you bow to someone.

"In the city, a reflection. In the woods, a sound."

"And in the desert?"

"You don't want to go to the desert."

Scott from Mamet's SPARTAN. Useful advice if you're afraid you're being followed.

To continue with Mamet, The Edge contained plenty of practical survival tips. It taught me how to make fire from ice; kill a bear; make a compass out of a pocket watch, leaf, and puddle of water; and most important of all, not be the only black character in a survival movie.

To follow the line of practical food advice: when one doesn't have something to strain the water from their pasta noodles, I learned from "The Apartment" that a tennis racket does the job!

One last thing occurred to me. I didn't really "learn" this from Miller's Crossing but have always agreed with it: I would never chase a hat if it blew off my head. You do kind of look ridiculous. I've seen people do it. Just let it go and buy a new one.

You are a man after my own heart, Jim. Everytime I shave hear Johnny Caspar's words in my head as well.

As for what other bits of cinematic "advice" I've applied to my day-to-day life, whenever I crack an egg I always hear a voice with a French accent telling me to do so quickly; in other words, execute it with mercy, like "ze guillotine" (as in Billy Wilder's Sabrina).

Also, I don't smoke cigarettes but I have on occasion puffed on a cigar and each time I did I remembered Gene Hackman's advice in Young Frankensetein: "Don't inhale until the tip glows."

Tyler Durden, Brad Pitt in Fight Club.
You take SO much from this film. Not just the vinegar thing as mentioned by 'nd' but pretty much everything the guy says is gold. A different way of looking at the world. At yourself. Plus how to make dynamite, (if you can't find it in the Anarchist Cookbook.)

Here are a scattering.

I am not the contents of my wallet.

I am not the car I drive.

Knowing what a Duvet is is not necessary to our survival in the Hunter/Gather sense.

If someone has exactly the same briefcase as you, hit them real hard and run away.

You can turn off the power mains of a house whilst standing in two foot of water only if you do it really fast.

Self improvement is masturbation.

And, most importantly, when you find that your favourite passtime is getting a bit stagnant, you've either gotta take it up a notch or shut it down for good.

William Powell as Nick Charles, demonstrating that a proper martini should be shaken in waltz time.

In Little Dieter Needs to Fly and now Rescue Dawn, when Dieter Dengler shows us how to escape from handcuffs with just a small piece of wire (or in his case, a flattened nail).

One movie that leapt immediately to mind as a sort-of masterpiece of little tips (even though I have never had to use any of them, and God willing I never will have to) is "Cast Away". The bulk of the film is essentially made up of nothing but tips:

- How to crack open a cocunut.

- How to start a fire.

- Why it's important to cook a crab before eating it.

- How to spear fish.

- How to construct a raft.

- How to maintain sanity by talking to a volleyball.

Of course, in a larger sense, the movies (and of course television) teach many of us how to do everything: talk, dress, kiss, flirt, argue, etc.

Ghostbusters:

"Ray, when someone asks you if you're a god, you say 'Yes!'"

Hasn't really come in handy yet, but I'm sure it will someday.

Two tips stand out for me. One's from George Harrison in A Hard Day's Night. It's another shaving tip: "Put your tongue away; it looks disgusting hanging there all pink and naked. And one slip of the razor..." Not that I shave my face, but still, good advice in general.

For some practical AND philosophical advice, if I ever go deer hunting, I'll remember that "You have to think about one shot. One shot is what it's all about. A deer's gotta be taken with one shot."

Probably I'm so late to comment, you won't even notice this, but learned two tips on shaving from two other movies. First, I recall the exact same advice from Miller's Crossing being given by one of the radio announcers in Good Morning Vietnam (though his reasoning was that shaving with cold water avoids razor burn).

And in Barcelona, Chris Eigeman laments that he never had a father figure to teach him the manly arts, such as shaving. At the end of the film, he finds such a figure, who advises him to shave in the opposite direction that the hair grows, which, believe it or not, was new advice to me. (It's also the movie where I learned that the thing that's above the subtext, the completely obvious and open thing that nobody ever talks about, is called "the text.")

"Blow-Up" - swear to Christ - taught me how to dance. "Go *against* the beat," David Hemmings says to Vanessa Redgrave in that long scene in the loft. I've passed this wisdom on to others - it WORKS!

I learned from Ordell Robbie in "Jackie Brown" that should one want to kill every mothereffer in the room, one should use the AK-47 and accept no substitutes.