Step One
Show up late to their birthday party. No one cares about birthday-party promptness like people in the movies; only monsters show up late to an adult’s birthday dinner. It doesn’t matter how legitimate your excuse or how non-momentous the birthday is. There’s no coming back from it. It’s a sign of how cold and calculating you’ve truly become, how estranged you are from your true self.
Step Two
Pull a blanket over them after they have fallen asleep. Only good people do this. They’ll never know what hit them.
I’ve never been on time to a birthday party, but I’ve also never pulled a blanket over anyone* so I suppose I’m not living in a movie.
I’d best to go make some grand declaration to myself about my ambitions and see if I am catapulted into a training montage to test this theory.
*progeny excepted, as they are exceptional progeny
Any time I have put a blanket over a sleeping adult, I have felt like it was tucking in a dead body and saying goodbye forever. So I don’t do it. Which might explain why I am not in a movie.
I like to show my sleep love by taking a photo of the person in a bizzarro pose, on their smartphone and then changing the background of the phone to the photo.
I admire you.
::creeps toward sleeping, hot-natured person who has tossed the blanket away because hot-natured::
::gently pulls blanket over sleeping hot-natured person::
::creeps away rubbing hands together in malicious glee::
Bonus villainy: Place snuggly kitty on hot-natured person’s chest. Muahaha!
Oh no, the cat will do that by itself!
If I can suggest a variation:
Part 1: Show up late to your movie child’s birthday party.
Part 2: Show up on time to your movie child’s piano recital.
Part 3: Miss your movie child’s soccer game completely.
Your movie child will not know what the fuck is going on.
Re: that photo of Piper Perabo covering up good ol’ Heck – can I nominate Heck’s character as one of the Men Who Will Be Spared? He’s so great.
oh god literally the one difficult part about Imagine Me & You was that Heck was SO PRECIOUS it made me sad that she had to leave him
Honestly, him not being a “oh now I must kill or beat or humiliate her because she’s a dyke” kind of characters makes that movie a pleasant experience instead of a gut-churning one.
Bless you, Heck.
I genuinely love how the Ethnic Gay Movie, BRITISH EDITION, emphasizes gentle disappointment and regrets and a desperate avoidance of public humiliation as the central story framework.
He’s like Ralph Bellamy in any movie Ralph Bellamy was ever in.
Step Three
Start saying good-bye at the end of phone conversations. They will be confused.
Step 3.1
Close the doors wherever you show up.
Oh hi, Denny!
Hi, Tommy!
Ah-heh-heh-heh-heh.
I can’t wait till I am the mother of a child in a movie, so I can glare witheringly at my partner’s inability to be free at 3pm on a Wednesday for a piano recital.
The best reason to have children, IMHO
“Work, work, work. All you do is work!”
“Between 9 and 5.30, Monday to Friday, yes.”
“DON’T YOU SEE? DON’T YOU SEE WHAT YOU’RE MISSING? YOU ARE. MISSING. THIS.”
*Child, seated on piano bench, looks forlornly into audience.
*No Parent.
*Disapproving whispers from audience begin as Child’s hands remain fixed over keys.
*The auditorium doors burst open! It’s Parent, stained and battered from perspective-altering hijinx!
*More whispers as Parent clambers into a seat and flashes Child a thumbs up.
*Child grins.
*Child believes in self!
*Child crumbles up Bach sheet music and tosses it over shoulder.
*Bach wad hits Disapproving Authority Figure smack in the forehead.
*Child cracks knuckles, rips into honky-tonk cover of Lady Gaga Song.
BACH WAD
There is no such thing as a non-momentous birthday.
For real, though, I am the TARGET AUDIENCE of any movie where being hours late to/missing a birthday party creates problems between a person and his/her partner. I identify strongly with both the anguish of the birthday person and the (always) immense guilt of the late person.
My very good friend missed my 21st birthday party because he took a spontaneous weekend trip to Providence with his girlfriend and two guy friends. I forgave him, eventually. Except maybe I didn’t, because now I’m commenting about it on the internet. Who knows? Birthdays are important. I think it doubly hurt because I’m one of those people who secretly wants their friends to make a Big Deal about their birthdays, but of course I’ve never told that to anyone, that would be attention-seeking and not at all chill. So I remain secretly a little disappointed every year.
ACTION MOVIE COROLLARIES:
1. Ruthlessly kill comrade who has been your hench/friend for the ENTIRE MOVIE until this point because you are a villain and villains do not care about friendships
2. BUT LEAN IN AND TENDERLY CLOSE EYES OF DEAD HENCH/FRIEND
2b. raise glass to absent friend
2c. one tear
2d. but only one
But Mallory! If they are asleep, how will they know it was you?? I fail to see how this (admittedly) generous act will achieve the desired confusion in the other party.
Suggested replacement: Bond with the target’s children. Even if they hated you before, there’s no way their heart won’t melt once you start talking about Power Rangers with their kid. (Kids still watch Power Rangers, right?)
They find out when they wake up, because you were the only people in the apartment, so it had to be you. And then their world is rocked by kindness.
Because they’ll wake up with your gran’s crocheted afghan wrapped around their shoulders, and know you must have gotten it out of the closet just so they’ll sleep warmly through the night.
(Those shots when the person just yanks the blanket that was on the back of the sofa anyway over the guy don’t show person’s devious humanity to anyone but the viewer.)
Power Rangers is still on TV. I don’t know if anybody watches it but until recently my Target had about 1/3 of an aisle devoted to merch.
I know a woman who had a heart attack while her 4-year-old grandchild was at her home with her. The grandpa calls 911 and helps Grandma lie down on the bed. Grandpa tells child to sit on the bed with Grandma and stay there. He’s worried about losing track of Child and about scaring Child. He asks Child stay with Grandma because Grandma feels sick.
Child stays put and *pulls a blanket over Grandma*. Grandma pushes blanket off. Toastfolk, a heart attack makes you feel very, very hot. Child pulls up the blanket again. Grandma pushes blanket to the floor. Child patiently hops off the bed and covers Grandma again. Over and over until the paramedics arrive. That kid was gonna take care of her Grandma, no matter what.
My wife was on a business trip overseas during my birthday last year, and then last night she pulled my shirt back down over my exposed belly “because I was afraid your stomach would get cold”, and now I read this and I’m worried she has schemes afoot.
Her concern for the temperature of your tummy is one of the most adorable things I’ve ever read.
I have a partner who regularly falls asleep on the couch, usually about halfway into a movie he insisted he was not too sleepy to watch. I’ll tell you what, if you tenderly tuck him in, you better be ready to wake up at 3 in the morning to a plaintive call from the other room.
“HELLO?! EEGGHH? WHAT? WHERE? WHAT TIME IS IT?! HELLO?!”
The true kindness is being like, “hi. wake up, get in bed.” And then put up with all the grumbling and lying, and let them not brush their teeth despite the heinous morning dragon breath. That’s real love people. Blankets are cruelty, its the kind of thing a new lover will do. Before you know about the dragon breath and the sociopathy that comes when they need to wake up.
Oh my god, I HATED when my college boyfriend would wake me up from a couch snuggle/nap to be like, “Hey, hey, do you want to sleep in your bed?” NO I WAS ALREADY ASLEEP AUGHHHH
The next time my dog tries to steal the blanket while I’m sleeping, I’m going to scream, “BUT I WAS ON TIME TO YOUR BIRTHDAY PARTY, TREVOR!!!!” That. That will show him.
If your movie character is an off-screen 911 operator, simply engage the conversation as if they had identified themselves when they answered the phone. Do not, under any circumstances say “Hello, 911?” or anything else to confirm who you’re talking to. This will completely baffle the movie 911 operator.
If you’re in a relationship, never NEVER lie in bed with your backs to each other. It will automatically mean your relationship has Terrible Fundamental Flaws.
People in movies never just want their butts to snuggle.
I wrote an awful teenage piece of fanfic in which characters sleeping with their backs to each other was a sign that things were deeply wrong in their relationship. You can tell that I’d never gone out with anyone.
My very good friend missed my 21st birthday party because he took a spontaneous weekend trip to Providence with his girlfriend and two guy friends. I forgave him, eventually. Except maybe I didn't, because now I'm commenting about it on the internet. Who knows? Birthdays are important. I think it doubly hurt because I'm one of those people who secretly wants their friends to make a Big Deal about their birthdays, but of course I've never told that to anyone, that would be attention-seeking and not at all chill. So I remain secretly a little disappointed every year.