How to Enjoy a Movie with Your Significant Other Even Though All Major Actors Haven’t Been Identified Yet

We get it, it’s impossible to sit through a movie these days with your “special someone” while keeping the phone untouched. The urge comes to recall every actor onscreen deep from within.

Away quickly to IMDB or Letterboxd you go, while losing any attempt at bonding. The minute a new face enters the narrative, it’s like a trigger reaction.

“Who is he?” one of you asks. “I know her from somewhere!” bubbles up without prompt. This interaction inevitably leads to a listed string of films or series, all met with “No… no,” until the phone is finally whipped out to identify the mysterious mug. What did people do before smartphones? Was that Jimmy Stewart and Martha Stewart on screen? Who could ever know!

Life can be better. Existence can be easier. Where is the elan in a fumbled online search? Rather than miss key plot points or subtle moments onscreen, I’ve created a few guidelines to help you stay distracted instead of getting distracted.

Lock your phones in a distant apartment

Most cities have a ruinous downtown with dingy lofts going for handsome rates. Simply lease out a studio and keep it far enough away from your current dwelling to make visiting an inconvenience. Leaving your phone in your new studio guarantees that you’ll get through this movie in peace. Try to not get desperate, though. Don’t go to your neighbors begging for Leonard Maltin’s Movie Encyclopedia: it undoes all of your progress, and nobody has that book anymore.

Undergo hypnosis therapy

You can’t lose time recalling an actor’s name if you never knew their name to begin with. Presto! Simply scrub all filmography knowledge from your memory via expensive and dangerous hypnotherapy. Take out a reverse mortgage, sell your worldly goods, donate organs—whatever it takes for the plane tickets and expensive brain-warping procedure. Be careful how far back you go, though. You have to remember basic functions, from using the remote to selecting a film title.

Memorize every actor ever

Alternatively, you could go the opposite route by ingesting the history of film media. Silent serials? Bingo, you can name every actor, long dead. 1970s TV movies? You know every face speaking those schlocky lines. Italian action films? Japanese historical epics? AI-generated Netflix releases? You’re going to have to stick a name to every face that your eyes come across. Unless you’re a language-learning model, this method might seem out of reach, but at least you finally know who Henry Dean Stanton is. My God, he was in everything!

No longer view any media with performers

There are plenty of good documentaries out there! There are nature videos galore! Perhaps even dip into Norwegian “slow television,” which features common everyday events without any recognisable participants whatsoever. These limitations suddenly make C-SPAN thrilling. You can also try good old-fashioned reading, unless the book was released as a tie-in with a popular film, then it’s just back to fighting over half-famous faces on the cover.

Confidently make up names

If your partner really is unsure, what’s to stop you from identifying an actor as “Jax Tableson” or “Miranda Keez-Weez” or “Tay-Wow Pumps”? Most people are simply scared of looking stupid or being embarrassed. Clearly and proudly labeling a hitherto unknown face will add so much enduring happiness to your relationship. And also maybe some longterm confusion.

Reward silence with a sweet treat

At the end of the day, most people are like little terriers. Simply rewarding their base reactions with a little “sweet treat” like a Ferrero Rocher will keep them in line. This will hopefully create a positive reinforcement system, refraining from interruptions during an episode or feature.

Alternatively, whenever the question “Who is that actor? I know them from something…” pops up, you can respond by loudly yelling, “Down! Stop, down! Stop. No!” or put them in a cage with the blanket over the top so they think it’s night. Guess they’ll have to identify actors in their dreams!

Watch everything alone

Refuse to watch anything with your significant other. Constantly dodge their invitation to see a film or catch up on the latest season. Instead, binge everything quietly on your own, knowing you are superior in your ability to wait until the credits. That way your reactions to the names finally listed, ranging from “Knew it!” to “Huh, I didn’t recognize them!” can be celebrated quietly without further interruption. You are truly the cinema master now.

With the above tips, you’ll be just as focused as that one guy in that thing. You know, the one I’m talking about. That guy in that famous movie. Super focused guy, always focused on everything. He’s on a road trip with his brother? Also his brother is famous, who was that again? He’s super famous. But he’s young in this. One of them won an Oscar or a Golden Globe or something in this. You’ll be as concentrated as him, whatever his name is. Begins with S? Or a D? Maybe an M? Tip of my tongue. He was in that movie I saw last month, the bad one.

Hang on, let me just look it up.