when i watch old movies i’m constantly surprised by how much acting has improved. not that the acting in the classics is bad, it’s just often kind of artificial? it’s acting-y. it’s like stage acting.
it took some decades for the arts of acting and filmmaking to catch up to the potential that was in movies all along; stuff like microexpressions and silences and eyes, oh man people are SO much better at acting with their eyes than they were in the 40′s, or even the 70′s.
the performances we take for granted in adventure movies and comedies now would’ve blown the critics’ socks off in the days of ‘casablanca’.
there’s a weird period in film where you can see the transition happening. right around the fifties, I think. the example my prof used when i learned about it was marlon brando in “a streetcar named desire” – he was using stanislavski acting methods and this new hyper-realistic style and most or all of his costars were still using the old, highly-stylized way of acting. it makes it way more obvious how false it is.
i even noticed it in ‘the sting’, which was 1973. i actually think they used it on purpose to get the viewer fished in by the second layer of the con; the grifters at the bookie’s were acting like they were acting, and the grifters playing the feds were acting for reals. if you’re used to setting your suspension of disbelief at the first set’s level, then the second set are gonna blow right past you.
or possibly the guys playing the grifters playing the feds just happened to be using the realistic style for their own reason, and it coincidentally made the plot twist work better. but i like to think it was deliberate.
i was thinking about this again, and when you know what to look for, it’s really obvious: old movies are stage acting, not movie acting. it just didn’t really occur to anyone to make the camera bend to the actors, rather than the other way around. just image search old movie screenshots and clips and gifs, you’ll see it. the way people march up to their mark and stand there, the way they deliver their lines rather than inhabiting the character. the way they’re framed in an unmoving center-stage.
this is a charming little tableau, quirky and unexpected, but it’s a tableau. it lives in a box.
now, i usually watch action movies, and i didn’t think it was fair to compare an action movie with what appears to be an indoor sort of story, but i do watch some comedy tv. so i looked for a brooklyn 99 gif with a similar framing, intending to point out that the camera moves, and the characters aren’t stuck inside the box. but i couldn’t even find the framing. they literally never have all the characters in the same plane, facing the camera, interacting only within the staging area. even when they’re not traveling, they’re moving around, and they treat things outside the ‘stage’ as real and interact with them, even if it’s only to stare in delighted horror.
as for action, it took a while for the movies to figure out what, exactly they wanted to show us, and how to act it. here’s a comedy punch:
here, also, is a comedy punch:
the first one looks like a stage direction written on a script. the second one looks like your friends horsing around and being jerks to each other. the first one is just not believable. the physics doesn’t work. the reaction is fakey. everyone’s stiff. even the movement of the camera is kind of wooden. the second one looks real right down to the cringe of his shoulder, and the camera feels startled too.
i’m not saying this to dis old movies, i’m just fascinated and impressed by how much the art has advanced!
I’m going to bed, but I also want to say that I think, without actually bothering to explore it and make sure, that there’s been a similar shift in comics, probably related to the shift in acting/camera work. And I think you still see remnants of old “stage acting” comics in the three-panel style set ups (you might still see it in long form comics, but you’d probably call it bad composition)
Now can someone explain why people in old films talked Like That
Y’all, THAT’S HOW PEOPLE TALKED.
Seriously, I used to work in a sound studio, and one series of projects required us to listen to LOTS of old audio recordings. Not of anything special – just people talking.
AND THEY TALKED LIKE THAT.
It was so fucking wild to hear just a couple of people being like,
“WELL HI THERE JEANINE, HOW ARE YOU TODAY?”
“OH, NOT TOO BAD, JOE, THOUGH MY HUSBAND’S BEEN AWAY ON BUSINESS FOR A FEW WEEKS AND I MISS HIM SOMETHING TERRIBLE.”
“WELL IT’S A HARD THING, JEANINE, BUT YOU’LL GET THROUGH IT.”
“WELL I SUPPOSE I’VE GOT TO, HAVEN’T I JOE?”
All in that piercing, strident, rapid-fire style we associate with the films of the era. If you’ve watched lots of old movies you can imagine the above in that speech pattern.
I don’t know if people talked like that because it was in movies but I suspect it’s the other way around.
Same goes for the UK – When they made the TV series The Hour, set in the 1950s, they had to tell the very well spoken, privately educated Dominic West to tone down his imitation of a 1950s newsreader because being accurate would have sounded to a 2011 TV audience as if he was doing a parody. When you watch Brief Encounter they’re not speaking like that because they can’t act, they’re speaking like that because it was the norm on screen. It now sounds unnatural because it’s not the norm any more.
Obviously there were people with regional accents and who didn’t speak in a heightened manner, but they didn’t get to be on TV or in movies unless they were villains. (And usually the villains were putting it on, like Richard Attenborough in Brighton Rock. Sure, he was Richard Attenborough, but he was brought up in the Midlands, and by the on-screen standards of the time, that was common.)
Even the Queen’s very posh accent has changed over the last 50 years and become “more common" – check out newsreel footage etc for proof – and recordings of her father are almost like someone from a foreign country (well, it is the past).
There is, for many film historians/critics, an actual turning point from mannered, theatrical, or “overplayed” acting on screen to naturalistic/American Method realism on screen. It happens in the 1954 movie On the Waterfront, during a traveling shot in which Marlon Brando’s character and Eva Marie Saint’s character are walking together. Eva Marie Saint accidentally drops her glove in the middle of the scene. Marlon Brando instinctively picks it up as his character, and continues the dialog, all the while playing with the glove–turning it about, trying it on, etc. Eva Marie Saint stuck with him, never broke, and the director didn’t call “cut.”
Before that scene in that movie, if an actor dropped a prop by accident, they would have re-shot the scene–because Brando mostly disappeared out of frame as he bent down to pick up the glove, and (as is explained above) movies were framed to keep the people in the scene in the frame. I
t’s a pretty famous scene in movies because Brando’s character doesn’t give the glove back, but instead uses it to amplify what the two characters are experiencing, naturally and without artifice. It is, for all intents and purposes, the exact moment that screen acting changed.
Okay, but here’s the thing about television specifically: given the size of TV screens when they first came out? Stage acting was the only thing that could be READ. Watch Star Trek: TOS on a modern screen and it looks absurdly overacted. Film of the same era is not, and yet the TV is.
And that’s not a fault of the actors; they were all very capable of naturalistic film acting (yes, even Shatner) – as the later movies would bear out. It’s because they were acting for the small screen, not the big one.
Stage acting and stage makeup is what it is because people are far enough away from the stage that you have to cake on the makeup garishly and exaggerate the hell out of your for it to be VISIBLE. And in early television? Yeah, those constraints actually very much applied. You could move the camera, sure, but the quantity of visual information you could send was just damned limited.
Here’s another example of that.
Watch some Classic Dr Who. You may or may not notice it without watching for it, but every shot of the TARDIS is taken from the same angle.
The TARDIS was, at that time, a stage set. The camera was behind the fourth (Sixth?) wall. It was fixed. And most TV sets were built like this. They had a specific fourth wall and everything was filmed from that angle.
Fast forward to the new series, and you’ll see that the TARDIS is being filmed from different angles all the time, including following the actor around.
Three things have changed:
1. Cameras have become much smaller.
2. Set building for TV has developed as an art. Those early sets were built by people who were trained to build stage sets.
3. Overall technological improvement resulting in things being cheaper.
The TARDIS set that was just retired? Each of its walls was designed to slide out. So you could put the camera anywhere you wanted. Presumably this is the case with the new one too. They couldn’t imagine doing that back in the day. Nor could they afford the complexities of a set like that.
It’s actually my opinion that TV has very much matured as an art form…this century. This decade. We are doing and seeing things that couldn’t be done ten years ago, twenty. Heck, even five.
Going back to speech patterns for a moment – I was a young child in the 80s, so my memories of the norms of the time period are limited (especially because I was incredibly sheltered), but the books I read at the time and the popular movies of the time all have this kind of – whimsical, sardonic speech pattern going on. Think John Waters dialogue.
I always thought it was kind of stylized. But then I ended up in a weird part of YouTube one night and found someone’s home video of just walking aroud a 7-11 convenience store at midnight talking to people in Orlando, Florida. Just trying out their new camcorder for shits and giggles, talking to other customers, talking to the cashier, etc. And you know what? They all talked like a goddamn John Waters movie. It was the weirdest thing, like I was watching outtakes from The Breakfast Club or Say Anything. I expected one of the Cusacks to walk into frame any second.
Anyway, so I think it’s super cool how human speech and interaction shifts over time, and if you’re living through the shift, you don’t really notice it as it happens.
I like to watch silent movies but i don’t know why? Is it because there not that much action and noise in them?
ok so, for people who have seen the LOTR films but not read the book I’d like to share some things that are 100% canon:
– Sam Gamgee uses the word ‘boner’. In a song. Several times.
– he also writes a poem that contains the phrase ‘golden showers’. (this is actually in the extended cut but they changed it to ‘silver showers’)
– at one point after he’s defeated Saruman steals Merry’s weed & runs away
– Denethor has actual mindreading powers
– so does Faramir (but he’s a nice person so they manifest more as heightened empathy)
– Gandalf ALSO has mindreading powers but for entirely different reasons. he reads Frodo’s mind while he’s sleeping at one point, casually reveals this to Frodo, and Frodo’s just like ‘huh neat’
– rather than bravely drawing the orcs away from Frodo like in the film, in the book Merry and Pippin just kind of, panic, bolt into the woods, and run directly into the orcs’ arms.
– Merry then draws his sword and hacks a bunch of orc hands off
– Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli name themselves ‘the three hunters’ before setting off to rescue Merry and Pippin because they are dorks
– they also improvise a whole song about how much they loved Boromir
– Aragorn does not initially tell the hobbits he’s a friend of Gandalf bcos he wanted them to like him for who he is. im not kidding. he openly admits to this.
– i feel like this is fairly well known but, if you didn’t know Frodo is 50 years old and looks 33
– hobbits PROBABLY age different to humans so looking 33 in practice means he looks about 21
– in accordance with the above Pippin is the equivalent of a 16-17 year old human
– Pippin can pass for a human child and looks like ‘a boy of nine summers’
– this isn’t that weird i just think it’s really cute: Pippin has 3 older sisters and their names are Pearl, Pimpernel and Pervinca.
– Sam & Rosie have 13 children. One of them is called Goldilocks.
– Frodo has another best friend. His name is Fatty. He stayed behind in the Shire to cover for Frodo’s absence and ends up getting jailed for months by Saruman’s forces.
– Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, who steals spoons, is also jailed by Saruman. (She whacked one of his goons with an umbrella.)
– Grima Wormtongue MAY have eaten an entire hobbit
– Saruman invades the Shire and turns it into a communist hell police state.
– the whole Tom Bombadil thing is common knowledge but if you haven’t read the book i guarantee you he is weirder than you think.
– to give just 2 examples: 1) the whole tom bombadil arc provides the explanation as to how Eowyn and Merry were able to dispatch the Witch King
– and 2) for unknown reasons sleeping in his house causes everyone to have horrible nightmares… EXCEPT for Sam who has a peaceful and dreamless night. no explanation offered for any of this.
considering that Pippin’s dad is named Paladin, you fucking know he claimed the right to name each and every one of his children and his poor wife just begged him to choose a different letter to start with
also aragorn openly admitting to being fucking lonely and just wanting friends is treated like a weirdly funny joke in the book by the way that some of the hobbits react to it, and frodo also proceeds very soon after to basically tell aragorn that he’s pretty foul-looking but seems a good guy
yes to the above & a small correction + one i forgot:
– Merry does in fact gift Saruman the weed. It’s the bag it’s in that Saruman steals and runs off with. (also give that Merry stole the weed from Saruman’s personal supply in the first place i can’t say i blame him)
– Aragorn literally has magical healing powers. i don’t think they ever explain this in the films but he does very much have healing powers.
– the Ents are able to tear down the entire wall around Isengard, but can for whatever reason not make a single dent in the tower of Orthanc itself
– several riders knew that Merry was there and coming with them to the fields of Pelennor even though he was forbidden to do so, and they just sort of shrug and don’t tell the king
– GOD Merry and the riders: they don’t just shrug they straight up act like he isn’t there. to the point where if he talks they just pretend like they don’t hear him. this hurts his feelings.
– Merry doesn’t recognise Eowyn until she reveals herself to the witch-king. it could be that her disguise is just that good but Eowyn herself seems to be kind of surprised that he doesn’t recognise her so it’s possible he’s just a dumbass.
– Pippin goes all in for a suicide mission at the Black Gate because he thinks that Frodo and Sam are captured and/or dead and everything is lost anyway, so he just decides that if he’s going to die, he’s going to die fighting, and then he almost gets squashed by a troll
– Gimli found Pippin underneath said troll after the battle, only because Pippin’s fucking foot was sticking out, and probably had a bit of a panicky moment while he was MOVING the troll to drag Pippin out of there
– i can’t believe i forgot about the troll: Pippin single-handedly slays a troll & then its body falls on him and he’s just lying there like ‘well i guess this is how i die’
– Gimli 100% thought pippin was dead when he found him and was so distraught he almost ripped his beard out
– There’s also Aragorn making the Mouth of Sauron flee with terror because he glared at him. Not a joke. (An argument can be made here for Aragorn having psychic powers)
Or intimidation proficiency
If I may add…
– Legolas falling out of a tree and screaming.
– Legolas dropping hie bow. And screaming.
– Legolas just screamed. A lot.
– Legolas singing a song that he only knew half of.
– “Do what you will in your madness but I wish to see no eyes!”
– Legolas straight up walking away after a battle and singing
– Legolas sneaking Gimli into Valinor like contraband Twizzlers into the movie theater.
– everybody rags on Frodo for being a dumbass at the Prancing Pony, but listen, Merry knew they were on a top secret mission carrying the Ring and that the forces of Sauron were actively searching for them and not far away and he still decided it would be a good idea to just go out for awalk, at night in a strange city, all by himself, just because he fucking felt like some fresh air
Ok TO BE FAIR to Merry, unlike the others he hadn’t actually SEEN the Nazgul at this point (just glimpsed one from the other side of the river) and as a result doesn’t understand just how much danger they’re in.
I found my copy of the books a few days ago… might be time for a reread…
don’t forget when saruman went evil and told gandalf he promoted himself from saruman the white to “saruman of many colours” gandalf was like “but i liked white better”,,,,,he legit said that that was his rebuttal
Ok but what about when legolas, gimli and Aragorn are tracking merry and pippin and legolas just watches as Aragorn rolls around in the fucking dirt and when he’s like “there are a lot of riders on horses coming this way!!” legolas is basically like, yea I know I’ve seen them for awhile there are 105 and their leader is tall LEGOLAS
Let me clarify that nothing tragic or untoward has occurred recently in Hawaii to my knowledge.
But it came to my attention recently how the US annexed Hawaii and ooooh boy I wasn’t ready.
See, I’ve had 12 years of grade school where I learned history, part of it in honors classes, then bunches of years in college that led to a bachelors degree in history. I have almost an entire ceiling high bookshelf full of history, archaeology, and anthropology books. Hell, you can’t graduate from high school where I’m from without taking multiple US history courses.
And at NO POINT did ANYONE tell me how Hawaii became a state.
All we ever got was Hawaii Became a State. Shit, most of the time I didn’t even think to question it. I do recall a couple times thinking “Yeah, but how DID that happen?” I think I may have even asked once and had a teacher basically shrug and move on to Pearl Harbor. Like…what?
So for those of you unaware (Hawaiian folks probably laughing sarcastically in the distance at this point) Hawaii used to have a hereditary monarchy.
BUT THEN
(I tried to find that gif of Powhatan from Pocahantas talking about the pale visitors but I couldn’t find it so just pretend it’s here.)
The US comes in like “Ooooh pretty” and like, you know how racists are worried about Illegal Immigrants ™ coming in and voting and taking over that way? Yeahhhhh, turns out there’s a reason for that. Because the US government legit actually did that. Twice. (The other time was in Texas loooll*cries*Ilivehere*)
Okay, so I’m not an expert on this and most of my info is from various wikipedia pages on Hawai’i’s last monarchs, but from what I gather, the US starts moving in. Americans start relocating to Hawaii, then they used an armed militia to force King Kalakaua AT GUNPOINT to adopt the Bayonet Constitution which stripped the monarchy of its power. Quote from wikipedia:
These anti-monarchists, known as the Hawaiian League, were mainly white men of North American origin, and they quickly appointed themselves as government officials, providing themselves with almost complete control of the government.
Not Pictured Above Because Tumblr Won’t Let Me Honestly Guys I Tried: King Kalakaua, majestic monarch of Hawaii. Among other things, he ended a ban on the hula, which had been outlawed do to American Protestant immigrants being themselves. He brought it back as a celebration of Hawaiian culture.
After his death, he was succeeded by his sister Queen Liliuokalani, who among other things was an awesome composer. Her most famous composition was Aloha O’e, the melody of which I guarantee you’ve heard at least once. She decided, you know what, fuck the Bayonet Constitution. Approximately all of native Hawaiians agreed with her, because seriously, fuck the Bayonet Constitution and fuck the fuckhats who wrote it.
But then the US remembered it has a military and no joke – the United States Marine Corps showed up and overthrew the government. Queen Liliuokalani was the last monarch of Hawaii. A short while later, Hawaii was given a choice, stay a territory or become a state. Being independent wasn’t an option.
So basically, Hawaii is a state because the United States military staged a coup and overthrew the government.
The revolutionaries established the Republic of Hawaii, but their ultimate goal was the annexation of the islands to the United States, which finally occurred in 1898.
Even the President at the time, Grover Cleveland thought this seemed a bit screwy, so he launched an investigation into the legality of the coup, which found “United States diplomatic and military representatives had abused their authority and were responsible for the change in government.” Grover Cleveland later stated "Substantial wrong has thus been done which a due regard for our national character as well as the rights of the injured people requires we should endeavor to repair the monarchy.“
To which the Senate, full of Pro-Overthrow the Government of Hawaii-ahem, I mean, Pro-Annexation representatives basically responded by giving Grover Cleveland and the entire native population of Hawaii the finger.
And of course, none of this is ever mentioned in any US history class I have ever taken. Wouldn’t want to make the American government look bad, now would we? Wouldn’t want those fertile young minds thinking it’s cool to question authority figures. It also puts the whole Lets Nuke the Fuck Out of Japan For Bombing Pearl Harbor thing into perspective. We, as a nation, got fucking pissed enough to unleash nuclear warfare onto the world over land that never properly belonged to us in the first place.
Hawaii, you got screwed and I am so so sorry. And I’m sorry that I, person with a bachelors in history, never knew.
Also I’m sorry if I got stuff wrong. I’ve just unearthed this mine of suck recently.
My talented friend Mercy wrote this poem detailing her experiences as a Samoan American. She can be found on IG and Twitter, and here’s a bonus link to one of her many spoken word pieces.
I would love to quote from this thread but everything in there is so deliciously fucking quotable.
I dunno, I’m rather fond of “Most men believe themselves to be insightful speakers of truth to power, when in reality they don’t even pass the Turing Test.”
Every inch of this is brilliance.
“Weaponized mediocrity” is the best thing I have ever read.
You know what, I’m calling it here, and I’m calling it now.
2017 is worse than 2016.
2016 was worse for celebrity deaths (thus far-it took at least 4 of my favorite people, probably more) but in terms of general bullshit and shenanigans, I stand by it. 2017 sucks worse than 2016.
I lost my beloved car in a gnarly wreck I still have not psychologically recovered from, I lost my job, and I’m losing my apartment. So I’m literally losing every single thing I had going for me in life. Sure I still have my dog and two cats, but now I won’t even be able to feed them myself. And yeah, if it comes down to it, my mom will gladly step in and buy them food, but the point is, I can’t even do it myself. I’m about to be 28 and I’m losing every scrap of my independence that I’ve worked so hard to achieve. And I’m supposed to feel bad for my boss feeling bad when he’s the one who decided to lay me off in the first place?
My 10 year high school reunion was this year. I obviously didn’t go. Partially because I don’y ever want to see most of those people again, but partially because I felt so pathetic because I was a full time AP student with a bright future ahead of me, and I’m a receptionist and still can’t seem to get into grad school. I’ve had to sit there and watch as my fellow students became doctors, Disney animators, scientists, got married, moved to large cities, traveled the world and I’m stuck here doing nothing with my life that I wanted to.
I kept telling myself though that it’s okay, it’s fine that I haven’t achieved my goals yet, because hey, I’ve got an apartment, I can feed myself and my animals, I’ve got job that pays my bills. Now I have none of that.
I feel pathetic and worthless and all those things my ex made me feel. After he dumped me, I kept, I’m worth so much more than this, I deserve so much better. And he thought he was so much smarter than everyone else, but he had lost his job and moved in with his parents, and what kind of hot shit does he think he is. The only thing consoling me in the face of his abandonment was that I had a job and an apartment and my independence. That I’d worked hard to get where I was. Except now I’m at rock bottom all over again.
My greatest regret was never telling him how much I hate him. How angry I am. For listening to the people who told me to just let it go. And now I’m right where he is and he’s gone and I can’t. I have nothing. Only this empty lack of closure and a bunch of cardboard boxes to pack what’s left of my livelihood.
And people keep telling me it’s going to be okay and I just want to scream at them to shut up. JUST SHUT UP. First of all, you don’t know that. You do not know, you have no possible way of knowing that it’s all going to be okay, that I’ll get a decent job with a great supervisor who DOESN’T micromanage me, who doesn’t make me feel incompetent, who doesn’t treat me like crap, and I’ll get it in the next few weeks, that I won’t have to couch surf for months, that I won’t have to go back to retail, that I will get into grad school this time around, that I won’t commit suicide before all that happens, that I won’t run into my ex in the meantime and have him realize how terrible my life is right now. You. Don’t. Know. And even if you did, even if you could give me an exact date on when Everything Will Finally Not Suck in my life (a time which has literally never happened in the 28 terrible godforsaken years I have been stuck on this miserable piece of shit plane of existence) that doesn’t change the fact that things are NOT okay RIGHT NOW. Things SUCK right now. Things have sucked. Things have always sucked. And now they suck worse than ever. I’m losing everything of value I had, my job, my home, and my independence, all that the same time. Things are not okay, things are terrible. So fucking let me be unhappy. My life is falling apart. I’m ALLOWED to be unhappy.
He did it again!
He’s got this kid staying with him, because some killers are after her. He tucks her into bed, then starts brooding over this other kid he bonded with as a vampire, and he changes out of his regular 90s street clothes, which look like this:
And as soon as she was asleep, changed into his Vampire Broody Clothes in order to decant some blood into wine bottles, because this is totally an appropriate activity when a young child is literally less than 100 feet away from you, possibly not that sound asleep. Especially when you’ve been warned that she likes to wander off AND you’ve seen for yourself how precocious and strong-willed she is.
But the weirdest part is he changed back into his street clothes to sleep on the couch. Maybe he didn’t want to disturb the girl by running in and grabbing some pajamas.
1. No one actually cares how fast your windshield wipers are going.
2. You aren’t required to make a right turn on a red light, even if it’s clear, even if the person behind you honks.
3. And they always honk. People will honk even when you think you’re doing all the right things. Or you’ll make a silly mistake and they’ll honk at that too. My mom honks back and flips them off. My dad smiles and waves. My sister cranks her music and pretends she never heard them honk. Know that it’ll happen eventually and make a plan ahead of time for how you’ll cope.
4. The person who has been unintentionally following you for a while also feels a bit anxious that you might think they’re following you.
5. If you’re getting too anxious, pull over in a safe area. It’s fine to make time to recollect yourself.
6. When I first learned to drive, I only listened to one tape (yes, it was a tape. and it was the Lion King soundtrack). Having familiar, repeating music allowed me to keep something consistent while focusing on the factors that are changing around me.
7. It’s easiest to tactile,auditory, or vocal stim while driving. I attach fabric or stim toys (like a Tangle) to my steering wheel so I can rub my fingers against it, I listen to my favorite song on repeat, or I scream out my latest vocal stim.
In regards to 7: my mom bought a steering wheel cover with an interesting texture because she didn’t like the feeling of the wheel, so this is a good idea for anyone who wants something to touch without distracting from holding onto the wheel. Just be careful not to let anything distract your attention from the road!
It’s ok to turn down the radio while you’re trying to find your way. I don’t kow why the internet thinks this is stupid and hilarious. Reducing distraction while feeling anxious, distracted, etc, is a good thing.
Public radio at the bottom of the dial (if you have that kind of car radio) is better for driving than pop stations at the top of the dial. If you have internet radio, may I suggest world-renowned XPN.org from the University of Pennsylvania (affiliated with NPR)?
If you can’t find someone to teach you, try a driving instructor. They sit next to you and have a brake pedal on their side, so they can stop you if you get into trouble.
Highways are EASY. You’re much less likely to get into an accident on a highway than small streets.
Iff you can’t fiddle with directions on your phone, Garmin makes excellent, affordable GPS devices that don’t need a special service and charge with an adapter that fits into your lighter, or by USB.
You have every right to not move your car until everyone inside has a seatbelt on. Remember, you can be held legally responsible if someone is injured in your car.
Practice driving and parkig in big office or shopping center parking lots after they close!
NOTE: this is way longer than I meant it to be – sorry.
I know my driving anxiety is different, because it’s PTSD related, but I’m not a fan of the “Highways are easy” advice. One of my wrecks was on the highway, for one. And two, in my area, wrecks on the highway are common and often involve serious injuries. We had something around 4 fatalities in a week a few months ago. Yes, statistically highway wrecks are less common, but when they do happen they tend to be much more serious because of the speeds you’re going. Just saying “highways are easy” is a little dismissive and not very helpful to me.
My advice would be this:
Deep breaths. If you’re having to merge, or let people on the highway, or at a major highway intersection, consciously take deep breaths.
Where I am, it’s generally understood that the left lane is for “passing” ie. the fast lane. If you don’t want to go the speed of sound, stay out of there. That being said, I like that lane, because typically, on ramps are on the right, so the only traffic you really have to worry about is the middle lane. If you’re in the right lane, you can keep to the speed limit or go under without people getting mad. That’s basically what that lane is for. Just be mindful of people coming onto the highway, and you should be fine. Don’t be afraid to go a bit under the speed limit if the speed scares you. If people get pissy because you’re doing 55 mph in a 60 zone, they can go around.
Practice highway driving by getting on at one on-ramp, staying on the highway (in the right lane) for about a mile or so, even just to the nearest exit lane and get off. Increase the time you spend on it until you start feeling more comfortable.
Avoid rush hour. Usually this is around 8-10 in the morning and 4-6 in the evening (16:00-18:00.) This means everyone is going to or leaving work at the same time. There’s more traffic and people are irritated.
I find road rage is worse in the evening. People are tired and they’re stressed and they’ve had a bad day and they get on the road and want to get home RIGHT NOW and hate you and every single other driver on the road who stands between them and their sweat pants and beer. It’s human and it’s understandable, but it’s also very dangerous when you have dozens or even hundreds of people like this on the road at the same time. I’ll take the left lane in the morning, but stay to the right when I’m going home for this reason.
One piece of advice to take with a MASSIVE grain of salt. The highway will have fewer people later at night. Most people are at home by this point, so it can be less terrifying to drive at night. BUT be wary of the hours when the bars close. People do drive home drunk. Usually last call in the US is around 2-ish. So stay away from the road if you can around that time.
18-wheelers/trailers/semis/whatever you call them where you live are the absolute devil. They’re huge, they are always going too fast, they are incapable of staying in their own damn lanes, and I’m pretty sure a research group discovered a few years back that a large number of truck drivers are on meth. Just avoid them if you can. (You can’t. But try.) I try to get past them and not be right next to them. But when in doubt, just let them have what they want and stay out of their way. Again, deep breaths.
If you feel safer, and you can get to your destination this way, there is absolutely no shame whatsoever in taking the service road the entire way. If you have a totem or something that you feel is good luck or it’s presence calms you, bring it. Same thing if it starts raining. No shame at all in pulling over and trying to wait it out.
This bit of advice might make things worse for some people, but I want to mention it anyway. Ever since the wreck that put me in the hospital (not on the highway-drunk driver ran a light) I have a ridiculously cuddly stuffed Darth Vader in my front seat. If I get in a wreck again and have to go to the hospital, he’s coming with me. Knowing he’s there and that I’ll have something to hold if I’m ever in an ambulance again makes me feel better.
If you are in a wreck, and you are in the slightest bit hurt GO TO THE HOSPITAL. Yes, I know, medical bills are awful. BUT, if you are even on the fence at all about if you need to be checked out, GO. And if the wreck was not your fault, the other party’s insurance will be responsible for your medical bills. Check with your car insurance (YOU ARE LEGALLY OBLIGATED TO HAVE CAR INSURANCE.) and check and see if you have “uninsured motorist coverage.” What this means is, like in my case, if you get in a wreck with someone who doesn’t have insurance, your insurance provider will cover your medical bills, even though you weren’t responsible. My bills came to about $5000 (for a 45 minute hospital stay wtf?!?!??) but Progressive is covering every cent of that.
It’s a good idea to keep an emergency contact, your medical insurance card, and any relevant medical information like allergies, etc. with you when you drive, just in case.
I know all the info is scary, but I feel like if you have your bases covered, and know what you need if you’re in a wreck, it’s better than not knowing how to respond if it happens, feel me?
Above all: you are better off getting there late than in a body bag.
This is true for every single person on the highway, so never ever let another driver make you feel guilty for driving safe. People on the highway are mad at their bosses, their GPS for sending them the wrong way, the construction, and life in general. Absolutely none of that is your fault, your problem, or your responsibility.
The Paradox Machine 