Real life imitates art?

March 24, 2011 11:30 AM

Pontypool is Canadian director's Bruce McDonald zombie (?) flick about language virus. In real life, Toronto's Global News Mark McAllister suffers a bizarre on-air episode on Wednesday, reminiscent of the CBS Serene Branson.
posted by SylviaAspevig (35 comments total)

Third video is not available, says YouTube.
posted by mrnutty at 11:39 AM on March 24, 2011

I feel bad for professionals who have difficult medical moments while live on television. It has to be terrifying.
posted by hippybear at 11:39 AM on March 24, 2011 [2 favorites]

It sounds like the UN is getting itself involved in a very heavy bertation.
posted by rusty at 11:44 AM on March 24, 2011

I submit that about seventy percent of the things I see on TV news could be in Youtube videos justly titled as "Reporter makes nonsensical comments on air. "
posted by ricochet biscuit at 11:46 AM on March 24, 2011 [4 favorites]

I've never head anything described as a 'medical moment' before.
posted by delmoi at 11:55 AM on March 24, 2011

The hues of the garbans of today.
posted by SmileyChewtrain at 11:58 AM on March 24, 2011

I've never head anything described as a 'medical moment' before.

cf. "Wardrobe malfunction".
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:58 AM on March 24, 2011

TV reporters speaking mysterious words on television? I'm sure there are people who will translate it into reptilian and tell you they are recipes for human flesh gumbo.
posted by longsleeves at 11:58 AM on March 24, 2011

Kittens give Morbo gas.
posted by ego at 12:05 PM on March 24, 2011 [2 favorites]

The first link was borken for me. Here's the Pontypool trailer on youtube.
posted by dammitjim at 12:12 PM on March 24, 2011

The ability to speak is a weird thing that can go at any time, it seems.

Back in 1996, I was working a late shift in a computer lab at Johns Hopkins U., just outside where a student was shot by another student. I heard popping sounds and thought someone was setting off fireworks, but after one of us checked it out and found out that there was a gunshot victim who was unconscious and bleeding, we closed down the lab.

I headed out to where the guy was laid out on a concrete path leading to the quad. He was being administered CPR and otherwise trying to be kept alive by these two guys I knew, one of whom I was friends with at the time. Once the ambulance showed up and they took the victim away, those two guys looked devastated, obviously from the shock of what they had been through.

I tried saying something, anything to try to comfort my friend, and a literal stream of babble came out of my mouth. I could not form a coherent sentence, as much as I tried. The speech center was broken and I couldn't do anything about it.

Watching the YT clips, watching someone try to speak and not be able to form words, while being puzzled about it, really hit me. It's like you know everything you're saying is utterly wrong, while having almost no control at all over what you're saying. It's scary when your brain rewires itself on you without warning.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:13 PM on March 24, 2011 [9 favorites]

...and then you need to eat people.
posted by dammitjim at 12:17 PM on March 24, 2011

Video not available. Available. Avail. No avail. Hopeless. Hope less. Less hope. Lost hope. Hope. Hype. Hyper. Piper. Pipe. Pipe. Pint. Pint. Punt. Pont.

Pontypool.
posted by Shepherd at 12:17 PM on March 24, 2011 [5 favorites]

mrnutty: "Third video is not available, says YouTube."

It's there, it just won't play nice with the embedded video button.

dammitjim: "The first link was borken for me. Here's the Pontypool trailer on youtube. "

I also did a Pontypool post last month with links to the movie on YouTube for anybody who wants to see it.
posted by Rhaomi at 12:18 PM on March 24, 2011 [3 favorites]

[previously]

Canadian broadcaster + paraphasia != Pontypool, unless there was face eating involved.
posted by benzenedream at 12:20 PM on March 24, 2011

It made me wonder if he was a victim of a teleprompter on the fritz.
posted by ardgedee at 12:26 PM on March 24, 2011

PARP?
posted by pajamazon at 12:31 PM on March 24, 2011 [9 favorites]

The newscasters remind me of this much more than Canadian horror films.
posted by mysterpigg at 12:31 PM on March 24, 2011

It seems that Angelique has a rare case of brake fluid... bran fluid... Brain Fever! Or what we call in Austria, Kopfgeschlagen!
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 12:37 PM on March 24, 2011

Ron Burgundy: You stay classy, San Diego. I'm Ron Burgundy?
Ed Harken: Dammit. Who typed a question mark on the Teleprompter?
posted by Astro Zombie at 1:38 PM on March 24, 2011 [2 favorites]

I'll just leave this here: Transient ischemic attack

(...with sincere apologies to those of you (us) who will be spending every moment for the next year waiting anxiously for the signs—any sign—of an attack.)
posted by tapesonthefloor at 1:41 PM on March 24, 2011

I wondered if, in the guy's case, it might not just be a case of a problem with a teleprompter, too. But the woman looked scared to death at the words that were coming out of her own mouth, and her voice grew teary...that was hard for me to watch, honestly.
posted by misha at 2:22 PM on March 24, 2011

I wonder if this is something that happens more often than we might suspect, and the only reason we don't know about it is that it happens when people are alone.

If I were on my commute and this were to happen to me, and the only symptom is the paraphasia, I wouldn't have any idea it had happened because I'm alone in the car for a half-hour with nobody to speak to.

This assumes that the effect isn't permanent, of course.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 2:34 PM on March 24, 2011

No, not a teleprompter error. Listen to him hesitate his way through " The UN -- muh - mission -- has whole received support from all patterns -- in the -- hues -- of the garbens [sic] of today." He's an experienced reporter who should be able to deal with a teleprompter problem by saying something that might stumble a little, but which would use real words he's familiar with from all the reporting he's done on this story, not this word salad.
posted by maudlin at 2:40 PM on March 24, 2011

But the woman looked scared to death at the words that were coming out of her own mouth, and her voice grew teary...that was hard for me to watch, honestly.

There is perhaps a feeling of helplessness there, too, that adds to the terror.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:53 PM on March 24, 2011

I get something similar with migraines, I can't read and write with any meaning, and with bad ones its diffcult to speak lucidly and I have to concentrate to understand people. I would typically have the visual aura and maybe some numbface before which at least is a warning but it must be horrible to lose it in those circumstances. It surprises people how fast mine come one, but I can go from being lucid and usually quite energetic (because they usually happen when I'm tense or under pressure) to being useless in minutes. So being in this situation would be a real possibility.
posted by biffa at 4:03 PM on March 24, 2011 [1 favorite]

The weirdest thing about this to me is that I really have to pay close attention to tell whether a news anchor is speaking gibberish or not.
posted by cmoj at 4:30 PM on March 24, 2011

Media closes ranks to defend its professionalism. News at 11.
posted by stevil at 4:52 PM on March 24, 2011

Damn it, Netflix...you're letting me down.
posted by JaredSeth at 5:43 PM on March 24, 2011

Media closes ranks to defend its professionalism. News at 11.

Recently I was sternly reprimanded on a metafilter Dan Savage thread for "mangling the cliche" for using the cliche "News at 11": "for fuck's sake, it is film at eleven".

But just the other night I heard in conversation someone randomly say: "News at 11." I reckon it is a generational thing, also depending upon which television station you watched years ago.

Our current generation is growing up with a 24 hour news cycle, and they now have an opportunity to closely observe the evolution of a Dead Metaphor.
posted by ovvl at 5:45 PM on March 24, 2011

I loved this movie after watching it from using the links upthread. Both stunning critique and an outright howler monkey of a B-movie at the same time! Fantastic recommendation - I'm glad I came across this.

I'd love to see this idea of infectious language done again in another horror setting. The best parts were when the characters were beginning to be infected.
posted by Lipstick Thespian at 7:10 PM on March 24, 2011

PARP?

He come at me with his foreign gibberish.
posted by dobbs at 11:15 PM on March 24, 2011

When I woke up Tuesday I was functionally blind. If you haven't had a "medical moment" involving your brain deciding something isn't right so it's time to punt, just wait. It's fun!

For values of fun equal to holding onto the floor so you don't fall off the Earth.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 12:13 AM on March 25, 2011

Alright, this is just getting creepy now.
posted by Rhaomi at 12:45 PM on March 30, 2011

And the inevitable conspiracy theories arise...

But facts rarely get in the way of a good conspiracy theory.

“Conspiracy theory is pornography for lazy researchers,” notes Chip Berlet, senior research analyst with the Boston-based firm Political Research Associates. “It’s basically people who don’t bother to read into the social science and history and political struggles of a society deep enough to understand that things are very complicated.”

posted by warbaby at 7:20 AM on April 6, 2011