Idk if you hang out with people a lot and cultivate good banter then most movie dialog is subpar in comparison. Just got to step up your game friend 🤷

This may one of the reasons Alien works so well as a movie. The actors were often directed to improvise dialogue based on a description or just a few written lines. The conversations feel natural as the actors seemingly struggle to find the right words.

My boss and I both forgot the name of the MDM we use at work.

"I gotta get the, uh, the mobile thing setup"
"Uh, yeah, whatever its called get Tyler in it"

Thats where we are at

/smugbrag

When I was younger, my former roommate's crush (and future girlfriend) described being part of our conversations as "like watching a TV show". How much of that was us being cool and unique versus how much was us autistically mirroring characters from pop media? Don't care, great compliment.

There's some debate on this! Most movie dialogue is designed to convey the impression of conversation, but this is naturally unrealistic. People stutter and start over and get distracted in normal conversation much like you described, which can become very burdensome on the screen. Like when your boss won't get to the point in the standup. Overly precise dialogue is equally burdensome and often fails to maintain attention (see: the Time 1776 AI videos). A lot of the discussion around how best to balance those natural pauses and disruptions around the otherwise "eloquent" speech in movies to best convey a characterization.

I'm sure others out there can point to legitimate sources, but I'm not super read up on it

There is a documentary called the wolfpack. 8 or so kids growing up with only movies and themselves. When they got out of the house for the first time in 16 or so years they were surprised that real conversations aren't like in the movies. There isn't always something interesting going on. They also all talked like they were in a movie.

You do realise bodycams are just filming real life, right?

So yeah ... people in real life will sound like ... real life people, not movie characters.

but realistic is boring.

Movie dialogue tries to be verisimilitudinous, rather than realistic.

I'm mostly making this comment because "verisimilitudinous" is an excellent word that I love getting the opportunity to use.

I want everyone to talk like they're in a David Lynch movie.

I'd like to be able to talk like a stand-up comedian. I rehearse shit in my head. Put the funny word at the end! Sometimes it even comes out the way I intend.

Charismatic actors saying lines written by professional writers. All the pauses cut out too, ofc.

And it's all simplified language. Like I thought I knew german until I seen ich_eil "normal" german talk.

I saw an interview with Joe Mantegna (I think), talking about David Mamet's dialogue. He said "Everybody always says that he writes the way people talk. Bullshit. People don't talk in iambic pentameter. He writes the way people wish they could talk."