Does anyone else remember the scene in Mission Impossible 3, where tom cruise is hosting a dinner party full of guests who only know his fake cover identity as a statistician working on traffic waves for the department of transportation?
The movie portrays it as conversational kryptonite, where he briefly discusses traffic issues in order to weaponize boredom and get some people to leave him alone.
That part broke my suspension of disbelief, because I was like "Hey, why is everyone wandering away?!? I want to hear what Tom has to say about how to address the problem!"
I remember this, and actually thought the same thing. It led me to do some research and I came across a pretty interesting page on the topic of smoothing out waves of traffic. It's an old site and I was just able to re-find it just now, but perhaps you will find it interesting:
The movie portrays it as conversational kryptonite, where he briefly discusses traffic issues in order to weaponize boredom and get some people to leave him alone.
That part broke my suspension of disbelief, because I was like "Hey, why is everyone wandering away?!? I want to hear what Tom has to say about how to address the problem!"