You’ve just arrived from another country. You’ve never been here, but you’ve seen every Hollywood movie made over the last 30 years. Therefore, you might think you’re an expert in American culture.

您确定每个人都在财务上舒适，要么完全破产，生活在肮脏的地方。您认为美国人在不拆除公寓的情况下第一次无法发生性关系，而首选的性职位正站起来 - 毕竟，当那里有一堵漂亮的墙时，为什么还要花时间躺下呢？

哦，您认为任何人回家时的第一件事就是将啤酒从冰箱中拉出。

由于好莱坞电影的神话和陈词滥调，这是您实际上可能相信的其他一些不真实的事情：

很难做一杯好咖啡

也许这是渗透剂时代的保留，但是今天，如果您有体面的咖啡和任何类型的锅，您几乎都无法将其搞砸。这不是精确的科学。咖啡非常宽容，当别人花时间制作时，人们倾向于欣赏。

Still, screenwriters, at a loss for dialogue, often throw in some snazzy banter about how bad someone’s coffee is. In fact, until Harvey Keitel approved of Quentin Tarantino’s coffee in “Pulp Fiction” (1994), it’s possible that no character in a movie ever commented on having agood一杯咖啡。

Another coffee cliche: Serious people drink only black coffee. You can’t win a court case or catch a murder suspect if you put milk in your coffee. And if you have anything besides one forlorn half-eaten carton of Chinese food in your refrigerator, you’re a frivolous epicure.

If you’re pregnant, you’re having a girl

Lucille Ball was pregnant while playing the pregnant Lucy Ricardo in “I Love Lucy.” In real life she had a boy, but if she had a girl, she probably would have had a boy on the show anyway. For about 50 years, leading up to around 1975, almost every time a female protagonist was pregnant she gave birth to what Luca Brasi in “The Godfather” famously called “a masculine child.” It was a movie staple in those days for women and men to talk about how they preferred boys.

从那以后的几年中，情况发生了变化，在电影和电视中，女性婴儿远远超过了男性。没有人对此进行研究，因此没有数据，但是请注意这一点。你不能错过它。

If you’re having sex for the first time, you leave your clothes on

我不得不问其他人，只是为了确保我没有在这一点上被迷惑，但是显然，大多数人确实更喜欢穿衣服off当从事身体亲密关系时。更重要的是，他们真的更喜欢另一个人也没有衣服。但是出于某种奇怪的原因，电影中的人们显然没有这种感觉。

Are they afraid of catching a cold? Did they just forget? Or is it just another example of what sociologists call the “Knocked Up” syndrome: In that classic R-rated film from 2007, the lead actress, Katherine Heigl, simply did not want to be nude onscreen. And who would?

But in such cases, just cut the sex scene, or suggest nudity, but don’t insult our intelligence — or make Americans look so busy and results-oriented that they won’t stop to enjoy life’s simple pleasures. Basically, “Knocked Up” depicted two people who were so intimate they were having a baby together and yet had never seen each other naked.

If a bartender asks what you’d like to drink, to be cool, say, “I’ll have a single malt.”

乔纳森·普莱斯（Jonathan Pryce）在“所有旧刀”（2022年）中说，但是当任何喝苏格兰威士忌的人都可以告诉你，就像走进熟食店说：“我会吃三明治。”

各种酿酒厂都有各种各样的麦芽，它们彼此不同，土耳其与Liverwurst一样。我更喜欢来自艾莱（Islay）的苏格兰威士忌，并喜欢高地的苏格兰威士忌。我对低地的苏格兰威士忌并不疯狂，发现Speyside Scotches排斥 - 即使是顶层昂贵的Speyside苏格兰威士忌。

The point is, everyone who drinks scotch is different, and every bartender knows this, so sidling up and saying, “I’ll have a single malt” is the opposite of cool. It’s like saying, “I heard this in a movie.”

A common American greeting is “You look like s—.”

好莱坞确实需要退休。在“The Offer,”Paramount+’s recent fictional miniseries about the making of “The Godfather,” the line is spoken three times in 10 episodes. And earlier this season, someone said that to Ryan Gosling in“The Gray Man.”

A couple of weird things about this: The first is that almost every time someone is told this, they look great, and the line comes as a surprise to the audience. Apparently, we’re tounderstandthat the character “looks like s—.” But why?

Basically, the line is just a screenwriter’s excuse to allow the lead character to announce what he or she has been doing since last we saw them. It’s an easy means — and by now a cliched, lazy means — of setting up exposition.

第二个怪异是现实生活中的任何人都这样说。即使是真实的，也没有人对我说过，我也从未对任何人说过。

Just a wild guess, but I have a feeling that if you try out this line on somebody, they won’t brief you on their recent activities. They’ll be insulted.