This week I saw the new Steve McQueen movie Shame. Michael Fassbender (the protagonist), who has a great presence and gaze, and James Dale (his boss) represent two completely different pickup styles. Fassbender plays it calm, intense, and outcome independent in spite of the fact that he is actually a rampaging sex addict, while Dale is always approaching, appeasing, and in general being a dancing monkey.

For your consideration I want to submit this clip, which I found particularly true to life, in which Dale has just approached with a direct opener, telling the blond that she's gorgeous and that he had to talk to her. He then offers to buy her a drink and ends up buying a round for all her friends. The clip begins when he tries to restart the conversation with another compliment "I can see you're very successful." Immediately, the blond shit-tests him by asking him to remember the color of her eyes. He fails, but refuses to admit defeat and comes off looking like a sore loser. When Fassbender arrives, Dale immediately DHV's him to enlist him as a wing (in the film there is no prior mention of a "pitch", so it's probably a lie as well). However, this backfires when Fassbender passes the shit-test. Dale once again refuses to admit defeat and ends up buying the blond another drink(!) after she gives hers away. When she picks up the tab, Dale compliments her for the third time in a row, calling her a " strong, independent woman" in some kind of weak qualification.

At this point, Fassbender enters the conversation on his own terms, pitching his voice lower than Dale's and asking an innocuous, normal question to the whole group. Because she is the queen bee, the blond answers for everyone, and her answer is what a PUA would answer to a shit-test, i.e. an obviously bullshit response "Karate." At this point, Dale misjudges the energy of the set, probably because he dislikes that the blonde's attention is now on Fasssbender, and goes into full tool-mode, karate-chopping the air and talking way-too-fucking-fast. Notice that this is, to a lesser extent, a problem throughout the scene, as he frequently repeats himself or the blonde in a nervous fashion to fill in the silence and "gain time" to think ("that's amazing, that's amazing, hey buddy, hey buddy, hey..."). When he pulls the blonde away from her friends with a PUA-esque assurance that he's only borrowing her for a moment (note the twirls), it's clear that he has done nothing to build trust and comfort among the blonde's two friends, who walk away muttering about how she's probably going to get "robbed and roofied."

Because of his calm and outcome-independent demeanor, one of the friends actually asks Fassbender for a dance, and the blonde stares at him even as she dances with Dale. Later, the blonde refuses to go home with Dale, but after he's gone she picks up Fasssbender in her car. On the way home, they pull over to fuck standing up in an alcove by the harbor.

While in a way, I think this scene was written as a parody of pick-up in general with Dale as the butt of the joke, I think it illustrates the natural failures of someone who knows a lot of theory and routines but isn't comfortable enough with himself to apply it well.