1. How long until the spoiler moves into spoiler-public-domain...?
It's never acceptable to spoil any good movie twist for anyone who hasn't seen it. TV shows with a big twist are the same, especially now that everything is coming available for streaming.
2. Is saying "there's a huge twist at the end" a spoiler?
Also not cool unless you're trying to get the person to watch the movie, and you don't make such a big deal about it ("Great stunt work, some really funny lines. It has a clever twist, even. Really good movie."). It can ruin the movie if the person is scouring the story for clues.
3. In discussion of a movie with spoilers, with someone who has not seen it, how far do you let yourself go when giving them the pitch?
Tell them the setup (what happens in the first act) and mention a couple of non-spoiler-y highlights ONLY. Generally, tell a little less than trailers do these days. I swear, the trailer for Rise of the Planet of the Apes told the WHOLE ENTIRE STORY, pretty much IN ORDER.
If I were trying to get you to watch $ (Dollars), I would say it's a cool '70s heist movie where Warren Beatty and Goldie Hawn are trying to rob the safe deposit boxes of these three bad guys who use the same bank because criminals can't complain to the cops. It's Germany in the winter, so it's pretty bleak but it's got a dark sense of humor, and there's some boobs and some really clever heist stuff. You get almost all that in the first 20 minutes, which is the hook part of a movie anyway. The most you should say about the ending is that it's got a nice, slick ending or whatever, to assure the person that the ending doesn't fall apart, which sometimes happens with otherwise great movies (The Prestige).
4. Have you ever had to spoil something just to get someone to watch it?
That would defeat the purpose. I HAVE spoiled movies that I think are crap and the person SHOULDN'T see them.
5. Have you ever accidentally spoiled something?
If you talk about movies a lot, like I do, you're bound to mistakenly assume your audience has seen something they haven't. However, I mostly stay away from REAL plot-twist-type spoilers anyway, because why would ever bring up the end of The Usual Suspects outside of an in-depth conversation with someone you know has seen it? I'm convinced that people who spoil movies mostly do it maliciously so they can feel superior to people who haven't seen the movie. It's like when people say "YOU haven't seen Rochelle, Rochelle?!" It's like, fuck you, no one has seen every fucking movie you have. Have YOU seen Firestorm? Harrison Ford jumps out of a plane and shoots back up at it while he's falling. Helicopter falls on a car. Hell of a picture.
6. When were you worst-spoiled?
As I was walking into South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut, a couple was walking out of The Sixth Sense and said the exact thing you shouldn't say. I actually still enjoyed The Sixth Sense later anyway, because the film is so brilliantly constructed that I mostly convinced myself that they must have meant something else.
Also, several times, I've looked up a movie on IMDb to decide if I should watch it, and some jackass has posted something on the message board with a spoiler in the title. If you complain, some other jackass will invariably claim that you shouldn't be reading the message board of a movie you've never seen (as if the subject lines don't appear right there on the front page of the movie's entry).
