Thinking I'd be a shoo-in, I was taken aback when the American summer camp interviewer (let's call him "Chuck" because that was his name) asked me what my special talent was.

Huh?

"So Marc, what can you teach?" said Chuck, blinding me with his veneers. "Karate? Modern dance? Painting? Trampolining? Knitting? Archery? Basketball? Cooking? Luge?"

Luge? I shook my head.

"Every camp counsellor needs to teach something. What are your special gifts?" Chuck's bright smile was beginning to look a little strained at this point, as though he had just realised I was the type of kid picked last for sporting teams.

"Well," I said, "I can sing any '80s sitcom theme song on demand. And I can recite the dialogue from Dirty Dancing word for word."

Chuck looked unconvinced. Possibly because I was now doing an impromptu re-enactment of the pivotal "I carried a watermelon?" scene from the film. Complete with actions. And accents. When this failed to entertain, I may or may not have launched into a shaky rendition of the Charles in Charge theme song.

And faster than you can say, "You suck," Chuck was telling me off for wasting his time. This camp was for serious applicants only. For people who had genuine talents. I apologised profusely, said goodbye and skulked away wondering how long it would take me to find his car in the car park.

Just joking. Maybe...

Anyway, the moral of the story is (a.) never be tempted to throw clumps of dirt and twigs at someone's car because you'll get caught by your mother who offered to pick you up that afternoon, and (b.) Chuck was wrong. Nobody puts Baby in a corner.

The fact is that where baby boomers pride themselves on being able to recite Shakespeare, Wordsworth or Shelley on cue, generation Xers are more likely to boast about their word-perfect "royale with cheese" scene from Pulp Fiction.

We are the generation raised on Brady Bunch re-runs, Miss Pacman and Saturday mornings spent pressing rewind on the VCR remote control in a desperate bid to memorise everything from Michael Jackson dance moves to the monologues of Ferris Bueller.

So it's no wonder our pop culture obsession has been turned into a performance sport: Movieoke. It's karaoke for movie-lovers.

Imagine. Instead of being egged on by your friends to get up on stage and perform a stunningly pedestrian rendition of My Heart Will Go On from Titanic, you get to pretend to be Rose and/or Jack, by flinging your arms in the air and re-enacting the "I'm the king of the world" scene.

So how does it work?

Like karaoke, at Movieoke you get to choose from hundreds of movies and once you've decided to perform Jack Nicholson's "You can't handle the truth" from A Few Good Men, or Meg Ryan's fake orgasm scene from When Harry Met Sally, the disc is put in, the DVD subtitles are activated, the sound is turned down and the movie is projected on a screen behind you. Then you get to release your inner thespian and bring the scene to life in your own unique way.

The concept was devised by twenty-something New Yorker Anastasia Fite who started Movieoke in a small bar in the Big Apple in 2003. Since then it has taken off all over the world reaching everywhere from Melbourne to Tokyo.

While some people are able to perform scenes with eerie accuracy, the idea of Movieoke is not to be perfect.

You don't have to know the movie by heart. Ad-libbing and ensemble pieces are encouraged. If you're not comfortable performing alone, then drag up a few friends. In the end, as long as you give it your all, both you and the audience will love it. And alcohol helps.

While a bar in Melbourne has started weekly Movieoke sessions, it is yet to be offered in Brisbane. Still, it's only a matter of time.