I hope all you youngsters on the Internets are enjoying “The Oozing Skull,” our first Cinematic Titanic offering. Joel asked me to list my five favorite riffs from this episode, and so in the spirit of my own raging narcissistic egomania, all five of my picks were spoken on the show by Yours Truly.
This is a paraphrase of a line delivered by W.C. Fields in his movie masterpiece, “The Bank Dick.” I have long considered this the funniest film ever made; when I first heard Fields deliver this line it made me laugh non-stop for years afterwards, to the point where I couldn’t do my homework or hold down a job because I couldn’t stop laughing at the words, “mo-go-on-the-go-go-go.” This was a high price to pay for a joke I didn’t even understand, but I regret nothing.
“The Bank Dick” also features Shemp Howard as the bartender and proprietor of The Black Pussy Café, the favorite watering hole of Egbert Sousé, the character played by Fields, and so I’d like to take this opportunity to address one of my pet peeves about certain fans of The Three Stooges. I understand why people love Curley, and I totally get why he may be the most popular Stooge: he was indeed a comic genius. But it really bugs me when some people, disappointed when they see a Stooge short that doesn’t feature Curly, speak disdainfully about Shemp, as if the presence of Shemp means they’re getting an inferior product. Obviously, W.C. Fields thought Shemp was funny, or he wouldn’t have cast him in “The Bank Dick,” and like I said, “The Bank Dick” is the funniest friggin’ movie ever made. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I love the entire Howard family: Moe, Curly, and Shemp. If there were a Zeppo Howard, I bet I’d love him too.
This is an indirect reference to The Ed Sullivan Show. Ed presented all of the greats of show business on his show, but he also had a soft spot for little people who played big harmonicas. In my opinion, there is not nearly enough of this form of entertainment on modern television. I’m not saying that every show should feature them, but they’d sure enhance the kinds of shows that would be perfect for little people with big harmonicas, like “Law and Order: Criminal Intent,” and “The McLaughlin Group.”
A frightened boy runs though a canyon while a drummer beats a tom-tom on the soundtrack. Thus the line, “Danger in Ginger Baker Canyon.” Ginger Baker was the drummer for the 60s super group Cream, so this joke should have the widest possible audience. Right? Right? Well, It didn’t get a laugh in our afternoon show at Industrial Light and Magic; it didn’t get a laugh in our evening show at Industrial Light and Magic. No one in the Cinematic Titanic crew laughed at it, and it’s a pretty good bet that we could make it though the rest of the 21st Century without a single human being ever finding it funny. And yet it survived though several drafts of our script. We could have replaced this riff with something more accessible, like, oh, say, a Jack Bruce reference, but we just never got around to it. Is this riff even still in the movie? I can’t remember. I guess I’m suffering from Post-Traumatic-Self-Indulgence-Syndrome.
The novelty songs of Ray Stevens spoke for an entire generation; “Guitarzan”, “The Streak”, and “Ahab the Arab” did nothing less than alter the consciousness of our nation. In anticipation of the next Todd Haynes film, in which five different actors portray Ray Stevens at five different stages of his life, we decided to unapologetically jump on the Ray Stevens bandwagon.
This riff portrays our chief executive as a drooling moron who plays with toys on the White House floor. This joke was an attempt to give the Bush Presidency as positive a spin as possible.
Posted in frank |
