I’m surprised that someone called Little Nemo finds that the Greatest Work of Art based on this theme.
Ever see Little Ego in Slumberland, by the way?
I agree with what you said in your previous post: it was never a surprise ending when my namesake woke up from a dream. The reader always knew he was in a dream.
Another example of that type of work would be H.P. Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle (which Brain Lumley has added to).
eta: And I have read Giardino’s book.
How about Futurama when Leela keeps dreaming about Fry telling her to wake up. It was the one with the space bees. It was actually quite a touching episode.
Does Roseanne qualify?
.
Terry Jones?
In the episode he’s thinking of, Michael Palin actually plays the mild-mannered man (Mr. Pither) who’s on a bicycling tour of Cornwall, and who finds himself in a Soviet prison at one point.
I don’t recall any reason to think Mr. Pither’s a civil servant though. His profession is never mentioned.
[spoiler]*
I’m . . . . . just . . . . a . . . . .
♫ Jack in the box
♫ You know whenever love knocks
♫ I’m gonna bounce up and down on my spring
BOM BOM BOM
*[/spoiler]
I think it was in the fall of 1986 that Madonna appeared on the season premiere of “Saturday Night Live” and told us the entire 1985 season (with Randy Quaid, Terry Sweeney and Robert Downey Jr.) had been a dream.
I question the premise. The kid dreaming about them showing up in St. Elsewhere doesn’t reveal anything: I dream about both real people and people from TV in odd situations all the time. Only people from St. Elsewhere appearing elsewhere would establish them as part of a dream, and then only if we know for sure they have had experiences that the kid had in the dream.
Still, I stumbled upon this site a long time ago, and couldn’t remember what to look up to get back to it. So thanks.
EDIT: Even the Wizard of Oz movie doesn’t count, as Dorothy insisted it wasn’t a dream, and later went back in sequels. The ending was more of a “Was it just a dream?” ending, at least as I remember it.
Isn’t Click (Adam Sandler movie) basically based on the dream sequence formula?
The 1939 film is pretty firmly in the “it was all a dream” column, as Dorothy recognized on waking that the farmhands, Elvira Gulch, and Professor Marvel had been transformed in her imagination into the fantastic characters of Oz, in typical dream fashion. “And then I bumped into you - except that it wasn’t you, exactly - you were made of tin. Seemed normal at the time.”
Subsequent Oz movies don’t have any bearing, because they weren’t sequels to the 1939 movie any more than they were to '20s version with Oliver Hardy..