ID this movie: "Big W"? (NOT "It's a Mad x4 World")

Cafe Society
,
1

In The Girl at the Baggage Claim (a work of nonfiction), Gish Jen describes how her father told her about a movie he had once seen:

…he did not even know its name. However, he did remember its plot, which involved a group of people on an island, looking for a treasure. Told that it was buried under something shaped like the letter “W,” they hunted all day, examining every stone and leaf and anthill. They looked under logs; they combed through the seaweed. By sunset, though, they finally had to give up; and so it was only then, at the movie’s end, as the group motored away, that the audience saw that the “W” was in the sky—that it was made by the tops of the trees.*

There follows a footnote:

*I have never found the movie my father described. There is a “Big W” in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, but the story is different.

So…is there an actual movie that matches her father’s description?

2

It’s Citizen Kane.

3

“I think it was called The Bus That Couldn’t Slow Down.”

4

It may have been a non-fiction book but her father’s story might still be fiction.

5

Obviously it was Big. In the scene at Sea Point Park, you can see the trees form a W in the distance behind the Zoltar machine. In the alternate ending, Paul, having been spurned by Susan, looks there for buried treasure.

6

I vaguely recall an episode of Remington Steele that features the same group of trees. Remington, being a movie buff, recognises them from the film.

IMDB connections suggests it’s this episode.

7

I might suggest that her father was indeed talking about It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, but remembered the plot incorrectly. There are some similarities: it is about a group of people looking for a treasure, though not on an island, and the big W is formed by treetops.

I know it’s hard to believe that anyone might mis-remember the ending of a well-known movie (coughBigcough), but we should consider that possibility, however remote and far-fetched it might be.

8

Oh, you are going to burn in Hell for that one.

But it was still funny.

9

That’s what I was thinking, and possible the author’s memory has conflated the story told to her with something else. No Big deal.

10

Maybe he was confused, and it was a big T?

11

I hope that’s not a description of an actual movie because it sounds extremely dull. An entire movie about people looking around an island, never finding anything, then giving up? Hopefully this either neglects a significant amount of plot or only describes a portion of a larger movie.

12

I managed to find that episode online. Yes, the W palms show up in the episode, and yes, Steele recognizes them from IAMMMMW. But sadly, no one is hunting for buried treasure, they walk right past the palms, and the episode ends in a storage unit filled with paintings.