[describing Bruce, played by Ralph Bellamy]
Walter Burns: He looks like that fellow in the movies - Ralph Bellamy.
And, as far as I recall, there’s also a blue & yellow Wolverine costume in there.
Roddy is voiced by Hugh Jackman, of course.
In Bladerunner, J.F. Sebastian (I think that’s his name) lives in the Bradbury Hotel.
4E would have loved it. Remember, he made his reputation with monsters and he was a constant self-promoter.
The TV series The Middleman was the insider reference champion. The number of references was amazing. In the first episode, for instance, the plot involve a gorilla gangster (referred to in passing as “Gorilla Grodd”) and the following are listed:
My two favorites from the show were when they introduce themselves as “Alexander Scott” and “Kelly Robinson” (from I Spy and when they go to a parallel universe where all the men wear goatees.
In Mr. 3000, two of the guys in the dugout are always doing trivia. One asks the other about a soap opera star - the other IS the soap opera star. It was a set-up scene, and you have to watch him try to keep a straight face.
A running gag in SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL is that (a) the character played by Tony Curtis keeps getting described as looking like the guy from SOME LIKE IT HOT, and (b) they routinely go on to specify that they mean Jack Lemmon.
It’s the Bradbury Building – a real historic building in Los Angeles, and it’s the actual interior of that building that we see, with all the stairs and balconies. I’m not sure it’s an insider anything.
Karl Malden, probably most remembered as the “Don’t leave home without it” spokesman for American Express, always managed to work his real last name (Sekulovich) into the movies he was in.
Karl Malden - Wikipedia (second paragraph in Early Life)
It was where they were transferring their prisoner, Chewbacca, from. “Prisoner transfer from Cell Block 1138.”
I am sure I read this somewhere, but now can’t find supporting evidence of it, that the cell number Princess Leia is in, 2187, is the title of one of George Lucas’s “experimental” films he made in College. (Oh wait, here it is, but not his, instead it’s a film that Lucas was inspired by)
Mentioned in Boris Karloff’s biography - they convinced him to take the part of Johnathan, the insane brother with the line about him looking just like Boris Karloff.
I have to admit, Arsenic and Old Lace is one of my favorite movies. I just wish they had gotten Boris Karloff to play Johnathan. But the comedy timing is wonderful.
Not terribly recent, but one that made me spew my drink. In the 2010 version of Clash of the Titans, Perseus is digging through a trunk for stuff to take on his quest. He pulled out a mechanical owl and tosses it aside, muttering “We don’t need this…”
The mechanical owl was a major plot element in the 1980s version of the same movie.
In the 2011 remake of Fright Night, Jerry Dandridge (played by Colin Farrell) kills a motorist played by Chris Sarandon, who portrayed Dandridge in the 1985 original.
In Coming to America (1988), Prince Hakeem (Eddie Murphy) drops some money that is picked up by a pair of homeless men, played by Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche, who it is implied are reprising their roles as Randolph and Mortimer Duke from Trading Places (1983), also directed by John Landis and starring Eddie Murphy.
The movie Maverick (1994) is so full of inside jokes involving the original Maverick series, the Lethal Weapon movie series, and director Richard Donner’s personal life and work that it can’t easily be summed up.
Ignorance fought!
In some of the display panels seen on Star Trek: The Next Generation, some things would be displayed as “in-jokes” that only the actors would be able to see clearly.
I found an example through Google: okudagram | Walking down the Enterprise-D corridor was unrea… | Flickr
Notice the pictograms of odd stuff [circled] inserted into the display of the Enterprise deck plan.
(Sorry. TV, not movies. >< )
From the original Star Trek: some of the conduit pipes along passageways were labeled “GNDN” for “goes nowhere, does nothing.”
Also, the Jeffries tubes were named for Enterprise designer Matt Jeffries.
In the movie Exit to Eden, based on the book by Anne Rice, Lisa and Elliott are walking through a crowd in New Orleans. Someone asks, about the reason for the crowd, “is that Tom Cruise?” Someone else replies “Nah…I think that’s Brad Pitt.”
Cruise and Pitt were both in “Interview with the Vampire,” also an Anne Rice book, which was shooting nearby at the time.
Is it always a movie title in his movies? It’s a line from 2001 that Landis picked for some reason to always appear in his movies.
Wiki on SYNW. I guess it doesn’t always appear as a movie title, but often.
Star Wars had cute robots, so *Clash *had to have a cute robot owl. It didn’t make the movie a blockbuster.
In Romancing the Stone, the Kathleen Turner character offers to pay the Michael Douglas character with travelers’ checks. He turns and asks, “American Express?” She replies, “Of course!”, and he accepts the deal.
Michael Douglas was partnered with Karl “Don’t Leave Home Without Them” Malden in Streets of San Francisco.
I wonder if Diggit thought he was seeing a reference to Ray Bradbury, and switching him with Philip K. Dick for authoring Electric Sheep=>Blade Runner. I make that kind of convoluted mistake all the time.
The Bradbury is a fascinating building. A few years ago we walked around the interior. It was a weekend, the offices were all closed, but the building was open.