and after hearing the dialog and actually understanding it, it makes you go :dubious:
First is in the movie Men In Black. Will Smith at the beginning of the movie chases down an alien and when he has him against the wall, he pulls out his badge and says “NYPD!, which stands for knock your punkass down!”
I must have heard that 10 times before it dawned on me that he was trying to use the first letter in each word for his quote. Except, NYPD DOESN’T stand for “knock your punkass down”, since the “N” in NYPD needs to be a “K” to use the word “Knock”.
I know it’s stupid, but I was at first excited that I finally recognized this, and then realized the error. Which makes me wonder what, if any. idea the the writers had with this line in the script.
The second line is in Waterworld. The world is supposedly covered in water, which would make swimming something second nature to everyone left alive. And yet, when Costner throws the little girl in the ocean to get rid of her, Jeanne Tripplehorn says “she can’t swim!” She’s grown up with nothing but boats and water, and she never bothered to learn to swim? It’s so stupid.
I have more examples, but thought I’d wait to see what other examples you all might have.
It may seem stupid, but there’s plenty of precedent – in the Napoleonic British Navy, apparently most sailors didn’t know how to swim. They might have spent their lives surrounded by water, but they rarely had to actually go into it. And officers weren’t interested in having them learn – why teach the men a skill they can use to jump ship next time they’re in a foreign port?
Any Robert Altman movie. I’ve probably seen Gosford Park ten times, and I still hear new things every time I watch it. But then, Altman was famous for that.
As Foghorn Leghorn once said, “It’s a joke, son.” It was deliberate, to make the phrase funny.
Next you’ll be complaining the the Committee for the Liberation and Integration of Terrifying Organisms and their Rehabilitation Into Society is a mistake because “Into” shouldn’t be capitalized.
Funny you should mention that, because one of my favorite sources of dialog that blows past most people is old Popeye cartoons, and I came in to mention the Popeye movie, which Altman directed. I know, I know, it’s a seriously flawed vanity project. But, it’s also got some killer dialogue being muttered throughout, just like the old cartoons had.
That would be all of them, as I am half deaf and my TV’s closed captions is broken.
*Me: What did he say?
Daughter: I don’t know. I was checking my email
Me: (pressing the CC button but getting hit over the head with the fact that universal remotes are nowhere close to universal and “rewind” doesn’t even work) Shit!*
I won’t commit to the idea that Waterworld has deep inner meanings. But there is an argument that the people in that environment would see the ocean as an implacable enemy and they wouldn’t also use it as a casual recreation resource. Their reality is that the ocean is trying to kill all of mankind and it would be in keeping with that belief that any individual who falls into the ocean by mistake drowns.
**The Bridge on the River Kwai ** When Col. Saito is frustrated with the progress of the bridge and he says to Col. Nicholson, “If this bridge is not complete I shall have to kill myself, what would you do?” and Nicholson replies, “I suppose would have to kill myself”. and drinks the shot he initially rejected.
Only an Englishman can insult with that subtly. I hadn’t noticed it until the 4th or 5th viewing.
I thought the whole point of the girl being unable to swim was
She’d been born and grew up on an island, and didn’t need to learn. So they go searching for the island she was born on, which is presumably the only dry land left.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen the movie though.
I mentioned in a much earlier thread along similar lines the scene in the movie Sky High (the best film you will ever see that has both Kurt Russell and Bruce Campbell), as the Sidekick kids are sitting down to lunch, you can hear the cafeteria staff over the PA system in the background asking the Sidekicks to stop ordering “Hero” sandwiches.
That’s why I posted the OP, Chuck. :dubious: Keee-rist, sue me. I didn’t get NYPD= knock your punkass down because my brain seemed to have trouble with the whole “N” - “K” thing.
I don’t know about any deeper meaning in waterworld. If she was born on dry land, how on earth could the people on the dry land draw a map to it? Her tattoo should have been a big spot with an arrow pointing to it. Picture a “YOU ARE HERE” map
In Withnail & I, before he actually comes out, there is homosexual innuendo in pretty much everything Uncle Monty says to “I”.*
Some of it is obvious: “let us transfer your talents to… the meat”. Some of it is less so: “So you’re a thespian too?” where the “p” is pronounced as a distinct “b”.
But some of it I only picked up on after repeated viewings. When they are playing cards, he looks at “I” and says “The two queens to bet”. But the way he says “bet” makes it sound like “bed”. Very subtle, absolutely not hammered home, and very clever.
*At the time the movie was set, homosexuality was either still illegal or had only just been legalized in the UK, and Monty came from an era when he could have gone to jail for what he was, and the use of innuendo and ‘polari’ slang was a way for him and other homosexuals to identify each other while maintaining plausible deniability.
I’m apparently one of the few people that actually enjoy watching Waterworld :D.
But her inability to swim is definitely a ‘hint’ to her coming from “dryland”. I think Costner’s line at the time is “Who can’t swim?” or something similar. Other hints like when she scribbles trees on the side of Costner’s boat with his crayons.
At the end of the movie when they find “dryland”, they find a palm tree hut with two skeletons who are the girls parents. So presumably the parents found the island post the watery apocalypse, so were able to ‘draw’ a usable map on her back. Now the question as to why they would tattoo a map to their location on their daughters back I have no idea.
Blazing Saddles is DEFINITELY a movie you need to watch many times to catch all the humor. The wedding picture of his parents in Governor Mel Brooks’ office shows the happy couple FROM THE BACK!
Both Airplane! movies have to be watched over and over! Notice that the doctor at the Mayo Clinic has shelves of BEST FOODS MAYONNAISE sitting behind him! The focus is the heart available for transplant jumping all over his desk.
~VOW
