Well, he can still do them cold.
I’ve been reading Washington Irving’s The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon – a classic work, containing the well-known stories Rip Van Winkle, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and a bunch of other stories I’ll bet most Dopers haven’t even heard of. (His pieces in the book on Christmas are supposed to have inspired Dickens’ a Christmas Carol)
It’s been many years since I read Sleepy Hollow (AKA The Headless Horseman), and I caught something I never noticed before. On the surface, it’s a ghost story about Ichabof Crane meeting the spectre of a hHessian soldier whose head was carried away. Beneath that is the story of hoe Brom Bones scared the heck out of his rival for the hand of Katrina van Tassel, taking advantage of his well-known taste for (and fear of) ghost stories. I’d always imagined that Brom and his cohorts, acting like Gaston and his followers in the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast, elaborately pranked the schoolmaster and thus scared away a rival.
But, on reading the story again and more carefully, I note that, after the party that precedes the ride, Crane went to Katrina for a one-on-one talk, and emerges too soon, rapidly, and visibly crestfallen. Brom didn’t need to scare Ichabod away – Katrina had already renounced him, and was encouraging him (Irving suggests) only to light a fire under Brom.
At which point Brom’s spooking Ichabod looks like it isn’t just an idea of Brom and his pals – Katrina might have been involved too. It wasn’t an effort to break up a possible romance – it was just a way of disposing of an inconvenient and unwanted suitor.
Sneaky gal, that Katrina.
More evidence that this isn’t necessarily the case: at least one poster tagline was “Just Deux It,” which would make more sense with an exaggerated French pronunciation versus your “Duh” idea.
What might help resolve this is for someone to watch the film again–apparently towards the end of the credits someone says “*Hot Shots! Part Deux *was filmed in front of a live studio audience.” One would assume that that line would have the intended pronunciation.
Well played, sir. Well played.
I was going to go with him being the “Voice of GOD”.
Anyway, go with my revised entry, which I now realize is correct. It’s a double entendre meant to be understood as “DUH”. If you pronounce it that way, you lose the double entendre. But now it’s obvious that people didn’t get the joke. Did no one wonder why it was in French to begin with?
Same reason the sequels to Naked Gun were “2 1/2” and “33 1/3”?
“It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.”
Maybe because it isn’t much of a joke, if any such joke were intended. “Deux” doesn’t look like it should be pronounced “Duh”, and there’s nothing particularly funny about naming a sequel “Part Duh”.
French films are perceived as classy/sophisticated/serious/pretentious by many Americans, so the use of French is amusingly incongruous when used for a wacky American comedy.
Do you remember the poster? It was Charlie Sheen dressed as Rambo shooting a rather panic-stricken chicken as an arrow. It ain’t Noel Coward. It was a Jim Abrahams comedy How funny are you expecting the title to be when pointed out like this. It’s a PUN based upon a near homophone in the pronunciation of the French “deux” and the English “Duh”. It’s not rocket science. All that bit about the pretentiousness of the use of French makes the joke that much more “meta”. Its actually makes the joke funnier using the incongruity of using a “sophisticated” language for a pun on “Duh.”
Wow. It’s great that you want to look deeper into the movies you watch, but there is absolutely nothing supporting your theory besides your own opinions. And yet, those of us that are telling you you’re wrong are the stupid ones…
Here’s the poster. Read the tagline at the top of said poster.
Looking deeper? It’s a PUN, for chrissake, and a rather stupid one at that. Have you seen the movie? Why do you think they would be above a stupid pun?
I honestly didn’t expect the push back here. Is it a joke so simple we are embarrassed to have missed it?
And? There’s nothing preventing them from using it as a homophone for other puns. If anything, it proves my point. There’s nothing faux-sophisticate about that usage.
Of course I’ve seen it. I was 12 when it came out. Saddam Hussein melding with his poodle as if he were a T-1000? That’s comedy gold baby!
And it’s not a pun, it’s “French words sound funny.” This is comedy 101 man.
Sometimes the only sane man is actually… well, not.
“Just deux it!” = Just do it!
“Part Deux” = Part Duh
Two uses of a near homophone into unsophisticated multilingual puns. Is it really that hard to admit that on some level it is there?
I hear Charlie Sheen has a Q&A at his show. I’ll tell him I have money on it and he might relate and actually answer it.
I just tweeted him. I’ll see if I get an answer.
Are you so invested in this massive stretch that you’re embarassed to admit you may have simply come up with something unintended?
We all see what you’re saying, and while it’s a remote possibility, there’s nothing else other than your conception to indicate that it was intended, and there’s a whole *slew *of evidence (tagline, the way it’s pronounced in the trailer, etc.) to prove that “duh” was *not *the intended pronunciation.
What SFG said. I’m generally really good with subtle humor and at picking up on clever wordplay, and I’m just totally not seeing this one at all.
I tried reading this as “fuh-sophisticate” and I don’t get the pun. Please explain.
Wait a minute. I backed off the pronunciation. The tagline is actually evidence for my point. “Part Deux” is an otherwise incongruous use of a French word in the title. The tagline shows that it is being used as it is using the French near homophone to make a cheap bilingual pun. I fail to see how this is a massive stretch. All you have is the concept that it is a random bit of silliness.
Because I wasn’t making a pun.
What? The tagline uses one pronunciation in order to make a bilingual pun. You are proposing that the same word used on the same page is supposed to also be pronounced in a different manner to make a totally different bilingual pun? That doesn’t make much sense at all. Why would they come up with “Just Deux it” if they didn’t intend the word to be pronounced that way? How would it have the connection to the title of the movie? You are the one that is stretching and not making sense.
Did you hear the sound as that went by overhead?