Obvious things about a creative work you realize after the millionth time (OPEN SPOILERS POSSIBLE)

[caligulathegod]

@Mister_Rik

“Duh” usually means, “no shit, Sherlock!” in my part of the country.

You do realize that is an ironic usage of duh. Duh comes from the imitation of what used to be called “retarded” people.

Consider this: this “stupid” movie was one long string of painfully blatant sight gags, for the most part (to the best of my recollection, anyway; it’s been a while). And yet the title is allegedly this incredibly subtle and sophisticated pun. So subtle and sophisticated, in fact, that only you got it. In which case it doesn’t belong in this thread, which states in the title, “Obvious things…”, not “Subtle things…”

I just quoted several written pun uses in the film of the same quality (“Iraq” and its neighbor “A Hard Place”). I just streamed it tonight off Netflix (and didn’t find it the least bit funny, actually). But I’m pretty sure I’ve said over and over that it’s stupid. It’s a mock sophistication, that’s what makes it kind of clever. I just said that I thought it was obvious but most people get caught up in what they think is the joke (the use of the otherwise pointless French in the title) and miss the actual joke, that being the pun. There’s really nothing at all funny at all about it being French. But as a dual use pun, “Two” and “Duh”, it actually approaches being a joke in a Rocky and Bullwinkle kind of way.

I made my point. You don’t have to agree. Unless someone can add something new, it’s a dying horse.

[Miller]

FTR, when the film came out, I recall seeing the same double meaning in the title that caligulathegod did. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t intentional, though. If they had intended it, they’d have surrounded it with neon arrows and giant signs saying, “Look! We’re making a joke! Aren’t we zany!” like they did with every other joke in the movie.

[caligulathegod]

Thanks. But after just watching the film, they really didn’t do that with the puns. You had to actually look for them. Saharanwrap? Halalarm (halal + Alarm)? The visual jokes, yeah. It’s really not any better than the “Blank Movie” series. And technically, it’s kind of douchey to point out puns, since the implication is that you are saying that the person is too stupid to get it. But this thread is kind of about that and it’s a pun that apparently no one did get. I thought I had indicated that I thought (as in opinion) it was the intended joke rather than an outright statement that it was. I just backed up my belief with the explanations. I honestly did not expect this kind of blowback.
But Jim Abrahams seems to have dropped off the face of the earth and Pat Proft (co-writer) created a facebook page and then abandoned it. It was his Birthday a few days ago. Charlie Sheen is too busy to answer the question.

[Miller]

@caligulathegod

And technically, it’s kind of douchey to point out puns, since the implication is that you are saying that the person is too stupid to get it.

On the other hand, you are dealing with people who are watching Hot Shots: Part Deux. So, it might not be that unfair an assumption, after all.

[sub]Confession: I own the first Hot Shots movie on DVD.[/sub]

[caligulathegod]

Touche’

Confession: I just saw the Charlie Sheen live show tonight, which is what brought this up to begin with.

[Shot_From_Guns]

@caligulathegod

You either agree or disagree. Objectively, the pun is there (it’s as strong as “Deux it”). Whether it was intentional is anyone’s guess. I stated from the first post that it was my opinion and I backed up the opinion with the logic I used to arrive at it. All you’ve done is said, “nuh uh.” That’s fine, too. But there’s no need to be jerky about it.

Yes, dear, you’re very clever. I will print this thread out and put it on my fridge so all my friends can read it and see how clever you are.

[Irishman]

@Ludovic

I tried reading that as "“Ohv-REED” and I don’t get the pun.

I don’t get it, either. No worries.

@caligulathegod

Deux is not pronounced do. It’s close enough, just as it is close enough for duh.

Thanks for the link to an audio file of French pronunciation. I agree that the sounds don’t quite come out like “doo”. But to this American ear, the French word has typically been conveyed as sounding that way, as opposed to the short vowel “duh”.

And why doesn’t that make sense, the multiple uses? It makes sense to you to be used as a weak pun once then as an incongruous nonsensical title elsewhere?

The “nonsense” title came first, and the “weak pun” comes from that. It makes a lot more sense to me to make a pun off the title and pronounce the word the same way for the pun as the title, than to stick a word in a title to make one pun using one indiosyncratic pronunciation, and then turn around and use the same word with a different pronunciation to make a second pun that relies on the fact that the word being punned is from the title. If you want the connection to the title, you use the word pronounced the same way - otherwise you lose that connection. And it requires the connection to the title to make any sense at all. Otherwise you’re just saying “Just 2 it!”

@caligulathegod

**
I understand a question on whether the filmmakers intended it or not, but can you seriously argue a pun doesn’t exist when someone has made it?

I certainly don’t dispute that you made a pun. But the whole point of this thread is “obvious things in a creative work that you missed”, so the argument is all about if the filmmakers intended the pun you see.

Granted, they made some really dumb puns, so I can’t discount that they intended another dumb pun. And calling it “Part Deux” never made any sense to me. But if they intended that pun, they did a horrible job with it, because it’s buried under the consistent expectation that the word sounds like “doo”, which they cater to with their other more obvious pun and with the film trailer pronunciation of the title.

[Mister_Rik]

I just remembered one from my own experience. Back in my early 20s, I used to be a regular performer at a local bar’s “open mic” nights. Once of the songs I performed frequently was “Weird Al” Yankovic’s One More Minute:

"Weird Al" Yankovic - One More Minute (Official HD Video)

It was always a crowd-pleaser.

Eventually I started performing at another open mic night at a different bar, which happened to be a “country” bar. I did that song there once. The following week I showed up and the bartender took me aside as soon as I arrived and said there had been some complaints the week before, and he asked me not to do any more “obscene” songs. He didn’t identify the particular song, and I was completely baffled, since I wasn’t in the habit of performing “obscene”, or even “off-color” songs. I had a couple somewhat-off-color songs in my repertoire, but I’d never sung them at this particular bar. In any case, I hadn’t planned on doing that particular song that night anyway; I usually made a list of what I was going to sing beforehand, so that I wasn’t boring the audience with the same songs every time I showed up, and so I didn’t make the connection.

Then, finally, some months later, I was singing the song at … an after-church barbecue at the home of another family from my church (it wasn’t a “church function”, just several families who were friends getting together on a Sunday afternoon after church). I had my guitar, and somebody invited me to sing, and so I just sang some “fun” songs. And so I was singing this song, and I got to the lines:

I guess I might seem kind of bitter
You’ve got me feeling down in the dumps
'Cause I’m stranded all alone at the gas station of love
And I have to use the self-service pumps…

And that’s when it hit me :smack:

Thankfully I had, as I mentioned, performed the song many many times, and part of my performance was being able to maintain a serious, heartbroken facial expression while the audience is roaring with laughter (this is more difficult than you might expect). I was utterly mortified to realize what I had just sung at a bunch of people from my church! But I realized at the same time that if it had taken me so long to “get” that line, even after singing it so many times, chances were that most of my audience wouldn’t immediately get it, and that suddenly stopping would only call attention to it (if for no other reason than the fact I’d have to explain why I stopped), so I called on all my previous performance experience, maintained my straight face, and finished the song. If any of my listeners picked up on that line, none of them mentioned it.

[Shot_From_Guns]

If *that’s *obscene, I’d shudder to think what they’d make of some of the music I listen to.

I think the moral of the story is just that country fans have no sense of humor.

[Mister_Rik]

@Shot_From_Guns

I think the moral of the story is just that country fans have no sense of humor.

Eh, there’s actually quite a bit of humor in country music. I think this was probably just one uptight person complaining.

And it occurred to me after posting that story that the guy who owned the house where I attended the after-church barbecue (20+ years ago) was the same guy I now share a house with. He’s my parents’ age, and has a couple daughters a bit younger than me; he was married at the time but is since divorced and living on SSI Disability (which is why he needs somebody to split the rent with). I don’t recall if he was in my audience on that occasion, but knowing him better now I’m sure it would have gone over his head. One of the great joys in my life is sharing jokes and cartoons with friends, but I’ve completely given up on sharing these things with him because he’s so literal-minded that I end up having to explain every single joke to him. and that takes all the fun out of it.

[Mister_Rik]

Oh yeah -

I’d say the most “obscene” song I ever performed was a song called “The Ballad of Dick and Jane”, by Pinkard & Bowden:

There were three young men who fell in love with Jane
Tom, Dick, and Harry were their names
“I am her only boyfriend!” each of them would boast
But she passed on Tom and Harry, 'cause she liked Dick the most

Now she’s got Dick in the palm of her hand…
And so on

[lisiate]

I only realised that when Gene Roddenberry was looking for a name for the ship and captain off on a five-year voyage of exploration he simply modified the names of Britain’s most famous explorer and his first vessel after seeing this comment elsewhere:

(Still not quite as good as when James Cook and the Endeavour came up in conversation and someone said “Oh, yeah” and did the Vulcan finger-sign, but…close.)

[Shot_From_Guns]

… Wow. lisiate, you just blew my mind.

[lisiate]

I know - freaky isn’t it?

[Shot_From_Guns]

I am, no snark, seriously annoyed right now that I can’t get to Facebook from here and tell like three hundred people. I only hope I can remember this when I’m home in half an hour.

[Peter_Morris]

@lisiate

I only realised that when Gene Roddenberry was looking for a name for the ship and captain off on a five-year voyage of exploration he simply modified the names of Britain’s most famous explorer and his first vessel after seeing this comment elsewhere:

Sorry, you are mistaken. GR went through a long process to decide on the captain’s name. He made a whole pilot episode where the Captain was called Christopher Pike.

When the network rejected the pilot, he recast. He had to go through another long process to choose a new name. He considered various surnames including : Drake, Christopher, Hannibal, Kirk and North.

I’ve never seen any suggestion before yours that Kirk’s name was based on Cook.

From the earliest drafts, the ship was always called “Enterprise.” I don’t see any reason to suppose that it was based on the Endeavour.

[lisiate]

Aww, but it’s such a neat coincidence. And think of all the other parallels - Cook travels to the ends of the earth to make astronomical observations, Solander and Banks on the boat as science officers, exotic locales and dusky maidens in the south seas…

[Mister_Rik]

This Canadian singer, Lights, has a song called “Ice”. A bit after the 2 minute mark, she ends some rapid-fire lyrics with the phrase, “let a little light melt the ice ice baby”. I had listened to it many many times before it registered that the synthesizer solo immediately following that line is playing the same rhythm and intervals as the bass line from the Queen/David Bowie song “Under Pressure” that Vanilla Ice sampled in his song, “Ice Ice Baby”. It’s not immediately obvious because a) it’s not the bass playing it, and b) it changes with the chords instead of just being the same notes over and over like the original.

(Also, I strongly recommend checking out Lights’ music. Everything you hear, music and vocals, is all her. Girl’s got some talent.)

[Sefton]

In the movie Spaceballs, I never understood the humor behind President Skroob’s name. Lone Star, Barf, Dark Helmet, and Yogurt were all fine, but I never got Skroob.

Then, through a chance encounter in IMDB, I read that Skroob is Mel Brooks’ last name spelled backwards! It’s so obvious! Gah!

[Siam_Sam]

Well, sort of backwards. That would actually be “Skoorb.” But Skroob does sound better.