So I recently watched 2001: A Space Odyssey. First time I had seen it since I was a kid. (I’m 40.) Amazing film. I won’t bother trying to do it justice. Look it up on the web if you haven’t seen it.
I had read some about the film prior to watching and knew this shot was coming, and knowing about it didn’t spoil it for me. But just in case …
SPOILER ALERT
The shot in question is after the modified proto-human tribe has bested the rival tribe, Moonwatcher (that’s the name; see the imdb page) tosses his bone/weapon in the air and it becomes a satellite orbiting the earth, thus indicating to the viewer that the story has jumped 4 million years into …
2001 !!
So during my reading about the film I kept coming across writers mentioning this scene as having been frequently parodied in the years since. Example, this critic says of the shot that it must be “one of the most parodied in cinema history,”
Ok. Name one. What other film or TV show has parodied this specific shot? I know there have been many shows inspired by 2001, but I know of none hat referred to this particular shot, let alone parodied it.
I think the baby carriage going down the steps in Potemkin is parodied far more often than the shot in 2001. I don’t doubt the Simpsons did it, but they also did Major Kong and the bomb from Dr. Strangelove - and no doubt every other interesting shot in movie history.
The Potemkin steps are a good choice, but has the benefit of being over 80 years old. Another famous shot from a more recent film is Dustin Hoffman framed by Anne Bancroft’s leg in The Graduate. And even more recently, the Neo-leans-back-to-bulletdodge managed to find its way into every spoof within a matter of months.
Monty Python’s Flying Circus. In one of Gilliam’s animated segments, a caveman throws a bone in the air, it turns into a modern bone-shaped satellite, then falls back down and hits the caveman on the head.
Could be the first parody too, because it probably appeared shortly after the movie was first released.
The slow motion Right Stuff march is parodied a lot.
I have seen the 2001 shot quite often, but it’s hard to remember where. The only one I can recall is in Genesis’s Land Of Confusion (Spitting Image) video.
Off the top of my head, I’d say the western gunfight shot is one of the most common. The setting is a long main street in a western town. The shot is framed from behind one of the gunfighters with the second gunfighter facing the first in the distance. The camera is slightly offset so you can see both gunfighters simultaneously in the frame. They draw and shoot. exampleexampleexampleexample
FYI: If you go to the IMDB page for a movie and click on “Movie Connections” you’ll see a lot of references about (or within) a movie in other shows. Here’s the one for 2001. A very long list and a quick check of the top couple screenfuls shows some monolith/ape parodies. (But there’s another section of parodies further down. Hmm.)
The “Battleship Potemkim” stairs shot is interesting since so very few people have probably seen the movie. (I’ve seen it maybe twice. Most recently in the past year when it was on TCM.) IMDB indeed lists quite a few homages to the staircase scene.
The Simpson’s parodied quite a bit from “2001”. The one I liked the best was the weightless Homer rotating to line up with the rotating potato chip - like the ship landing on the big wheel space station.
Another parodied scene is the “Hills are Alive” scene of Julie Andrews twirling on the meadow mountain top from “Sound of Music”.
I watched Casablanca for the first time a few years ago, and it was a little bizarre as though I’ve never seen the film, I’ve basically seen every scene, character and piece of dialog parodied at one time or another.
Thelma and Louise driving off a cliff and freeze framing is another scene I’m familiar with the shot only through parody, I’ve never seen the movie.
I don’t think this counts. I’m not a film buff, but my understanding is that a “shot” is different then a “scene”. Having a big monster climb a building and swat at planes is often paraodied, but there isn’t really a single “shot” of that from the original film that sticks out as often parodied. The bone up in the air thing, when its parodied, actually tries to re-create the way it looked in 2001, down to how the scene is framed by the camera.
I’ll grant it’s a pretty hazy distinction in a lot of cases though.
I call it the hero walk. The parody I remember right now was in Monsters, Inc.
And a vaguely similar scene was the one from Reservoir Dogs of the guys walking down the street in black suits, while smoking. I remember seeing it parodied on Coupling.
