Once in 1989, when Geena Davis hosted Saturday Night Live, there was a skit featuring John Lovitz as a copyright attorney explaining, between segments of the subskit “Frost White and the Seven Little Guys,” how everything in it was sufficiently distinguishable from anything else you might have been thinking of that for copyright-infringement purposes, etc.
QUEEN: Oh, my! Whoever cleaned this plate did a great job! I can see myself as if it were a mirror! [turns face to audience] But it isn’t a mirror! It’s a plate! Plate, plate, my hand, who’s the most pretty in the land?
[plate shows image of Geena]
QUEEN: Frost White! I’ll get her, with one of my poisonous . . . oranges!
I vaguely understood at the time that this was inspired by an episode at the most recent Academy Awards ceremony, where there was a Snow White skit and Disney’s lawyers went apeshit. But what’s the backstory? I missed that Oscars show.
The video that was widely circulated was not the one with the underage girl and her lesbian hairdresser girlfriend but that of a threesome with a model called “Jennifer”, a young friend called “Justin Morris” and the actor himself, shot in a hotel room in Paris.
The underage girl and her lesbian hairdresser girlfriend were the ones who stole that video from Lowe’s hotel room during the Democratic National Convention.
The worst thing about the event is that Beach Blanket Babylon is actually a terrific show and is an SF institution. The problem was that taking a parodic (and fairly risque act) in a cabaret setting and decontextualizing the Snow White business and moving it to a huge auditorium was an enormous mistake. BBB indulges in kitsch: celebrity impersonations, outlandish costumes, song parodies, cheesy humor, absurd choreography–in other words, everything that the Academy Awards doesn’t intentionally represent (although thanks to the legacy of Debbie Allen, absurd choreography is now a staple of the show). It was stupid to think such a show could translate to such a formal, impersonal environment, and both Carr & Silver are equally to blame for the result.
If you’re ever in SF, be sure to check out the show, which is in North Beach (the Italian district which has recently exploded out here thanks to the World Cup).
Snow White should stay away from the Oscar Ceremony. I watched as an animated version of her messed up giving an Oscar to Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase in 1992.
I’d forgotten how bad it was - and that it just didn’t end - it kept going and going and going…
But I miss things like giant dancing stars during the Academy Awards. The interpretive dance during the the “Best Song” performances were fun, it’s the difference between not knowing exactly when to stop and disabling the brakeline entirely.
One of my greatest regrets was that I was out of the country that year when the Oscars were on. Only Oscar ceremony I remember missing since Star Wars was robbed of its Best Picture Oscar by Annie Hall. Annie Hall better than Star Wars, yeah right. Don’t see any goddamn Woody Allen/Diane Keaton action figures, do you? Stupid Academy.
Hoo, man. I didn’t see that the first time around and now I’m sorry I’ve seen it at all. I couldn’t make it through though; as soon as Raw Blow started singing I had to ditch it.