Looney Tunes’ Peter Lorre (YouTube), Animaniacs’ Goodfellas (YouTube), SpongeBob SquarePants’ Lord Of The Flies (YouTube), Not Another Teen Movie’s American Beauty plastic bag (YouTube), Graphic: Rebecca Fassola
This week’s question comes from reader Gonzalo Perez-Garcia:
“What pop culture phenomenon were you introduced to through the parody/satire of it? I watched at least two of SNL’s The View skits with Cheri Oteri’s Barbara Walters before I realized that it was based on an actual show that existed on TV, not just a silly idea the SNL writers came up with on their own. Likewise, a friend of mine in college saw Mafia! before she had ever seen The Godfather. When I finally made her and two other girls watch The Godfather, she was laughing at certain scenes because now the analogous parody scenes in Mafia! suddenly made sense to her.”
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I recall watching multiple parodies of Rear Window on shows like The Simpsons and Looney Tunes, wherein a character thinks they’ve witnessed their neighbor commit a crime, long before I got to finally see the original, which was well worth it.
I think The Rabbit of Seville introduced everyone to Opera
DaaaaaaintilyDaaaaaaintily
We got to play that at a band concert while the cartoon played on the big screen.
The LA Symphony did it a couple of years ago too:
um yeah, that was the place we did it at. not ours though.
If not that, then “What’s Opera, Doc?”
Don’t forget What’s Opera, Doc?
Leopold! Leopold!
Opera for me might have been the Carmen episode of Hey Arnold
The first time I heard any music from Carmen was in the Gilligan’s Island episode when the musical producer (I want to say it was Phil Silvers?) ended up on the island, and they tried to convince him to rescue them by staging a musical version of Hamlet. Gilligan sang the “to be or not to be” soliloquy to the tune of “Habanera.”
Neither a borrower or a lender beeee. Do not forget: stay out of debt!
And it won a Oscar, too!
The cartoons of the ‘40s were filled with classical music I would never have listened to otherwise.
Can’t forget that Hitchcock episode of That 70’s Show where a B plot is literally Rear Window. So good!
I’m surprised that the Simpsons didn’t come up.
Seeing that most of Looney Tunes’ cultural references are from 1930-1960, I’d say that.
Oh my God, how could I forget that by the time I read Of Mice and Men as a jr. high reading assignment, I’d already seen who knows how many Looney Toons characters who say, “I will love him and pet him and squeeze him and call him George!”
While I had seen a few episodes of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z sparingly when I was a kid, I didn’t truly become a fan until I’d seen the fandub parody Dragon Ball Z Abridged.
The abridged series was better than the original if for solving the pacing issues alone.
Abridged shows have a habit of sometimes being better than what it was parodying. Take SAO Abridged, it was a vast improvement on SAO by axing the harem subplot, gave Kirito a flawed character with an actual character arc, and Kayaba is actually given a motive for his actions.
Did you tell him to work the shaft?
Nail, there’s an Albino Namekian standing behind you…kill it like the rest.
My brother tried to show me those abridged Dragonball episodes and I found them excruciating. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel, and of course a 30-year old Japanese kids’ show has parts of it are going to feel weird nowadays.
Then I’d recommend TFS’ Hellsing Ultimate Abridged.
Bitches love cannons
They’ve gotten a LOT better in the decade or so they’ve been doing them.
I’m kind of happy that the new DBS Broly movie doesn’t have Krillin because all of the “official” Krillin voices sound wrong to me after DBZA.
Pretty much every parody The Simpsons ever did
if you’re of a certain age you basically experienced most pop culture through a simpsons reference first. i’ll never forget when i first saw citizen kane and was just like ‘oh’
Patton for me.
Yes! That was my first thought: by the time I watched Citizen Kane I had seen the Simpsons episode a few times, and recognized Orson Welles as the inspiration behind Animaniacs’ The Brain.
Hey! There is no cane in Citizen Kane!
Yep. I was actually proud of myself for catching many of the references in the regular Simpsons episodes when I was a kid. BUT having only just gotten into The Twilight Zone a few years ago, I had no idea so many of those early Treehouse of Horror bits were ripping off inspired by those. (I’m actually a little salty about it, cause now the twists are no fun, but that’s on me)
For a band that became as important to me as they did in high school, it’s more than a little embarrassing that my first encounter with Nirvana was a kid on the school bus playing Weird Al.
…Frau Blücher?
I’ve never seen Deliverance, but I sure feel like I have. I think the first parody I probably saw of it was on The Simpsons?
Rocko for me. That was a hell of a show.
I can’t how many times I’d heard “SQUEEEEEAL like a pig!” before I knew that was in Deliverance.
“squeal like a pig” and “ya got a real purdy mouth” have become so memetic that when I did finally watch Deliverance I was surprised what a small section of the movie that scene actually is.
I know. I figured as soon as the opening credits ended, it was wall-to-wall banjos and assrape.
Not to mention banjoassrape.
It’s still bizarre to me that the first place I ever heard a ‘squeal like a pig’ joke was on Rocko’s Modern Life.
Another notch on that show’s extensive ‘how did this not get dinged?’ belt.
I learned about Deliverance when I witnessed the horrific rape of one of my childhood heroes, Indiana Jones.
I remember one from Animaniacs
I’d say the parody to original awareness ratio on that movie is 50:1. The film itself is incredibly intense and the ‘squeal’ scene is not funny in the least. Ned Beatty sure didn’t think so. It’s a straight-up man-versus-nature-versus-man survival flick.
Everyone should see Deliverance at least once.Even if you think it’s been spoilt from all the parodies, it hasn’t.
SCTV did a bizarre long-form parody where, if I recall correctly, Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis played butchers with pig noses delivering headcheese to a backwoods address.
I can’t think of any specifics off the top of my head, but it was probably from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon, which started when I was 4 and I watched obsessively for years. Having rewatched them in the years since, I’ve realized that they did a lot of parodies and riffs on things that I definitely didn’t get back then.
I got into Channel 101 back into college. When Yacht Rock hit the scene, my friends and I were big fans. I started listening to all the music from the show as a joke. It didn’t take long before I realized the actual genius of the music and started listening “un-ironically”.
“Goddamn that’s smooth!” is a running joke with me and a few friends.
..for me it was Will Ferrell’s crazed (‘here’s a song I wrote when I killed a drifter to get an errection’) drug addict version of Neil Diamond .
“Tropics obsessed lunatic” is now my go-to description of Jimmy Buffett.
Ok, not a parody as such, but once, on here I think, people were whining why it takes so long for a season of Game of Thrones to drop. So with my limited (none) knowledge of the show I commented something like “Winter is rendering”, which got a lot of stars. After a while I decided to watch an episode to see what the fuss was about, then another episode, then another. I think I’ve binged on them all a few times now.-late to the Game.
Dragnet as parodied by Sesame Street. Sesame Street was a gem. It introduced me (unbeknownst to me) to Stevie Wonder, Buffy St. Marie, Madeline Kahn, Lena Horne, and…spelling.
I definitely saw “Mathnet” on Square One years before I ever saw Dragnet.
I remember seeing Square One’s David Numberman sketch before I knew who David Letterman was.
How bout the count?
That’s probably mine! I don’t know but my mother and older brother insist that the Count was the first character I reacted to on the show. They tell me that as a toddler I appeared to be counting along – or at least following along – with him and then would squeal with delight when the thunder and lightning part would come. Is that weird? That might be weird.
Ensuring this article can be repeated 20 years from now, they’ve also parodied Game of Thrones, Mad Men, Law and Order SVU and the Spider-Man musical.“Wait, Grover kept diving into the audience in that sketch because that kept happening in real life?!
Not to mention Monsterpiece Theater
Reportedly, Alistair Cooke was amused by his Seasame Street parody and thought Cookie Monster’s Alistair Cookie would be remembered long after he was forgotten.
As a kid, I knew One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest wasn’t so literal and I could imagine it was rather a story about an insane asylum, but I had no idea what to do with Twin Beaks.
I was fascinated to learn that the Sesame Street parodies came out of pedagogical studies that showed that kids learned better from TV when their parents watched with them — so there was a conscious effort to target some of the content toward adults in order to draw them in.
Obviously, I knew of Flash Gordon. But my first encounter with something Flash Gordon-esque was “Bride of Chaotica!”:
I didn’t love Voyager, but that episode was brilliant.
Oh man Tom Paris was always my favorite character on that show. I once changed the wallpaper of my account on a school computer to just a tile repeating image of his face. I always thought of him as like the closest thing the Star Trek universe had to a Star Wars character.
I watched Kentucky Fried Movie many times before ever seeing Enter the Dragon.
We are building a fighting force of extraordinary magnitude. We forge our spirits in the tradition of our ancestors. You have our gratitude.
I’ve watched I’m Gonna Git You Sucka more times than I can count, and I have yet to watch any of the classic ‘70s blaxploitation films.
Have you seen Black Dynamite? So good…
Not yet, and it’s about to leave Netflix, so I need to get on that.
Sometime in the early 80’s my parents were watching Grease on tv. A song started playing that I recognized. “Hey! That song is by Alvin and the Chipmunks!” That’s when I learned that Alvin and them didn’t write their own songs.
All I know about classical music, I gleaned from Warner Bros. cartoons and Spike Jones records.
Hard to believe, but I saw Spaceballs before I saw all of the Star Wars films. And when the alien pops out of that dude’s chest and does a little dance, I had no clue what it was parodying until I saw the movie Alien.
Many Americans born between the Depression and the Reagan era have Looney Tunes to thank for instilling them with any amount of cultural literacy. For me, though, I was prepared for films like “The Wild Bunch,” “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid” and even “Straw Dogs,” thanks to “Sam Peckinpah’s Salad Days” on Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
I love that sketch but have yet to see a Peckinpah film.
His movies are like that but with fewer English people.
If you are interested, I would warn you there is a serious amount of misogyny in even the most conventional Peckinpah (like “The Wild Bunch”). Plus his addiction to drugs and alcohol really impacted the quality of his later films (though some seem to like “Cross of Iron” and even “Convoy”). If you’re still interested, “Ride the High Country” and “Wild Bunch” are essential. “Ballad of Cable Hogue” is an interesting oddity. “Pat Garrett/Billy the Kid” is worthwhile, if not totally successful. “The Killer Elite” is a disappointing waste of James Cann and Robert Duvall. Even for fans of Warren Oates, gas-guzzling cars and outlandish movie titles “Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia” is an ugly piece of work. Hoping some opposing viewpoints will be posted to help you decide if Peckinpah is worth exploring in depth.
Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia is awesome! VERY odd artifact of its era, but i found it totally engrossing.
Yeah, I know The Wild Bunch is one of “those” movies that you’re just supposed to have seen if you claim you like movies.
“Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia” is an ugly piece of work”A gloriously ugly piece of work.
I can’t remember what would mark The Wild Bunch as particularly misogynistic. There’s not much for women to do in it, but I don’t think it hates women per se, at least not any more than it does people in general. I’d take Easy Rider and MASH, to name movies of same era, to task over misogyny well before Wild Bunch. But as to why someone should watch Peckinpah, he handles ugliness and ugly themes with an adroitness and style that has never been matched. It’s provocative in the best sense of the word; it provokes thought and not merely a disgusted reaction. Maybe the most relevant comparison I can think of: Peckinpah films masculinity like Spike Lee films racism.And stylistically, if you like Tarantino and/or John Woo, you have to seek out Peckinpah, at the very least The Wild Bunch, The Getaway, and Ride the High Country. Then, if you can stomach it, the advanced studies: Straw Dogs.
A very thoughtful defense. But to your first point, the women in The Wild Bunch were either prostitutes by trade, treacherous members of Mapache’s concubine (including Angel’s former love, Teresa) or swooning, helpless victims in the bank and train robberies. Not a lot of agency or resourcefulness among the women in that film.
True, you could never mistake the film for feminist, but I still don’t think it’s misogynist so much as it just doesn’t care about women, being instead focused on a insular world of men. Prostitutes and victims are just what these guys on the outskirts of the world encounter, but I don’t think the film affirms their world view (elicits sympathy, but not affirms) and it never lets the viewer forget how stupid and/or amoral they are. Compare it, again, to MASH, where the men treat the female characters like shit and also come off like the coolest dudes in the world. And I give it credit for presenting its nudity and sex in a matter-of-fact way that’s not remotely titillating; it just is (think of the way the brothel in the big buildup to the climax is shot)tl;dr: Anyone who requires well-developed female characters in all of their cultural intake should stay away from The Wild Bunch, but I also don’t think it should be labeled with a trigger warning for misogyny.
Straw Dogs is well worth seeing, if you don’t mind disturbing, and Ride the High Country is one of the great western films. I think you better understand where Tarantino came from if you see Peckinpah.
I learned about the Gathering of the Juggalos from an SNL skit. I knew ICP existed, but saw that skit and was wondering what the hell is this thing. Then I saw a replay of the original commercial for the Gathering, it showed me how well they nailed it.
Poor Ass Dan
“Fuckin’ magnets! How do they work?” was something I’d seen quoted all over the ‘net that I just assumed was about stupid people in general.
He’s gonna live forevah.
RIP Ass Dan, 1979-2919
If you have a clown posse one wonders what extra information the word ‘insane’ is giving you.
You aren’t familiar with the Sane Clown Posse? They were a two man jazz band in the 70s from Toledo, Ohio.
Their Riddlebox album was such a huge thing in my southeast Michigan elementary school that I absolutely had a childhood ICP phase, so I’m embarrassed to be able to share that they were first known as the Inner City Posse. I thought I was so cool for having one of their early albums.
But did you know that SNL learned about the Gathering of the Juggalos from Tom Scharpling & Paul F. Tompkins on The Best Show?:
RIP Ass Dan
And Mrs. Potato-Dick.
Gathering of the Juggalos tale at the 7:15 mark.
On You Tube, there is a really funny video titled “Noel Fielding Sketchfest conversation w/ Bobcat Goldthwait at SF, Social Hall- January 17, 2016″ where Bobcat teaches Noel about The Gathering of the Juggalos. I’ll try and post the link. Either way, the whole clip is great but the Juggalo story starts at 7:15 mark. Watch & I hope you enjoy it 🙂
Now we know the AV Club commentariat has turned over completely since Nathan’s departure.
I intuited what they were parodying pretty quickly, but I am not sure I have ever sen an actual ad for the gathering.
So many of those Documentary Now episodes are based on movies I’ve actually never seen. I didn’t watch Jiro Dreams of Sushi until after watching Juan Likes Rice and Chicken, so a lot of that movie became unintentionally hilarious after thinking about Fred Armisen firing raw chicken at a wall with a high-pressure air cannon.
I recently watched the performance of Swimming to Cambodia which the season 2 episode Location is everything was based on. I thought it was extremely boring compared to the Documentary Now parody. There were some parts of the DN episode that were almost a perfect recreation of the original doc though so it does show how well they write and direct those
A lot of “Location” came from another Spalding Gray monologue that turned up on HBO back in the day, called “Terrors Of Pleasure,” which dealt with among other things, Gray and his long suffering girlfriend buying a vacation home in Upstate New York, with less than dazzling results. It was a lot funnier, if only for Gray’s description of the house, and that he managed to lose a lot less then he thought he would when he finally unloaded it.
On that note: My first exposure to Spalding Grey was his role as Nanny Fine’s therapist that Mr. Sheffield sends her to because she’s pressuring him to commit to a relationship.
the “grey gardens” one is just brilliant.
Seeing films parodied on the Simpsons was always an interesting experience for me growing up, as the older people in the audience would remind the youngsters just what is being parodied and why they should laugh at it.This is particularly true for the parodies of Citizen Kane, mainly because they kept coming back to it, usually in a Burns-centric episode.
I do this with my son all the time, and will often show him youtube clips of what I’m talking about. The “Who’s on First” sketch is a great example, so many variations of it have been done in at this point, but the original still holds up (until people totally forget about baseball.)
“but the original still holds up”Not really.
It’s possibly one of the least funniest things.
I’ve always thought of the “Who’s on first?” bit as akin to the Aristocrats joke. It’s less about how funny the material is and more about the way they’re performed.
If that’s the case, the only funny version of it is the one with Skinner and Chalmers.
The Kids In The Hall have my favorite take on the routine:
I won’t pass judgment on your thesis until seeing Gilbert Gottfried do Who’s on First.
Wrong.
Now pick up the ball and throw it to Naturally.
Haha, that’s hilarious, my pre-teenage son had a better sense of humor than you. ^_^
You have outed yourself as a humorless loser. Sucks to be you.
Yikes, I just stated an objectively correct fact. Calm down. I’m sorry I don’t like my humor to be terrible.
Yours is the least interesting comment I’ve ever read. Are you as uninteresting in person as you are online?(Please do not answer. No one cares anymore about your opinion.)
It’s also a small miracle that a comedy routine from the 30s about how “the players these days all have funny names” isn’t just a prelude to a bunch of racism.
Well, there was Ty and Dizzy and Scooter and Honus and The Flying Dutchman, not to mention Babe. They had colorful nicknames back then that had nothing to do with racism.
See, I do the opposite to my wife. She hates it.
I experienced all of the Hitchcock classics through the Simpsons first. It even affected my experience watching Rear Window, as I thought Jimmy Stewart had lost it and it was all a coincidence, just like with Bart. It made the ending better for me as it was a bit more of a surprise.
I also did not recognize the Citizen Kane parodies in early Simpsons until I saw the movie in my 30’s.
In my 40s I’ve been catching up on a lot of great 20th century movies I’d never seen, and I’m surprised how often I say, “Oh shit, that’s what the Simpsons were referencing!”
The Simpsons is all over this one for me. Citizen Kane definitely counts since I only saw it in it’s entirety a few years ago. Tons of shot by shot Kubrick references, tons of Hitchcock including a full episode of Rear Window, a lot of the OG Treehouse of Horrors are direct riffs on the original Twilight Zone even literary stuff like Streetcar Named Desire or The Raven. Basically, if it’s in black and white or from a book I saw the Simpsons parody before seeing the actual source material.
About a year ago, I listened to the classic story “The Dark” from the old-timey radio program “Lights Out”*, and had the sudden revelation “Oh! That’s what that one gag in the Simpsons was about!”
I won’t spoil it, but here’s a link to “The Dark” (which I highly recommend):
—————————————————————————————
*Well, okay, it was the re-recorded and (presumably) streamlined version of “The Dark” from Arch Oboler’s “Drop Dead” LP, but I have never actually found a copy of the original broadcast (but a ton of copies of the re-recorded version linked to above). Anyhow, this is all more context than is probably necessary.
OMG I would love a video of all the direct Simpson Parodys. Anyone have that?!?!?!
I only saw All the President’s Men for the first time two years, so it was a shock to realise Sideshow Bob Roberts is such a perfect parody, including Smithers as Deep Throat and the crane shot when Lisa is going through public records.
Speaking of Sideshow Bob, the fact that he has “Luv” and “Hāt” tattooed on his knuckles is a reference to Robert Mitchum’s character in Night of the Hunter (who had “Love” and “Hate”), but modifying it to fit on the smaller number of fingers that Simpsons characters have.
Corollary to this, I’d be interested to know how many people can trace their knowledge of one or more episodes of The Twilight Zone to seeing them spoofed on Treehouse of Horror.
-If we’re laying cards on the table on that note: Homer^3 as a version of Little Girl Lost for me.
The ‘60s and ‘70s version of this is the film parodies in Mad Magazine.
Yeah, but Mad Magazine straight up told the readers what they were parodying (Star Blecchhh, etc.) while The Simpsons parodies force the viewers to figure it out for themselves.
Does King Arthur count as pop culture? I saw Holy Grail before any other Arthur stuff. Maybe I saw Sword in the Stone first? I’m honestly not sure.
King Arthur was England’s pop culture icon and story for centuries.
Oh, those Looney Tunes parodies! Bugs Bunny cartoons are actually a pretty great source of pre-war pop culture references and even helped me out with random catchphrases my grandparents used to say devoid of context. And “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” is a fabulous book that holds up today.
Pfft I’m just going to delete what I wrote because Hughes said what I did, I should scroll more slowly next time.Although I will say I guess I’m more familiar with Leslie Nielsen’s parody work compared to his earlier serious works. Also I saw Hot Shots before Top Gun.
I’ve seen both Hot Shots movies multiple times. I have never seen Top Gun or a single Rambo movie to this very day.
Well, with Top Gun, you’re not really misssing anything, especially if you’ve seen any other Tom Cruise movies.But First Blood, the first of the Rambo movies, is way more of a downbeat and cynical 70s movie than anything else, and is definitively worth watching.
First Blood and Rambo have as much in common as Rocky and Rocky IV.
About a year ago, I was at my regular karaoke night and we slipped into a “Weird Al” block, where one person did a Weird Al song and that inspired somebody else to do a Weird Al song until suddenly a dozen Weird Al songs were queued up to go. The KJ then asked us all the question “Are there any songs where you knew the Weird Al parody before you knew the original?” as an introduction to her own performance of “I Lost On Jeopardy” (a parody of The Greg Kihn Band’s “Jeopardy”). I knew there had to be a song that met that criteria for me, but I couldn’t think of it at the moment. It was only a few days later that I looked up a list of all published Weird Al parodies to realize that I knew “Syndicated Inc.” from the album Bad Hair Day but had somehow never heard the original “Misery” by Soul Asylum. I spent the next two weeks listening to Soul Asylum on repeat and cursing my younger self’s ignorance.
I knew the song “I Lost on Jeopardy” before I’d ever seen Jeopardy.
I was aware of jeopardy, but I heard I Lost On Jeopardy before I ever heard the original song or saw the show.
I’ve never actually seen Jeopardy , but I’ve always loved the SNL version of it
Or Lost!
I knew “Sweet Transvestite” before I knew what a transvestite was.
The thing about that is Jeopardy wasn’t on the air any longer when he parodied it. It was revived after that song.
I bet a lot of people did. I was 12 when that song came out and figured it was mocking a pastiche of classic game shows.
Same here!
Not a Weird Al song specifically, but the music video for UHF had so many 80s pop culture references I didn’t get until way later:
There are definitely weird al tracks I heard before the originals, but more common than that is, even if I know of the original, that I only know the Weird Al lyrics.
Yeah, my answer to this was “most of Weird Al’s repertoire since 2001.”
I remember stumbling across the music video for “Money for
Nothing” on TV and being immediately confused why the CG characters didn’t look
like Weird Al and Jed Clampett.
I did ‘One More Minute’ at a karaoke night once, which went really well, largely because no one in the audience seemed to be familiar with the song. Singing about being dumped goes over well with drunks at a bar, I guess.Most Weird Al direct parodies are more firmly entrenched in my brain than the originals, even the mega-hits like ‘Bad’ and ‘Gangsta’s Paradise’. If I hear ‘Bad’ the lyrics to ‘Fat’ just superimpose themselves over top.
It’s interesting to find out that that song was released before the current edition of Jeopardy debuted, so he was referring only to the original, Art Fleming-hosted version.
I believe so.
Not only did I know Smells like Nirvana before the original I knew Smells like Air Pressure:
You must be young.
But am I jm young?
Almost every 90s Weird Al parody song I knew before the real song, including “Phony Calls” and “Fat”. In fact, it took me 10+ years between hearing “Amish Paradise” before I ever heard “Gangster’s Paradise:
Pretty sure “I Lost of Jeopardy” for me, and probably also “Yoda” based on The Kinks’ “Lola”
Basically, all Bugs Bunny classical music shorts. To this day, I still refuse to believe that there is not a Wagner opera where a short viking guy sings, “Kill the Wabbit!”; or that the Barber of Seville does not feature the lyrics: “Why look so perplexed, why must you be vexed, can’t you see you’re next? Yes, you’re next, you’re so next.”
Got ahold of my first mad Magazine back in 87 and had the entirety of John Cameron’s Aliens spoiled for me. (of course, when later watching ti for the first time, it was still fucking awesome.
I read the MAD take on Pulp Fiction so many times because I was like “what the hell is this movie??”
I assume John Cameron’s Aliens features the line, “Get a lei from her, Lubitsch!”
My main memory of that parody is the depiction of Hudson as a literal giant chicken.
My dad had a copy of a Mad artist Don Martin’s book of parodies featuring a parody of generic Elvis movies. I thought it was funny enough until I watched Viva Las Vegas, then all the jokes hit. Thank god for Mad Magazine and the good work they did over the decades, forming the senses of humor for 9 and 10 year olds.
Am I missing something? Who is John Cameron?
I was gonna mention Mad…I used to buy their paperbacks at garage sales and stuff, and they were all 50’s -’70’s reprints featuring movie parodies.
I probably first encountered more old movies from Mad parodies across-the board. Everything from The Wild One to the Godfather was Mad.
I used to read Mad when I was young in the 1960s, and when I saw “Airplane”, I was surprised at how much it visually resembled one of those great movie parodies drawn by Mort Drucker, with all of the sight gags, sometimes even hidden in the backgrounds. The shot of the director of the Mayo Clinic seated at a desk in front of a bookshelf lined with jars of mayonnaise is a perfect example of Drucker’s style.
Spaceballs. I’ve probably seen it 25 times, and when I finally watched Alien in college I really kind of expected the alien to start singing after he burst out of John Hurt’s stomach.Also Star Wars, which I didn’t see until I was like 13.
i remember a family road trip where the kids were entertaining ourselves by reading a paperback collection of “mad” pieces. there was some story of kids fighting against a shop keeper & one of them told the adult “we’ll fix your wagon on halloween.” none of us had any idea what that phrase meant & had to ask my mom. “does he have a broken wagon?” good times.
So many movies I knew first because of MAD. My older sisters had them laying around and was exposed to so many R rated films through MAD—and ridiculous ones like Catch 22 and The Deep that no elementary school kid would even care about—a decade before I could legally go see them. The also had MAD collections with an older, dark Disney parody of Mickey Mouse taking out Donald (I think he bricked him into a wall like that Poe story—the evil grin on Mickey’s face sticks with me). I just remember kind of getting it, and kind of being uncomfortable with what I didn’t really get but was afraid was what I thought I was thinking.When you’re 8 you’ll read anything.
I am familiar with most movies and TV shows from the late 80s and early 90 from their MAD magazine parodies. Blecch
I saw Spaceballs before Star Wars
I was literally running down a list of stuff like this, and i thought “wouldn’t it be sad if I saw Spaceballs before Star Wars.” I’m sorry you had to experience that.
The acting in Spaceballs is so much better than Star Wars.
No, man. It’s better that way. About 20 minutes in to watching Star Wars for the first time I started giggling. My husband asked me why and I told him “Spaceballs is a very funny movie.”
I got a TON of pop culture for the first time from Looney Tunes. I think my first encounter with Humphrey Bogart was when he got a coconut cream pie thrown in his face.Also all the Dick Tracy villains showed up in a Bugs Bunny ep, I think. And of course all the guest stars on Scooby Doo- Mama Cass, Phyllis Diller, maybe even the Globe Trotters.
Oh man scooby do. They were all so high.
The Dick Tracy references were from a Daffy Duck short.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Piggy_Bank_Robbery
Shit, you’re right. All I remembered was Pickle Puss…
I always remember the old Merrie Melodies cartoon where it was just a bunch of fish that were caricatures of 1930’s movie stars. Eight-year-old me was all “what the hell is this?”
God totally forgot about that. There were so many of those. I still watch modern day cartoons (with my kids… right…) and whenever there’s some reference to pop culture i do find myself wondering how this will hold up when my kids are my age.
I watched Airplane! so many times before ever seeing Staying Alive. And I’ve still never seen From Here to Eternity.
Most of them.Between looney tunes, animaniacs, tiny tunes, the simpsons, family guy, futurama, etc, I was well covered.
I gained a lot in pop culture knowledge from watching cartoons as a kid and having my parents see the parodies over my shoulder which led to a trip to the video store.One of the best sources was — echoing Clayton — Animaniacs and specifically Pinky and the Brain. There’s a brilliant Third Man parody that had my dad go out and buy the Criterion DVD immediately, so we could watch it together. Or the multi-parter which is just a big Prisoner riff.The other big one was Gargoyles. Though that was less to do with parody and more pastiches. But it definitely got me into Shakespeare and the Avalon mythology.
Maurice lamarch doing orsen Wells is the best thing.
Ooh, still got that Criterion Third Man DVD? That’s worth a hell of a lot these days, they’ve lost the rights to it since!
I bought a The Third Man DVD on eBay for real cheap many years back, and it turned out to be pretty bad transfer, not even letterbox format. Much later did I notice that the title on the spine read “The Thrd Man”.
Yikes! That’s too bad. As I understand it, though this comes from film people likely far pickier about this stuff than I am, the Criterion’s initial release of The Third Man is still considered the best-looking transfer (even if they lost the rights to it long before blu-ray as a format arrived), but the current blu-ray (which I think Lionsgate put out) is still quite good. But since Criterion’s release was so much earlier, and has never been reissued by them, it’s very collectible now!
“…one of Welles’ lowest professional moments was recreated, nearly word for word,…”I would’ve paid big money to hear Brain say “Get me a jury and show me how you can say “in July” and I’ll… go down on you.”Apparently the Animaniacs outtakes are hilarious so that tape probably does exist.
Pinky and the Brain put one in my brain I didn’t connect until years later.
The Brainy the Pooh episode. I got the base level joke of Christopher Walken as Christopher Robin. But for years I had no idea his scene was basically a kid spoof of Walken’s monologue from Annie Hall until watching it in a film studies course in college.
And suddenly I was very glad the room was dark so no one saw my eyes go wide and chuckling to myself as that all clicked together years after the fact.
And don’t forget about the Animanics episode that is essentially Heart of Darkness.
The Hobbit & Lord of the Rings, due to finding my older brother’s copy of Bored of the Rings.
I think I read Doon before Dune. I certainly enjoyed it more.
Thanks to Airplane!, I knew most disaster movie tropes long before I ever bothered to actually sit down and watch The Poseidon Adventure or The Towering Inferno (the best of the ‘70s disaster flicks, IMHO). And Airplane! wasn’t even directly parodying those.The Simpsons has done that a few times, too. I was really enjoying this minimalist animation segment in the episode “Catch ‘Em If You Can” and had no idea they were just doing the opening titles to Catch Me If You Can until years later. And I still meet people who think Paint Your Wagon was just something they made up for that musical clip show, and not a stage musical/film flop.
Turn on the captions for that episode. Someone is way too hard working.
Which one? “Catch ‘Em If You Can” or the Paint Your Wagon episode?
Catch em. Tried to dig up the photo I took, but at one point it reads “espionage themed jazz music”
I remember seeing that thinking a western musical with Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood was just too outlandish to be really funny.Turns out…
♫ Gonna paint this wagon, gonna paint it fineGonna use an oil-based paint, ‘cause this wood is pine ♫
Pon-der-OOOOOSSAAA-pine!
Oh my god, Paint Your Wagon is a real movie???! 35 years old and still learning new things.
If you get the chance, watch it (it’s like 3 hours long, though). It’s not horrible. Eastwood and Marvin really can’t sing, but drunken Lee Marvin navigating a town full of collapsing whorehouses will never not be entertaining.
And it was a real Broadway musical by Lerner and Lowe (better known for My Fair Lady and Camelot), not just something created for a movie. But yes, neither Eastwood nor Marvin can sing, but that hasn’t stopped Hugh Jackman from being in musicals, has it?
I’ve never heard Jackman sing, but I was told he played either the Phantom or Raoul in an Australian production of Phantom of the Opera.
Oh, no doubt. I’m sure he has some experience singing. It’s just that it isn’t his strongest talent.
If you really want to laugh at Airplane!, watch Zero Hour! (the original)
I’ve seen comparisons on YouTube. My dad and brother found it channel surfing, once (it may have even been on TCM), and said it was impossible to watch without laughing because they knew exactly which Airplane! gag to mentally insert in the movie.
_Spinal Tap_ is even better, had you seen the early 70s Tour filmslike this from ELP
God, I just watched “Airport” … better yet: “Alex Haley’s Airport” on TCM about a year ago and so-oo many jokes from “Airplane!” and “Airplane 2″ lock in. The inappropriate old woman passenger … The know-it-all kid passenger … the bomb-plot from A2. The broken marriages! The affairs! It’s all there. “Airport” is mostly boilerplate but there’s moments of nutso suspense… plus George Kennedy chomping a giant cigar.
Forgive me: “Arthur Haley’s Airport” … way different author.
Apparently Airplane!’s parody of the From Here to Eternity beach scene was unintentional, as the filmmakers had never seen it.
Well their DP or their storyboard artist must have seen it.
In that vein, I’d heard of Enter the Dragon of course but thanks to having seen Kentucky Fried Movie first, I probably couldn’t view it the way it was ideally intended as a result.
I saw Airplane! in the theater (I’m old, but I was too young at the time to get the sexual humor of it) I got about half of the cultural references because ABC had all of the disaster movies on Sunday night (along with a Bond movie every month), including the Airport franchise. EXCEPT the original Airport, where the spoiled fish takes out the pilots. I just thought it was a random plot point to move the story until, years later, I randomly read about that original Airport.
The Simpsons’ early Treehouse of Horror episodes (watched religiously after Trick-or-Treating for years) basically previewed every horror/thriller movie for me: The Shining, Amityville Horror, much of the Twilight Zone…even The Devil and Daniel Webster.
Not another Teen Movie was a great parody. Funny and cute and was perfect right after American Pie 1 and 2 came out. I didn’t know about American beauty until I saw this.I already saw all of the John Hughes movies before this. Getting the Principle to reenact the Breakfast club suspension scene was fucking perfect.Also the sound track to Not another teen movie is fucking great.
I hadn’t seen any of the newer teen films they spoofed (Cruel Intentions, She’s All That), but I HAD seen a lot of the stuff those films were based on (Dangerous Liaisons, endless takes on Pygmalion), plus all the Hughes films gags they threw in.
As a kid in the 1970s, I got to learn about so many R-rated movies via MAD magazine. By the time I finally got to watch “Dog Day Afternoon” and countless others, I honestly felt like I had already seen an abridged version of the film.
There are probably a lot for me, considering how many old Looney Toons I used to watch in the 90s and early 2000s. I really like old movies now, but most of them I’ve seen as an adult or when I was a teenager.
The Simpsons episode “Margical History Tour” introduced to me to the Mozart vs. Salieri feud that’s the basis of Amadeus. So I then rented Amadeus from my local Blockbuster (lol), and loved it. It’s now my favorite movie.
I’d say I was first exposed to British documentary style and the Brits’ penchant for sweeping saga films through Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
SCOTT OF THE ANTARCTIC
I saw Spaceballs many many times before I saw any of the Star Wars movies. The funny thing is that my wife had the exact same experience, so I imagine that was relatively common for kids of our generation (we are early 80s babies).
As a Kid reading Mad Magazine (and Crazy Magazine and sometimes Cracked) I came across this many many times. In some cases, I have never seen the original to this day, but I generally was aware of what they were parodying within a few years of reading itOne recent item off the top of my head of which I was completely unaware until an article (I believe on here) linked to the original – Amy Sedaris in her TruTV show copying part of a suggestive exercise video that Angela Lansbury made.
I don’t recall if it was MAD or CRACKED, but I’ll never forget reading the comic version of one of my future-favorite films. The comic was called “ A Crockwerk Lemon.” Then, ages later, after seeing the movie, I found out it was first a novel. So I ended up reading and (mostly) understanding the whole book (thanks to seeing the movie), before I discover it had a translation of terms used in an appendix.
Not Another Teen Movie is pretty fantastic. I recently saw Bring It On for the first time and was dying all over the place at the references.And “Ba-ring it!” “It’s already been broughten!” is regularly quoted around our house.
I don’t think it can be underestimated how much of a loss it was when Jim Henson died, he was a master of parody and a subversive critique as early as his coffee commercials then soon Sesame Street, his appearances on SNL and the Muppet Show.Muppet Babies is amazing especially for the use of footage they could use across their run, but especially with their connections to Lucasfilm at the time for example
When I was about 9, I saw Anthony Perkins parodying Psycho on an SNL re-run, and I was enchanted. The next day, my parents borrowed Psycho from the library, and I became obsessed with it.
A LOT of Disney and wholesome movie references from the Simpsons. As an example, I’ve never seen ‘Mary Poppins’ but I have seen ‘Sharry Bobbins’
Buy me a beerTwo bucks a glassCmon please help meI’m freezing my ass
Move it, ya drunk
Or I’ll blast your rear end
I found two bucks!
Then come in my friend….
Can I be a boozehound?
Not till you’re fifteeeeeeeeeeeeeeen….
Wasted away in Margarittaville…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfgQ1xZyttI
I didn’t see Apocalypse Now until years after first hearing this song.
Yes yes yes to the 40’s Warner Brothers cartoons. Some of the celebrities parodied were from radio, like Eddie Cantor (“I can dream, can’t I?”) or Jerry Colonna (“Is every body happy?” Maybe I have them backwards.), so I’ve really only ever seen them via Bug Bunny cartoons. Tallulah Bankhead, Veronica Lake, so many others.
Of Mice and Men was parodied many many times on Looney Toons with different pairs of characters wholly dedicated to the parody.Didn’t realize this until I read the book.
I still haven’t read the book, but my sister and I said “I will hug him and squeeze him and name him George,” countless times as kids.
Until about 2 or 3 years ago I was under the impression that Lawrence Welk was a fictional character that Fred Armisen created for SNL.
Muppet Babies and Simpsons for me. Syndication helped me understand many of the references.
It has become a sort of running joke between my husband and I that I only know about pop culture phenomena from before the lat 90’s thanks to 30 Rock. So many times we’ll be watching/listening to something and I’ll go “Oh! This was in 30 Rock!”. He finds it adorable, but also depressing.
i laughed my butt off at the pulp fiction reference in space jam despite having not even come close to seeing pulp fiction yet.
Jim Carrey’s ‘Wrath of Khan’ reference in ‘The Cable Guy’ when they’re fighting at Medieval Times. When I finally saw Star Trek II I couldn’t help but laugh when that song started playing. Oh and another one – In Billy Madison when he parodies ‘The Godfather II’ with the “you broke my heart line,” which he says to Eric. It went right over my head as a ten-year-old. A few years later I finally saw ‘The Godfather II’ and when that scene played I sat there for a second like, “wait…where do I know that from.” Then it clicked, I got the joke, and started cracking up. My parents were understandably confused.
Here are both scenes for those curious:
When I was a kid it was Animaniacs or the Simpsons parodying things way too old for me. These days maybe it’s Robot Chicken instead?
Wrath of Khan? The Cable Guy was making an original series reference.
Yeah my mistake. Should’ve double checked.
Are you sure about that? That music isn’t in “Wrath of Khan” or any of the Star Trek movies. It isn’t even in the Khan episode from the TV show, because at that point it hadn’t been written yet.
No you’re right. I mixed it up with the movie for some reason.
Here’s the thing – I KNOW there was something which fits the bill here, which I first encountered not knowing it was a parody. I know, know, know there was – but it’s dancing just outside the grasp of my old brain’s recall.So I’ll go with the old movie parodies on “The Carol Burnett Show”, in particular “Mildred Fierce” and “The Little Foxies”. The best thing about both of them was watching the the originals years, or even decades later, and realizing how incisive the writing was, and how little exaggeration was needed to make them into parodies – hahaha, Mildred talks to that cop for literally HOURS in the Carol Burnett version!! Holy crap, she really does talk to that cop for hours in the movie – SHE REALLY DOES. And that Tim Conway nephew in “The Little Foxies”! Such an awful dope! Then in the movie, holy crap – Dan Duryea really is just that relentlessly unredeemable, so much so that you almost can’t help but laugh in shock – did he really just step on his mother’s skirt and tear it? And then respond to her little scream by just kind of looking at her blankly? Before just turning away, along with everyone else??? Actually, The Little Foxies is almost a 15-min straight condensation of the movie “The Little Foxes”- like one of the Mama and Eunice sketches, it could have been played without laughs.
I saw her Norma Desmond parody long before I saw Sunset Blvd.
yes! me, too! i particularly remember the hitchcock “rebecky” spoof & also “random harvest.” they were funny even if you hadn’t seen the originals.
“Mildred’s Fatburger’s”, and Rebecky putting on a second pair of glasses to look at Maxim were for sure hilarious to kid me.
The heightened emotions of melodrama can easily tip over into camp if they’re not performed with absolute sincerity. The fact that the actors have to take the material so seriously is what makes it so susceptible to caricature. A sure way to ruin any film is to watch the French and Saunders version first. Their comedy genius combined with the expertise and resources of the BBC produced a run of almost perfect spoofs for a couple of seasons in the early 90s. I imagine it’s difficult enough for anyone to keep a straight face all the way through What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, but I know I never stood a chance when I first saw it a couple of years after What Ever Happened to Baby Dawn?
Those F&C spoofs never stopped getting better, either – the earlier ones of things like “Gone With The Wind” and “Thelma and Louise” were enjoyable silliness, with them mostly just riffing, in and out of character, but “Mamma Mia – It’s A Nonsense” and “LOTR” were highly complex (not to mention highly budgeted), and very specific. Well, the fart joke during the splits in “Mamma Mia”…
Does the AVC not allow commenters to submit potential questions anymore? I can’t find anything like a link or an email address like in the old days. I have a thing I want to submit.
Two classic movies via The Simpsons: “Citizen Kane” and “The Shining.”“Wait, you forgot your bear! A symbol of your lost youth and innocence!!!”
Everything we watched in film school ended up being something I’d already seen parodied or referenced on The Simpsons years before.
The correct answer, for everybody, is opera. Opera is always parodied, but not seen often. My first was probably on The Odd Couple, but Looney Tunes was early on.
Mine was either Looney Tunes or Gilligan’s Island’s version of Hamlet to the tune of Carmen. Probably my first exposure to Shakespeare, too, though I don’t like to think about it.
As I recall in high school reading Hamlet, my entire class could sing the song “neither a borrower nor a lender be….” from memory that Skipper sings as Polonius. Years later, I started singing this song in front of a group of coworkers all 10 years younger than me and got only blank stares. For a little while I just thought my high school English class consisted only of weirdos. I’m so glad when I encounter others who can remember this.
It was stuck in my head for a good half hour after I posted yesterday. You are definitely not alone.
This just reminded be of how Hey Arnold! did an entire episode where he dreams he and his friends are in Carmen. I believe one of the lines is “my name is Carmen, I am quite charmin’.”
I’m surprised this hasn’t been mentioned yet, but for me it was Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey and The Seventh Seal.
After seeing the episode-length Citizen Kane and Sunset Boulevard parodies on Tiny Toon Adventures, I remember thinking “These would be really good movies if they just told them straight”.
I love how Maurice Lamarche got to parody that Orson Welles’ pea commercial multiple times in his life. When I initially saw the clip of the original commercial recording, I was pretty sure the reference would have been:
Eek! The Cat parodied a bunch of stuff that very few kids would have actually seen. The one I remember most clearly was the Apocalypse Now episode.
Alex, if you really want to get the most out of YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, you need to keep going and watch SON OF FRANKENSTEIN, the third film and the last in which Karloff plays the monster. A LOT of stuff there was quoted more or less directly by Brooks and Wilder, including the son who isn’t sure he wants to continue his father’s work, Igor, the one-armed policeman, the darts game, and yes even the enormous knockers.
I saw Son of Frankenstein for the first time on Svengoolie a few months ago and yeah, my reaction was pretty much ”oh shit, so THIS is actually where Young Frankenstein comes from!”
Bogart in Treasure Of The Sierra Madre turns up a couple of times in a Looney Tunes short. Didn’t discover that until maybe 4 years ago.
There’s a Rugrats episode that parodies The Maltese Falcon.
Back in the late ‘80s, my local Seattle station (soon to be my local Fox network) would run “SCTV” marathons at midnight, with the correct assumption that people would tape them. The everything-but-the-kitchen-sink sketch “Midnight Express Special” introduced me to “Midnight Express” and (when VHS copies became available) “The Midnight Special”:
Everyone alive today who knows the Looney Tunes character Foghorn Leghorn has seen a parody before the real thing, because that character was created as a parody of a character who appeared on Fred Allen’s radio show, a blustery Southern senator named Senator Claghorn, played by Kenny Delmar.
Senator Claghorn had all the tendencies that we associate with Foghorn Leghorn, including the catchphrase “It’s a joke, son”, and also the practice of talking over people while telling them things like “you keep flappin’ your lips and I can’t get a word in edgewise”.
The character of Senator Claghorn was a breakout star, and was being quoted all over the place starting soon after it debuted in 1945. Delmar as Claghorn even got his own movie, called It’s a Joke, Son!, in 1947. But the movie was awful; that character’s charm came mainly from its interaction with Fred Allen, and could not be a lead character. In this respect, the parody was superior to the original, as Foghorn Leghorn proved very well equipped to be a star, from his first appearance in a cartoon in 1946.
Foghorn Leghorn stands as the most notable example of a parody that has completely outstripped the thing it was referencing, and one that has become established as an entertainment phenomenon in its own right.
Heh, I was going to say Foghorn Leghorn myself, and decided to read the many, many comments first. I listened to a ton of classic radio comedy shows in high school (my parents introduced me to shows like Suspense and The Shadow when I was a kid, but skipped the comedies), and I was really startled when I first hit Fred Allen and Sen. Claghorn. I had no idea he was a parody.I had another one of those illuminating moments in a Foghorn Leghorn cartoon a couple of years ago. When I saw it in one of the shorts as a kid, Miss Prissy’s book, Live Alone and Hate It, was just a funny title. But then I discovered Marjorie Hillis and Live Alone and Like It years later, and ohhhh, now I get it. I hadn’t even realized there was anything to get.Incidentally, Marjorie Hillis’s books are tremendously fun and kind of amazing time capsules, and I recommend them heartily.
This was my introduction to the Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” Gotta love it!
Not sure if this entirely counts, because it was more of a reference than a parody. A few years back I suddenly realized that the first time I heard of my favorite film, Blow-Up, was on SCTV’s Farm Film Blow Up. I remember when they complained that no one “got blowed up” wondering why anyone would name a film Blow-Up and not blow anyone up. It seemed stupid to me. What a difference a few years and a great film can make.
Ha! I got a good one. Up here in Canada in the 80s we were about 3-4 years behind on hip hop becoming mainstream. So I had never heard of Beastie Boys or “Fight for Your Right” when the now long-forgotten Morris Minor and the Majors dropped “Stutter Rap,” which was actually the first rap song I ever heard (age 8?). It wasn’t until years later that I heard License to Ill and finally connected the dots.
Morris Minor and the Majors may be long (and justly) forgotten, but their lead singer, the comedian Tony Hawks (not the skateboarder), is still going strong, especially for his memorable turns on Radio 4 comedy panel game I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue. Here he is singing the Smiths’ Girlfriend in a Coma to the tune of Tiptoe through the Tulips.
I had no idea. I don’t think I’d thought about him in 30 years.
I’m surprised that “Family Guy” has barely been mentioned in the comments. Maybe that’s cause some of the references made on that show are completely over its audience’s head. Say what you will about its obsession with pop culture, I’m impressed that they’re willing to do parodies of things most people wouldn’t have a clue about like William Shatner performing “Rocket Man” on a 1978 sci-fi awards show or the “Somewhere That’s Green” number from “Little Shop of Horrors.” “The Simpsons” also got into the act when they did an homage to the little-known film “Two for the Road.” It makes me feel good when I pick up on references that would elude the vast majority of viewers.
Weird Al also wrote the best Devo song not done by Devo members. From Wikipedia:“In an interview on VH1’s Behind the Music, Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh stated in reaction to the song that: ‘I was in shock. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard. He sort of re-sculpted that song into something else and… I hate him for it, basically.’”AV Club wrote about how great it is, even.
I saw Spaceballs before I saw Star Wars. I was so excited when I finally understood who Pizza the Hut was supposed to be!
My answer: none.
My childrens’ answer: all of it.
Blazing Saddles was my entry to westerns and racially biased culture. It’s a very funny movie and very smart about what it’s saying. Unfortunately it’s also essentially the pinnacle of this.
Austin Powers!So many references, from Basil EXPOSITION, to the henchman who throws a shoe, I had no idea there were so many references from the Bond films, especially the old ones.
Lady Gaga. I was aware of her, but I had never actually listened to any of her songs or anything. My first exposure to her music was actually via Little Kuriboh’s Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series.It would be, like, another 5 years before I actually listened to a proper Lady Gaga song.
Russian lit by way of LOVE AND DEATH.
Wheat
“You ig-no-rammus!” “’Ig-no-ray-mus’, sir.”
I’m pretty sure I saw Spaceballs before I saw a single Star Wars movie. That and read the Mad Magazine parody (“we’re off to kill the bad guys, and blow ’em right outta the sky! If we should miss, then we can all kiss, our buddies back there goodbye!)
I still haven’t seen The Music Man, but I can sing the Monorail song from the Simpsons by heart.
I read of Mice and Men in Jr. High on my own for the sole purpose of getting the jokes better when there was a small cat/dog/gangster paired with a big, dumb cat/dog/gangster.
Bugs Bunny & Friends when playing the piano, would alwats say, “I wish my brother, George, was here.” Reference to Liberace, I was later told.
My kids were watching a My Little Pony episode where two of the flying ponies were dragging a non-flying pony behind them while escaping a Temple of Doom-type location, when a crocodile or some other dangerous thing got in their way, and the pony who was skiing behind the two flying ones shouted, “Are you crazy, go around it, don’t go over it!” and one of the ponies up front hollered back, “Go over it, are you crazy?”Just a few weeks later, we decided it was time they were introduced to the intrepid Henry “Indiana” Jones, PhD, and their sudden recognition upon viewing this scene:was just a delight.
Not sure if this counts, but when I saw Scarface, I was shocked that ‘Push it to the Limit’ was a real song from a real movie. When I first heard it on South Park I thought it was *obviously* a half assed parody of bad 80’s music created for the show in an hour or two.
The new Disney Channel series of Muppet Babies also features a scene using the rolling boulder from from Raiders of the Lost Ark. I knew it was a call back to the original Muppet Babies series, which of course I knew was from Raiders in the original series.
God. I am SO damn old…
God. I am SO damn old…
I also learned about “Goodfellas” and Orson Welles from Animaniacs. Another piece of pop culture I was exposed to through that show was “Apocalypse Now.” They did a parody where the Warners were sent by the studio head to find The Director, who’d gone off the rails while making a movie. It took me years to learn that they were making fun of the movie AND the making of the movie.
Freun-LAY-ven!
Airport disaster movies and Airplane!
Fortunately or unfortunately every major piece of pop culture I encountered as a parody or reference before the real thing. Why? I grew up watching Golden Age Simpsons from the age of about 5-6 on. As an example, it was many years before I knew Cape Fear existed, while I absolutely loved the Sideshow Bob parody of it. Pulp Fiction, Apollo 13, Rear Window, Goodfellas, Citizen Kane, endless. Anyone who got to watch the Simpsons before they were 10 are probably in a similar boat. A more recent and prosaic example is the South Park parody of “Work Bitch” by Britney Spears. Had never heard the song and thought it was just written for the show.
I was the lucky one in my family to discover the Orson Welles outtakes from Wikipedia after YEARS of quoting the Pinky & the Brain version. I got to share that with my brothers over the holidays this year – an absolute joy to watch them double over and almost fall out of chairs in response
I’m with Nick on this, Looney Tunes were paroding 30s-50s culture as their current zeitgeist just as Animaniacs and Tiny Toons did to the 90s. But I didn’t know Ed Wynn was a real man until I was in my teens and saw him in the Twilight Zone and realized his incredibly zany voice and whole mannerisms were perfectly encapsulated in the parodies…
I could probably come up with better examples if I spent a lot of time thinking about it, but I remember getting really excited watching a Three Stooges re-run on cable and realizing that Larry sounded almost just like Stimpy from the then new, then untainted by scandal Ren and Stimpy cartoon.There were a lot of Looney Tunes and MGM cartoons with pop culture references that had ceased to be relevant before I was born. Bugs Bunny meeting long-dead celebrities, Frank Sinatra being so thin he had to be hooked up to an IV, and of course the Tex Avery classic where a bulldog maestro is hypnotized to perform a wide variety of what were popular songs in the 1940s. I STILL laughed at that Tex Avery cartoon despite having little knowledge of the songs contained within, and maintain that it could work brilliantly today if the references were updated and the unfortunate racism was taken out.
The Critic and MST3K.
Growing up in the 80s and 90s in Norway, I lived in a relatively low-income household. This meant we only really had the national Norwegian broadcasting channel, one other TV channel, rented VHSes, and a small cinema that sometimes got movies around the time they would be released on VHS. Also, a huge amount of popular comics were translated from the US.
What does this all add up to? Never ever watching an episode of Happy Days, but having some vague idea that there’s this leather-jacketed guy somewhere going “Eyyyy” and jumping sharks. “Do ya feel lucky, Punk?” Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles becoming a HUGE DEAL while Daredevil barely had a whiff of popularity on comic book shelves, and only realizing as an adult that the Foot Clan was a parody of the Hand.The Genie in Aladdin is a genre of his own in introducing foreign audiences to stuff through parody en masse. I recall The Far Side being a repeat “offender” in referencing/parodying US stuff I’d never heard of, too.
I was an NES player, which means I was a Mario fan, and watching the Super Mario Super Show was super confusing at times. So. Many. Parodies.
Al Jolson or perhaps Abbott and Costello from Looney Tunes and Tex Avery cartoons….when cartoons were actually cartoons.
One of my biggest pop culture regrets is watching Kentucky fried movie’s a fistful of yen segment many many times before ever having seen Enter the Dragon. I knew it was a takeoff on karate movies of the 70s but didn’t realize how much of a direct parody of that movie in particular. When I finally did get around to watching enter the dragon a few years ago, I recognized the greatness of it but couldn’t help but laugh at it at the same time. I literally had to turn it off when the guy says “just lost Drunken men who don’t care where they wake up the next morning”
Things I learned today: now that I’ve heard the Orson Welles “Frozen Peas” clip, I realize that not only is the Animaniacs sketch a nearly-verbatim satire, but it’s also pretty obviously the inspiration for the “Clem Fandango” gags in Toast of London. Thank you for turning me on to that.
Almost every 90s Weird Al parody song I knew before the real song, including “Phony Calls” and “Fat”. In fact, it took me 10+ years between hearing “Amish Paradise” before I ever heard “Gangster’s Paradise:
so many old movies from “the carol burnett show.”
Their parody of “Gone With the Wind” is still one of the funniest things from that show. “Why Scarlett that DRESS!” “Well, I just saw it in a window and couldn’t resist”
The first hip-hop song I fell in love with was Morris Minor and the Majors’ “Stutter Rap,” which hit #2 in Australia. Rap otherwise wasn’t really a thing over here.I didn’t hear Licensed to Ill (now one of my favourite albums) until about 4 years later, and a lot of the jokes that went over my head years before finally dropped into place.
I spent four of my high school years in band / orchestra with a teacher that came from the Whiplash school of music instruction. Every year, he would make the spring concert a combination of a jazz “big band piece”, an overture from something like West Side Story and a classical piece. One year he picked “The Barber of Seville”. Several times around the music and none of us could get through it without cracking up because all we could think of was the following Bugs Bunny Warner Brother’s cartoon. After listening to us giggle, Herr Director threw up his hands, shut the score and told us we were all monsters. And he gathered up all our scores and found another piece of music for the spring concert.
I have another one and this isn’t a parody per se, but it was more like I was familiar with the homage before the original:I was born in 1970 and had my teenage years in the 80’s. U2 were breaking out and the Joshua Tree was a huge album (I was a metalhead in HS and only knew them from MTV) They had a video, I believe for the song Where the Streets Have No Name, where they played on a rooftop. Years later I saw the B-Sharps episode of the Simpsons with my housemates when it first aired, and said out loud, “Oh, that’s like that U2 video” when they played on the rooftop. One of my housemates, somewhat managing to contain his disgust, said, “You know that’s a Beatles reference, right? That’s why they had George Harrison comment on it” And I was like “Oh yeah, I knew that”
Because of The Simpsons, I was a teenager before I realized that A Streetcar Named Desire was not actually a musical
Eek! The Cat did a superb parody of Apocalypse Now. And it also introduced me to Sgt Pepper, before I even knew what it was.
The great detectives.
Music.
My parents were “religious.” Once my brother borrowed a CD from a friend and mom buried it in a drainage ditch several feet underground. She made my dad throw out all his old vinyl from the 60’s.The only music I heard until I was over 18 was Church “music.” I don’t mean Church music, of which there is centuries of beautiful tradition, mostly in Latin. I mean the parody/farce that is the modern pop garbage that can somehow wring 100 syllables out of the word “Jesus.”
One non-Church CD I was allowed in the 18 years before I left home was by Weird Al, so that was also parody. (One of the other church moms prevailed upon mine to loosen up a bit.)
Does anyone remember when Animaniacs parodied Apocalypse Now?
My previous comments on this thread have been “pending approval” today for so long, so I bet someone else will beat me to this, but here goes:
I’m really old, but there was a film I loved, as a kid, called “Murder By Death.” It parodied all these classic detectives from old films and fiction. There was Charlie Chan (Peter Sellers), Nick and Nora Charles from “The Thin Man” series (David Niven and Maggie Smith), from the Agatha Chrstie mystery books there was Miss Marple (Elsa Lanchester) and Hercule Poirot (James Coco) and “The Maltese Falcon” Sam Spade (Peter Falk, who I only knew from his own TV detective series, “Columbo”). They all had funny variations of the famous character’s names. I didn’t know who they were paying homage to were, at the time. It also had the plot of at least a few other films: the detectives (each accompanied by one companion), had to stay the night at a mysterious millionaire’s mansion, where, they were told, a murder was going to take place. The one to solve the crime would then be named The Greatest and receive a million dollars. Oh, and Truman Capote starred, as their mysterious, insane host. I bet this film is available to watch somewhere online? If so, you should- it’s a hoot.
The Rutles! But what band were they supposed to be?
Showing my age, but – for years my younger brothers and I would do “Tell Me About the Rabbits, George!” from Bugs Bunny cartoons without number at each other. It wasn’t maybe 15-20 years ago that I caught Lon Chaney, Jr.’s Academy Award-nominated performance as Lenny in the film version of OF MICE AND MEN, and realized that was who they were doing!Also, Foghorn Leghorn? It’s only five or so years back that I found he was a pretty spot-on impersonation of ALLEN’S ALLEY’s Senator Claghorn!EDIT: Oh, and don’t ask me how this happened, but I saw KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE’S “A Fistful of Yen” Kung-Fu movie parody before I saw ENTER THE DRAGON. So, the first time Han points out to Roper the “Merely Drunken Old Men who no longer know where they are, nor care…” – I yelled out the theater, “And these are Drunken Old Men who DO Know Where They Are, But Don’t Care!”
Saw The Music Man recently and after, all I had stuck in my head was “Monorail! Monorail! MONORAIL!”
I learned about Apocalypse Now from Animaniacs.
-The Critic’s take on the Orson Welles radio spots (“Full of country goodness and green peaness…wait. That’s terrible!”)
-As I’ve admitted elsewhere recently, I had no idea just how long the legacy was behind the Simpsons character oft-refered to simply as “YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSS?”
-Animaniacs spoofing Apocalypse Now. Granted, I was only half aware that doubled as a Jerry Lewis gag, but the AN send-up completely evaded me as a kid (…and weirdly, it was only in the past year or so that I remembered/realized that episode even had a gag on the use of The End by The Doors.
…memory has been pulling some wild cards on me lately.)
Mine was the films of David Lynch. I had seen the Martin Short film jimminy glick in lalawood and the film features a Lynch parady and I had never heard of David Lynch. Jimminy glick made me want to seek out a Lynch film, and now I’m a huge fan
I has to be High Anxiety directed by Mel Brooks riffing on all the Alfred Hitchcock tropes.
I’m not the biggest fan of parody movies, and I can probably trace that back to Spaceballs. To this day I can never take Darth Vader seriously because I had watched Rick Moranis spoofing him first. Worse still, is the movie also kind of ruined Alien’s chest-buster scene for me.
My father had taped radio shows(WSAY Rochester I think) from Doctor Demento, plus of course the PBS station in Rochester played Monty Python I think on Friday nights. As a Canadian it was great.
Never learn about opera from a Bugs Bunny cartoon. You’ll find out the real thing is never as funny as you expect.
Not so much a parody and not so much the first time I’d experienced them, but there’s music that I’d heard at least once already that was repurposed and that new version overtook the original in my head.
Specifically, several instances where Quintin Tarintino used the musical cues from the “Man with no name” Clint Eastwood trilogy. Re-watching “Fistful of Dollars”, “For a Few Dollars More” and “God the Bad and the Ugly”, you constantly encounter melodies and cues used elsewhere.
Never seen Top Gun but I’ve seen Hot Shots! twice. Im 27 (for recerence).
I watched Spaceballs probably 200 times between the ages of 6 – 10 (probably too young, but I got most of the jokes). I never saw a Star Wars films until probably age 12, and then a lot of things clicked.
I’ve been a Star Wars fanatic my entire life, but somehow over the years of me watching those movies on a loop, endlessly, my sister managed to avoid every single one. Not sure how this happened, but anyway, fast forward about a half decade, my sister is in high school and the watch A New Hope in her lit class as an example of Campbell’s Hero’s Journey archetype. She really enjoyed it, and so I told her if she wanted to sit down and watch the rest of them, I owned them all. I bring my Blu Rays over to my parent’s house and we sit down to watch Empire, and for some reason this one is familiar to her in a way A New Hope wasn’t. At first I figure that I probably watched this one a lot more often, because for whatever reason we didn’t own a copy of A New Hope in my house until I was in high school myself, and she’s remembering little snippets from before she was old enough to comprehend it as a film. Eventually we get to Yoda, who is VERY familiar to her, except in her mind he’s a merchant-type character and is supposed to be trying to sell Luke things.And then we realize that somehow, she had avoided Star Wars her entire life, but has vivid memories of Spaceballs.
Film noir courtesy of Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid.
There’s a lot of SNL skits from my childhood that seems strange, especially musical parodies. Like John Belushi doing his Joe Cocker impression without knowing who Joe Cocker is. Of Rich Hall doing the Talking Heads Big Suit thing, without knowing about the Big Suit.Also, reading Mad magazine as kid and not knowing really knowing that a lot of the stuff that they were doing was parodies of pop culture things at the time. Like, who knew that there was a Towering Inferno movie in the theatre? And the Looney Tunes Peter Lorre thing mentioned above is a good one. Given that the old Looney Tunes cartoons really weren’t created as kids entertainment, but as bumpers in movie theaters, there’s sooo much referential stuff in those that only adults in that time period would get. Things like the short where Humphrey Bogart is trying to order a sandwich.
I grew up reading Mad Magazine in the ‘70s. Most of the movies I saw parodied were ones I had never seen (and some I still haven’t seen).
I saw Spaceballs when I was 4-6 years old in the late ‘80s before I ever heard of Star Wars. That was in that period of about 1987-1994 when Star Wars disappeared from the pop culture radar with no new movies, cartoons nor merchandise, so I was too young to remember it. When I finally did see Star Wars at about 9 years old in 1992 I was like “Wait a minute, this is like Spaceballs”. Then in 1995 they started making the action figures again with no new media and even before the theatrical re-releases of the movies in 1997 because there was that much demand. I bought some myself that year. They haven’t stopped making Star Wars toys since, and of course there have been new movies and cartoons too. Now it’s impossible not to have at least heard of Star Wars if you live in the industrialized world.Sidenote: There were those bendy Star Wars figures that came out in 1993 and I had some, but I don’t count those a real comeback, those were like cheap knick-knacks.
‘Werd Up’, duh.