A new video from NextMovie compiled all of the references to movies that occurred during the first five seasons of The Simpsons. Some are more obvious than others (like the Lawrence of Arabia one), but the video helps you out by telling you the movies. 2016 Update: Unfortunately, that video is no longer available, but below is a similar compilation of movie references from the first two seasons. This video was created by Quiritare Cinema.
How many do you recognize? Check it out.
What is your favorite Simpsons movie reference? Leave your two cents in the comments.
On Tuesday, Marty Brown will be performing before a live audience at Radio City Music Hall on America’s Got Talent. As his long-term fans and regular Chimesfreedom readers know, it is a great story for the country singer to be making a comeback. Two decades ago in 1992, Marty Brown was a young man with a dream traveling the country performing in a tour of Wal-Marts. Check out the young Marty Brown singing “Wildest Dreams” in the shoe section of the retail store in 1992.
Help make the wildest dreams of the Brown family come true Tuesday night by picking up the phone, logging onto the AGT website, and/or Tweeting your votes. To vote by phone, call the number they show on your screen for him. To vote by Internet, go here. To vote on Twitter, tweet using the hashtag #voteAGT followed by “Marty Brown.” You get one vote on Twitter but can vote up to ten times each on the phone and on the Internet (for each email address).
Voting begins 10:55 p.m. Tuesday, and the phone voting goes until 1 a.m. EST while the online and Twitter voting goes to 6:00 a.m. Wednesday. For more information and details on the voting times for your time zone, check out AGT’s website. Or you may listen to Brown explain the voting system:
How will you vote? Leave your two cents in the comments.
One of the highlights of Saturday Night Live is seeing performers breaking character because they cannot control their laughter — as long as it does not happen too often. This video montage features cast members from various seasons — going back to the late 1970s — as they crack up. See if you can make it through without laughing.
The term for unscripted giggling is “corpsing,” referring to the fact that the worst time to laugh is when you are playing a corpse. For a discussion of when it is okay for SNL cast members to laugh and when it becomes annoying, check out Slate.
What is your favorite SNL moment where a performer started laughing? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Many commentators have noticed the parallels between Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Several parallels are intentional, but is one of the biggest similarities just a coincidence? Note that this post has spoilers for both Moby Dick and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
The Wrath of Khan (“TWOK“) mirrors the overrding theme of vengeance from Moby Dick. Just as Ahab is driven by his desire for vengeance against the white whale, TWOK focuses on Khan’s obsessive quest for vengeance against Captain Kirk (William Shatner). The movie writers’ intent is reinforced with Herman Melville’s book appearing in one scene and Khan quoting or paraphrasing from Moby Dickat points (“to the last I grapple with thee; from Hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee”). Finally, the ending of TWOK is almost identical to the ending of Moby Dick. But what is interesting is that, despite all of the intentional similarities, it appears that this major similarity about the two endings is entirely coincidental.
In the end of TWOK, after Spock dies, his body is sent off in a photon torpedo as his coffin. In one of the final scenes, we see that this “coffin” has landed on the planet where Genesis is bringing the planet back to life.
The test version of the film, though, omitted the final coffin-on-the-rejuvinating-planet scene. Various sources, including Wikipedia, explain that Leonard Nimoy had initially agreed to reprise his role as Mr. Spock in TWOK only because his character would finally be killed. But, as the filming was coming to a close, Nimoy had enjoyed the making of the movie so much, he wanted to allow for Spock’s return if they so chose. So, the scene of Spock mind melding with Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) was added, but the initial cut of the movie still ended in a way that appeared to make Spock’s death final. Only after test audiences reacted poorly to seeing the icon’s death did producer Harve Bennett add the final scene showing Spock’s coffin on the rejuvenating planet with Nimoy’s voiceover of the traditional Star Trek series opening monologue.
The director, Nicholas Myer objected to the changes but allowed them. According to his director’s commentary on the video, he believed it was cheating to change the finality of the death scene (and having no interest in a resurrection story, he declined an offer to direct Star Trek III: The Search for Spock). In the commentary, he explains that as the movie was being finalized, producers realized that they might want to continue the series. And so the movie has the ending we all know:
Other sources confirm the story about the changes to the ending of TWOK. The book Star Trek and Sacred Ground, by Jennifer E. Porter and Darcee L. McLaren, reports that the first versions of the film did not include the scenes with Spock’s coffin landing on the Genesis planet. (p. 155.) A 2010 Los Angeles Times article noted Nimoy’s response to seeing the coffin scene: ”I was caught by surprise by the ending…. I was sitting there watching it and the camera goes across some foliage, some mist — a little magical kind of look — and guess what, there’s the black tube … whoa, I think I’m going to get a call from Paramount.”
So why is it interesting that the final scene was an afterthought and not planned from the start? Because so much of the rest of the movie echoes Moby Dick, and in the classic novel, a coffin plays an important role. Aboard the novel’s ship the Pequod, the character Queequeg at one point thought he was dying and had a coffin built for him. At the end of the novel, the obsessed Ahab is killed by his obsession just as the obsessed Khan is effectively killed by his obsession Kirk. Then, the book’s narrator Ishmael survives because after the Pequod is destroyed, he uses the coffin as a life buoy, just as Spock is left with a coffin after the Enterprise is almost destroyed. As Ishmael is adrift after the ship’s destruction, he describes his discovery of a “black bubble” in the ocean:
“[T]he black bubble upward burst; and now, liberated by reason of its cunning spring, and owing to its great buoyancy, rising with great force, the coffin like-buoy shot lengthwise from the sea, fell over, and floated by my side. Buoyed up by that coffin, for almost one whole day and night, I floated on a soft and dirge-like main. The unharming sharks, they glided by as if with padlocks on their mouths; the savage sea-hawks sailed with sheathed beaks. On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last.”
[Update February 2015: The final coffin scene from the Gregory Peck movie does not seem to be on YouTube any longer, but below is a trailer for the movie.]
When I first saw The Wrath of Khan in the movie theater, because of the Moby Dick references, I thought the director intended to invoke Moby Dick again at the end. Just as the classic novel ended with Ishmael surviving in a scene with a coffin, I thought the producers’ message with the final coffin scene was designed to evoke Ishmael’s survival, revealing that Spock would live again. While they did intend to imply Spock might live again, it seems it was a coincidence that the way they did it once again invoked Moby Dick.
Were the similar endings a coincidence? What do you think? Leave a comment.
Bonus Moby Dick References: There are a couple of other parallels between Moby Dick and Star Trek outside The Wrath of Khan. Captain Picard, i.e., Patrick Stewart, starred in a TV version of Moby Dick and like Khan he quoted the book in a Star Trek movie, Star Trek: First Contact (1996).
On July 24 in 1567, the imprisoned Mary Queen of Scots was forced to abdicate her crown. Eventually, she would be beheaded.
]The abdication came after Mary’s second husband died under mysterious circumstances. Mary subsequently married the main suspect, leading the nobility to have her imprisoned. She was forced her to abdicate her throne in favor of her son.
After Mary escaped and went to England, she became connected to plots to overthrow Queen Elizabeth. So, Mary was beheaded. But when Elizabeth died, Mary’s son King James VI became King of England, Scotland, and Ireland.
A Mary Who Was Queen of Arkansas
More than four hundred years later, Bruce Springsteen wrote a song about another Queen Mary, “Mary Queen of Arkansas,” which appeared on Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. (1973). Springsteen earlier included the song among the first demos he recorded for John Hammond at Columbia.
When I first got the album, “Mary Queen of Arkansas” was one of my least favorite songs on the record. Hammond did not especially like it at first either, and Springsteen rarely plays the former concert opener live these days. But gradually, the song grew on me.
“Mary Queen of Arkansas” is a love song, with some circus references: “Well, I’m just a lonely acrobat, the live wire is my trade.” Beyond that, I never thought too much about the meaning.
But checking some sources for this post, I found various interesting theories. Some say Mary has religious significance or that she was a prostitute. Similarly, Springsteen has commented on how he often uses the name “Mary,” saying “I’m sure it’s the Catholic coming out in me, y’know? That was always the most beautiful name.”
Here, though, the title’s similarity to Mary Queen of Scots seems less than a coincidence. Reportedly, Springsteen got the idea for the title from the 1972 film Mary, Queen Of Scots, which starred Venessa Redgrave.
The song, though, is not about the Queen of Scots. Wikipedia concludes, “The song appears to be sung in the first person, by a slave in the antebellum American south, to his white mistress, with whom he is having a clandestine affair.”
I never saw that the slave connection in the song, although some of the lyrics support that theory. For example, consider the lines: “your white skin is deceivin’ . . . But on your bed, Mary, I can see the shadow of a noose.” Hmmm. . .
Either way, it is a beautiful song. It also makes one think fondly of Mary Queen of Arkansas.
The song also captures the escape theme that arises in other Springsteen songs like “Born to Run.” While Mary Queen of Scots was unable to escape a tragic end, we can hope that Mary Queen of Arkansas and her lover were able to get away clean to Mexico without either one of them losing their head.
The above version of “Mary Queen of Arkansas” is from a 1974 Houston radio show.
Do you think Mary Queen of Arkansas is in the voice of a slave having an affair or is it just an Arkansas love song? Leave your two cents in the comments.
, by Jennifer E. Porter and Darcee L. McLaren, reports that the first versions of the film did not include the scenes with Spock’s coffin landing on the Genesis planet. (p. 155.) A 2010 