I came here to start this topic, only to find it already existed. It’s cool to see how many obscure things i share with other fans (detassling, dada, Philip glass, red green, wgn), but mine shocker was hearing a reference to Italo Calvino’s “Nonexistent Knight” in “Wizards of the Lost Kingdom II”.
I stumbled on Calvino’s writing a decade ago in some used European bookstore and haven’t knowingly met another reader of his work in America… And i talk about his books every chance i get. So referencing a lesser-known book from an already obscure italian writer was a real surprise. I smiled more out of being pleased to “get” there reference than the joke itself.
Not a reference as such. Still, I’m just tickled near the end of Rocket Attack: USA when Crow is incredulous that there’s a real town called Hazlet. One year in college I passed through there every day, as it’s a halfway point for N.J. Transit’s trains between NYC and my folks’ old place. So I saw it twice a day 5 days a week for a while.
How many people knew about Anthony Braxton (as referenced in Time of the Apes) besides me? There’s lots of Jazz mentions on the show, but that one’s particularly esoteric. Or Don Cherry, who’s called out in Terror From The Year 5000 because of the time machine making some particularly weird horn noise.
Also, Feminist artist Judy Chicago has been mentioned several times and I have a (very old and dusty) B.F.A. so that always makes me chuckle.
For what it’s worth, my mother-in-law attended Northern Illinois University while my wife was in junior high and high school, so my wife grew up in Dekalb. And… she spent a couple of summers detassling corn. So that stuff all has meaning for us.
I guess we need detassling flair. It’s way more common than i suspected. I don’t get Judy Chicago or know much about jazz, but i look forward to the Anthony Braxton reference when i finally see that episode. I discovered his music when i ran out of Tyondai Braxton songs.
You mean the filmmakers? I’m guessing their main motivator was that it was less than an hour from NYC. (Where some of their other non-stock footage was presumably shot.) Or maybe one of them lived there…?
I leave it up to someone with a stronger stomach than I to analyze whether the cardboard news guy’s family would really have survived a nuclear bombing in NYC just because they were a monumental 38-mile distance away from the epicenter.
True, sometimes it’s just the result of convenience, lack of budget, or simply laziness. Maybe it’s just coincidence that we have a connection with those cut-corners.
Studies have shown that 38 miles is a totally safe distance from any nuclear blast.
There’s a lot of low-budget labors of love that come out not great, but feel earnest to the point that mocking them seems a little mean. The best riffs tend to play along, like in Time Chasers (to my mind, an earnest low-budget film), when the villain gets out of the limo and Mike says “I’m Bob Evil.”
But some low budget movies earn mockery because the content is so repulsive. Hobgoblins and the Francis Coleman movies come to mind as films I have no sympathy for. And The Room has become such a famous “good bad” movie, I think people forget how clear the film makes it that Tommy Wiseau hates women.
Strangely, my favorite thing about that movie isn’t in that episode, but in Castle of Fu Manchu, when Forrester says “this movie makes The Unearthly look like Citizen Kane.”
Though I love the lines: “Conway, I’ve got a gun.” Tom: “Warm gun, makes me happy.”
I loved that one. Along the same lines, Matt Berry’s pretty well-known now, thanks to What We Do In The Shadows tv show and of course IT Crowd. But I still laughed at “I’m Garth Marenghi and this is my Dark Place” in Cry Wilderness, as well as “Yes, I can hear you Clem Fandango” in Lords of the Deep.
I don’t think it’s that obscure, but as far as local references, San Francisco International has a Bay Area specific one. When the newspaper columnist played by Van Johnson is arguing about the divorce with his wife, at one point Mike says “honey, I’m sleeping with Herb Caen.”
In Zombie Nightmare there is a scene where the detectives are talking to Joe, the janitor at the academy. Crow says,“Can I have a Tahitian Treat?”. My dad was a janitor and when he was working at a junior high school they had a vending machine in their cafeteria that sold Tahitian Treat. It was the only place I ever saw that drink. I always asked to have one when we visited Dad at work for his dinner break. How’d they know that?
I recall these only because I watched it recently. When Kiss Kicker 99 (aka pig liquor) plays in Hobgoblins. Mike calls the band John Paul Satre and the Heartbreakers.
Yeah. I watched The Room once for the riffing and that was the end. Wiseau ain’t my idea of a culture hero, or outlaw. In fact, I’m sure the film took off like it did because it’s so in line with how a great many films regard women. It’s just considerably less oblique about that than many more competent films are.
To call her character a cardboard cut-out would be unfair to real cardboard.
I kind of liked the Karl Rove Glasses guy, whose name I don’t remember. He seemed into it just enough to belong in a better movie. Maybe something on Lifetime or the USA Network.
(I also have a dusty old BFA fwiw)
