And the topic for today is….
how many times can you swipe a plotline
or a character,
without someone catching on.
Answer:
Until you go to the theatre with one or more comparative lit/ writer types.
Ie:
I once was invited by friends to go see Amarcord.
Five minutes past the ice cream commercial, the trailer for another film,
and the two next to me unpacking a box of cheese nachos
the inviter suddenly yelled “Thornton Wilder. Our town. Let’s go”
And got up and left.
Gasp.
Hey, he was a compie.
We do that.
Make that “they do that.”
I just think it.
And then there was the time a group of us went to see spider man.
And every time he appeared in his spidey suit, the other compie in the group quacked.
Followed by, in a true Donald imitation
“I don’t see why I have to be the one to put on this silly suit and go save people.”
This time I left.
Case three was a Louis de Funes film.
This time, despite the fact that he was a fantastic actor,
I quacked.
Mentally, of course.
Which got me thinking.
Not that it is thrillingly important, what with the world in the shape it is in at the moment,
but has anyone else out there ever noticed that people constantly steal Shakespeare?
Or didn’t you notice that the scene in Titus Andronicus,
where he is served two dead in a pie,
has been politely rewritten
as the scene that got all the talk,
and the awards,
in “The Help?”
(where something else was supposedly baked in a pie. Or not.)
Then, of course, there is the scene in “The Magic Christian”
where the hero takes money to strip to “To be or not to be.”
That indeed, methinks, sirrah, doth forsooth or something, take real class.
Silly,
but to get by with it as a writer….
Oh joy unbounded
“That was Gilbert and Sullivan- Trial By Jury.”
Which reminds me of the time we went to see The Forbidden Planet-
The Tempest set in the far distant future,
with the audience forced to put their hands on their heads,
palms up,
and chant
“Reverse Polarity, Reverse Polarity.”
Once again, “Oh joy unbounded.”
So now, I am thinking.
Little grey cells putting on their combat helmets,
what could I well and truly “borrow” from “Our Will?”
The Sonnets To A Dark Lady?
Already been done – Martha Jones in Dr Who.
Henry IV?
Pirandello.
And did anyone else notice that the Monty’s Python group’s “Dead Parrot” sketch
had a distinct flavor of Hamlet’s Yorick?
Sorry.
So…
Now what?
And then it hit me.
Macbeth.
Burnham Wood.
The troops marching.
Out of the night.
Uhhh…
does anyone else see a distinct similarity to the Hitchcock film “The Birds?”
I think I’ll just take a small break here to do the laundry
and get back to you tomorrow.
With a new topic.
Did anyone else out there notice that all three of the top laundry soap companies
have the same ingredients?
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Quahog on a Tightrope 