Something for Thursday

OK, a bit different, inspired a bit by my Wednesday Dichotomy post from yesterday.

I’ve always loved the movie A Fish Called Wanda, the raunchy and hilarious diamond heist caper flick that starred John Cleese, Kevin Kline, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Michael Palin. I remember when I first saw it, with my parents, and I was thinking, “Hmmm, for a movie that’s getting rave reviews for how funny it is, so far it’s only mildly amusing here and there.” Well, it turns out that the movie has about thirty minutes or so of set-up stuff that’s amusing but never hilarious — but once the movie gets going, it’s one of the funniest damned things I’ve ever seen. I’ve never once watched the movie and not laughed at it and its sly wit. (Even some of the “meta” humor in it, such as the fact that the character George Thomason is played by an actor named Tom Georgeson.)

Anyhow, Wanda was a staple of our movie viewing in college. We watched the movie all the time, probably at least once a month, to the point that we wore out my VHS copy. What was cool about that VHS tape is that it’s one of the first examples I can remember of an advertisement for something other than another movie preceding the film itself. Now, usually ads annoy me and I ignore them, but this one was awesome because they tied it right into the movie itself, so much so that we never ever ever fast-forwarded through it. To this day, when I need to write a post about something relating to the nuts and bolts of this blog, I always use the phrase that leads off this ad, “A Very Public Service Message”.

Anyway, here’s the ad. John Cleese is hawking Schweppes beverages. Schweppes Schweppes Schweppes Schweppes Schweppes Schweppes Schweppes!

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