Film characters comparing characters to people in other films

[lackedpunch]

I quite enjoyed the 2016 Ghostbusters remake, and was very tickled by one scene in particular.

Kristen Wiig's character is trying to convince the mayor (Andy Garcia) of the reality of ghosts in the city, and she says "Don't be like the mayor in Jaws". The mayor gets angry and says "Don't say I'm like the Jaws mayor!"

I am wondering if there are any other films in which a character is likened to one from another film. Or has a situation in a film been.likened to a situation in another film?

[Ginger Yellow]

Just watched Happy Death Day, a horror version of Groundhog Day, in which one of the characters compares the events to Groundhog Day.

[G-Man]

Not exactly the same thing, but close, is Cary Grant's line in His Girl Friday. His ex-wife turns up with her new boyfriend, played by Ralph Bellamy. Grant's character wants to belittle him, says something like: "Hey, you look like that fellow in the movies...", pauses to think of the fellow in the movies' name... "Ralph Bellamy."

Pure genius.

[Jah Womble]

I always struggle with this phenomenon. Barring biopics or documentaries, logic tells me that all folk in the movies must exist in a completely different reality from 'ours', therefore they should all watch different TV and go to different movies. (The absolute extreme was reached for me in the 1967 film Caprice, where Doris Day is apprehended when about to watch a movie - which transpires to be the opening titles to...Caprice.)

However, my suspension of disbelief does seem to extend to the music to which characters might listen - and even certain real-life events that might shape their destiny - so it must be me that's f***ed up here.

[Ginger Yellow]

I always struggle with this phenomenon. Barring biopics or documentaries, logic tells me that all folk in the movies must exist in a completely different reality from 'ours', therefore they should all watch different TV and go to different movies

The obvious example of this being 90% of zombie movies (especially pre-2010 or so), where nobody has seen a zombie movie.

[Patrick Thistle]

I've often wondered why none of the characters in soap operas watch soap operas.

[Jah Womble]

Brookside were wise to this - the younger characters all used to watch a fictitious soap called Meadowcroft Park, presumably at the set times that Brookside went out for those of us in the real world.

For the brief time that I watched the show, I found this strangely satisfying.

[Southport Zeb]

Not exactly the same thing, but close, is Cary Grant's line in His Girl Friday. His ex-wife turns up with her new boyfriend, played by Ralph Bellamy. Grant's character wants to belittle him, says something like: "Hey, you look like that fellow in the movies...", pauses to think of the fellow in the movies' name... "Ralph Bellamy."

Pure genius.

In a similar vein, although not genius, would be Julia Roberts playing a woman pretending to be Julia Roberts in one of the Ocean's films.

[lackedpunch]

I think that characters in "Scream" refer to what usually happens in other horror films, but do they mention specific films?

[Beatle Simon]

'The Flash' on Sky One is full of these references, or 'Easter Eggs' which I believe to be the term the kids use - 'Star Wars', 'Indiana Jones' and 'Harry Potter' are the main ones that are always mentioned. Even 'Marvel' and 'Doctor Who' have been subtlety spoken about. None of the other crossover DC shows - 'Supergirl', 'Arrow', and 'Legends Of Tomorrow' do this, although when Brandon Routh's (who played Superman in 2004s 'Superman Returns') character first met Supergirl, he said something like he felt they were cousins or somthing.

My 13 year old son is a big fan of 'The Flash', and everytime an 'Easter Egg' reference is mentioned, I always say that its real in their universe. It drives him crazy.

[denishurley]

Brookside were wise to this - the younger characters all used to watch a fictitious soap called Meadowcroft Park, presumably at the set times that Brookside went out for those of us in the real world.

For the brief time that I watched the show, I found this strangely satisfying.

Similarly, in Emmerdale the 7pm slot on ITV was taken up by a soap called Castle Bridge.

[Jah Womble]

Ah, didn't know that. It's clearly a more prevalent phenomenon than I thought...

In a similar vein, although not genius, would be Julia Roberts playing a woman pretending to be Julia Roberts in one of the Ocean's films.

US comic actor Don Knotts did something similar in some god-awful show I saw years ago. As well he might.

[Snake Plissken]

Castle has plenty of references to Firefly and other shows the actors were in.

[Satchmo Distel]

Famously, Raging Bull has De Niro as Jake La Motta doing the On The Waterfront speech.

There are many films and TV dramas and sitcoms where a character does an impression, like Hawkeye in M*A*S*H doing Groucho Marx and Jimmy Cagney.

[Ginger Yellow]

And Mute has a Hawkeye and Trapper impression.

[Nefertiti2]

Hellzapoppin has loads

[EIM]

Deadpool does this a lot

[Levin]

There are two or three things being discussed here.

1. Breaking the fourth wall to comment on the media's place in the media landscape.
2. Creators putting in references or nods to other media that the characters are unaware of being so.
3. Characters referencing other media.

I'm fairly confident that TV is much more comfortable talking about Film than other TV shows. Though that might just be that writers are more confident that films are better know for the stuff to stick.

[Jah Womble]

Yep, something to that definitely. In TV-land - especially soaps - 'The Movies' is generally represented as other-worldly, a Mecca that the characters' mundane existences can never penetrate.

In Martine McCutcheon's case*, it should probably have stayed that way. (*Other examples are available.)

[Janik]

TV Soaps and other long form dramas are much more multistranded and dealing with more of the minutiae of characters lives. Because they have more time to develop more minor themes, and more pejoratively more to fill. So you get something more like mundane ordinary life in those forms, where it's only natural to have the characters talking about film and music references, because its what people do. To give an example which I'm slightly surprised has gone unmentioned so far, The Sopranos mentions films a fair amount, particular mob ones like The Godfathers or ones with Italian associations like Gladiator. Equally it would make little sense if characters on Eastenders or Corrie didn't occasionally talk about films and music. However shorter TV drama series or one-off shows are going to have the same dynamic as films where the characters are dealing with a big enough central story for there to be no time to devote to mundane daily life stuff.

On the film side, you get something very similar with 'slice of life' type dramas. cf. the video shop workers in Clerks spending their time discussing films, particularly Star Wars. And that leads us to the whole film genre where the cinema going experience itself is a central theme of the plot. Things like Cinema Paradiso, The Last Picture Show and the like. And then scenes in movies with the characters sitting in a movie theatre watching a film along the lines of Donnie Darko.


It seems we are not the only people to have thought of this, which is hardly surprising. In fact there is a whole website dedicated to the subject - http://www.filmsinfilms.com/

[Various Artist]

TV Soaps and other long form dramas are much more multistranded and dealing with more of the minutiae of characters lives. Because they have more time to develop more minor themes, and more pejoratively more to fill. So you get something more like mundane ordinary life in those forms, where it's only natural to have the characters talking about film and music references, because its what people do.

And yet they never seem to talk about what's on TV, or have the football on in the pub. Do people in Eastenders watch the BBC? Do we know if there's an equivalent fictional soap opera to those mentioned upthread, clogging up great chunks of 'their' BBC1 schedules, to the despair of the more sane denizens of Albert Square, if there are any of those. For that matter, it's amazing not one of them is known to watch Coronation Street.

It appears the 'mundane' (sport, TV) and 'magical' (film, music) worlds are clearly delineated and the characters in the mundane one can only safely reference that separate, otherworldly one. Which is odd, because it suggests Cristiano Ronaldo, say, is a more accessible and knowable figure to them than Billy Bragg for example.

Although... if music to them is the same as in our 'real world', I wonder who people in Eastenders believe was the bassist in Spandau Ballet, and if he's reminiscent of that nasty Steve bloke who used to be around. Suddenly this is getting as problematic as the notion that people in Albert Square might've watched Love Actually and had to struggle with how that actress playing the Prime Minister's tea-lady is identical to Tiffany.

[Janik]

It appears the 'mundane' (sport, TV) and 'magical' (film, music) worlds are clearly delineated and the characters in the mundane one can only safely reference that separate, otherworldly one.

I suspect it's rather more prosaic than that. The sport is going to be partly a rights issue if they want to use something a day or two old, which they will with soaps given that it's set in the here-and-now, or an datedness one if they avoid the rights problem by using something a few months previously. If the background is a Premership match from five months ago, people will notice. That will also be a factor with TV shows, as will not pushing a rival's product. With films and music its much more plausible for people to be talking about something that came out months or years previously as they are both less ephemeral media than TV and Sport. I'm now wondering if you ever see newspaper headlines in the background as set dressing, and if these are the real thing?

Oh, and do soap characters tweet, and more pertinently talk about tweets/Facebook these days? Or has social media not made it to Albert Square yet?

As noted above, Film characters talk about films.


Oh, and to bring yet another media into it, Terry Pratchet mixes the magical and mundane for comic effect repeatedly. Most notably in Moving Pictures, but also in other books with various Roundworld technologies transposed to the Disc with their real working alluded to and their functioning on the Disc being down to magic. The best bits though can be seen as commentaries on this very topic, such as Susan Sto Helit (for those who don't know the stories a Teacher/Governess with significant magical abilities) thinking that if she ever began dancing on rooftops with chimney sweeps or sliding down banisters she would beat herself to death with her own umbrella. Which is something perfectly understandable to the adult reader (or viewer if this line was included in Sky's Hogfather adaptation), but doesn't make the slightest sense in universe.


And finally, seeing as I keep broadening the media this is covering, a picture:-

[San Bernardhinault]

I always assumed that characters in soap operas can't watch and talk about real TV, because otherwise they'd end up watching the show that they're on - which would be interesting but have consequences outside the realm of normal soap operas, or they'd be consciously not watching it and watching other stuff instead, in which case the audience might wonder why it's so bad that normal people in Albert Square can't even face watching it.

[Lang Spoon]

Mibees also a bit more prosaically is them filming so far ahead of time. Think East Enders used to be filmed 6 weeks ahead of airing. Not sure if that’s still the case.

[Satchmo Distel]

They're probably filming a scene this week where the lads go to the Vic to watch England v Tunisia. Inserting a real game into a period drama is quite common but usually with fake commentary for, I guess, rights reasons (often as a radio commentary to avoid visual rights as well). Recent example would be Endeavour (young Morse) when set in July 1966.

Another one might be a an episode broadcast an election day, although I don't recall Lofty saying "I can't believe that cunt Thatcher got in again," probably because he was a secret Tory (whatever happened to Lofty and Michelle btw?).