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Jerry and David Zucker have a rep for borrowing material from old films to make new ones. So it should come as no surprise that David's forthcoming An American Carol, the conservative fantasia opening on 10.3, is, according to a certain guy in the loop, based on a 69 year-old Porky Pig cartoon called Old Glory.
Carol uses the same basic idea as Old Glory -- i.e., a character deemed insufficiently patriotic changes his tune after being "turned" by some ghosts from American history. In Zucker's film it's an unpatriotic documentarian based on Michael Moore who needs to be aroused; in the 1939 cartoon it's a chubby pink (pinko?) pig who can't be bothered to memorize the pledge of allegiance.
As summarized more than once on this site, An American Carol is about a fatty named Michael Malone (Kevin Farley) undergoing a political change-of-heart after being visited by patriotic ghosts in the form of George S. Patton (Kelsey Grammer), George Washington (Jon Voight) and John F. Kennedy (Chriss Anglin), and coming to see the correctness of right-wing thinking.
In Old Glory, Porky Pig is visited in his sleep by Uncle Sam, who explains why the tiny little animal should respect the U.S. enough to learn the pledge. Sam provides a quick inspirational run-through of U.S. history (Nathan Hale, the Declaration of Independence, pioneers on the trail, Abraham Lincoln), which, sure enough, wakes Porky up in more ways than one.
David Zucker has previously helped create two projects that cribbed from older films so ripping off Old Glory (along with Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol) wouldn't be out of character. Airplane! ('80), which the Zuckers co-directed and co-wrote with Jim Abrahams, used the plot of Zero Hour (1957). And Brain Donors! ('92), which Jerry and David exec-produced, was "suggested" by the George S. Kaufman-Maury Riskind screenplay for A Night at the Opera.
Posted by Jeffrey Wells on August 14, 2008 at 5:38 PM
comment #1
Mgmax says ...
Oh yeah, Old Glory is wonderful. The surreality of Uncle Sam lecturing a pig ("Now, Poar-keh...") intercut with badly rotoscoped Patrick Henry and so on, can't be beat. Who wouldn't want a whole hour and a half of that?
Posted by Mgmax at August 14, 2008 6:56 PM
comment #2
DarthCorleone says ...
Here's the good news, Porky. It's only 1939, so a radical religious lobby known as the Knights Of Columbus has not added the words "under God" to the Pledge yet out of fear that those unpatriotic atheists enjoy the same freedoms as the rest of us Americans!
Thanks for sharing the cartoon with us. I enjoyed watching it. And I gotta admit - crazy liberal though I am - I'm curious about this movie.
Posted by DarthCorleone at August 14, 2008 7:27 PM
comment #3
BurmaShave says ...
I had no idea Patrick Henry looked so much like Billy Drago.
Posted by BurmaShave at August 14, 2008 7:34 PM
comment #4
bone says ...
So Michael Moore attacking insurance corporations, a car company, and a special interest lobbying group has made him the target for a movie on being Unpatriotic.
Posted by bone at August 14, 2008 7:52 PM
comment #5
Mgmax says ...
Bone may be onto something here. There might be rightwing bias in this picture!
Posted by Mgmax at August 14, 2008 8:07 PM
comment #6
The Winchester says ...
It was probably just youth, but Brain Donors cracked me the hell up. That scene where Swan Lake is playing, and the guy comes out in the ducck suit still puts a smile on my face.
Posted by The Winchester at August 14, 2008 8:16 PM
comment #7
bmcintire says ...
Can you imagine how pissed kids (and many adults) were when THAT thing came on after the newsreels and before the feature? At least Zucker's movie has a fat guy, boob jokes and a little kid getting hit in the head for a laugh.
And really, was that cartoon actually supposed to invoke patriotism? "Watch closely, little pig, while animators bring stiff, uncomfortably posed 18th Century paintings to life - badly."
Posted by bmcintire at August 14, 2008 8:41 PM
comment #8
nemo says ...
What?!? The ghost of John Kennedy is being dragooned into showing the correctness of right-wing thinking? This farce is even more ridiculous than I thought!
My small-town John Birch Society 7th grade English teacher would be rolling over in her grave. She devoted one hour every week to brainwashing us with her version of Americanism, something I doubt she could get away with in a public school today, even in Indiana. She spent a good part of that hour every week telling us that LBJ, Martin Luther King, and all the Kennedys were communist dupes who would give Vietnam over to the Reds and force us all into miscegenation.
The idea that JFK upheld right-wing ideals would have been news to her and all the other members of the John Birch Society and the Klan living in Indiana at that time.
Posted by nemo at August 14, 2008 8:54 PM
comment #9
Mgmax says ...
"The idea that JFK upheld right-wing ideals would have been news to her and all the other members of the John Birch Society and the Klan living in Indiana at that time."
Then how come my JFK-esque views are invariably called rightwing around here?
Posted by Mgmax at August 14, 2008 8:58 PM
comment #10
The Hoyk says ...
Gee, Mgmax, didn't you read the Fox News ticker headline from "THE SIMPSONS":
JFK CONVERTS TO REPUBLICANISM FROM THE GRAVE
Posted by The Hoyk at August 14, 2008 9:31 PM
comment #11
DarthCorleone says ...
I take it back. I just watched the trailer from the previous post. No longer curious.
Posted by DarthCorleone at August 14, 2008 9:31 PM
comment #12
Mgmax says ...
"JFK CONVERTS TO REPUBLICANISM FROM THE GRAVE"
In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility—I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it—and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.
And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.
My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own.
Name that Christianist neocon claiming to talk to God and be doing His work....
Posted by Mgmax at August 14, 2008 9:44 PM
comment #13
Mgmax says ...
But it doesn't matter. In two weeks the election will be all about how Hillary snatched it from Obama at the convention, anyway.
Posted by Mgmax at August 14, 2008 9:45 PM
comment #14
VictorLazlo says ...
JFK was pro-union which, along with his family ties, made him de facto Democrat. He was also pro-civil rights, even if he wanted to slow MLK and the movement down a bit. And being pro-civil rights after Strom Thurmond and the ex-dixicrats hijacked the Republican party guaranteed his Democratic status.
Funny how we had four great presidents in a row, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower and JFK. The Presidency nuked the fridge after Kennedy was assassinated.
Posted by VictorLazlo at August 14, 2008 10:44 PM
comment #15
Terry McCarty says ...
The Winchester wrote:
It was probably just youth, but Brain Donors cracked me the hell up. That scene where Swan Lake is playing, and the guy comes out in the duck suit still puts a smile on my face.
Never saw it, but maybe I should whenever Paramount puts it on DVD. Worked as a dress extra on that part of the shoot--done at Warner Theatre in San Pedro.
Posted by Terry McCarty at August 15, 2008 12:02 AM
comment #16
Terry McCarty says ...
nemo wrote:
The ghost of John Kennedy is being dragooned into showing the correctness of right-wing thinking? This farce is even more ridiculous than I thought!
But didn't some folks that later became Republicans like Charlton Heston get excited when JFK faced off against Fidel and Nikita in 1962?
Posted by Terry McCarty at August 15, 2008 12:05 AM
comment #17
D.Z. says ...
I wonder if the animators who worked on that short did the Ichabod Crane toon from Disney or that 70s LOTR...If only John K. were here...
bmc: "Can you imagine how pissed kids (and many adults) were when THAT thing came on after the newsreels and before the feature? At least Zucker's movie has a fat guy, boob jokes and a little kid getting hit in the head for a laugh."
Victor: JFK also believed Joe McCarthy was doing a great job, thought killing off Castro would go unnoticed, and looked the other way on the puppet running Vietnam
until he started embarrassing us. Also, while Johnson wasn't great, he was the first President to actually make civil rights laws a reality, while Carter was the first to suggest we should actually have standards in international relations.
Posted by D.Z. at August 15, 2008 12:23 AM
comment #18
Mgmax says ...
LBJ cashed the civil rights check JFK was barely willing to write.
But mocking Texans as illliterate, bloodthirsty boobs even when they advance the cause of human freedom with considerable courage-- and at the cost of their party's electoral success for some time to come-- is an old media habit, and no better than any other form of bigotry.
Posted by Mgmax at August 15, 2008 5:46 AM
comment #19
fielding says ...
The only thing typically Democrat-like about JFK was the adultery.
Posted by fielding at August 15, 2008 7:05 AM
comment #20
George Prager says ...
Hey, fielding..David Vitter wants his Pampers back.
Posted by George Prager at August 15, 2008 8:53 AM
comment #21
Richardson says ...
"In two weeks the election will be all about how Hillary snatched it from Obama at the convention, anyway."
Bah, that's short odds. The interesting question is, *how* is she going to do it?
Posted by Richardson at August 15, 2008 7:58 PM
comment #22
vp19 says ...
LBJ cashed the civil rights check JFK was barely willing to write.
Agreed, and it was JFK who largely set LBJ up into the morass known as Vietnam (not that Johnson was entirely blameless, mind you). Take Vietnam out of the equation, and LBJ would've been known as one of our greatest presidents -- even the Harvard historians who dismiss his Texas background would have admitted that.
Posted by vp19 at August 17, 2008 8:39 AM
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