Arizona Daily Star critic Phil Villarreal reported this morning that An American Carol director David Zucker shot a cheapshot bit aimed at Sen. Ted Kennedy but apparently (and understandably) decided to cut it due to Kennedy’s recent struggles with brain cancer.
Zucker “had a Ted Kennedy look-alike offer a ride to someone at a convention,” Villareal reports. “When he opened the car door, water spilled out. It’s a reference to the 1969 incident in which Kennedy drove off a bridge with Mary Jo Kopechne as his passenger. Kennedy survived but Kopechne died.
Villareal says he “got this tidbit from former Tucsonan Jillian Murray, who has a role in the film. ‘It was a cool stunt,’ Murray told Villareal. ‘Fish were coming out.'”
Zucker’s scumbag sense of humor aside, the fish-coming-out-of-a-car is a bit from Paul Brickman‘s Risky Business. Remember? It was followed by the Porsche car-dealer guy coming up to Tom Cruise and his friends and asking, “Who’s the U-boat commander?”