Been a while since I saw it, but there’s a funny old corny flick from the 70s. Airport.
Old school slapstick comedy, literal expressions carried out, and tons of play on words.
The pilot has a drinking problem. So, when he goes to drink a glass of ice water, it smashes in his forehead.
One airport exec says to another, something like …
“Surely you don’t mean that. Surely it’s too dangerous.”
The other guy replies, “I do mean it. And stop calling me Shirley.”
Corny, but still funny. I think because you never know when the next play on words will come at you.
There’s all kind of actors in it making various appearances.
At one point the lady who played June Cleaver on the “Leave it to Beaver,” show from the 60s is in the back of the plane.
A jive talkin’ brothuh askes the stewardess something. The stewardess can’t understand him. June Cleaver steps in saying she talks jibe and can translate.
So she does, then starts talkin’ smack back to the brother in full jive attitude and lingo.
You only connect half of it, cause it’s 70s jive, but it’s funny ‘cause June Cleaver is a straight-backed, even tempered, white table cloth and picket fence, type of 60s mother TV personality. And there she is smackin’ jive to a brothuh.
It’s not what you expect her to play.
Thing is, I’ve seen something very similar happen in songwriting.
But it ain’t all that funny. Fact is, it kills a lyrical idea.
It’s like a writer took a “June Cleaver talks jibe” pill. Only it aint jive, it’s something else.
It’s amazing how someone going into, “songwriter mode” can flick this personality on like a teenager thumbing through the swim suit edition of Sports Illustrated.
It’s kind of a phenomenon what a writer’s pen will do.
I give you step-by-step instruction how to avoid the phenomenon.
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