r/Harmontown • u/rimbletick • 3d ago

The 20-Year Joke: The Anti-Monopoly Man

I was watching Long Kiss Goodnight (a Shane Black 90's Action Movie) and I noticed it had a joke that took over 20 years to make.

Here's the setup: Samuel Jackson is in a hotel with the TV on in the background. The Long Goodbye (1973) is playing. Elliot Gould is looking for cat food and ask the stockboy "you don't have a cat by any chance", and the clerk responds "What do I need a cat for?! I got a girl!"

Back in the hotel, Sam Jackson smirks and says, "Pussy is pussy".

Effectively, Sam nails the punchline on a 20-year-old setup. I feel this is the opposite of a Monopoly Man; they don't fabricate the setup, rather, they found something existing in the world and came up with a killer riff. Shane Black must've been sitting on this joke for years, right? The very movie title is a tribute to his crude little joke!

So, are there other examples of this trope? A movie/song/real-thing-in-the-world creates a premise, and another movie finishes the joke. I feel Tarantino does a similar thing (e.g., the whole Top Gun monologue), but that feels like riffing on media, not a clean SETUP-PUNCHLINE.

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u/RonanTheBarbarian 3d ago

That’s a great observation and a great question and I’ll have to think about it to come up with examples. My immediate thought is that Dan also addressed when filmmakers get this wrong. Take The Lone Ranger for example, it comes time for him to say his only famous line, “Hi ho…” and Depp cuts him off with a “Don’t”. The writer must have been thinking this joke would kill because it’s such a cynical, catty, sassy thing to say.

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u/im_sofa_king 3d ago

Now You See Me: Now You Don't

1

u/zam1138 Keep-keep-keep smoking that glass pipe, PFT! 2d ago

“Now You See Me”? No I didn’t.

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u/sci-fi-eye 1d ago

Don't you now see me?

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u/novnwerber 3d ago

Not really a specific joke, but in season 3, episode 18 of Bosston Legal, the character Danny Crane has flashbacks to a case he worked on when he was young and just getting started. But the flashback footage is from a 1957 Studio One episode called "The Defender"  featuring a dashing young William Shatner as an attorney helping his lawyer father with a case. 

So in the flashbacks, you see the real young Shatner, in the original black and white grainy footage working as an attorney.