Once in a Lifetime

[e_r_e_n_e_t_a]

Recently I read a profile of David Byrne from 1993 which went into some detail on the televangelists that inspired Byrne to write the song "Once in a Lifetime," which became a hit single for the Talking Heads in 1980. In the article, Byrne also noted how much the gestures of these evangelical preachers informed the choreography he and Toni Basil

Comments

[roninspoon]

The Muppets are at the core of everything. They sit on the throne of the damned at the center of the world and pluck, ironically, our puppet strings for their own machinations.

[e_r_e_n_e_t_a]

I hear that the next Hellboy miniseries will deal with this very theme.

[ouro]

"But if the first season of The Muppet Show and the first three movies showed us anything, it was that as much as the Muppets depended on an immersion in pop culture, they rarely needed to resort to parody."

I'm not so sure.
Would you class the Wayne and Wonda sketches as parody or gag-comedy?
The Swedish Chef is clearly a parody of Julia Child and her imitators.
The Mating Ritual from the Planet Koozebain spot has got to be a Wild Kingdom parody.

There is something different, though about the level on which those examples operate and simply dropping a muppet into a completely choreographed other unit of popular culture. I'm not sure how to articulate this difference.

It is not present in the interminable performance of "I'm looking through you" that the ghosts backstage give in the Vincent Price episode.

[e_r_e_n_e_t_a]

While the format of the Muppet Show relied on spoofs of pop culture (especially songs, but occasionally specific movies), their comedy was mostly standalone. The Swedish Chef works as a gag even if you've never seen Julia Child or a cooking show. The Koozebanian mating ritual is more enjoyable if you've seen nature documentaries, but it doesn't depend on a knowledge of Wild Kingdom