The following is a little bit of context for young people that will take a few sections of this (deservedly) well-beloved film from “kinda weird” to “very funny, actually.”
I won’t explain why you need to know these things. Just trust me that having this context will improve your enjoyment of this film.
Supporting features
Double-features at movie theatres used to be fairly commonplace. You’d go to the cinema and there’d be two films. Usually the big full-length blockbuster feature film would be the second one.
This tradition continued a bit after the advent of VHS, in which it was fairly common for the main feature on a video cassette to be prefaced by a “supporting feature.” These would often be short films, sometimes animated or light, either contrasting or complimenting the main feature.
Supporting features are parodied in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (1983), in which the supporting feature famously attacks the main feature. The only remaining modern vestige of this that I can think of are Pixar shorts that often come along with their feature films.
The “shave and a haircut” jingle
Probably the most famous jingle of all time is the “shave and a haircut” jingle. You’ve heard it before even if you think you haven’t. Go to the Wikipedia link above and remind yourself what it is. It starts with the sing-song “shave and a haircut” with the response “two bits.”
It’s an old barbershop jingle from the time when “two bits” still meant “twenty-five cents” or at least “very cheap.” Note that it’s difficult to stop yourself from doing the “two bits” reply when prompted with “shave and a haircut.”
The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down song
From 1930 to 1969, Looney Tunes, a very famous cartoon television series was produced by Warner Brothers. The theme song for this television series was called The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down.
Harvey (1950)
Jimmy Stewart starred in a very famous and generally well–liked film about a six-foot-tall invisible rabbit named Harvey.
Public transit used to be real
Between 1938 and 1950, General Motors, through the use of several subsidiary companies, bought public transit systems in about 25 cities in the United States in order to dismantle them to eliminate competition for automobiles. This is known as the General Motors streetcar conspiracy.
And according to the Wikipedia article:
Most of the companies involved were convicted in 1949 of conspiracy to monopolize interstate commerce in the sale of buses, fuel, and supplies to NCL subsidiaries, but were acquitted of conspiring to monopolize the transit industry.
Wikipedia, General Motors Streetcar conspiracy
Now you, a young, have the context to understand some jokes that were “very funny, actually” in 1988.
@bgcarlisle I never knew about the reference to Harvey (1950), thank you so much for mentioning it! I'll fix that gap in my repertoire posthaste.
I haven’t seen that movie since I was a child, so I have no memory of whether it’s a good one
But that was the reference the guy in the bar made to Judge Doom
@bgcarlisle gotcha, gotcha, thank you!