Four I noticed:
* Jesus is blonde. Like really blonde.
* Is that a Hoover in the Communist household?
* The mermaid gets pregnant after a sperm whale encounters her. (She marries a whale too.)
* Hobie makes a spaghetti western.
I loved the sexual innuendo in the sailor scene too!
Baird & Burt = the two "Charlie"s
The Merry Widow Waltz editor C.C. Calhoun put on the dailies of "Merrily We Dance" is a musical reference to Hitchcock's "Shadow of a Doubt". Both films ("Shadow of a Doubt" & "Hail, Caesar!") have a doubling and duality theme: "Shadow of a Doubt" the two Charlies (C.C.!), "Hail, Caesar!" Laurence Laurentz, his protégés Baird & Burt, the twin sisters Thora & Thessaly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viet_Cong#Names
If you take a look at the top of the film's poster, you see (from left to right) the "two Charlies", "J. Edgar Hoover" respectively the "Christ(like) figure" (depending on the interpretation) and "the holy family" ("Mary" & Joseph).
Carlotta Valdez - shirt appears - to me - covered with strawberries.
a strawberrie (urban) A person who has been prostituted after being addicted to something, usually crack. Or someone who will provide sexual favors for drugs.
She asks ''Hobie' 'Am I Late ?" ( 'am I Laid?' )
While Hobie Doyle " ( One of the biggest movie stars in the world remark is countered with 'on horse back ! ( on the back of a whore ) English speaking natives understand better then outsiders (like me) : Hobie as reference to Hobs (on a (w)horse )
Actors who started as porn actor to stay in business or boost carreer ? as reference to On Wings as Eagles ?
Eddie Mannix to Baird Whitlock: "The picture has worth and you have worth if you serve the picture."
In the Chinese restaurant, the Lockheed recruiter "serves" the picture of the Aitch-erino mushroom to Eddie Mannix.
In "Roman Holiday" (directed by Ben Hur's William Wyler, written by Spartacus's Dalton Trumbo), the film's two main characters drive on a scooter. In "Hail, Caesar!", Gloria DeLamour exclaims: "Jesus Christ on a scooter!", Jesus Christ, the supposed main character of "Hail, Caesar!: A Tale of the Christ".
From Autolycus' speech at the feet of the penitent thief: "I encountered him before, Gracchus, beside the well of Jehosaphat." "Jehosaphat", like in the minced curse "Jumping Jehosaphat!" (*). After the cut for this scene's take, in which Baird couldn't remeber the final word "faith", there is some unminced cursing going on. Besides, earlier, after Autolycus drank from the well of ("Jumping") Jehosaphat, Baird's facial expression jumps between awe and wonder as he "squints against the grandeur".
(*) I don't know whether the expression "Jumping Jehosaphat" is still commonly known. I heard it e.g. in Preston Sturges' "Christmas in July" & "Hail the Conquering Hero" (both times exclaimed by the same actor, Raymond Walburn), in Howard Hawks' "His Girl Friday" and also in an episode of "The Office" (used by Martin Freeman).
Jesus Christ, the actual main charater of "Hail, Caesar!: A Tale of the Christ".
I'm aware of Jumping Jehosophat but never heard anyone say it...
Jesus at one point asks if he is a principal or an extra. (And the actor has come off a talent show)
--
It's not "Sci-Fi", it's SF!
"Calvinism is a very liberal religious ethos." - Truekiwijoker
I'm aware of Jumping Jehosophat but never heard anyone say it...
Jesus at one point asks if he is a principal or an extra. (And the actor has come off a talent show)
O, I missed that: but is it really Jesus? There were, of course, two thiefs on either side of Christ in the story of the crucifixion: I just supposed that the question of principal/extra was directed to one of them. But you may be right: especially since it would be hilarious. (”Are you a principal or an extra?”, asked of the title character of the movie, from a nationwide talent hunt …). Have to see it again.
shareI think it was used in Warner Brothers cartoons. Either Sylvester the Cat or Yosemite Sam. Or Foghorn Leghorn.
shareI think this is one of the jokes. Christ is not the main character in "Hail, Caesar". The joke is based on the full title of "Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ" in which Jesus appears only 3 times as a passing shadow. So much for a title character!
Like Ben Hur, we don't see Jesus in Hail Caesar either. Not even the actor. Only his feet, legs, and from behind. Only three times also. We hear him and know his name is Todd but that's about it.
share
Eddie Mannix to Baird Whitlock: "The picture has worth and you have worth if you serve the picture."
In the Chinese restaurant, the Lockheed recruiter "serves" the picture of the Aitch-erino mushroom to Eddie Mannix.
Eddie Mannix to Baird Whitlock: "The picture has worth and you have worth if you serve the picture."
Change of image: Hobie Doyle from horseback to soundstage, Saul of Tarsus from Christian fiend to Christian missionary. "Takes a little getting used to."
Also, what significance has the temporal (and even spacial?) displacement of Saul's Damascus vision? Maybe how stories passed down from generation to generation are changed?
All the time I thought the New York based studio boss's name to be "Skank". Until I took a look into the (draft) script where it spells "Schenk", actually a German name, with "sch" pronounced "sh" (like in "shtick" (*)), not like in "school" or "schedule".
(*) "Up with your hands! This is a shtick-up!" (Director Fritz in Woody Allen's "Take the Money and Run") ;-)
"Biff" (the name of the guy Allegra meets instead of Monty) references (the bully from) "Back to the Future". Huey Lewis & the News sing "The Power of Love". Hobie & Carlotta sing "The Glory of Love". "The power & the glory", like in the doxology usually added at the end of the "Our Father", the prayer taught by Christ to his disciples, which is heard as last song in "Hail, Caesar!" during the end credits.
Since it fits into this thread:
Topic of user deep-focus: 12 commie writers in boat = 12 apostles of Christ
on those naughty, irreverent Coens!! Coincidence? I think not. Staying behind to do their "Lord's" work while he ascends (well, descends/submerges really) into their ideological heaven.
In the study session with Marxist theoretician Professor Marcuse, Baird Whitlock uses his "Danny Kaye anecdote" as an example of "cui bono" ("who benefits?").(*) The logical fallacy corresponding to cui bono reasoning is the "cum hoc, ergo propter hoc" fallacy ("with this, therefore because of this"). The name of the actor playing Jesus is Hocheiser ("Hoc-heiser"). Todd "the Hoc" Hocheiser in "Cum Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc: A Tale of Who Benefits". ;-) (**)
(*) a reasoning also used by the Dude in "The Big Lebowski": "It's like Lenin said. You look for the person who will benefit and... you know...?" - "I am the Walrus." ;-)
The text of Lenin the Dude probably refers to (with "cui prodest", a variant of "cui bono"):
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/apr/11.htm
Published in the "Pravda", Russian for "truth", a word of significance in Baird Whitlock's speech: "a man bringing us not the old truth, but a new one, a truth beyond the truth that we can see, a truth beyond this world, a truth not told in words, but in light, a truth that we could see, if we had but..."
(**) Marx' phrase "religion is the opium of the people" might also be looked at under the aspect "cui bono" ("who benefits?").
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cui_bono
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_of_the_people
Marcuse's name is an in joke too...
--
It's not "Sci-Fi", it's SF!
"Calvinism is a very liberal religious ethos." - Truekiwijoker
Yes. Though not particularly familiar with the matter, Marcuse and "Die Frankfurter Schule" are known names to me. The whole thing with communist/Marxist theory and Professor Marcuse coming down from Stanford to teach the screenwriters about "direct action, praxis" also casts some (subtextual) light on "The Ladykillers", where at one point Professor Dorr uses (the first half of) the communist motto "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" and, towards the end, tells Lump: "Now is the moment of praxis. Now, Lump, you must act." The way that worked out probably shows the Coens' opinion on the matter. ;-)
One more thing...
The text of Lenin the Dude probably refers to (with "cui prodest", a variant of "cui bono"):In 1913, prior to World War I, Lenin asks who benefits from the "mad armaments hurdle-race", and answers that the corporations producing the weapons would. Eddie Mannix has a job offer from Lockheed, who "blew the Aitch-erino" (Hydrogen bomb) on the Bikini atoll. share
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/apr/11.htm
Also (perhaps of interest with respect to Eddie Manix' Catholicism), Hoc-heiser: "hoc est corpus meam" = "This is my body" (from which, by the way, probably the expression "hocus-pocus" is derived)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin_phrases_%28H%29
Also, I read elsewhere, that "before Gable was Gable" can be seen as an allusion to "before gay was gay".
The New York based studio boss's given name is Nick, Nicholas, like the last Russian czar:
- Both "swell figures from the east", to apply a term used by Eddie Mannix to describe (or rather circumvent?) Jesus Christ.
- The word "czar" is derived from "Caesar".
- The communist screenwriters don't believe in Santa Claus (Saint Nicholas), as their Russian comrades didn't in 1917.
- An allusion to the impending end of the old studio system and Hollywood's "golden age".