There is a running joke throughout the film of The Killer's use of aliases. When he checks in at airports, the ticketing officials all greet him. All of the names he uses are characters from US sitcoms like Felix Unger, Lou Grant, Sam Malone and Archibald Bunker. It is remarkable that a country that is so literate about popular culture , no one comments on this. " Your name is Felix Unger? Just like the guy in The Odd Couple! Wow!". No one says it.
sharePop culture is so forgettable, though. On the one hand, we idolize it, but it's amazing how fast people just completely forget about shows. Or, rather, how fast the zeitgeist forgets. If you're part of a certain generation, you'll never forget M*A*S*H*. Another generation might remember Friends. Yet another always remembers The Sopranos. But outside of Tony, how many characters do you think people could name from outside of that bracket?
I knew a bunch of those names, but take more interest in film and television - I think most people on moviechat message boards probably would. But even if we saw those names, we might not comment and we certainly wouldn't think, "Hm... that's suspicious..."
Take Sam Malone, for instance. Malone is a common enough last name and goodness knows there are a lot of people named Sam. This is perfectly believable. If - and that's if - somebody noticed that he shared a name with Ted Danson from Cheers, would they say something? Probably not. Think about "Felix Unger," (with the umlaut) and his German tourist persona. Would you want to bring up an Odd Couple reference with a German guy? This is going to lead to an awkward conversation.
Only in sequence would the names be suspicious. If you noticed that several TV characters checked into your airport in a matter of days. But of the thousands upon thousands of names - who's noticing?
I agree with a lot of what you are saying. Different generations will remember different TV shows. Only if you are a pop culture junkie raised on American TV would these names jump out. The Killer in the movie used these aliases because no one would notice.
shareYeah, and you'd only notice if you saw a bunch in a row. At most, somebody would recognise the name, but it still wouldn't make them flag him as suspicious. If he picked a really weird fictional character name like Frodo Baggins or something, sure, but not with the mundane names he chose.
shareI'm a 32 year old American who watched a lot of old sitcoms as a kid and the only names I recognized were Sam Malone and Archie Bunker. The generation that would casually recognize all those names is dwindling.
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