Movie Specs Info

By Jan Verhoeff

Sink your teeth into these Movies and Advertising Slogans, rich in Back Roads Nostalgia and Historic Significance…

When Rockhound belted out “Oh Say can you see…” while riding a Nuk into a new time zone, he heard the words, “Get OFF the Nuclear Warhead!” by Colonel Willie Sharp. Harry Stamper (played by Bruce Willis) uttered the now famous line, “Got any more bullets for that Gun, Sharp?”

Raising kids during the movie age is more than hilarious. No matter the situation, one of my boys has a movie line comeback.

The best one happened a while after the movie Armagedon had been around for a while. Shopping at the mall, my granddaughter had found a bison to climb on,  and my son straddled the bison behind her, helping her to stay on board (the plastic beast was more than a little slippery for a one year old) and quoted, “Rockhound said, “I just wanted to feel all that power between my legs.” Yup, it feels about the same.”

What was Armagedon advertising in the movie? I noticed several phrases specifically leaning toward sexual inuendo, but I don’t believe sex was the point of the movie. In an early scene, Stamper’s daughter follows him along the high walk of an oil rig, telling him she’d been more mature than him since she turned ten-years-old, and he acknowledges that she’s better than the oil drilling rough-necks that he’s got on his team. Regardless of the fact that many of them have high level degrees and are well educated, Stamper’s concern is for his daughter’s future. He wants something more for her. In his act of saving the world, he gives his daughter and his right hand man, A.J. (played by Ben Affleck), his blessing.

There’s something about this movie, when I watched it the first time, I noticed a wide variety of things, but after seeing bits and pieces of the movie, I began to realize the significance of specific pictures. Posters on the wall, bottles on a shelf, the beer labels on the bar displayed prominently toward the camera, and other specific advertisements punched up for the camera. In one scene a billboard pops up in the middle of nowhere on a dirt road — I’m just betting Lamar Co. didn’t have anything to do with that billboard in the middle of a back road.

Are these the new form of subliminal advertising? Is there something about watching Oscar racing a helicopter across the pasture in Montana that replicates an old Marlboro Commercial?

You decide.