Yesterday Andras and I were talking about various and sundry pop cultural subjects, and the topic came around to cool slacker characters. I said “You know, like Rispoli.”
Andras said “you mean Jeff Spicoli.”
“Exactly!” said I. Mr. Hand’s nemesis in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”, played so perfectly by a young Sean Penn, is such an iconic cultural touchstone that to invoke his image you don’t even need to get his name right.
Marveling at how quickly “Rispoli” had been understood to mean “Spicoli”, we went on to posit the creation of a story or play or movie in which every single cultural reference would be similarly fractured, but in such a way that the audience would always know exactly who or what was being invoked. Needless to say, to create such a work it would be useful to amass a file of great examples.
Today I was describing an idea for a gestural computer interface, and Andras said “You mean like in ‘Blah blah blah Authority’.”
“You mean,” I said, “‘Minority Report’.”
“Exactly!” said Andras, and then we just looked at each other, pleased that we had snagged another example for our files.