his was only my second fractured fairy tale. After "Prince Gaylord," I thought I'd like to do a parody of a known work instead of an original tale. I came up with a long list of potential candidates and chose "The Three Little Pigs" because I'd never been particularly fond of the pigs in the story . . . or pigs at all, really. I always ended up feeling sorry for the wolf. It's highly likely that pity for fairy tale villains was what ultimately led me to always root for the bad guys in movies.
Moving on. In the first few paragraphs of the story, the stick house pig says "Pull the other one!" to the straw house pig. That was the first reference in the story to Monty Python and the Holy Grail—in an early scene in the film, King Arthur (Graham Chapman) and his trusty servant Patsy (Terry Gilliam) approach a castle, and the following dialogue ensues:
1st soldier with a keen interest in birds: Who goes there?
King Arthur: It is I, Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon, from the castle of Camelot. King of the Britons, defeater of the Saxons, Sovereign of all England!
1st soldier with a keen interest in birds: Pull the other one!
King Arthur: I am, and this is my trusty servant Patsy. We have ridden the length and breadth of the land in search of knights who will join me in my court at Camelot. I must speak with your lord and master.
And then follows the famous coconut scene.
I wanted to make the wolf as sympathetic and pathetic as possible, so, when he accidentally blows down the straw house, he stands there sadly and says, "Oh, poop." Aside from being a thoroughly pathetic oath, that was also a reference to MST3K's outtakes reel, Poopie!.
I couldn't resist alluding to Close Encounters of the Third Kind because of the similar uses of a chimney as an entrance to a house. Also, I liked the bit where the brick house pig reacts to the reference by saying, "Don't reference pop culture; this is a fairy tale!" That line was another reference to Monty Python, this time to the Crunchy Frog sketch, which included the line "And don't talk to the audience." Due to the structure of the fairy tale, I couldn't rip that line off directly, but close enough.
Also in that scene, the stick house pig says, "Not that it matters; we already referenced Monty Python and the Holy Grail." —The stick pig actually meant the "Pull the other one!" bit, but of course the preceding pop culture line was another reference. Also, when the straw house pig doesn't get the Monty Python reference, he asks interestedly, "When was that?" That was an allusion to J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, when Mad-Eye Moody warns Harry not to put his wand in his back pocket because he might accidentally blast a buttock off. Nymphadora Tonks interestedly asks who Mad-Eye's known who's lost a buttock, and, like the stick house pig, Mad-Eye dismisses the comment.
As per usual, I failed to resist the temptation to allude to another of my stories. After the collapse of the brick house, the wolf says, "I am so going to fucking sue you for this." That referred to my favorite scene from "The Denouncing of Klein High School:"
Aron Koscho reached the administrative offices first. He charged in and stood in front of Mr. Grove's desk, bellowing, "I'M GONNA SUE THE SHIT OUT OF YOU!!!" Mr. Grove looked up to see a wax-coated guy with his eyebrows blasted off standing there. A grotesque, blistered, and burned mass of hair lay where his scalp used to be."Aren't you the guy who had the obscene T-shirt?" he calmly inquired.
"I DON'T CARE ABOUT THE FUCKING T-SHIRT!" bellowed Aron. "AREN'T YOU LISTENING TO ME? I'M SAYING I'M GONNA SUE THE SHIT OUT OF YOU!"
"Oh."
Aron stood there. Clouds of acrid smoke wafted through the room.
"Well, don't you CARE that I'm gonna sue you for every penny you've got?"
"You're the young man who wore the rude T-shirt to school the other day. I forgot to expel you, didn't I?" he said, reaching into his desk for a pen and a write-up slip.
"Ah, man," muttered Aron under his breath.
Ahem. Yes. Later on, during The Big Bad Wolf vs. The Three Little Pigs, there's a bit with a "suspiciously attractive young secretary" who hushes up negative publicity. That was a vague reference to Kiss Me Deadly, a movie in which a private detective has an attractive young woman who obtains . . . suggestive photographs of herself with men in order to "fix" cases.
The juror who mutters that she didn't think the three little pigs seemed defenseless was based on me. Speaking my mind at inappropriate intervals has always been something of a knack with me.
The repeated "Objection!"s of the defense attorney during the prosecuting attorney's speech were reminiscent of both Miracle on 34th Street and the Three Stooges' Disorder in the Court, especially the latter.
When the prosecuting attorney winds up his speech with a plea for the jury to find the "swine—no pun intended—guilty," I was thinking of Peter Sellers in The Pink Panther. His character Clouseau is always referring to things as "swine." I at first didn't even realize that referring to the pigs as swine was quite literal. I wasn't sure if I wanted the pun in there, but I obviously decided to leave it in, with the lawyer even saying "no pun intended," for comedic effect. That in turn reminds me again of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. They didn't have enough room in the budget to allow for horses in the film, so they had to use coconuts. They decided to make the best of it and show the coconuts on screen for comedic effect.
I kind of referenced "The Denouncing of Klein High School" again with the defense attorney's line, "Aw, shit." In "Denouncing," Aron's character says "Aw, man" when he gets expelled. I had originally written "Aw, shit," but I changed the line partly because a student standing in front of his principal probably wouldn't be swearing, even if he were already being expelled (I mean, why make matters worse?) and also because I was still fairly new to writing my KP stories, and I wasn't sure if I really wanted to use that much heavy swearing in them. Shit. Shiznitty fuck shit piss. You can guess what I ultimately decided.
Oh, and naturally, it wouldn't be a proper fairy tale without a happy ending. It seemed only fair that the poor hapless wolf should get the girl—the incredibly uncompromisingly hot girl of questionable morality, that is, reminding me of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, which in itself is chock full of references to classic animation, so why the hell not.