Obscurest. Reference. Ever.
Last night I was watching a Simpsons episode from the ninth season entitled “Dumbbell Indemnity.” (Episode number 194 Production Code 5F12, for those of you who will never have sex.)
The plot involves Homer helping Moe the bartender commit insurance fraud by stealing his car and parking it on the railroad tracks so it will be destroyed. On the way, Homer sees that one of his favorite films, Hail to the Chimp, is playing at the drive-in theater and decides he has time to watch it before the train arrives. Of course, he falls asleep, and wakes up just as the train passes.
At this point, I alarmed my wife by sitting straight up, sputtering and pointing at the TV. Not because I’d finally had that brain aneurism the hordes of my enemies have been praying for, but because I recognized the image on the screen. A very obscure image. Specifically, the artists on The Simpsons had quoted a photograph from 1956 named Hotshot Eastbound.
The only reason I even spotted the visual reference in the first place was because the story behind the picture was in the December 2005 issue of The Smithsonian Magazine. The photographer’s name was O. Winston Link, and he chronicled the end of the steam locomotive era.
I wasn’t absolutely sure I was right, though, so I hunted around for some screen grabs of the sequence. Not only was I correct, but there is a detail I hadn’t spotted last night: there’s a jet in the same orientation on the drive-in screen in both versions. The Simpsons shot is about a quarter-second behind the photograph, but as you can plainly see they’re essentially identical.
I haven’t found a discussion of this visual joke anywhere on the web, so I may have actually been the first person to spot it. Makes you wonder what else they’ve buried in the margins of the show.
February 15th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
Thanks for such a great story. I wouldn’t have known about the Simpsons connection with Winston Link. Link has been a favorite of mine ever since I saw his photographs. More on this at http://gulahiyi.blogspot.com/2007/02/hotshot-eastbound.html
Thanks again
February 16th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
The page of the smithsonian magazine article:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/issues/2005/december/indelible.php
February 17th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
Quevedin, thank you for locating the article. Very kind of you.
Mr. Link appears to have quite a following.
February 19th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
Good to hear from you, David. I enjoy this site. I’ve added AD to my recommended links, you’re welcome to do the same with ruminations. OWL is quite a story. I know there are some active message boards for people who drive around and find the exact locations where he took his photos. Next time I’m in that part of Virginia, I’ll probably be on the trail myself. In his final years, the story took a bizarre twist when his wife kept him imprisoned in his own home while she stole his photos and negatives.
April 5th, 2007 at 9:50 pm
Hi,
Thank you. I was in an accountant’s office this past weekend (end of March 2007) and the only magazine he had was this old Smithsonian magazine. I happened to see the photo of the train passing the drive-in and it caught my eye.
Tonight, as I was watching five minutes of a nine year old episode of the Simpson’s while rushing through dinner, I saw this scene. I nearly spit out my chicken pot pie.
I am glad you caught this, because there seems to be no other reference to this anywhere on the web, and I couldn’t remember where I saw the photo or what the photographer’s name was. This very possibly could have driven me insane. Thank you for delaying the inevitable.
April 5th, 2007 at 10:37 pm
You’re welcome, Tim.
The more I think about the episode, the more I suspect that large chunks of the plot were specifically created to set up that one shot. I am going to try to contact the writer of the episode and find out the whole story, because it’s apparent this was more complicated that simply throwing in a visual reference.
And in another obscure Simpsons reference, at least it was chicken pot pie and not “Blinky.”
Update: I just found out that the writer, Ron Hauge, does an audio commentary on the DVD of the episode. Netflix, here I come! Mr. Hauge also wrote for National Lampoon, personally animated the hilarious amateur cartoon in “Stimpy’s Cartoon Show” on Ren and Stimpy, and wrote the infamous “Marine Biologist” episode of Seinfeld.
June 1st, 2008 at 10:17 am
There is a reference to this on the Wikipedia site about Winston Link
June 16th, 2009 at 10:32 am
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June 14th, 2010 at 10:58 pm
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