Wednesday, December 4, 2024

The Brain (of Pinky and the Brain) Reveals that he has Directed Shakespeare

"Yes, Always." By Peter Hastings. Perf. Maurice LaMarche, Rob Paulsen, and Harry Andronis. Dir. David Marshall. 
Animaniacs. Season 1, episode 52. Fox. 11 February 1994. DVD. Studio Distribution Services, 2018. 

Every now and then, a Shakespearean deep cut is just the ticket.

"Yes, Always" is a very odd episode of Pinky and the Brain that was broadcast before the characters had their own spin-off show. In it, we are invited to see the Brain recording some dialogue for a series of commercials.  In the course of the work, we learn that the Brain has had experience directing others in Shakespeare.

All that is very meta, which is one of the things I love most about the show.  But, as is so often the case with Pinky and the Brain (cf. their take on Hamlet, for example), there's another layer.

The biggest inside joke is that the script is derived from outtakes from some Findus Frozen Foods commercials that Orson Welles did late in life. You can find a good (though somewhat profanity-strewn) account of this here

Here at Bardfilm, we're generally more interested in the Shakespeare in any given material. But we also greatly admire Pinky and the Brain (and we need very little excuse to watch it). Enjoy, then, a portion of "Yes, Always" with its allusion to the Brain's directorial history.


Links: The Episode at IMDB.

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Bardfilm is normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilm is a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
All material original to this blog is copyrighted: Copyright 2008-2039 (and into perpetuity thereafter) by Keith Jones.

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