Sight at the Museum

Previously: 

Where the Red Fern Grew  - -  Thunderstruck  - -  Bringing Up Bobby

Ryan Bellgardt is a prolific Oklahoma filmmaker whose work ranges from horror to scifi and now family films.  His latest work, The Adventures of Jurassic Pet, falls into the "kid makes a cute monster/alien/creature friend and goes on an adventure to help/save it" genre.  Like his other movies, Bellgardt filmed in Oklahoma and it's a lot of fun to try to track down the locations that make it on screen.

It usually involves spotting a street sign or a familiar building exterior or some other kind of landmark to figure out where a scene was shot.  But there were a couple of scenes in this movie that were easy to ID since they take place in one of the best museums in the state.

The Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, on the OU campus, has an impressive amount of interactive features, cultural artifacts and historical items on display as well as frequent traveling exhibits.  But the biggest draw might be the colossal amount of fossils and dinosaur skeletons.  It's one of the best places in the state to take a gander at the remains of some of the behemoths that stomped around the Sooner state all those years ago.

The amount of fossil casts and skeletons really give the place a "museumy feel" for lack of a better term.  It's the perfect kind of visual shorthand that location scouts look for when they want a setting that is instantly recognizable for what it is.  In this case, the dinosaur museum looks like a dinosaur museum so it's a perfect place to film a scene that takes place in a dinosaur museum.

The museum appears in a couple of different scenes.  Towards the beginning of the film our hero Chris is on a field trip at Sam Noble with his class.  As the field trip progresses through the museum, several of their best specimens get some screen time.  Young Chris speculates on the possibility of dinosaurs being alive and well in the present while his teacher seems to become enamored with the tour guide.

The plot of the film involves Chris finding a magic (I think) dinosaur egg which quickly hatches into a baby dinosaur who quickly grows through adolescence into adulthood in about a day.  During that process the two chase after each other and run away from a bad guy scientist all over town.  Their adventures take them back to the museum for some dino-hijinks.

Fortunately no fossils were destroyed in the melee and the fun continued to several other locations.  If you've got kids that love dinosaurs (or just like checking out Oklahoma productions) you can see it for yourself on various streaming platforms or find a copy in your local Redbox.  There's already a sequel in the works so hopefully it won't be too long before before another Oklahoma museum gets the star treatment. 

Twisting in the Wind

Homage comes in various forms.  For a state like Oklahoma, which tends to keep things low-key, there's not too many movies that celebrate the state.  Sure, there's a few that take place here, but not too many that that really take a swing at the high-octane craziness that can happen, especially during tornado season.

A more typical type of homage is the roast.  Nothing tells you how you've endeared yourself to your friends like having them tell you how much you suck.  And one of the thickest branches on the "Roast Family Tree" is the Mad Magazine parody, which has been skewering pop culture for decades. 

From my perspective, the Oklahoma Homage Stars aligned in issue #349 of Mad.  It was the Fall of '96 and in addition to taking shots at Madonna, Hercules and Xena, Twister got their steaks and eggs served to them too.  With that, let's take a look...

As per the usual Mad format, we start off with a big splash page with the characters introducing themselves with gags-a-plenty.  The usual Mad art style is your standard "caricature" that tends to be somewhat accurate when it comes to faces.  BUt while Helen Hunt is recognizable, it looks like the artist didn't make any kind of effort to make Bill Paxton's character look like the actor.  It's enough to almost think they weren't able to see the movie but maybe caught a few Mad About You reruns.

The parody follows the plot of the movie pretty much, starting with young Helen Hunt seeing her father get killed by a tornado and swearing to one day hunt that tornado down and kill it.  The likenesses continue to be off with pretty much every other character throughout the story.  But there's a reason why Twister's most famous character looks a little off...

Gary Larson had retired the previous year.  If you're not familiar with the name, he was the cartoonist for The Far Side, which was incredibly popular in the 80s and early 90s and frequently featured cows, which is why we have this additional homage.  I guess he was still in the popular zeitgeist enough to influence our parody's writer to use for the Twister "flying cow" gag.

Which leads to a joke that should have been in the movie...and for some reason a Bart Simpson cameo.  Remember, it wasn't just the Far Side that was popular back then.  So just like in the movie we get the "gang goes to see Aunt Meg" scene and dine on "tasty cow."  And just like in the movie they go chase some more tornadoes.  But unlike the movie, we get a twist ending:

Speaking of homages, we end with a combo.  Taking a page from Newhart and the Wizard of Oz, Helen Hunt wakes up safely back in Must See TV Land with what I assume are semi-accurate caricatures of the cast.  You had to know her hit show was going to make it in this Mad parody somehow.

So not too many Oklahoma mentions but still plenty of state identity made it out of the movie and into the magazine.  This will have to hold you over until I can track down the "Grapes of Wretch" parody they undoubtedly did at some point.