Elkhound
Since: Jun, 2010
Sep 18th 2012 at 6:32:08 PM
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Milwaukese.
In Milwaukee—and perhaps other cities with a strong German cultural influence—you will sometimes hear people speaking English with German syntax. Sometimes they will be people whose first language is German, or perhaps it was their parents' or even grandparents' language.
There are several expressions used commonly as illustrations of this.
- Tie the dog loose & let him run the alley down.
- Make out [or on] the light.
- Come down by my house where the streetcar bends the corner round, and whistle me out once so my Momma can see who I hang by.
and, last of all
- Throw Momma from the train a kiss.
I can't believe that the title of the film wasn't in some way inspired by this bit of Teutonic English.
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MrDeath
Since: Aug, 2009
Sep 19th 2012 at 7:30:45 AM
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I can believe it. Seems like a hell of a stretch that they put in a pun that, maybe, people in one city in the US might get.
A lot of the tropes and summaries on this page seem to take it at face value that Margaret literally "stole" Larry's book. Like she actually sneaked his finished manuscript out from under his pillow and dashed it down to her publishers or something.
I think the movie leaves it intentionally vague. Larry is 100% convinced that Margaret stole the book but no other character in the movie is all that sympathetic to him (including his best friend, his publisher and his girlfriend). Almost everyone who knows him well is shown telling him to essentially "just get over it". The best friend even comments to the cops that he doesn't think Larry killed Margaret because "Larry never *did* anything".
Personally, I don't think Margaret literally stole the book so much as she stole Larry's idea for a book or something more along those lines. Her getting away with outright passing off someone else's writing as her own doesn't seem all that likely, especially since Larry is so angry and obsessed with it that he would almost certainly have provided proof of her fraud if he could.
The movie leaves it vague so that you are at first on Larry's side blaming everything on his ex-wife but as the movie goes along you start to understand that his life's problems are his own fault and he should be focusing on bettering himself & starting a new novel rather than remaining stuck in the past.