One of the true joys of Animaniacs—the original, not the boingy boingy remake that we haven’t heard much about in a while—is not only how far over the heads of its target audience it was willing to take its often very vulgar jokes (RIP Prince) but how utterly inside baseball it got. One of the greatest of those moments is when this animated variety show, which was executive produced by Steven Spielberg, pilloried Variety, the long-running show business trade magazine known for its “slanguage” headlines, a particular form of what’s commonly known in the journalism business as “headlinese.”
Variety has something of a reputation in both media and showbiz for its lingo and its killer, if over the top, headlines. In 1929, following the market crash that led to the Great Depression, the mag’s headline for that story read: “Wall St. Lays An Egg.” The most famous, however, was the inspired 1935 headline “Sticks Nix Hick Pix,” which meant, as Wikipedia translates it, “people in rural areas (‘the sticks’) reject (‘nix’) motion pictures (‘pix’) about rural life (‘hicks’).” (Really, “Hicks Nix Sticks Pix” would have been better, but let’s give credit where it’s due.) The magazine has also been credited for creating, among other jargon, the terms “legit,” “boffo,” “sitcom,” “sex appeal,” and “striptease.”
So you can imagine how much fun Spielberg, showrunner Tom Ruegger, and the crew at Animaniacs had with “Variety Speak,” a song giving the Hollywood rag all the good-natured guff it deserved for its ridiculous slang. As Variety itself might have put it, “Boffo Burn on Trade Made Grade.”
Thanks for reading The Dot and Line, where we talk about animation of all kinds. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter.
