File under the heading of "Game shows in other media"...
I just got back from seeing a documentary called
Waking Sleeping Beauty that chronicles the time period from 1984 to 1994 when Disney Animation went through a revival from creating box office bombs to the highest-grossing animated films of all time.
Here's a funny story: In 1986, during the production of the film with the working title
Basil of Baker Street, the Marketing department stepped in and had the film renamed
The Great Mouse Detective. A story artist then issued a fake memo stating that Disney would proceed to rewrite the titles of their past films, to humorous effect, of course. (
Seven Little Men Help a Girl, The Wooden Boy Who Became Real)
And here's the game show connection: A few years later, the writers of
Jeopardy! used the titles in that fake memo as the clues for a new (and then-recurring) category called "In Other Words...." The documentary does show footage of Alex Trebek describing the new category and explaining its origin back to the fake Disney memo. And here is the memo at
this link.Dean
dascungio@cox.net (dascungio@cox.net)
