GR and the movie "Diner"

[Bruce Appelbaum]

     Re the popcorn trick:  Maybe you've just had a sheltered youth.
     
     Everybody seems to know about it, but nobody apparently has any (or 
     will admit to having any) firsthand (as it were) experience with it.


______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: GR and the movie "Diner"
Author:  Joe Varo <vjvaro at erie.net> at Internet
Date:    8/9/96 1:58 PM


     
I'm in the process of a re-read of GR and came across something I'd not 
noticed in previous readings.
     
On page 293 of the Bantam edition, part 2 episode 7, Pynchon refers to 
"doing the penis-in-the-popcorn-box routine" in a movie theater.
     
In the movie "Diner", Mickey Rourke's character (Boogie, if I recall), in 
order to get his date to touch his penis, holds their box of popcorn in 
his lap, opens his fly and sticks his doodle up through the flap in the 
bottom of the box and into the popcorn.  Eventually, as his date reaches 
in for some popcorn, she latches on to something other than popcorn.
     
Now as for myself, were I to have not seen "Diner" I'd be clueless as to 
what Pynchon was talking about in this passage....that is, assuming 
they're the same thing.
     
Was this little trick popular at sometime in the past or is there some 
kind of connection between Pynchon and the writer (was it Steve Tesich?) 
of "Diner"?
     
Also, while I'm thinking of it, at one point Pynchon refers to Secret 
Service agents as looking like "Apaches" and in another passage he refers 
to "Apache sideburns".  I'm assuming he's refering to the tribe of native 
Americans; if so, what kind of sideburns did they sport?
     
Joe