GRAB BAG
November 2017
By Mike Bentley
Round 3
Tossups
1. One character in this film tries to explain his compatibility with the protagonist's wife by spinning two coat hangers together.The protagonist's father is killed after saying "Hey" to the man played by Alex Pettyfer who raped his wife. Producer Sheila Johnson secured funding for this film before she died, and its director had previously made The Paperboy. A dinner conversation in this film turns into a heated argument over (*) In the Heat of the Night.This film's protagonist refuses to meet with his son Louis because Louis refused to attend the funeral of his other son, Cecil, who died in Vietnam.Earlier, Lewis had survived a Molotov cocktail thrown into a bus in Alabama.The title character's wife is played by Oprah Winfrey in this film, which co-stars Robin Williams as Dwight Eisenhower.For 10 points, name this film where Forest Whitaker is title White House servant.
ANSWER: Lee Daniels' The Butler
2. One band named for these animals has a video where the singer walks past a cop with a reptilian tongue and a man with a leafblower who sets the Creep-O-Meter off the charts. That same band named for these things wrote a song where the singer requests "get me white wine and Vicodin" and to "sew a scarlet letter on my bathing suit". The songs "Hey Girl" and "Crimson Wave" were recorded by a Seattle punk band named for these animals. Another band named for these animals had a breakout hit that borrowed from the chorus of "Swass" by (*) Sir Mix-a-Lot. The aforementioned Seattle band pairs "taco" with this word. A group named for these animals asks, "Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?" in one hit. Alexander Cabot III manages a band named for these animals whose members include Valerie and Melody. For 10 points, name these animals, which name the backup band of the Archie character Josie.
ANSWER: cats [or pussycats; or Tacocat]
3. This character reached a national US audience thanks to the 1930s radio plays of The New Penny writer Edith Mesier. A highlight of Soviet television in the late '70s was Vasily Livanov's portrayal of this character. Ronald Knox satirized applying Higher Criticism to the Bible with his lecture on the "Studies in the Literature of" this character. Franklin Roosevelt was an honorary member of a club devoted to him founded by Christopher Morley in 1934 and FDR even believed this character was born in the US. Members of Morley's trivia-obsessed organization devoted to this character participated in the (*) "Great Game" and were called "irregulars". This character's hat derives from non-textual illustrations by Sidney Paget and is called a deerstalker. The actor William Gillette created this character's catchphrase and gave him a curved pipe to smoke. For 10 points, name this detective created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
ANSWER: Sherlock Holmes [or Sherlock Holmes]
4. The Turkish version of this show, Ver Firina, encouraged contestants to dance. The inaugural episode in a behind the scenes look at contestants on this series featured guest-stars Paul Rankin and Roisin Conaty and was hosted by Jo Brand. This show really took off in its second season with a Twitter-baiting shot of a squirrel revealing his large testicles. An all-star version of this series included a team from retailer Marks & Spencer, and the first season of a kid’s version of this show was won by a 10-year-old named Freya. The success of this show has spawned similarly named programs about (*) sewing bees and pottery throwdowns. One scandal on this show involved Diana Beard stealing an Alaska from Iain Watters.David Cameron was reported to be backing the hijab-wearing Nadiya to win one of its seasons. The judges on this show are Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood. In one episode of this show, John recreated the Roman Colosseum in gingerbread form. For 10 points, name this quaint BBC food competition.
ANSWER: The Great British Bake-Off [or The Great British Baking Show; or GBBO]
5. This musician has most frequently collaborated with songwriter Dean Dillon after abandoning writing his own songs like the weird "I Just Can't Go on Dying Like This".A lightly fictionalized version of this man declares "I’m going to play the guitar and sing" in a movie that became a huge VHS hit and produced the best-selling album of his career. His 2015 album Cold Beer Conversation was his first not to produce a Top 10 hit. He runs a yearly Team (*) Roping Classic. His track "Give It All We Got Tonight" failed to become his 60th #1 hit; he plays the other 59 over two nights in Vegas. In one of his best known songs, the singer declares "I hang my hat in Tennessee" due to the title problem. Another of his hits has the singer coming "up from San Antone". For 10 points, name this country music icon behind hits such as "Amarillo By Morning" and "All My Ex's Live in Texas".
ANSWER: George Strait [or George Harvey Strait]
6. In 1957, Harpo Marx delivered a wordless pitch for Pepsi during a "spectacular" rendition of this musical. As a kid, I saw a Tony-winning revival of this musical where Bernadette Peters, Tom Wopat and Ron Holgate starred in the main roles. A song written for this musical which titles a 1954 Ethel Merman film discusses how even though "your pa and ma have parted, you're broken-hearted, but you go on" and opens by noting how "The (*) butcher, the baker, the grocer, the clerk / are secretly unhappy men because" they don't receive applause. Dolly is caught tampering with the title character's equipment before a match on Governor's Island in this musical, where two characters plan to get married in "An Old-Fashioned Wedding"."There's No Business Like Show Business" and "Anything You Can Do" were written for this show, whose characters include Pawnee Bill and Chief Sitting Bull.For 10 points, name this Irving Berlin musical about a female sharpshooter.
ANSWER: Annie Get Your Gun
7. The protagonist of this film offers up "Stonehenge" as an example of a word that can't be easily rhymed to a man who admits he cheated on his wife at a math conference. In this movie, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend's Vella Lovell plays one of the more substantial of the women who "drop by" a suburban house to offer a headshot for the protagonist's "X-Files" collection. The final scene in this film reprises dialogue from the meet cute about whether yelling "woo" counts as heckling or not. Its protagonist, a comedian, stages an embarrassing one-man show where he lists (*) cricket positions and recounts the history of his home country. This Michael Showalter film co-stars Holly Hunter and Ray Romano as the parents of Emily, who gets put into a medically induced coma. For 10 points, name this romantic comedy starring Kumail Nanjiani.
ANSWER: The Big Sick
8. The mastermind of these events was mocked in a political cartoon as a gynecologist for his obviously false boast that they "can no more have a deficit than a man can have a baby". Some artists protested these events with sculptures of Mickey Mouse fingers pointing out especially expensive new infrastructure. The "Big Owe" was created for this event, as were two no-bid concrete pyramids costing $80 million. The song “Cotton’s Dream” became a hit due to this event. This was the first time the host nation failed to win a gold medal at the Olympics. Alberto Juantorena of Cuba became the first and only person to win gold in both the 400 and 800 meters at this event. The Omega SA (*) scoreboard did not have enough digits to display a feat first accomplished at this event. Tyrannical mayor Jean Drapeau oversaw these events. Seven perfect tens were awarded to Nadia Comaneci at this event.For 10 points, name this sporting event in a Canadian city.
ANSWER: Montreal Summer Olympics [or 1976 Summer Olympics]
9. The opening shot of this film is of the back of a police officer walking down a hallway in 1976.The voice of Richard Jenkins tells a character in this film that he expects a certain number to be "as high as 90".One of the bigger laughs in this movie is an establishing shot where a billboard for AOL is visible.Stanley Tucci plays an eccentric (*) Armenian lawyer in this film named Stephen Kurkjian.At a dinner early in this film, one character admits that although he doesn't like baseball, he has been reading The Curse of the Bambino.One character in this film is pulled off the central case to travel to Florida investigate the 9/11 hijackers.A Jewish character in this film named Marty Baron is given a gift of the Catechism by Bernard Law. Robby Robinson, played by Michael Keaton, heads the title team that interview survivors in this film. For 10 points, name this 2015 film about the Boston Globe's investigation into the Catholic sex-abuse scandal.
ANSWER: Spotlight
10. The actor who plays this character told oral historian James Andrew Miller that he got this role while driving back from a horrible Pennsylvania comedy club in a blizzard. A DVD bonus feature has him telling you to "always read the paper to know what the fuck is going on" as part of his namesake guide to New York City. He gets into a debate about the name of the aunt from Bewitched in an episode where the protagonist declares his five-second rule about hugging and erections. This character doesn't leave after his roommate breaks up with his sister while she's dealing with (*) cancer. He declares he "likes a woman with a smart ass mouth like that" to Susie Green and is introduced as the brother of Loretta, who is staying at Larry's house following Hurricane Edna. For 10 points, name this character played by J. B. Smoove on Curb Your Enthusiasm.
ANSWER: Leon Black [or Leon Black]
11. Arun Venugopal interviewed Bernie Telsey for an episode of Slate's Working podcast that asked, "How Does [someone in this profession] Work"?In a New Yorker profile titled "The Nerd Hunter", Stephen Rodrick credited one person in this profession named Allison Jones with reshaping American comedy thanks to her collaboration with directors such as Judd Apatow. A legendary person in this profession named Marion Dougherty was the subject of a 2012 documentary by Tom Donahue. That film prompted Woody Allen to write a letter to The Hollywood Reporter celebrating Juliet Taylor, another woman in this profession.A company that helps out the person in this role on a movie originally divided (*) people into categories such as "dress" and "atmosphere".Unethical people in this profession might make applicants trade sexual favors on a namesake "couch".For 10 points, name these people who issue "calls" to find actors for movies and TV shows.
ANSWER: casting director [or casting agent; do NOT prompt on just "director"]
12. One of the funnier tasks in this game has you assist a cannon deliver "wonderful birthday gifts" in the form of cannonballs to some flying platforms. Defeating a boss in this game turns back on the steam from Burnie the boiler. Its third level features NPCs in the form of talking shopping carts. The final boss of this game taunts you with messages about the vileness of his upcoming quarterly statement. It's not a (*) Mario game, but one character in this game can consume a honeycomb to become sticky to climb ramps in Glitterglaze Glacier. A patch thankfully let you silence the gibberish voices that show up in its cutscenes. In each level in this game, finding a token allows the player to play one of Rextro's arcade games. It soared past its Kickstarter goal thanks to its developers, Playtonic, being former Rare employees. For 10 points, name this 3D platformer, a spiritual successor to Banjo Kazooie.
ANSWER: Yooka-Laylee
13. Colin Campbell's unpublished 29,000 word essay on this song notes that it's the only one by its band to take place over a fixed period of time, and, until "Dr. Robert" was released 10 days afterwards, the band's only song about an individual. The last name of the man described in this song was picked from the phone book to avoid confusion with the songwriter's actual father. According to an interview with Hunter Davies for the Sunday Times, the original title figure of this song was named Daisy Hawkins, but was changed after the songwriter saw a name on a signboard in Bristol.The band's drummer suggested the line about (*) darning socks in this song.This second track on Revolver had "Yellow Submarine" as its B-Side. Its title figure "died in the church" and was "buried along with her name".John Lennon added the line "all the lonely people" to this song.For 10 points, name this Beatles song about a title woman.
ANSWER: "Eleanor Rigby"
14. His most recent novel has a character who considers herself "part of a hipster reverse migration" from Brooklyn to the suburbs of Haddington; that novel's title character, Eve, takes a Gender and Society class and becomes obsessed with amateur porn after receiving a text message "U r my MILF!". He wrote of a divorced sex-ed instructor in The Abstinence Teacher and wrote Mrs. Fltecher. One of his characters takes to obsessively watching the kid's show loved by her missing children and is named (*) Nora Durst; Nora develops a relationship with a mayor of Mapleton who has to deal with the Guilty Remnant. His best-known novel was adapted into an acclaimed but little-watched HBO series co-created by Lost's Damon Lindelof and starring Justin Theroux; that novel centers on the mysterious disappearance of 2% of the world's population. For 10 points, name this author of The Leftovers.
ANSWER: Tom Perrotta [or Thomas R. Perrotta]
15. In 2007 there were two separate biopics planned about this person, although one was delayed because Oliver Stone made W. instead. This character heads an organization that places a car bomb under the Gremlin owned by the protagonist's loser brother-in-law JB. In that same film, this character bets with his less famous colleagues on whether a former TWA pilot will survive taking off from an extremely short runway. Mark Bowden wrote a book titled for killing him. This character and his colleagues have their pictures taken by Tom Cruise's character, a onetime business partner named (*) Barry Seal in the film American Made. Billy Walsh directs a poorly received biopic about this man starring Vincent Chase on Entourage. He goes into business with the chemist Cockroach and battles with DEA agents in the TV series Narcos.For 10 points, name this head of the Medellin cartel.
ANSWER: Pablo Escobar [or Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria]
16. This singer went on an angry drive in his Corvette before agreeing to lay down the mellow vocals that producer Willie Mitchell wanted of him for one of his biggest hits. A girlfriend of this artist gave him third-degree burns by flinging a pot of boiling grits onto him before tragically killing herself. He got into a money dispute with Tennie Hodges, the guitarist on many of his biggest hits who co-wrote a song whose first title concept "Make you come home early / Make you stay out all night long". He recorded the track (*) "Jesus is Waiting" after a spiritual conversion in his hotel room at Disneyland in 1973. His signature song insists, "Whether times are good or bad, happy or sad", he and the woman he's in love with should perform the title action. This man had a hit with "Love and Happiness". For 10 points, name this soul singer and reverend behind "Let's Stay Together".
ANSWER: Al Green [or the Reverend Al Green; or Albert Leornes Greene]
17. The female lead in this film is yelled at for bringing a "sodium bomb" in the form of matzo ball soup to the main character's home.A maid named Gloria helps secure a will which brings about the downfall of this film's chief villain.One scene in this movie has the main character asking for more bobby pins to put in a piano.Late in this film, the protagonist's father tells him that he's peaked and that he's sold the publishing rights for $750,000.One of the first shots in this film is set within a (*) Cadillac at a car dealership where the protagonist writes on a business card that he's miserable to the female lead, Melinda Ledbetter, played by Elizabeth Banks.The younger version of the main character is played by Paul Dano and the older version by John Cusack.Much of the beginning of this biopic chronicles the experimental recording of Pet Sounds.For 10 points, name this film about Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys.
ANSWER: Love & Mercy
18. Vance Joy opened most of the shows for the tour for this album.In one show in support of this album, the artist brought Natalie Maines onstage to sing a duet of "Goodbye Earl" and had Ellen DeGeneres perform during the catwalk segment.In another show on the tour for this album, Justin Timberlake performed "Mirrors" while Lisa Kudrow was brought out to sing "Smelly Cat".In a Halloween show on the tour for this album, the star dressed in an Olaf suit while Idina Menzel sang "Let It Go".One of the few songs not on this album regularly played during its tour is generally performed the artist on her back and is titled "I (*) Knew You Were Trouble".Despite never reviewing any of the artist's albums, Pitchfork reviewed a cover album of it by Ryan Adams. The tour for this album typically opened with the song "Welcome to New York" and concluded with "Shake It Off".For 10 points, name this most recent Taylor Swift album.