Browse: Home / When Triumph the Insult Comic Dog Met Star Wars

Menu

Skip to content
  • Home
  • Who We Are
  • About
  • Privacy
  • Contact Us
  • Login

The-SoluteLogo

A Film Site By Lovers of Film

Menu

Skip to content
  • Features
  • Reviews
  • Long Reviews
  • News
  • Articles and Opinions
  • Other Media
  • The Friday Article Roundup: The Truth is In Here
  • Lunch Links: Schwarzfahrer
  • Websites on the Internet: THE SOLUTE
  • New on DVD and Blu-Ray
  • Movie Gifts Holidays 2024
Dynamic duo.

When Triumph the Insult Comic Dog Met Star Wars

Posted By The Ploughman on June 16, 2022 in Short Articles | Leave a response

Just over twenty years ago the original Late Night with Conan O’Brien aired a classic bit featuring regular character Triumph the Insult Comic Dog ragging on Star Wars fans waiting in line for the premiere of Attack of the Clones. For the uninitiated, Triumph was a rubber dog puppet with a cigar in its mouth operated by writer Robert Smigel who would lob insult comedy from just off screen. The character was crude both in terms of his severe technical limitations and the quality of humor Smigel put in his barely pliable maw. Amazing the amount of protection afforded in just a couple square feet of rubber on an arm.

The video has the skit in full, but the moment that I think of most often is at the 10:20 mark when Triumph baits the crowd into a trivia competition. “What substance was Han Solo frozen in?” he asks, to which several members of the crowd respond “Carbonite!” No, sorry, informs Triumph. “The correct answer is: who gives a shit?”

This has always struck me as very funny just on a performance level – with Triumph “reading” the question off a notecard taped to his “paw”, the way he asks “What?” just to get everyone invested one more time in shouting the answer before hitting them with the punchline. It’s also the perfect level of nerd trivia question for the gag, an easy lay-up for someone who would camp out to see a Star Wars movie but far enough outside general knowledge to disguise the setup.

The skit has remained memorable thanks to Triumph’s generally game targets who provide the unscripted reactions. As one member of the crowd later wrote, there was a lot of overlap between the nerd communities and fans of the outré humor pedaled by Late Night, and people lined up to get a dose of Triumph’s punishment. It’s an interesting document of another era of fandom when eager moviegoers camped out overnight for seats at a theater showing a physical print, rather than purchasing tickets online for one of the round-the-clock showtimes on a multitude of digital screens. Smigel and his crew were able to film two back-to-back days of lines outside the theater. This was an event. Even though the reputation of the previous entry The Phantom Menace had plummeted, Clones was only the second new Star Wars movie to come out since 1983. Fans would have to wait another year to catch a single animated series on the Cartoon Network.

It’s also still in the era when mainstream culture perceived pop culture fandom as the unseemly domain of social outcasts, a continuation of the open season declared by William Shatner’s 1986 Saturday Night Live “Get a Life!” sketch. Triumph gets off some punchlines that are as funny as they are cruel, but the majority of his jokes are some variation on calling everybody “nerds” or denigrating their sex life (or lack thereof). Now the joke’s been turned around, as fans of sci-fi and comicbook culture are the driving force at the theater and the rest of the movie-going public wrings its hands over not getting enough sex. The participants in the 2002 skit appear self-aware and happy to play the fool for a moment. But when the power shifts, it’s not hard to image the more thin-skinned members of the community feeling some vindication in playing the bully behind their own puppets on social media accounts.

The mockery wouldn’t be made with this kind of flippancy now. Their gargantuan presence means the substance of franchise films gets discussed from all sorts of angles now, in terms of cultural representation and geopolitical forces and once in a great while aesthetics, issues that shouldn’t be shrugged away. But when the debate gets heated around whether the minutia of a fictional universe is getting handled properly and the passion turns to anger, sometimes it’s nice to remember a time when a dog puppet provided the correct answer.

Posted in Short Articles | Tagged Conan O'Brien, fandom, star wars prequels

About the Author

gemofpurestray@gmail.com'

The Ploughman

Related Posts

The power of the computer-generated sun in the Palm (D'Orr) of my hand.The Friday Article Roundup: We Have to Talk MEGALOPOLIS This Week Because Nobody Will Next Week→

Rock On, Friday FriendsThe Friday Article Roundup: Metal AF→

Just one more thing... I am Shiva, God of DeathThe Friday Article Roundup: Just One More Thing…→

In the year 2000 . . . .Celebrating the Living: Conan O’Brien→

  • Comments
  • Popular
  • Most Recent
  • j*****@yahoo.com'
    mr_apollo on Year of the Month: Mon OncleWonderful piece, Sam. It's made…
  • j*****@yahoo.com'
    mr_apollo on Year of the Month: Mon OncleFellow heretic here. I've never…
  • n***********@gmail.com'
    Ruck Cohlchez on Film on the Internet: AN AMERICAN CRIMEI wouldn't have called it…
  • j***********@gmail.com'
    Son of Griff on LIFE ITSELFGlad to hear back from…
  • n*********@gmail.com'
    Jake Gittes on Film on the Internet: AN AMERICAN CRIMEThis is the single most…
  • “The End” of SAVAGES

    38350 views / Posted November 10, 2014
  • The Untalented Mr. Ripley: The Craft of Standup Comedy and the Non-Comedy of TOM MYERS

    30685 views / Posted June 26, 2018
  • What the fuck did I just watch? SPHERE

    30328 views / Posted March 19, 2015
  • Gordon with Mr. Looper

    Attention Must Be Paid: Will Lee

    27640 views / Posted January 7, 2023
  • Scenic Routes: SHOWGIRLS (1995)

    23315 views / Posted November 20, 2014
  • The truth is FAR out there.

    The Friday Article Roundup: The Truth is In Here

    December 6, 2024 / The Ploughman
  • This is a way lower res image than I will be allowed to get away with at the new site.

    Lunch Links: Schwarzfahrer

    December 5, 2024 / The Ploughman
  • Websites on the Internet: THE SOLUTE

    December 4, 2024 / ZoeZ
  • New on DVD and Blu-Ray

    December 3, 2024 / Greta Taylor
  • Movie Gifts Holidays 2024

    December 2, 2024 / The Ploughman

Last Tweets

    ©2014 - 2016 The-Solute | Hosted, Developed and Maintained by Bellingham WP LogoBellinghamWP.com.

    Menu

    • Home
    • Who We Are
    • About
    • Privacy
    • Contact Us
    • Login
    Do NOT follow this link or you will be banned from the site!