The Self-Abasement Tapes: Checkmate Death

Ingmar Bergman has died.

The intense and intensely intimate filmmaker inspired many a comic parody over the years.

Here's my old attempt:

Voice Over: Swedish art film legends Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann for Que Tips!

(Brief silence)

Bibi: … You have a lot of wax in your ear.

(Silence. Then cut to a stark shot of a ticking clock.)

Liv: …What?

(Silence. Cut to a stark shot of someone cutting the head off a chicken. Then of a crucifix.)

Bibi: …You’ve got a lot of wax in your ear!

(Silence. Cut to stark image of another clock ticking.)

Liv: …I’m sorry, I can’t hear. The deafening silence of an empty universe has turned me inward. … Plus, I’ve got a lot of wax in my ears.

(Silence. Cut to stark image of a wheel of Gouda.)

Bibi: … You need to take comfort in love …though it is always fleeting.

(Cut to quick recap of all stark images in an accelerating montage.)

Bibi: And try some Que Tips.

(Silence.)

Voice Over: Que Tips. For when you’ve got wax in your ears.

The End

And here's the far superior work of SCTV where Monster Chiller Horror Theater accidentally books Whispers of the Wolf:

At 10:40 PM, Unknown said...: If he had lived long enough, there's an ad campaign Bergman could have used the prologue to Wild Strawberries for. Here's a synopsis:

Old man dreams fitfully. He is in a deserted town in which the hands on all the clocks have fallen off. A horse-drawn hearse walks by, dumps a coffin, and gallops off. Old man walks up to coffin, looks in, sees self in coffin, who commences to pull him in with him.

Cue voice-over: "For God's sake, don't go to sleep at all! Try Provigil."

The Self-Abasement Tapes