No pinkies, but..
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Murder by Death
avortac — 11 years ago(April 23, 2014 08:55 AM)
.. still ten fingers?
What?
How does THAT work? How do you have ten fingers, but no pinkies? What do you have instead, then? Surely the last fingers must be pinkies, even if they are different shape, color, or length/width than pinkies normally would be.
Either I don't get it, or it's a really thoughtless joke that doesn't make any sense.
But I'd like to know what the writer thought - how did he explain it to himself? What would he have called the non-pinkie-fingers? -
annmason24 — 11 years ago(May 26, 2014 09:05 PM)
I love this question! The answer is, it doesn't make sense, so there is no answer! That is the essence of the entire movie, it makes no sense. If you think about murder by death very long you will drive yourself crazy. The 10 fingers no pinky paradox is just one example. The whole crazy movie is just a lot of fun. I really like your question, because there is no answer.
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warren_houghton — 11 years ago(June 24, 2014 09:01 PM)
If you watch closely though, during some scenes, like when Mr. Twain walks around the table explaining the reason for the gathering you can see that he has little pinkie falsies to make his pinkies look longer than they really are.
My answer to your question is that the viewer is supposed to think when she says he has no pinkies that he has only 8 fingers, just as Sam Diamond says, but the movie has to give it a twist - to do the unexpected. When she says he has ten - just no pinkies - the viewer is supposed to scrunch up their face and go "HUH??" just as you did, then assume he must have 4 thumbs or 4 ring fingers or whatever. You're supposed to watch his hands carefully when he's introduced to try to see what fingers he does have, then the joke pays a little extra dividend to the observant viewer.
Nah, it's fair enough in this kind of silly, Pythonesque joke to call a finger in the pinky position that's the length of an index finger not a pinky.
Or you could just go with the previous answer. It's not really supposed to make a lot of sense, just be funny. Some people are bound to have senses of humour that the joke works for, and some not. Some people laugh at Bob Hope, some at Monty Python, and some at Adam Sandler. I frequently find myself watching TV shows that people obviously thought were hilarious at some point in time and I keep asking myself "what the heck is funny about this?" -
PillowRock — 11 years ago(July 28, 2014 08:49 PM)
If you watch closely though, during some scenes, like when Mr. Twain walks around the table explaining the reason for the gathering you can see that he has little pinkie falsies to make his pinkies look longer than they really are.
And at the very end, after the multiple "reveals" (one of which was Twain), when she is left alone laughing, Nancy Walker takes off a pair of "pinkie falsies". -
Stigger — 11 years ago(September 30, 2014 08:49 AM)
The "pinky" finger is a term used to identify the shortest finger. However, in this case, the person's "pinky" is at least the length of the ring finger. That's why the person still has 10 fingers, but no shortest finger.