E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt) break into the house to obtain the last Tomacco is a reference the film "Night of the Living Dead" (1968) and the zombies' attack. A farmer is shown using an elephant to measure his corn plants' height; this is a reference to the song "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'" in the musical "Oklahoma!", which features the line "the corn is as high an elephant's eye". The Southern colonel's accent is similar to the Warner Bros. character Foghorn Leghorn and he uses Foghorn's phrase "Sir, I say sir!", while the mudflap on his RV features a picture of him in a
The Elephant Vanishes deal of multimedia, which Complicite had traditionally eschewed, but married it with the company's trademark communal storytelling and demanding physical performance style. The eponymous elephant, for example, was represented at one time by a magnified eye on a video screen, and at another time by four live actors bent over office chairs. This combination of technical wizardry and compelling human narrative received high praise from critics, who also cited the play's humor, realism, and dreamlike motion a fitting tribute to Murakami's prose. "The Elephant Vanishes" (English edition) by Haruki Murakami; translation by Alfred Birnbaum and Jay Rubin The Elephant Vanishes