# Snakes on a Plane Snakes on a Plane is the 2006 Samuel L. Jackson B-movie whose ridiculous title generated over a year of online fan hype before it ever hit theaters, with bloggers, YouTube parodists and forum posters treating the premise as a punchline. Screenwriter Josh Friedman's 2005 post proposing the phrase mean the same as "shit happens" turned the title into a catchphrase, and New Line ended up shaping the film itself around fan suggestions, including Jackson's now-quoted "motherfucking snakes" line. ## Origin The screenplay started in 1992 when University of Pittsburgh administrator David Dalessandro read a magazine article about Indonesian brown tree snakes stowing away in WWII cargo planes and adapted the idea into a script originally titled Venom.[1] After being turned down by more than 30 studios, New Line bought the rights and hired Final Destination 2 director David R. Ellis; Samuel L. Jackson signed on after seeing the title alone.[5] The meme itself kicked off in August 2005, when New Line briefly renamed the film Pacific Air 121 before Jackson publicly demanded the original title back.[6] The day after that news broke, screenwriter Josh Friedman posted a blog entry declaring that "snakes on a plane" should be used interchangeably with "shit happens" and treating the movie's very existence as cosmic slapstick; the post drew more than 250 comments.[2] - **Platform:** Blogspot (source) / Something Awful, YouTube (viral spread) - **Creator:** Josh Friedman (catchphrase usage) - **Date:** 2005 ## Overview The meme has two layers: the campy title-as-catchphrase, used as a fatalistic shrug in place of "whaddya gonna do?" or "shit happens,"[2] and the film's most-quoted line, "I want these motherfucking snakes off the motherfucking plane," which fans wrote before it was ever in the movie.[3] Both grew out of the pre-release buzz that turned the film into an early case study in fan-driven marketing.[5] Parody output ran the range: mashup videos, fake theme songs, alternate movie posters, and a Varitalk phone service that delivered semi-personalized Jackson voicemails to 1.5 million callers in its first week.[4] Because critics were kept away from advance screenings and the studio had no official site for most of the buildup, almost everything the public saw before August 2006 was fan-made.[1] ## How to Use Typically deployed as a shrug in the face of bad luck outside your control. Someone rear-ends your car, your flight gets canceled, your cholesterol reading is 290: the correct response is a resigned "snakes on a plane, man."[9] The phrase functions the way "c'est la vie" or "shit happens" does, but with the added absurdity of the movie premise still hanging in the air. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Snakes on a Plane? It's the 2006 Samuel L. Jackson thriller whose ridiculous title generated over a year of online fan hype and turned into a shrug-style catchphrase meaning roughly "shit happens."[2] ### Where did Snakes on a Plane come from? David Dalessandro wrote the first screenplay in 1992 after reading about Indonesian brown tree snakes in WWII cargo planes; the meme took off after Josh Friedman's August 17, 2005 blog post celebrating the title.[1][2] ### What does Snakes on a Plane mean? As a phrase, it's a fatalistic shrug interchangeable with "shit happens" or "whaddya gonna do?", per Friedman's coinage and the Urban Dictionary entry that followed.[9] ### How do you use Snakes on a Plane? Say it in response to bad luck you can't control, like "snakes on a plane, man," the usage Friedman proposed in his blog post.[2] ### Is Snakes on a Plane still popular? It's a classic mid-2000s reference; the film's fan output kept drawing millions of YouTube views into the 2010s, including a 2009 clean-dub video that passed 2.9 million.[8] ## References 1. [https://web.archive.org/web/20080205090848/https://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06228/713732-254.stm]() 2. [https://hucksblog.blogspot.com/2005/08/snakes-on-motherfucking-plane.html]() 3. [https://web.archive.org/web/20060831173213/https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/film/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002234847]() 4. [http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=2313405&page=1#.UeCOb2RgZ7c]() 5. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/snakes-on-a-plane]() 6. [http://collider.com/entertainment/news/archive_detail.asp?aid=599&tcid=1]() 7. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihAoSwQqo44]() 8. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4t6zNZ-b0A]() 9. [https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=snakes+on+a+plane]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/snakes-on-a-plane Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library