Talk:Big Kahuna Burger

(Parody?)

Not a fictional burger chain but more a parody of an existing burger joint from Maui.
bigkahunaburger.net
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 170.35.224.63 (talk) 17:03, 21 May 2009

• Hmm. Just what i'd want WP to say if i were cashing in on Tarantino, tho even more plausibly what a tourist would imagine they'd heard, and recall as inside knowledge when they got back to Dallas. The anon IP offers nothing supporting that claim. On the contrary, the site refers to

Bubba Gump’s, that other restaurant named after a movie from 1994

which sounds like an acknowledgement that BKB is a knock-off from '94's Pulp Fiction (film). It also says, as of 2009, "For over 10 years", not even "for nearly 15..." (nor, as would be the case if it were original, "over 15", since BKB dates back to '92's Reservoir Dogs).
--Jerzy•t 06:04 & 11:48, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

• After further research, i've struck thru this section's initial contrib, and much of my response to it: the IP's comment is at best outdated, and plausibly an intentional hoax to push tourists on Oahu to go on to Maui (for the sake of local profit, or of pranking them into a snipe hunt of trying to get locals to direct them to the real original).
  I say "outdated" in case there was, in the Lahaina area, such a joint and Tarantino and/or his friends either bought it out or got them enjoined against using the name, and in either case got control over the website and partially redid it, e.g. removing the exact location, pointing to the Tarantinesque webmaster page, and insinuating that you won't have any trouble getting a BKBurger if you're enuf of a mensch to get the locals to deal straight with you.
  I say only "plausibly" an intentional hoax, bcz many people are gullible enuf to look at a spiffy web site, and contradict the established knowledge that the chain is a fiction without looking at the menu to see how close the description is to what the film presents (e.g., the Texas BKB clearly would not be inside the MacD's-style bag of the film), nor verifying that (as the IP explicitly asserted) it is not a chain but "joint". The IP gave assertions that were too detailed for the clearly (barring a change since May) too sparse info they had in hand, .
  --Jerzy•t 11:48, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
  
• Working at Universal in 1994 when Pulp Fiction premiered, it seemed like common knowledge in industry circles that Big Kahuna Burger was inspired by Islands, a Hawaiian style burger joint that was extremely popular amongst showbiz types in those days. Pretty sure they started in the 1980s and are still around. No evidence to be found of the connection per se, but I remember people talking about it as if it was confirmed somehow. Druff (talk) 17:44, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Knockoffs

Without using the word, i left in place a (softened) version of the final sentence's insinuation that all the real businesses are knockoffs, using what QT originated; i also added refs. I quoted from "Big Kahuna's: Sandwiches", without endorsing them, the San Diego joint's only actual refs to what i take to be QT's creation:

BIG KAHUNA BURGER - $7.65
Grilled ½ Pound Beef Patty Monterey Jack and Cheddar Cheese Tomato, Red Onion, Fine Cut Cabbage, Mayo, Ketchup, and Mustard.
"Biggest and Best burger in Town! Featured in the movie "Pulp Fiction"

It is not unusual in using the three words for its product, but it insinuates -- and many of its readers will infer -- that their product inspired QT to use a name they invented in that film, or -- what others may just as reasonably infer -- that they copied the name between Reservoir Dogs ('92) and Pulp Fiction ('94), he tried their product, and Jules's judgment on the fast-food burger echoed QT's judgment on theirs. You might find, if a court passed on it, that a hypothetical reasonable person would infer neither, but instead only that Big Kahuna's expects their customers to go away satisfied that Big Kahuna's did a good job of interpretating PF's implicit concept of a burger fit for a big kahuna. ...Or that some third party, a food reviewer or a steady customer had said "Biggest and Best burger in Town! Featured in the movie 'Pulp Fiction'." (note that i've taken a guess about what the nonsensical use of quotation marks intended to communicate), and that they were presenting that display of enthusiasm as evidence of a desirable product, without endorsing the reviewer or customer's factual statements. Or at least that their attorneys would raise the possibility of such an outcome, and insist that the clearly garbled text got printed despite PF's due diligence in instructing their ad agency and printers, and that (their regrets about that notwithstanding) it would be an undue burden upon them to have it redone, in the face of text that any fool could see had been garbled and could not represent what they intended to say.
In particular, i reported what they said that was directly pertinent to what belongs in the article. I don't find that they clearly claim to have originated the name (tho YMMV), and avoided OR and in particular SYNTH on that aspect. But i do offer here further information that strengthens my judgment that even their website is consistent with QT originating the name and others profiting by making reference to it.
Specifically, note that in their About us they state that

_ _ their family went into the restaurant business in Oahu in 1992 (the year of RD's release, script probably having been complete a year earlier)
_ _ their business is now named "Big Kahuna's Restaurant" (but they make no assertion that it was then, or that it has ever been named "Big Kahuna Burger", nor that they served burgers, let alone BKBs, before '94 let alone in '92)
_ _ they began operating in the 48 contiguous states sometime between '92 and '01 (but they make no assertion that they ever operated in the LA metro area, nor outside the islands before '94 let alone in '92)
_ _ they began operating in Pacific Beach (San Diego#Geography) in 2001 (but they make no assertion that they operated anywhere in Calif before then).

They do create, by the menu entry cited above (no matter how ambiguous one judges its assertions to be), a clear presumption that they believe they will profit from association with the name BKB and with PF, and anything insinuated or implied by the menu entry is both self-serving and unsubstantiated. The "About us" makes few clear assertions, and not even those are either

supported by evidence specific enough to verify via independent sources, or
themselves specific enough to offer support to the questions of fact that we are interested in.

It is my assertion that if i've erred in editing the final sentence, my error was in including any mention (it was via a footnote) of "Big Kahuna's" in the face of finding nothing both relevant and verifiable, and that the appropriate remedy would be taking out the footnote that introduces them into the article.
More importantly IMO, consideration should be give to whether there is wording better than what i found in the final sent, to describe the situation of lots of businesses wanting to be associated with the name. We may be guilty of SYNTH in discussing it at all, let alone with the under-ref'd claim, that all others are derived from him; if so, it was compounded by my mention (inserted as a new 'graph just before that) of the two websites that look like they might belong to a trademark holder, and appear to implicitly present fictional BKB's. I don't think that's a bad conclusion that he originated it, but it's not our job at WP to arrive at it. Can we come up with cease-&-desist letters that have been complied with -- or an academic consensus that shows reasoning close to mine has be found convincing?
--Jerzy•t 11:48, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Rename & expand

It probably would make sense to rename the accompanying article Big Kahuna Burger to Quentin Tarantino fictional brands, with the existing text variously rewritten a little more broadly or subordinated to a "Big Kahuna Burger" section, and to add a "Red Apple cigarettes" section. (There's a big square poster advertising them when The Bride arrives (from Okinawa) at a Tokyo airport (Narita International Airport, no doubt) in Kill Bill, Volume 1. And in PF, in the bar where Vince and Jules are going to be dispatched by Marcellus to retrieve the suitcase, Butch orders "a pack of Red Apples" from the barkeep. In fact, http://www.tarantino.info/wiki/index.php/Category:Tarantino_brands lists 6 more brands. And there are at least 2 more appearances of the smokes in PF, according to screen shots elsewhere on that wiki site.)
--Jerzy•t 06:04, 20 December 2009 (UTC)