Elton John turned the joke on its head by naming his 1973 album Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player. In 1985, the band Miami Sound Machine used the joke in their video for "Conga". Whispering about how boring the ambassador's reception is, drummer Enrique Garcia says to singer Gloria Estefan "Let's shoot the fat guy on the piano!" She laughs, having no idea they'll be performing next. The 1991 party game Notability was played by people trying to guess a song played on a toy piano, while, according to the rules, "SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER!" was to be shouted if someone thought the player was cheating (playing out of tune/tempo). This is one of Bob Dylan's favorite films and inspired his early work. Dylan refers to the film explicitly in "11 Outlined Epitaphs", which serve as the liner notes to his 1963 album [[The Times They Are a-Changin' (Bob Dylan album)|The Times They Are a-Changin''']]: "there's a movie called / Shoot the Piano Player / the last line proclaimin' / 'music, man, that's where it's at' / it is a religious line / outside, the chimes rung / an' they / are still ringin'" (spelling and punctuation as in the original). Martin Scorsese said "the character played by Charles Aznavour in Shoot the Piano Player, who keeps almost acting but never does until it's too late, had a profound effect on me and on many other filmmakers." In Britain, the joke about the piano player does not derive from this film but from the alleged remark of Oscar Wilde on his 1882 American tour, while in the wild west: "Don't shoot the pianist, he is doing his best." This is also the source of the book and film title. The line evidently gained some currency in popular European culture thereafter. For example, the French translation—"Ne tirez pas sur le pianiste, il fait ce qu'il peut"—appears written prominently in the wall décor of a nightclub in the 1933 Julien Duvivier detective film A Man's Neck''. Awards and nominations References Further reading External links Shoot the Piano Player: You’ll Laugh, You’ll Cry an essay by Kent Jones at the Criterion Collection 1960 films 1960s black comedy films 1960s crime comedy-drama films 1960s crime thriller films 1960s thriller drama films 1960s romantic thriller films French black comedy films French crime comedy-drama films French crime thriller films French thriller drama films French