Paul Anka - References in Popular Culture

References in Popular Culture

Sometime in the mid-1980s, Anka was secretly recorded while launching a tirade against his crew and band members, berating them for unprofessional behavior in the show they had just played. (Asked about it on the interview program Fresh Air, he referred to the person who did the recording as a "snake we later fired.") The recording became widely known after being uploaded to the internet, and a number of quotes from it have since become famous, including "The guys get shirts," "Don't make a maniac out of me," and "Slice like a fucking hammer." Some of the quotes were reproduced verbatim by Al Pacino's character in the 2007 film Ocean's Thirteen.

He was mentioned in the "Fish Licence" sketch in the tenth episode of Series 2 (23rd overall) of Monty Python's Flying Circus, which was first broadcast on December 1, 1970. Dealing with a postal clerk (Michael Palin) who thought it absurd to give all of one's pets the same name, Praline (John Cleese) countered that there wasn't anything wrong with it, citing Mustafa Kemal Atatürk as an example. To support his argument, he submitted as evidence an entry from the book "Kemal Ataturk, the Man by E. W. Swanton with a foreword by Paul Anka."

Gilmore Girls features a dog named after Paul Anka.