Jurassic Park (song)

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"Jurassic Park" is a song by "Weird Al" Yankovic. It is a parody of "MacArthur Park" by Jimmy Webb (as performed by Richard Harris), and is written as a humorous take on the film of the same name.

Track listing
The following tracks are on the single: The promo single only contains "Jurassic Park".
 * 1) "Jurassic Park" – 8:09
 * 2) "Frank's 2000" TV" – 10:07

Writing and development
Yankovic, when asked how he came up with the idea for the song, stated,
 * "I was driving a rent-a-car through Florida when the song 'Lola' came on the radio, and it got me thinking about how much fun I had doing 'Yoda,' where I took a then-current topic and combined it with a classic rock tune. Then I flashed on Jurassic Park which had just come out, and was already well on its way to becoming the biggest hit in box office history. I thought of various songs that I could combine that with, and then I hit on 'MacArthur Park.' It felt like a natural. I got permission from Jimmy Webb (composer of "MacArthur Park"), from Michael Crichton (author of the novel on which the movie is based) and of course from Steven Spielberg, whose blessing made it possible for us to cut through miles of legal red tape."

Lyrics and composition
Part of the humor of the song lies in the contrast between the catastrophic events of the movie, with much loss of human life and destruction of property, and the cynical banality of the singer's complaints, i.e., "This has been one lousy day," and "What a crummy weekend this has been." Other humor hinges on how lines from the parody closely mimic the lyrics of the original song:
 * Original: MacArthur Park is melting in the dark
 * Parody: Jurassic Park is frightening in the dark
 * Original: All the sweet, green icing flowing down
 * Parody: All the dinosaurs are running wild
 * Original: Someone left the cake out in the rain
 * Parody: Someone shut the fence off in the rain

The parody only features parts of the song, the verses, choruses, the instrumental (shortened), and the ending. The middle section ("There will be another song for me...") is missing. Intermixed during the interlude are various dinosaur sound effects courtesy of Sandy Berman.

Release and reception
After the release of Alapalooza "Jurassic Park" got light rotation on MTV. "Weird Al" Yankovic went on to say, "[MTV] played it a few times, and then just yanked it, because it wasn't really part of their sound." However, the single was a success on The Box and in Canada, where it was a Top Five hit. The combination of the two made Alapalooza work commercially.

Music video
The music video is done mostly with claymation in the style of Will Vinton's Dinosaurs! - A Fun-Filled Trip Back in Time!, parodying scenes from, as well as the general plot of the 1993 movie and was approved by the film's director, Steven Spielberg. The animation was done by Mark Osborne and Scott Nordlund. Parodied concepts include:
 * At the beginning of the music video, a miner discovers a fossilized mosquito, which appears silhouetted against the light. The light shifts and reveals the mosquito with a bent nose and abnormally large eyes.
 * During the laboratory scene, one of the robotic arms that handles the cloned dinosaur eggs is coloring an egg to look like colorful Easter eggs. There is also a dartboard instead of a chart in that room, and a sack of "Dino Chow" visible in the background.
 * When the scientist, who appears to be a caricature of controversial euthanasist Jack Kevorkian, looks through a microscope at the fossilized mosquito, he sees the DNA character from the introductory film at Jurassic Park taking a shower. The DNA shrieks and covers herself with the shower curtain.
 * "Weird Al" is first seen in Jurassic Park's kitchen attempting to hold a door shut on a velociraptor. The velociraptor gives up the brute force, pulls out a key ring, and sifts through it to find the key instead - a reference to the scene in Jurassic Park when a velociraptor learns to use the door handle.
 * In a crowd of loose dinosaurs, one of them is a chicken. Another crowd has a ballerina brontosaurus and another is holding a beer and has a lampshade on his head.
 * A claw harmlessly touches the wire after Dennis Nedry pulls the switch to cut the power.
 * A brontosaurus accidentally steps on someone. It turns up its feet to see a flattened person on the sole of its foot, and seems disgusted by it, as a human might after stepping on a bug.
 * The chaos theory is shown on a chalkboard as a large equation, which turns into a spinning globe, a reference to the series' Dr. Ian Malcolm character.
 * As "Weird Al" lyrically states: "I do not approve of this attraction, because getting disemboweled always makes me kinda mad," he presses a Ɵ stamp down on the Jurassic Park logo and then lifts up his shirt to reveal that he has been disemboweled.
 * During a power outage, a bunch of angry eyes appear around Yankovic; he lights a match, showing that he is surrounded by angry dinosaurs, who subsequently put the match out.
 * In the movie, the Tyrannosaurus ate lawyer Donald Gennaro, after destroying the bathroom he was in and eating him off the toilet he was huddled on. In the music video, Donald Gennaro is going to the bathroom in an outdoor toilet, while reading a newspaper, when the T-Rex eats him. The T-Rex then daintily wipes off the extra blood on his face with a napkin, sips some tea, and flosses.
 * As the song sings "Someone let T. Rex out of his pen", a tyrannosaurus in a wrestling outfit jumps off the fence, with a visible World Wrestling Federation logo on the top of the fence/turnbuckle. The camera pulls out to reveal that he is jumping on another wrestling dinosaur.
 * The entrance gate at Jurassic Park is shown several times. The second time, it is raining and one of the torches is out, so one of the animators sticks his arm into the frame and re-lights it with a lighter. The third time, a "Dinogizer" dinosaur with a drum and pink rabbit-ears, a spoof of the Energizer bunny, passes in front.
 * Barney is dancing to the song, but a T. Rex bites his head off. Later in the song, a brontosaurus gives the same T-rex the Heimlich maneuver, and it coughs up Barney's head.
 * An Arnold Schwarzenegger-lookalike hunter jumps into one of the dinosaur crowds, but a large dinosaur cuts him to pieces with a single swipe of its claws. This is most likely a reference to when Jurassic Park game warden, Robert Muldoon, is killed by a velociraptor. It may also mock how the film Last Action Hero (which starred Schwarzenegger) bombed in the box office because it was released a week after Jurassic Park.
 * A Tyrannosaurus with a fork, knife, and bib gangs up on Yankovic, then throws his utensils aside and swallows him.
 * While "Weird Al" is falling down the T. Rex's gullet, the instrumental portion of the song takes place, and he sees cel animation shots of dinosaurs dancing on colorful or spiraling backgrounds. This includes a T-Rex dancing in the styles of:
 * The Jurassic Park logo
 * Colorful wheels
 * Yellow Submarine
 * Cafe style
 * Cubist
 * There are also:
 * Two dinosaurs boogeying in cages
 * Dinosaurs being morphed
 * Two dinosaurs fighting over a human
 * A dinosaur resembling Dino from Hanna Barbera's The Flintstones series
 * When "Weird Al" lands in the stomach of the dinosaur, he is surprised to see a souvenir stand there, where a spotty faced teen offers him an "I was eaten alive at Jurassic Park" T-shirt.
 * The T. Rex turns on the people filming. The "director", who resembles Steven Spielberg, raises a sign that says "Cut!" before evacuating the set. Two people (resembling the film's producers Gerald R. Molen and Kathleen Kennedy) can be seen behind the "director". Their eyes "popped" and ran away before the director did. This may be a reference to an infamous error in the movie where, in the T-Rex scene, you can see a safety wire and a film light in the background.
 * A Ceratosaurus in a chef hat salts one of his victims and eats him.
 * At the last chorus, "Weird Al" is singing on a stage in front of three dancing dinosaurs with top hats and canes. Other dinosaurs are on the side playing trumpets and other brass instruments.
 * Yankovic rides the helicopter at the end of the video. On land, two velocipedes are crying and waving goodbye, one holding a sign that reads "Don't Forget to Write". As the helicopter flies what appears to be far away in the distance, a T. Rex appears, eats it, then looks at the camera and burps - a possible reference to the T. Rex's appearance at the end of the film. The T. Rex then winks as the scene irises to black.