Where does the name “They Might Be Giants” come from?
They Might Be Giants is the name of a film starring George C. Scott, as a classic paranoiac who thinks he’s Sherlock Holmes, and Joanne Woodward, as his psychiatrist Dr. Watson. Fred Wolf adds: [The] film you cite was previously a broadway play. The play’s title . . . comes from a section of Don Quixote da la Mancha by Miguel Cervantes, where Don Quixote’s trusted servant Sanch Panza asks the Don why is preparing to attack several windmills (common in Spain) with his lance. Don Quixote replies “Why, because they might be giants.” Russ Josephson writes: For me, the key dialogue of the movie, where the title comes from, follows: Holmes: Here, what do you make of it? Watson: God, you’re just like Don Quixote, you think everything’s always something else. Holmes: Heh, heh, heh, well he had a point. Of course, he carried it a bit too far. He thought that every windmill was a giant. That’s insane. But, thinking that they might be … Well, all the best minds used to think the world was flat.
