Hacker Cinema
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
1969 · Film · 105 min
Directed by Paul Mazursky
After returning to Los Angeles from a group therapy session, documentary filmmaker Bob Sanders and his wife, Carol, find themselves becoming vigilante couples counselors, offering unsolicited advice to their best friends, Ted and Alice Henderson. Not wanting to be rude, the Hendersons play along, but some latent sexual tension among the four soon comes bubbling to the surface, and long-buried desires don't stay buried for long.
3 neutralfrom 3 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
3 comments on Hacker News
I always figured it came from Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_%26_Carol_%26_Ted_%26_Alice
and that by referencing Bob & Alice one got an extra frisson because of "Swapping partners, Bob and Alice kiss fervently, as do Ted and Carol..." - that is to say Bob (the free love liberal man) and Alice (the conservative commitment woman) are put together in all these anecdotes because it is naughty and naughtiness adds to the amusement.
After a while of course nobody remembered the naughty movie and people just used Bob & Alice because those were the names one used for this kind of thing.
I always assumed the 1969 movie “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice” had something to do with the use of these names...
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064100
>Some people have suggested that the 1969 movie Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice was the origin of Alice and Bob. While it is possible—even likely—that Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman might have been familiar with the movie, there is no evidence to indicate that the movie influenced their naming decision. More likely, since Alice and Bob are common English names that start with A and B, the names were chosen without much forethought.
If their speculation, that the names are arbitrary, is true, why make so much out of it?
Compare with Smith and Jones, popular in philosophy.
Would also have been nice for the website to have supported https.