Jawohl! Here's part of an item that ran the other day in Daily Variety…
German helmer Doris Dorrie ("Naked") has reteamed with veteran thesps Heiner Lauterbach and Uwe Ochsenknecht for a Teutonic take on Neil Simon's "The Odd Couple." Produced for pubcaster ZDF, "Ein seltsames Paar" is shooting in Munich, where Lauterbach and Ochsenknecht also can be seen on stage at the Bayerischer Hof as, respectively, Oscar Madison and Felix Unger. It's the second time Simon's play has been adapted by ZDF. The pubcaster produced the short-lived "Felix und Oskar" in 1980 with Heinz Baumann as Oskar and Horst Bollmann as Felix.
The notion conjures up all sorts of jokes about a German Oscar ordering a German Felix out of the house mach schnell, and about brown knackwurst and green knackwurst, and of the both of them attempting to occupy The Pigeon Sisters. But here's my big question: The longest laugh in the play is when Oscar says to Felix…
You leave little notes on my pillow. I've told you a thousand times, I cannot stand little notes on my pillow. "We are all out of corn flakes — F.U." It took me three hours to figure out that "F.U." was Felix Unger.
Since they've apparently kept the names the same, does this joke work in German? That is, does the German language have a comparable vulgar slang term that suggests the initials, "F.U.?" And if not, why didn't they change Felix's name?