Long titles not advisable, but they work sometimes
Play the name game: Can you spot the real film titles from the fakes? ( Answers at the bottom of this story.)
Powers of Ten: A Film Dealing with the Relative Size of Things in the Universe and the Effect of Adding Another Zero
The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed- Up Zombies!!?
The Fable of the Kid Who Shifted His Ideals to Golf and Finally Became a Baseball Fan and Took the Only Known Cure
I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Hung Her on a Meathook, and Now I Have a Three- Picture Deal at Disney
A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man- in- the- Moon Marigolds
The Fable of the Throbbing Genius of a Tank Town Who Was Encouraged by Her Folks Who Were Prominent
The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent
Long Strange Trip, or The Writer, the Naked Girl, and the Guy with a Hole in His Head
A Joke of Destiny, Lying in Wait Around the Corner Like a Bandit
The Fearless Vampire Killers or: Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are in My Neck
Movie studios like to send reminders to critics. Embargoes are pretty standard. When The Drop screened for press, we were told: “All reviews ( including tweets!) MUST be held until the week of theatrical release.” When a film features a shocking twist — Bruce Willis’ character is dead, for instance — we’re asked to refrain from spoiling the surprise.
Birdman’s press- screening notice came with something new: a title note. “Please use the film’s full title, Birdman or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance, the first time the film is mentioned in an article,” it read. “After that, it can just be called Birdman.”
This is odd on a number of levels. For one thing, the film’s poster adds parentheses to the title: Birdman or ( The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance).
It proves that the longer ( and more punctuated) your title is, the more chances someone has of getting it wrong.
For another, reviews out of Telluride and Venice, where the film premiered, tended to ignore the subtitle entirely or mention it only in passing. Didn’t they get the memo?
Finally, many writers chose to add a comma after Birdman. I’m not sure why, but it proves that the longer ( and more punctuated) your title is, the more chances someone has of getting it wrong. You can find Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas on the Web as Dr. Suess’s The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, but you’d be hardpressed to mess up Jaws.
When it opens on Oct. 24, few people will refer to ( or even remember) Birdman by its full title, especially since “the unexpected virtue of ignorance” is such a vague phrase. It has all the ambiguity of The Unbearable Lightness of Being but none of the charm.
Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb had such a catchy subtitle ( though that extraneous colon rankles) that it’s become a popular catchphrase, with “the bomb” replaced with anything you like ( or learned to love).
So what makes a long movie title worth your breath? It helps if you can’t easily shorten it without losing something important. The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain is one of these, as is Woody Allen’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* But Were Afraid to Ask. ( Punctuation is generally anathema to movie titles, but that asterisk is gold!) On the other hand, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is just asking to have its name sliced. So too another Johnny Depp film, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, although that one was clearly angling for sequels.
In fact, most films with a colon can safely be chopped. Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life is that rare movie that actually demands an additional colon, whereas Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace replaced one would- be colon with a dash. Today, most people refer to it as just Episode One or The Phantom Menace or The Source of Jar Jar. Cradle of Life, meanwhile, isn’t discussed at all.
Rarely, cinemagoers will rename a movie themselves when the title gets too unwieldy. At the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, the Palme d’Or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days became known as The Romanian Abortion Movie — not much space saved, but at least it wouldn’t be confused with a Louis Prima song. Sciencefiction and fantasy fans know that ROTJ is the third episode of Star Wars.
This week sees the release of two movies with long- winded titles, both taken from books. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day is based on Judith Viorst’s popular 1972 kids’ book ( very loosely, more’s the pity).
And The 100- Year- Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared is a literal translation of Jonas Jonasson’s Swedish- language novel.
Both pass the test of being relatively unshortenable, memorable and relevant. Unlike, say, 1991’ s Night of the Day of the Dawn of the Son of the Bride of the Return of the Terror.
Name game answers: All of these are actual movie titles.