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Under discussion:

All About Eve  (1950)

Dawn of the Dead  (1979)

Bad Company  (1995)

All About My Mother  (1999)

Gladiator  (2000)

The Perfect Storm  (2000)

Shanghai Noon  (2000)

Amores Perros  (2000)

Adaptation  (2002)

Bad Company  (2002)

Shanghai Knights  (2003)

Wicker Park  (2004)

Elizabethtown  (2005)

National Treasure  (2004)

Shaun of the Dead  (2004)

2046  (2005)

Snakes on a Plane  (2006)

There Will Be Blood  (2007)

Lakeview Terrace  (2008)

Ghost Town  (2008)

My Best Friend's Girl  (2008)

EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed  (2008)

Disaster Movie  (2008)

Sometimes I really wish David Bordwell’s blog permitted comments. Mostly it’s better that it doesn’t, but the man’s last post has made me want to discuss the art of movie titles for a whole week now. And it didn’t help that coinciding in time with Bordwell’s post was another one of those sidebars in Entertainment Weekly pointing out some new movies with misleading titles. Yes, Lakeview Terrace does sound like a period romance, as do many other badly titled films (Elizabethtown and Wicker Park come to mind). This weekend also sees two new movies employing the method of borrowing song titles, which are typically not appropriate (Ghost Town seems more like a horror western hybrid, while My Best Friend’s Girl actually fits its plot).

Well, fortunately for me (and hopefully you), I can bring the discussion over to SpoutBlog, though not quite as in depth as Bordwell. I’ll be more than happy to have a conversation in the comments section regarding the more general topic of movie titling, but for now I’ll kick things off with a list of what I find to be the most interesting movie titles of the past decade. It’s been a time when studios and filmmakers have been very loose with ill-fitting and overlong titles, as well as some that are too plainly literal (Snakes on a Plane), but the following selections have the benefit of featuring clever, well-chosen and more meaningful monikers.

All About My Mother (Todo sobre mi madre) (1999)

This Pedro Almodóvar film has a very telling title, one that goes along with Bordwell’s acknowledgment of titles that speak for the character. Yet the character spoken for here is Esteban, the kid who dies in the beginning. Or does he? The title actually refers to a story Esteban has written for school and is inspired by the film All About Eve, which he has just watched. Esteban doesn’t so much die in the film as he does in his own story, which is depicted within the film. Also, the word “Mother” in the title doesn’t so much refer to his actual mother, Manuela, as it does his (made-up) transvestite “father”, Lola, who we learn all about.

Amores Perros (2000)

Although improperly translated as “Love’s a Bitch,” that phrase does at least apply on some level to Alejandro González Iñárritu’s film. As does the more acceptable translation of “Love is Dogs,” which references the film’s canine companions, each of which parallels its owner. But there is also another translation that’s more like “Goodness Wretchedness,” referring to a phrase on the film’s website that basically translates as “If your story turned out well, put it down to ‘amores.’ If bad, put it to ‘perros.’” The fact that you can interpret the meaning of the title multiple ways, and therefore you can interpret its meaning to the film multiple ways, is the reason that it was so important to release the film in the U.S. with its original Mexican title.

The Perfect Storm (2000)

Although the title comes from Sebastian Junger’s book, the name took on a whole new meaning for the film, which is, in my opinion, completely about the attempt to perfectly create a storm on a computer. Sure, there’s a plot within the film, too, but nothing more attended to than the perfectly rendered storm. In fact, the film’s storm may have been too perfect-looking, as the film lost the Visual Effects Oscar to Gladiator. While the title was clearly not intended for such purpose, and I had planned to ignore titles that inadvertently become more ironically meaningful upon release (Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed; Disaster Movie), I think the filmmakers at least meant to produce a spectacular storm more than a good story, so I believe it more qualifiable for the list at hand.

Shanghai Noon (2000)

This title doesn’t necessarily add anything to the meaning of the film nor does it really have multiple layers of meaning by itself. But it features the most cleverly punned title of the last ten years, in my opinion. The sequel’s title, Shanghai Knights, isn’t too bad, either. But just as the movie isn’t nearly as good as the original, neither is the title.

Adaptation (2002)

This title may actually be my favorite of all time due to its consisting of only a single word, which can be lent to the film in a multitude of ways. The title refers to the adaptation of a book to a film, the adaptation of a plant to its environment, the adaptation of a screenwriter character to his assignment, the adaptation of the same character to the events of his environment and, finally, the adaptation of the film itself to fit the mold of a certain kind of film that fares well in the present environment of the movie biz (ironically it’s this adaptation in the end from a smart film to a silly action movie that fails in execution, even though the joke more fittingly works perfectly on paper).

Bad Company (2002)

Even awful movies can have titles with multiple meanings, and this lame Joel Schumacher effort is a good example of such. Because “Company” means the CIA in addition to companionship, the title may refer to any of the following: an incapable member of the CIA (Chris Rock’s character); an incapable CIA in general (this was a time when the organization was called into question); a defective spy or untrustworthy spy; or simply the bad buddy team-up of Anthony Hopkins and Chris Rock (diegetically and extradiegetically). The same title had been used previously for a bad 1995 movie dealing with the CIA, so its multilayered usage here was not that inspired, but it is nevertheless a good title, in my opinion, and perhaps it will one day be put to better use.

National Treasure (2004)

The same goes for this movie, which should have and could have been a lot better. The title, which is a well-played mix of figurative and literal meaning and seems more thoughtful than most blockbuster Hollywood titles, would have you believe there was once some smarter writing to be found within the film itself.

Shaun of the Dead (2004)

For a short while, I thought the title of this comedy didn’t really appropriately fit the film’s story. Shaun isn’t of the dead, I reasoned, because he never “dies.” I accepted the title, though, because it was a nice play on the title Dawn of the Dead. Eventually I decided that it does indeed fit, because the general theme of the movie is that Shaun has been living his life as if he were a zombie. Before the real zombies show up, the “dead” of the title refers to all the people living in this spiritless way, Shaun included. Yet while the rest of these “dead” become undead creatures, Shaun proves that he is capable of living more fully and is able to survive the (allegorical) outbreak.

2046 (2004)

Wong Kar-Wai loves to play with the idea of Hong Kong’s transition from British territory to Chinese (which occurred in 1997), and the title partly refers to the final year in which Hong Kong is allowed self-regulation before becoming fully integrated into mainland China in 2047. In the film, the numerical title literally references both a hotel room and the future year, which is employed in a science fiction story being written by the main character. Some people also like to interpret the title as reading “two-oh-four-six” meaning “to owe for sex.” Though there are prostitute characters in the film, this meaning is less likely the intention of Wong. But the additional interpretation makes for a richer title anyway.

There Will Be Blood (2007)

Why not retain the title of Upton Sinclair’s source novel, “Oil!”? Well, besides all the changes made to the story, it could be because Paul Thomas Anderson’s new title has more possible meanings. The word “Blood” in the title may refer to the actual oil, or the blood shed for the oil (as in drilling accidents then and wars now), or family, especially actual blood relatives (of which there aren’t actually many in the film). Mostly, though, the title allows for and acknowledges a connection between the film’s setting and the current events it appears to be commenting on.

Under discussion:

Chasing Amy  (1997)

Zack & Miri Make a Porno  (2008)

Believe the hype––at least, to a certain extent. Zach and Miri Make a Porno is Kevin Smith’s all-around high score for the current decade, and as a date movie for the demographic looking for a formula of 5% genuine romance underneath 95% poop and dick jokes, it’s way more fun than the film that made Seth Rogen a plausible leading man, Knocked Up. But what’s really exciting about it is its seemingly autobiographical subtext referencing Smith’s own career –– which, unfortunately, is thrown in the flaming trash can of traditional romantic comedy in the film’s final twenty minutes, but which nonetheless makes Zach and Miri seem more heartfelt than any View Askew production since Chasing Amy.

In a working class suburb of Pittsburgh, in the midst of a realistically icy, muddy, shitty winter, lifelong best friends and roommates Zach (Rogen) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks, finally proving to me that she’s a different person than Rachel McAdams) work menial jobs and are nowhere near being able to pay their bills. It’s the night before Thanksgiving, and all through the town, everyone’s bitter and desperate to get laid. (Side note: it’s interesting that Smith, currently at his most bloated in memory––before the film, he thrilled the crowd with a story of being so fat that he broke a toilet––has made his most convincing film about the frustrations of being skint.) At their exceptionally depressing high school reunion set to the pop hits of 1998 (Marcy Playground and MACE, finally playlist bedmates once again), Zach and Miri discover from a former classmate’s porn star significant other that they (and Miri’s pair of oversized granny panties) have become accidental YouTube stars. Zach has an epiphany: if people are already looking at their asses on the internet for free, why not get paid for it?

By this point, Zach and Miri have had their heat, water and power shut off, so they discuss the moral finer points whilst huddled around a trashcan hobo fire in their living room. If being a DIY porn star is such a simple route to quick cash, Miri wonders, “Why doesn’t everyone do it?” In fact, Zach and Miri would appear to be uniquely qualified for the job: they’re poor, but unlike most poor people, they’re media savvy, free of the moral constraints of any particular religious or ideological affiliation, and, essentially, alone in the universe, with no family or significant other to impress or disappoint aside from each other. These are, of course, some of the same factors that will lead Zach and Miri to inevitably fall in love.

For a film in which the two leads discover their mutual true love via sex work, the convolutions of Zach and Miri’s romantic narrative are sadly old hat. What’s really exciting about the film is the glimpses it offers into the mind and soul of a garden variety suburban loser who finds his true talent behind the camera. In some ways a Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland “let’s put on a show!” movie with lightsaber dildos instead of a barn, Zach and Miri feels like a semi-autobiographical portrait of a nerd who figures out how to be somebody by turning on other nerds for a living. There are even patches of dialogue that seem like they could have been lifted from Smith’s days preparing Clerks. “You want to shoot a dirty movie here? Where we work?” asks Zach’s incredulous fellow barista. “You don’t know how may stories I have just from working here,” Zack responds. Later, when his own spirit needs lifting, the same co-worker reminds Zach that their pornographic exploits opened them up to “a world of possibilities, where plain old people like us could do something special.” Could there be a plainer reference to Smith’s own charmed career path from suburban comic nerd to God of Suburban Comic Nerds?

But though Rogen and Banks have surprisingly convincing sexual tension and their relationship itself is one of the film’s selling points, its Smith’s handling of the romance in relation to the porno that ultimately steers the film into disappointing territory. In unnecessarily tearing the couple apart at the exact moment when they should be deciding to be together, Smith accomplishes two things: he makes his film twenty minutes longer than it needs to be, and he completely abandons the idea that making porn movies (or, metaphorically speaking, any kind of movie) is not only a valid occupation, but the outlet through which Zach finds himself as a creative person and as a man. In the end, Zach and Miri’s romance reaches its predictable (and satisfying) resolution, but their porno remains in limbo, and with it languishes the idea that art––however depraved––can save a loser’s life.

Under discussion:

The Graduate  (1967)

Before Sunrise  (1995)

Before Sunset  (2004)

The Pursuit of Happyness  (2006)

Juno  (2007)

From left to right, Diablo Cody, Dana Fox, and Lorene Scafaria. Or, the “Femmepire” as they call it, a triumvirate of female screenwriters.

Lorene Scafaria has been toiling as a screenwriter for awhile, although her first produced film, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, is actually an adaptation of a novel by the same name. However, it manages to nail the “teen voice” without slapping a message all over it, and it should open up a few more doors for Lorene. Not that she needs them, since she’s already recorded an album of her own music, and has her next project already in the works.

Read on to find out how she tried to capture the New York City feeling in this movie, what she’s been doing with best friend and fellow screenwriter Diablo Cody, and what’s in store for her.

Good morning.

Good morning!

Adapting this from the novel, what was that like? Especially since you’re relatively new as a screenwriter. What was the process like for you?

Yeah, I’m definitely relatively new as a screenwriter. Unfortunately, Nick and Norah was my ninth script that I had written. [laughter] But, certainly my first adaptation. And I really wanted to be as true to the spirit of the novel as possible. It was fairly daunting at first, just because I loved the characters so much. I loved who they were, I loved the course of the night, I loved the tone of it.

But, movies like this haven’t been made in a while, and so it was just a real challenge to kind of bring it back to those movies that I grew up on in the ’80s, John Hughes movies and Cameron Crowe.

And then to try to make it a little more cinematic than the novel was itself, actually, which was beautifully written of course. But everything kind of started in this hyper-intense club and then it was sort of Nick and Norah hanging out for the rest of the night. Which is great…I loved Before Sunrise and Before Sunset so I wouldn’t have minded watching Nick and Norah just hang out all night.

But, yeah, we certainly had to come up with some devices to just maintain the thrust of that story. So things like Caroline going missing. Things like Where’s Fluffy, being this band that they’re looking for. You know, little things like that that certainly propelled it a little more.

Was music a part of the novel?

Yeah, it was.

Like specific well known songs?

Yeah. But it’s strange, because at the time I didn’t even know if it was a period piece, because of things like The Cure and Green Day. So, I didn’t know when I first started reading it what era it was even.

Yeah, certainly The Cure was someone who I sort of grew up with, and Green Day too. So it definitely was a part of it, of course, but it wasn’t specific to modern day.

Did you put some of the music in the screenplay or make suggestions?

I didn’t write it in, but I made a mix CD, but that was four years ago, with the first draft.

What was on it?

The Black Keys. It was a lot of… it was music I was really into then: Bloc Party, Frou Frou. I don’t even know how to say that, Frou Frou? But, it was definitely more in my mind than trying to capture that kind of hipster, scenester thing that now the movie is really sort of about. Oh, yeah. Sure, I definitely threw in my two cents. But, ultimately I’d say Pete and Myron, the editor, I think they started to really compile lists together. And certainly I’m a fan of Vampire Weekend and Bishop Allen. The fact that they played in the movie was just so, so cool. Local boys, you know. It was great.

But, yeah, I would say it sort of rounded out even in the editing process probably. And especially because it’s wall to wall sound. It’s kind of a throwback to what I loved about American Graffiti. It’s really capturing an era, and that’s what this was doing ultimately with all the real modern rock. Hopefully it won’t be played out by the time, you know… [laughs] Hopefully, it’s timeless in that way and isn’t just representative of right now. I wish one or two of my mix CD songs had ended up in there. [laughs] But that’s OK. Yeah.

We don’t see any parents, which I think would probably break the spell of this. Are there parents represented in the book? I mean, is there a conscious decision not to have some parent hovering on the outside waiting for like a cell phone call?

Yeah, there actually was. And in the book there was. Norah’s father is a great sort of figure, but I believe he calls at some point during the night. I believe there’s some kind of more of a ticking clock with him and Brown and more of decisions like that.

And there was a brief scene in the very early draft that I was trying to rip off The Graduate as much as possible. [laughs] And have Norah kind of be hiding up in her room. I wrote an early scene of her father and mother. But, eventually since that was it and we didn’t really require that, it sort of became great that you don’t have that. You don’t have anybody hovering over. You just really get to absorb what it’s like to be young, and you’re not thinking about your parents when you’re out all night. [laughs]

So, why should we as an audience be really focused on that? I don’t know.

It’s like Peanuts. It’s like this hermetic kind of world that kids live in.

Yeah. That would have been great, just so hear, “Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah.” I would have really liked to hear that. [laughter]

Did you like how the film turned out?

I really, really, really did. I’m very proud. And it’s so rare, I imagine, someone’s first film getting made the writer would be as pleased as punch. I really am, yeah. I think Pete Sollet’s amazing. I loved Raising Victor Vargas. I saw it when it came out.

He came on board, I’d say maybe after the first or second draft of the script. And I just knew he was the guy to do it all along. He captured such reality in his first film, and a very specific group of young people in that. It just seemed so appropriate for this. He’s a New York guy, I’m a Jersey girl. We hung out in cafes in the lower East Side and worked on it together. He’s pretty amazing.

How do you think it’ll translate for people who live out in the Midwest, let’s say, or someplace where they don’t have quite as much access to these all night, all these great haunts?

Sure, yeah. I would hope that people would still relate to having one of those all night events. I certainly, growing up in the shadows of New York kind of had that experience a lot. Traveling from Jersey into the city and having those nights.

I think it’s such a nostalgic piece. If you are young, and in the Midwest I imagine it would strike a chord. And I imagine if you’re older, hopefully it would just remind you of that time. Of course it’s a New York story and everything, but I think it’s really more about being young and falling in love, really. And sort of shedding all those insecurities you have when you’re a kid and trying to be as brave as possible at a very early age.

I should hope it’s relatable, yeah. I would love that. And also I imagine people kind of just seeing what that’s like. I was certainly fascinated by L.A. movies before I showed up there.

How much of yourself did you put into Norah?

You know, it’s weird. Norah, it was me on the page. It was so scary when I read it the first time. Definitely some. What’s strange is if you see a photo of me at 18, I look an awful lot like Kat Dennings without the lips and the… boobs and stuff. I wasn’t quite as stunning of course, but I was trying to look that way. I think girls at that age are so complex, and I think…

What do you mean “at that age”?

Well, at any age, right? Especially when they’re still trying to figure out how complex they actually are, and unfortunately dealing with boys that age, who are not quite as complex yet. [laughs] Definitely what I love about Norah is she’s got this great sort of wall up that she’s built herself. And certainly over the course of the night and over the course of data with Michael Cera, it’s starts to drop a bit.

And I think she’s a pretty guarded person, which I am. And yet pretty outspoken, which I am. So, yeah, I’ve definitely fallen in love with a few musicians in my day. So, I can relate. Also I have this father who’s larger than life, for me anyway. I can really relate to kind of what that experience is like, to sort of feel like you’re living in these halls with these people and your Friday and Saturday night are so very special when you get out of that and sort of shed your skin a little bit.

So, yeah, there’s plenty of me in there. But, I felt it when I read the book so it wasn’t hard. I was immediately attached. When I read it, it was a manuscript, it wasn’t published or anything. And I was just lying in bed and I just like closed it and cried a little bit because I was like, wow, that sums it all up. That’s exactly like what I kind of experienced at a time in my life. So it was already on the page, I think.

Michael Cera is coming off of Juno which was written by Diablo Cody, which kind of made her this poster girl for young rock and roll screenwriting women, and she has her column in Entertainment Weekly. Do you identify with her as a writer, or are you sort of….

[laughs] She’s my best friend.

Well, there you go. I guess that was easy.

There’s three of us. There’s myself and Diablo and Dana Fox, who wrote What Happens in Vegas. We call ourselves the “Femmepire.” [laughter] We’re trying very slowly to take over the world. Diablo certainly set the charge, which was kind of amazing. I love her so much. I loved her before I knew her work. So, the beauty of that was actually getting to see her film after I’d already fallen in love with her and getting to see how much of her was on the page actually and on screen.

Yeah, I admire her work tremendously. Obviously there’s going to be so many comparisons to Juno. We’re here, it’s the same day, next year. She came out to support me this year, which is great. She and Dana are both here so it’s really supportive.

I think what she brings to the table is kind of what I would hope, which is balancing that great line between comedy and drama. And allowing real people to be seen and not treating teenagers like they’re idiots. There are smart kids out there and they don’t all talk the same.

She obviously has a very unique voice. I wish we had known each other when we were both writing these things. That would have been kind of great. Now it’s going to   you’ll hear line hopefully repeated over and over. We all write in the same room together and kind of ask each other, “Is this funny? Is this not funny? Is this too offensive.” Most of the time.

I take it as a compliment anytime someone says that, for sure.

What advice did she give you as you were embarking on this publicity process? Because she had been through that.

Yeah. Well, I don’t have to get asked if this is better than stripping, so that’s kind of nice. [laughter] I never did any of that, so I don’t have any of that to fall back on . She was really just kind of… she said I’m going to be exhausted and to try to enjoy it. Dana, who’s also here, she calls it a “business wedding.” So, they’re my maids of honor and they’re reminding me to eat. That’s sort of the thing. Shoving banana bread into my face. I’ll leave it there for a while before I finally take a bite. They’re doing that kind of thing. She didn’t do the hair and makeup, and I was like, “How could you not have taken advantage of the situation?” [laughter] She was like, “I don’t want all that.” So, yeah, that was about it.

Have you ever thought of collaborating?

Yeah. We have. The three of us have talked about producing different projects together certainly. I think our styles are all so   I think they would gel really well together. I think we’d probably love to oversee a project together more than even collaborating on the writing itself.

She’s working on her television show right now, which is taking up a lot of time with “Spielborg,” I like to call him, because he’s part machine, for short. It would be great, but really getting to produce all together would probably be more of a goal than even writing together.

I don’t know how that would be. I had a writing partner for a very brief spell. And that’s not easy, it’s really not. It’s really not. I thought it would be half the work, but it’s really twice the work because you’re going over everything even more specifically.

When you look at a character like Norah and Juno for example, and then you compare them to the female roles in the John Hughes movies, what do you think it says about how far teenage girls and young women have progressed in the 20 years since then?

It’s sort of Molly Ringwald all over again. Unfortunately I think there was a real gap there in the middle where teenage girls weren’t portrayed in that way. A lot of the teen comedies that came out were sexist, in my opinion. [laughs] And really didn’t   I don’t know, I never found them very relatable, certainly. Hopefully it’s a reemergence of that. I should hope so. I think certainly in my era it was all about popularity. Remember? It was like popularity was the theme of everything. And a little bit of class struggle, and that was kind of it.

Nowadays I think it’s so much more about insecurity. I think beauty is such a strange and illusive thing these days. Young girls have all these magazines to look at and feel horrible about themselves. Diet, health, all of that. I think Juno, I think Norah, I think they’re real girls. I think both of these actresses are absolutely gorgeous but they’re not walking out of “Gossip Girl.”

Conventional.

Yeah, it’s not conventional beauty, obviously. I, for one, really appreciate that. [laughs] I should hope it kind of continues. The unfortunate thing is that women in general don’t get those roles any more. And the fact that it could kind of reach teenage girls is even more special to me.

Which is so funny, because now they’re the demographic, right? Now, that’s what everybody’s marketing towards. They’re the ones buying the t shirts. So, maybe out of some sick desire for box office they’ll actually maintain these young girl themes of hopefully confidence building rather than the opposite.

What are you working on now? What’s next?

I wrote a script called Man and Wife about an immigration officer who interviews married couples to figure out which marriages are shams where he’s sort of living his own sham marriage. Gabriele Muccino, who did The Pursuit of Happyness is attached, so hopefully that’ll get going pretty soon.

And I’m going to direct hopefully pretty soon, with a mandate again. I’m doing a project that should hopefully hit the trades pretty soon. And I recorded an album during the writer’s strike. [laughs]

What?

Yeah. I’m a singer/songwriter. I don’t know why. It’s my little hyphenate I’m trying to build up for myself. Yeah, I recorded an album during the writer’s strike because I just was losing, losing, losing my mind, out of just boredom and panic. And so, yeah, I’m going to try to push that as much as possible.

What’s it sound like?

I play piano and sing. So it’s piano based. It’s all about the lyrics. [laughs] My voice is trying to catch up to my lyrics, I think. It’s Fiona Apple/Feist.

Do you have a title or a label?

It’s called “Garden Party.” But I don’t have any label. If anybody out there is listening…