Really Clever Titles

[CalMeacham]

Some books, songs, and movies have very clever titles which contain jokes or clues themselves. I know that I'll think of a great many of these after I post this, but some examples are:

No Man Knows My History -- a biography od LDS Church Founder Joseph Smith. The title comes from a quotation of Joseph Smith. Regardless of what you think of the LDS Church, or Joseph Smith, or this book, I maintain that the title itself is especuially clever as the title of this biography. Fawn Brodie, the author, was a woman.


The Last of Sheila -- underappreciated mystery movie. The title itself is a clue.


Logician Raymond Smullyan's popular books of logic puzzles What is the Name of this Book? and This Book Needs no Title.





I know there are plenty of others.

[KJ]

The movie October Sky is based off of a book called "Rocket Boys." The title is an anagram.

[pinkfreud]

I dislike Michael Moore intensely, but I thought the title of Fahrenheit 9/11 was wonderful. Ray Bradbury was not amused, though.

[twickster]

The movie October Sky is based off of a book called "Rocket Boys." The title is an anagram.
That is too cool!

[Annie-Xmas]

Abbie Hoffman's book on ripping off the system: Steal This Book.

[pinkfreud]

The TV series Torchwood is a spinoff from Doctor Who. "Torchwood" is an anagram of "Doctor Who."

[gigi]

R.E.M.'s album epynomous. It makes my head explode.

[mobo85]

Desi Arnaz titled his autobiography A Book, since that's what it was, after all.

In a similar vein, a satire of history textbooks written by the staff of The Daily Show was titled America: the Book, presumably so it wouldn't be confused with America the country.

[BrainGlutton]

Principia Discordia: How I Found Goddess and What I Did to Her When I Found Her.

[Troy McClure SF]

I dislike Michael Moore intensely, but I thought the title of Fahrenheit 9/11 was wonderful. Ray Bradbury was not amused, though.
Of course, this was ruined when one of the commercials said, "Fahrenheit is the temperature at which our rights melt away" (or something like that).

Uh, Fahrenheit is a scale, dumbass.

[Marisa]

Isn't their a song called "Download This Song" - catchy but talking about mp3s and music labels and after awhile it's like "whoever you are you can't write good lyrics about this subject and now it's a whinge" but the title is like Hoffman's "Steal This Book"

Rushdie's "Satanic Verses" - Satanic as in they are the center of religious, social and gender debate in Islam but also a pun on the fact that they become seen as evil because of the way they are translated and transcribed in the book as well as the fact that he knew the book would be objected to for talking about such things.

Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion" - the idea of creating one's ideal mate from the Greek Myth of Pygmalion and Galatea. If you don't know what I am referring to - it got turned into My Fair Lady the musical.

[pinkfreud]

...one of the commercials said, "Fahrenheit is the temperature at which our rights melt away" (or something like that).

Uh, Fahrenheit is a scale, dumbass.The only commercial slogan I remember was "Fahrenheit 9/11: it's the temperature at which freedom burns."

[RealityChuck]

One collection of Theodore Sturgeon was titled Caviar, presumably because it was the best of Sturgeon.

John Sladek's novel of self-replicating robots was titled The Reproductive System.

Arrested Development is a punning title: George Bluth is a developer and he is arrested, arresting the development of the property. And, of course, everyone in the family is a case of arrested development.

Similarly, the short-lived Cops parody, Arresting Behavior had a double meaning in the arresting behavior of the cops, and their behavior while arresting people.

Isacc Asimov's "Shah Guido G" gives a clue to what type of story it turns out to be.

[Only Mostly Dead]

Isn't their a song called "Download This Song" - catchy but talking about mp3s and music labels and after awhile it's like "whoever you are you can't write good lyrics about this subject and now it's a whinge" but the title is like Hoffman's "Steal This Book"
There is also an album, "Steal this Album," by System of a Down.

[Saltire]

Isn't their a song called "Download This Song" - catchy but talking about mp3s and music labels and after awhile it's like "whoever you are you can't write good lyrics about this subject and now it's a whinge" but the title is like Hoffman's "Steal This Book"I know Weird Al Yankovic has a song available on his website as a free download titled, "Don't Download this Song."

[Justin_Bailey]

Desi Arnaz titled his autobiography A Book, since that's what it was, after all.

Whoopi Goldberg went one better and titled her autobiography Book

[ianzin]

There was a British rock band called Sad Cafe. They released an album alled Facades, this being an anagram of 'Sad Cafe'. (The band's name was itself taken from the title of a novel, The Ballad Of The Sad Cafe.)

When Rick Wakeman formed his first band, he called it Sour Milk. Because as the time, Cream were the biggest band in rock.

One of the first mainstream books about the crop circle phenomenon, and the seeming difficulty of establishing a definitive explanation, was called Round In Circles.

A magician called Simon Aronson published some small booklets for the magic trade, each of which was well-regarded. After some time, people asked him to put these small booklets together in one single volume, thus making them easier to get and to refer to. Aronson eventually did so. He called the collection, Bound To Please.

[Nature's Call]

In a similar vein, a satire of history textbooks written by the staff of The Daily Show was titled America: the Book, presumably so it wouldn't be confused with America the country.
The subtitle too is clever: "A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction"

[SpoilerVirgin]

Ruth Rendell wrote a very good mystery called Simisola. I read it only because I had heard that you don't learn the meaning of the title until the last word of the book.

One of my favorites by Agatha Christie is Why Didn't They Ask Evans?, which turns out to be a really great title for this mystery, making it all the more incomprehensible that they changed the title for the American release to something that reveals the secret of the original title (which is why I won't post it here).

[Revedge]

My favorite title is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

First there is the initial mental visual of artificial beings dreaming of artificial sheep. (Robots counting robot sheep.) But as you read the book it goes becomes a deeper meaning about when an artificail intelligence becomes intelligent enough, is it human. With human desires.


Edited because I am not as intellegent as my spellchecker

[Nature's Call]

I hesitate to mention some of the Xanth titles by Piers Anthony. Do these count as clever:

Isle of View
Centaur Aisle
Crewel Lye
Heaven Cent
Up in a Heavel
Faun & Games
etc.

[Qadgop the Mercotan]

Do these count as clever:
No. No they don't. :(

[RealityChuck]

Harpo Speaks! is a great title for Harpo Marx's autobiography.

Similarly, Flushed with Pride works very well for a biography of Thomas Crapper (who did invent a form of flush toilet).

Amphigorey is a great pun for collections of Eward Gorey's work: "amphigory" means "nonsense writing."

I always thought one particular title for a B.C. collection was quite clever, but there were drawbacks: Life is a Dollar Seventy-Five Cent Paperback (formerly Life is a Dollar Twenty-Five Cent Paperback (formerly Life is a Ninety-Five Cent Paperback (formerly Life is a Seventy-Fivey Cent Paperback))). (I've probably left off an iteration or two.

[Hogwash]

My favorite title is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
I dislike that title for the reason that people count sheep to fall asleep, rather than dreaming about sheep while they are asleep.

[Ronald C. Semone]

Three which come quickly to mind:

Michael Donner's book on palindrones I LOVE ME, VOL I

Gyles Brandreth's book on words The Joy of Lex

E. C. Bentley's mystery Trent's Last Case the title of which only has real meaning after you have read the novel.

[Nature's Call]

Okay, forget Xanth... :-)

I wouldn't argue that movie titles with numbers in place of letters (e.g. Numb3rs, Thir13en Ghosts) are clever. It did work for Se7en, kind of. But say what you will about the movie S1m0ne, the reference to binary digits was clever in a geeky sorta way.

The documentary on the making of the movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still" is called "Making the Earth Stand Still"

The movie "Auto Focus" is a biopic about Bob Crane, star of Hogan's Heroes. Without getting into details, the title is a double entendre on Crane's interest in photography and his self-centeredness.

[Nature's Call]

Oh, and speaking of Weird Al, what about his rendition of "I've got my mind set on you" with the title (and complete lyrics) "This song's just six words long"

[lissener]

Prick Up Your Ears, the biography of the randy gay iconoclast playwright Joe Orton, slyly suggests "prick up your arse." And Orton's own What the Butler Saw sounds like a clue to a mystery, but is in fact, in the end, a rude joke. (It should be noted that Orton's lover and killer, Kenneth Halliwell, wrote most of his titles.)

[Der Trihs]

The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould, a book about the misuse of science to support bigotry, is a multiple reference. It both refers to the old phrase "the measure of a man" and more subtly, it's self disparaging because in a book about bigotry it refers to all humans as Man. And yes, he did it on purpose.

[RealityChuck]

I wouldn't argue that movie titles with numbers in place of letters (e.g. Numb3rs, Thir13en Ghosts) are clever. It did work for Se7en, kind of. But say what you will about the movie S1m0ne, the reference to binary digits was clever in a geeky sorta way.What was actually clever was the use of Simone for the first artificial intelligence. Or rather Sim One.

I once published "Basic Poem":

10 Print "em po";
20 Go to 10

Got a very nice word rate for it, too.

Then there was Ellison Wonderland, a collection of Harlan Ellison's stories.

[Malodorous]

The title for Gattaca, a movie about the future effects of DNA based technologies, uses only the letters that are used to symoblize the 4 nucleotide bases.

[Max the Immortal]

Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion" - the idea of creating one's ideal mate from the Greek Myth of Pygmalion and Galatea. If you don't know what I am referring to - it got turned into My Fair Lady the musical.

Furthermore, "My Fair" sounds like the cockney pronunciation of Mayfair, an upper-class London neighborhood.