I am one of those people who occasionally likes to read credits on the teevee after a movie or show—maybe see who one particularly good bit player was, or see if any of my show-biz friends participated. I was watching an old “Twilight Zone” this weekend, and I really wanted to know who the two elderly leads were.
So of course the Sci-Fi channel—like so many others stations—squeezes the credits into one-skeenteenth of an inch so they can plug some other goddam show which I wasn’t planning to watch anyway and NOW wouldn’t watch if they PAID me!
I assume stations do this to get viewers to watch upcoming shows, but all they manage to do is royally piss me off. Especially when they have a voice-over during the closing lyrics to the “Blackadder” theme . . .
Not to hijack your rant, but it seems to be another case of torture through advertising excess. Just as many networks have an annoying icon camped out in one corner of the screen, or make use of gratuitous product placement, they make the credits into a type of split screen to cram yet more marketing down your throat. I don’t know about you, but I have a gag reflex for such things.
Yeah, that time is WAY useful as a means of engendering viewer loyalty. I don’t think it’s a tactic they’re going to walk away from anytime soon.
I, too, am a credit watcher. I enjoy, especially during older movies, looking to see if anyone now famous had a bit part.
Or, as in ‘Blackboard Jungle’, noticing the fact that Jamie Farr was credited as ‘Jameel Farrar’. Guess he really IS middle eastern.
Or, Kent McCord, from Adam-12. When he guested in Dragnet several times he was credited as Kent McSOMETHING-more-complicated-that-wasn’t-apparently-cool-enough.
Hear, hear! I hate when they squeeze movie credits like that. I also like to check out who the actors are. Once I get my 60-inch, high-definition, projection TV (should be any decade now), I won’t have to worry about not being able to read the credits.
Jamie Farr is in “Blackboard Jungle?” Now I have to watch it again despite the offensive presence of Glenn Ford. But Vic Morrow is so deliciously creepy!
Local station WGN devotes more screen space to its news anchorman than the credits, which it squeezes off to the side so they are completely unreadable. If it were one of their CUTE anchors it wouldn’t be so bad, but Steve Sanders isn’t my type and still wouldn’t be if I were gay. And it’s as if I didn’t have a whole hour of staring at his mug to look forward to if I didn’t change the channel.
I don’t mind it nearly so much when the promo takes the top of the screen and the credits run at full width across the bottom, although it sometimes requires me to tape the credits so I can pause them.
The MOST offensive rape of closing credits is comitted by, of all stations, our main PBS outlet. It doesn’t run them at all! One would think, of all viewerships, PBS’s would want to see them the most.
I couldn’t agree more. It’s hard enough to read the credits when their full-sized!
There is a solution: The Internet Movie Database Includes virtualy every movie AND T.V. show ever made. Not only does it list main cast members it also lists the guests. Unfortuntly you would need to know caracter names, and/or episode numbers, but hey… it’s better than sticking a magnifiging glass to the TV set and burning your eyes out (literly!).
When I saw the Joy Luck Club last night, they did something worse: they reduced the credits to being a quarter of the size in the upper right corner of the screen and ran them at double time. The only way one could have read the credits is to have eyes as acute as an electron microscope combined with major speed reading skills.
Bless the IMDB. One can read most credits there. Though choreography credits are hard to find at times, even in the credits for the movie, much less looking them up on the IMDB.
It’s bad enough when they run them at double-time, but to halve the credits and still run them fast, it’s impossible to read. I mean, why bother? How can the legal requirements (are there legal requirements to show credits?) be fulfilled if it is not humanly possible to read them?
On a related rant–I like watching the credits at the movies. I guess I was indoctrinated by my father. So, I hate going to movies in groups, because everyone tries to veto my choice. As a further matter of fact, I hate all the people who stay for the credits only when there’s something funny (a la Austin Powers, Toy Story II, etc). I’m sorry, but you don’t know the ultra-secret “stay during the credits” handshake, so you don’t get to stay, even if you want to.
Jaleel Farrah. I forget if he’s Lebanese or Syrian.
He was the one who was “always smiling”; I believe his character’s name was Santini or something similar.
[/hijack]
Yeah, I kinda hate credit squeezes too. We don’t watch a whole lot of television but we rent movies fairly often and Valkyrie likes to see who’s in the cast. So I’ve become a credit-watcher as well. In the theater I stay for the whole thing to see if they’ve thrown anything in afterwards. You wouldn’t believe how many people haven’t seen the Easter egg they put on South Park.
Funnily enough, my father was responsible for this habit in me too, but in a different way. After the credits of “Young Sherlock Holmes,” there’s a certain final explanatory twist. My father told me about it, and it was so cool to my young eyes that I cursed myself for missing it. I was determined to stay through credits from then on. I was rewarded when it came to such movies as Gremlins II, and my friends are generally the “stay” type, so it works out quite well.
I’ve always understood one’s mention among the credits to be a reflection of the strength of one’s union and/or contract. If that acknowledgement is (literaly) marginally observed when the movie is shown on televison, shouldn’t the union and/or those paid to oversee contract enforcement step in?
Entertainers are paid in two forms: money and recognition. Recognition puts them in the public eye and thereby lines them up for more work. “Fast-forwarding” their recongintion is that compensation’s equivalent of Bob Hope’s old stunt of folding his writer’s paychecks into paper airplanes and making the recipients dive for them at the foot of his staircase.
Slith Tove and easy e took the words outta my mouth. I can’t help bit feel the networks are violating some sort of understanding.
JeffB, I hope 60" are enough. We’ve got a 46" TV and I still can’t read the credits when they get done smashing them over. It’s not just size, it’s the way they’re distorted by the compression.
Well, no matter how big your TV is the resolution’s the same. The only thing that will help is HDTV and a broadcast that originated in HDTV format. Plain ol’ NTSC format will still look crappy.