I’ve wondered about the title of one of my favorite movies (and of course the book): Trainspotting.
Danny Boyle, director of the movie, says, “… through the late '80s in Britain, it (Trainspotting) began to mean anybody who was obsessive about something trivial, and part of that is drugs. It’s a very male thing. Women, they know better. It was a way in which men would conquer an area of life by just knowing everything about all the Sean Connery films.” But of course, it was named the same for the book, but I don’t think the author’s ever been specific. Some people claim it has to do with the “tracks” of the veins of the addicts, and that it’s sort of a double-entendre: Trainspotting being an obsession, drugs being an obsession causing tracks…
Trainspotting - I always thought the title referred to what many would consider an utterly pointless way to spend one’s time.
“But General Sherman! I told you where the rebels are! You don’t have to destroy Atlanta!”
“Sideways” is often used in country songs as a term for being drunk. It could also refer to the practise of strong wine bottles sideways.
It’s taken from Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer: I can’t recall the exact line, but it was to the effect that Rudolph was barred from the other reindeer games because of his red nose.
Why it’s appropriate, I have no idea. Haven’t seen the movie. I just sing a lot of Christmas carols with my kids.
Fargo and Brazil
Both titles were chosen because they evoke a certain feeling, since neither movie has anything to do with the locations in the title. But it isn’t very apparent in either case.
Tsk, tsk. All this commentary on GWTW and no one gets the original reference: a poem (circa 1900) by Ernest Dowson, titled (unforgettably) Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae . The same poem gave us the phrase “I have been faithful…in my fashion.”
It also gave us one of SJ Perelman’s wittier remarks: in an essay about weekend guests, he talks about his guests laying about “like Cynara’s lover, calling for madder music and stronger wine.”
The movie Heathers used the term to describe meaningless high school social climbing games that served no purpose other than to publically exclude people who weren’t popular. No idea if this ties into the movie title, as I avoided seeing it on the grounds that it contained Ben Affleck.
As for Brazil, I believe the title refers not to the South American nation, but to the mythical island that is sometimes glimpsed at a distance, but can never be reached. I believe it was being used metaphorically in the movie for the main character’s dreams of escaping the oppressive beuracracy of his everyday life, a goal which is ultimatly unattainable.
I see. I doubt that backgound is known at all in Australia. I’d say *Two if by Sea * is the classic example of a movie title that should have been changed for distribution outside the US.
*Brazil * was named after a piece of music used in the film, a light, escapist little tune.
In 1994 Tim Robbins starred in two really good movies with bizarre titles: The Shawshank Redemption and The Hudsucker Proxy. They make more sense once you’ve seen the movie, but I don’t imagine they have much marquee appeal.
Shawshank was at least taken from the title of the original novella, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.
The Hudsucker Proxy is one of my favorite movies ever. 
You know, for kids.
I remember reading in a big ol’ coffee-table book about the genesis of Brazil that Gilliam fought long and hard to have the film open as originally written: Panning from idyllic scenes in Brazilian rainforest, over to several Mr. Prosser types officiously directing heavy machinery. The camera dollies up up up a majestic old growth tree and comes to rest on a fly on its top-most branches, which is disturbed as the tree is felled by the earth-movers below. Strains of Brazil are heard as the theme music begins and the camera follows the startled fly as it makes its way through the clouds during the main title sequence. As the titles end, the fly completes its journey by flying into the Ministry window and landing on the drop ceiling above the printer, which is nearly through the T’s of the day’s arrest warrants.
So the encroachment of bureaucracy and runaway industrialism as far away as Brazil is ultimately responsible for the confusion surrounding Harry Archibald Buttle’s fate and has a tremendous (if completely unsuspected) impact on the course of Sam Lowry’s life. The mechanization, dehumanization, and all-around un-Walden-like shenanagens taking place in a remote corner of the world take a heavy toll on the Everyman close to home, who is not only oblivious to the implications of what’s happening in the rainforest and his complicity in it, but is totally desensitized to and blithely unaware of the baroque insanity that has completely overrun his own society. (The Brazilian fly touching off this catastrophic chain of events vaguely echos Edward Lorenz, though I have no idea if that was intentional.)
Anyway, the studios felt that this opening was (quite apart from being uncomfortably and perhaps unecessarily political) outrageously extravagant and just too darned costly to consider, and so it starts as the fly crosses the ocean, except that you don’t get to see the fly or the ocean.
I’d guess that Terry would still be bitter about it if that whole Quixote fiasco hadn’t put things in perspective for him. (Or perhaps he’s got enough Quixote in him himself that his feelings haven’t changed at all.) 
David Mamet’s screenplay is about a confidence game. From Wikipedia:
so…Million Dollar Baby …I saw it, and I still don’t know where this title came from…
The climactic bout in Las Vegas has a million-dollar purse. So Maggie is Frank Dunn’s million dollar baby.
Beyond the connection with the amount of the purse, in the dirty thirties “Million Dollar Baby” was a cliched term for a young star coming from a humble background, rising above their origins on the strength of their talent and charm.
I think it’s originally from the popular song of the same name, recorded by dozens of artist throughout the thirties and for decades afterwards. (Hell, Alice Cooper even riffed on it.) The premise of the song is that the narrator serendipitously ducks into a dime store during a sudden rainstorm and meets a girl that he likes a lot – so much that he values her at a million smackers, even though everything else in the store is less than two bits. What luck!
But when they titled the movie, they were probably thinking of the phrase’s cliche application, not the song, since it suits Maggie perfectly.
In the movie Tom Cruise’s character gets explained about the life he chose for himself during the Lucid Dream.
He took some images from the cover of a Bob Dylan cover “and the beautiful vanilla skies” from the Monet paintings from his mother.
As you can see as soon as he wakes up in the gutter, the sky is a beautiful vanilla sky as depicted in the Monet picture in his bedroom.
At that point his Lucid Dream starts.