I seem to remember Oliver Stone giving an interview where he said it referred to the men becoming as hard as their ammunition, something about bullets (or other ordinance) having a full metal jacket.
I could well be wrong, I never even watched the movie.
I’d love to know the meaning behind A Clockwork Orange.
Bah. Full metal jacket just refers to the kind of ammo that Private Pyle uses to off himself. Like many titles, it was picked because it sounds cool.
ETA: And FMJ is a Stanley Kubrick film, not Oliver Stone.
I understand the pun, but we don’t learn until the very end that that particular French peasant dish is crucial in winning over the restaurant’s harshest critic. I don’t think the word itself is mentioned until near the end.
Yes, and I thought so too. But it bears so little resemblance to the game commonly known as a “paper chase” that I wonder. And as one who has been through the first year of law school (which the film depicts), I continue to wonder. You aren’t guaranteed a degree just by getting through your first year of law school. You may be “chasing” your degree, but there’s no guarantee you’ll catch it.
But, hell, maybe you’re right, Nemo.
Oh yeah…for a really great example of this, I present If…Dog…Rabbit. A truly undiscovered gem of a movie, I’d be surprised if anyone here has even heard of it, let alone seen it, but it’s without a doubt Matthew Modine’s best movie, and also features great performances by John Hurt and Bruce Dern. It’s a gritty heist-caper set in Mexico, with an unbelievably evocative and atmospheric setting and some really amazing acting. And yet, it’s completely obscure. I bought it for 2 dollars in the used section of a little record/movie store, simply because of the weird title. It sat on a shelf quite literally for three years before I actually watched it. When I finally saw it I was really surprised at how good it was.
At the very end of the movie, there’s this voice-over that describes some kind of riddle or parable that the protagonist heard when he was a kid, which involves a dog chasing a rabbit. So like Glengarry Glen Ross, the individual elements of the title are there in the movie, albeit in a weird and tangential way. But it’s the way that they are arranged in the title - If…Dog…Rabbit - with the ellipses, that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
We still joke about this movie whenever we see a rabbit. I always say, “if dog, then goto rabbit.”
The movie was re-named One Last Score for what I guess was its second distribution. As if that made a dime’s worth of difference. If anything, the weird title probably would have attracted more viewers out of sheer curiosity.
Finally, something I know about!
The origin of the title ‘A Clockwork Orange’ is explained in the book, where the author character F. Alexander (who is very much a stand-in for the actual author, Anthony Burgess) rails against the process by which Alex is made compliant. If I remember correctly, his comparison is that man is an orange, and the juice is love, which God drinks because he is thirsty for it. NOT MAKING THAT UP. Anyway, by imposing behaviorist controls on Alex, the government had rendered him into something less organic and more mechanical - hence, if all men are oranges, Alex was now a clockwork one.
The movie got the name from the book, of course. Accoring to the IMDb trivia entry, the book’s derivation is . . . complicated
There’s one that should make this list, but can’t because the director wasn’t too bright: The Deep End Of The Ocean. The book’s eventual explaination of the title is utterly chilling, but the director didn’t bother to include it, so people who haven’t read the book are left having no idea why it’s called that.
The title, IMO, refers to the fact that there are certain key words that developers use for new neighborhoods that are meant to evoke a certain idyllic image: Farms, Acres, Glen, etc. If one rattles them off quickly, as one might when selling real estate and examining one’s options, then through the Ionescan principle of repetition leading to loss of meaning and absurdity, none of the names evoke anything, because they don’t mean anything anymore.
Of course, the real estate con men in Glengarry Glen Ross already know the names have no meaning. They are already lost in the absurdity. And they don’t care, as long as they can turn a buck from it. It’s almost like, “Glen Ross, Schmen Ross, as long as I’m rich.”
Ugh. I tried to get a job at a studio by doing script coverage of a draft of the screenplay of Deep End about two years before it was released. I recommended to pass on it and look for something else. Worst piece of crap I ever read. Never did the the resulting film.
I knew that Pyle offed himself with a full metal jacket, I just thought there was more to it than that. Kubrick doesn’t strike me as the type of guy that would leave thoughtless details in his movies.
I saw most of this on HBO a while ago. Why IS it called that?
ETA: Thought of another one. The Shining.
The words, A River Runs Through It are saved for the next to last paragraph of the story and for the last five minutes of the movie.
It’s unknown to magicians as well. I have no idea why the script suggests this word is used by magicians to refer to any aspect of a trick or anything to do with performing magic. I have never heard it used in this way by anyone in the world of magic, or in any magic book. I’m happy to be corrected on this if anyone knows different or has a source.
*How Green Was My Valley * ends with the lines, “Men like my father cannot die. They are with me still, real in memory as they were in flesh, loving and beloved forever. How green was my valley then.”
Morning Glory ends with this speech from Eva after being warned about being a morning glory, "Nellie, I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid of being just a morning glory. I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid. Why should I be afraid? I’m not afraid.”
At the end of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf we get :“Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
“I am George, I am.”
Right at the end of Soylent Green: “You can tell everybody. Listen to me, Hatcher. You’ve got to tell them soylent green is people. We’ve got to stop them somehow.”
And famously The Naked City, “There are 8 million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.”
From what I read, the terms (pledge, turn, prestige) were made up for the book.
:eek:
That kind of makes the movie even better, for some reason.
-FrL-
Here’s one I just watched last night on DVD: The Last King of Scotland. Not only is the title phrase not mentioned until the last quarter of the movie, it also turns out that the titular “king” isn’t even the Scot - it’s the African.
The Good, The Bad & The Ugly. I still don’t understand what the title means. It’s hardly a description of the characters is it? TMWNN isn’t particularly good, nor is Tuco especially ugly. Though I must agree that Angel Eyes is very bad indeed.
…those people would be idiots. Seriously.