In a recent Straight Dope Classics column, Cecil mentions that a critical point of contention on movie billing is the relative size of the names of the various actors. I was wondering – is this related to the reason movie posters so frequently have super-skinny text? In other words, when the actor negotiates text of a certain “size”, does that only specify the height, thus allowing him to get ripped off in width? See this poster for an example…all the guys at the bottom have text almost as tall as the two main stars, but it’s so skinny you can’t read it.
If the size/height/width thing were a real loophole, don’t you think that in 100 years of movie-making, some corporate legal eagle would have spotted it and closed it?
I think the skinny text is just because they try to squeeze in so much on a line. If they didn’t make it tall, it would be even less readable. (If you want to read it easier, tilt the poster away from you and the text will appear less skinny.)
At the risk of bringing down the wrath of Cecil the Omniscient, his answer didn’t specifically address one element in the question: Why the convention of listing an entire cast, typically without corresponding designations of the role each actor plays, then ending with “(and) Stephen Okpok as ‘Absinthe Esterhazy’”?
Perhaps it’s just another attention-grabbing tweak, but where did this peculiarity originate?
Don’t get me started on the gratuitious quotation mark abusage reflected in this practice…
Probably contractural obligation. If an actor has enough clout to specify name placement, title, and how it is used, his name may stand out in the crowd.
Haven’t you seen a similar display method in TV show credits? If an actor is called a “special guest,” it was part of the contract. Mentioning the role played is just one more display perk.
I just wish they’d choose fonts I can decypher, and run them slowly enough for me to read. Not quite so bad with movies, but I’d be pissed off if I was involved in a TV production. The bastids.
In “You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again”, Julianne Phillips recounts how, in the movie “The Sting”, her and hubby Michael’s contract specified that in the credits, the producers letters be an equal width across. However they still got marginalized when co-producer Tony Bill put his credit in letters twice the height of the Phillips’s.
After “The Sting” opened, Paul Newman and Steve McQueen began negotiations for “The Towering Inferno” and one of the big sticking points was placement of credits - Both wanted to be the first listed, and wouldn’t listen to compromises that had one name appearing on the screen before the other. They finally got around this impasse by having their names on the same placard, with Steve McQueens name to the right of Paul Newmans, but significantly higher than Newman’s. So while you might read Newmans name first, McQueen gains prominence by being higher placed.
This represents a great game among the participnts of the motion picture industry. The type you are referring to is known as “Motion Picture” or one of the many varients such as “Bee” that were designed exactly for the purpose of keeping the names of actors and production crew persons invisible while adhering to their contracts legal requirements. Neither designers or studio heads want to waste space, or artistic credit, promoting the “hired help” behind the movie. It’s all a battle of ego and power.
Oh, they’ve noticed. That is a source of great revenue and gamesmanship for the agents and lawyers feeding off the talent supply. It always comes down to power. Only a few people in a movie - the major stars and the director specifically, have the clout to force the issue and get their names to be readable.
The fly in that particular ointment has become the Writers’ Guild. They think they have clout. In the constant legal battles between the writers and the directors over proper billing has lead to significant changes in the way readable credits are handled in various advertising medium. Main movie posters, one sheets, have a tendency to get printed and shipped before the legal departments have a chance to sign off on them. But by the time we get to print advertising, which is what I do, the writers guild is looking at every damn ad to determine whether or not the screen writers are being slighted by the directors.
But again it comes down to clout. There are only one or two names appearing in any given movie ad that determine whether or not anyone will be interested in a movie. The stars. Nobody else really counts -except to their Moms.
As for the use of “and” as opposed to “&”, “with” and “a film by” and such, there really is a defineable code (not a law, you can break it without going to jail) for their use.
Amen, Kalhoun! Permit me to pull the thread out a bit more tangentially, and express the opinion that the worthy concept of credits has been long since trashed, at least in American TV and film.
I’m by no means a fanatic or even much of a devotee of TV and film. But I have this quaint interest in taking credits seriously, i.e. actually wanting and hoping to be able to view them as they scroll or flash by. Sure, I lose interest when they get down to the assistant Orc-mail polishers in a film like “Return of the King,”* but by and large I feel at least some interest, even an obligation, to express respect and appreciation by simply taking note of who did the work on the thing I’ve just finished watching. And I certainly find credits useful just to learn the names of the damn actors !
But credits are usually presented with anything but loving care; they’re zipped by in speed-crawl, and TV has long since rendered them unreadable with all those cutesy Generation-X techniques of splitting the screen and jamming the credits residue into an inch-wide column or square off to the side while promotional dreck hysterically takes center stage. I’ve actually tried to videotape credits if I was particularly curious, but often the damn things are compressed and sped up beyond resolution.
Finally, for now: I noticed long ago that British TV, at least the so-called “Brit-Coms” that populate PBS stations, preserve the civilized convention of a byline for the writer(s), i.e. “As Time Goes By” by Bob Larbey. American TV, on the other hand, hurriedly hides writing credits somewhere in the mob at the end. I assume it’s a recognition, perhaps unconscious, that the programming is so lame and shoddy that no one really wants to be publicly identified as its creator, except for business reasons…
- Speaking of “Return of the King,” the instant “The End” appeared, the young weekend crowd in the theater sprang up en masse and vanished faster than a fart. I then noticed one guy sitting motionless several rows ahead. “Aha!” thought I, “I’m not the last person in the world who watches credits!” Then the guy’s buddy ran back down the aisle and shook my putative aficionado-- turns out he’d just dozed off. Oh well.
I used to watch credits. They often had a lot of interesting information about odd things: where the filming was done or the kinds of special effects techniques used. Things you couldn’t easily find out elsewhere. And sometimes at the end you were rewarded with a new piece of film.
Then credits broke the five-minute barrier. Then the ten-minute barrier. And you could find them at IMDB and read them at one’s leisure.
Now I jump up and leave as soon as The End flashes on screen. The movie-makers have told me loud and clear that they don’t want me sitting in the audience reading the credits. They got their wish.
I always watch movie credits at least until the Key Grip is identified. I started this practice shortly after hearing David Letterman make a remark about how “you can’t make a movie without a key grip.” This led to one the high points in my life: when they were filming them movie “Surviving The Game” (starring Ice-T, Gary Busey and Charles Dutton) here in Wenatchee, the grip crew, sans key grip, showed up at my regular bar and I got to talk to them all night. The key grip wasn’t with them because they all hated him and were in the process of trying to get him fired. I also found out from these grips that Gary Busey is an asshole - they had nicknamed him “Gary Abusive”.
About TV credits and the practice of listing one actor along with his/her character’s name - this is always the last actor listed in the pre-show credits. Even the primary actors’ characters usually aren’t named (the Star Trek shows being an exception), but when the guest stars’ names roll, that last guy’s character is always named. I assume this is because the last actor listed is the actor with the fewest roles to his credit, and he’s therefore the least likely to have viewers saying, “Didn’t I see him on ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ a couple weeks ago?” So since he’s the least recognizable, he gets identified by character so that you know who he is.
The one I can’t figure out, is the credits for the TV show Babylon 5. The opening credits end with some sort of special mention of the guys playing Londo and G’Kar, even though they’re not the main characters. Sinclair, Ivanova, and Garibaldi (who are more important that Londo and G’Kar) are given the same sort of billing as Vir and N’Toth (assistants to Londo and G’Kar, and less important). Nor does it seem to be because of the clout of the actors: The only one I’ve ever heard of in anything else is Bill Mummy, who played Will Robinson, and he’s got normal billing, too.
Ever seen “I’m With Busey”? He’s not just an ass, he’s a raving lunatic.
Two point that are not explained in Cecil’s original article is that the order of honor is 1, 3, 2, and that, although such words as “starring” do not have clear, specific meanings, they serve to break up groups. If you look closely, the credits in Babylon 5 are:
1. Starring: (Sinclair or Sheridan, Ivanova, Garibaldi, and Delenn)
3. Also starring: (Dr. Franklin, Talia or Lyta, Vir, Lennier, Na’Toth – or, in “Born to the Purple” only, Ko D’ath – Keffer, Marcus, Zack, and/or Lochley)
2. With: (Londo and G’Kar or G’Kar and Londo, in alternate years).
This puts Londo and G’Kar in their own group, below the top stars, but above the rest.
OK, that makes sense. I had figured out that Londo and G’Kar were equally important and in their own little “group”, but I hadn’t realized that the third grouping was considered more important than the second. Thanks!
(been wondering about that ever since I got Season 1 for my birthday)