Title Tale

A title can make all the difference in the success of a film. But coming up with one that works is sometimes as challenging as dreaming up the entire concept for a movie.

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If we accept the latest research--that most of us have working vocabularies of only about 20,000 words--and if we recognize the history--that for over 80 years now the English-speaking world has been producing at least 300 movies a year--all you need to do is the very basic math of 300 × 80 = 24,000. Conclusion? We're running out of new, catchy titles. Demonstration? Let me give you these titles of recent pictures from last spring and see how many you can recollect or readily identify: Down to Earth, Faithless, Say It Isn't So, Someone Like You, Heartbreakers. Or--just to confuse you--throw in a few more from the fall: My First Mister, The Operator, Don't Say a Word, Two Can Play That Game, The Glass House.

Well, of course, you know Heartbreakers. You probably saw it. And maybe because it is--quite simply--a very arresting film with a very good title. As for the other titles, I'm not here to say that they were bad films, but they are surely evidence that modern moviegoing tosses us into a sea of titles that are vague, abstract, interchangeable, forgettable, sometimes disastrous and frequently not much use as titles or identifiers.

To be analytical, for a moment, what does Heartbreakers signify or promise? It gives no hint of place, period, individuality, subject or atmosphere. The only thing I know from that title is to suspect comedy. Why? Because to be heartbroken nowadays is a faintly comic concept--only foolish or immature people have their hearts broken. Beyond that, the title has no impact because the word "heart" occurs so regularly in film titles that a 2001 Heartbreakers _is fighting to keep its head above the staleness of overfamiliarity. In fact--did you remember this?--there have been two _Heartbreakers _already, and not so long ago: _Heartbreaker, in 1983, with Fernando Allende and Dawn Dunlap; and Heartbreakers, from 1984, with Peter Coyote, Nick Mancuso and Carole Laure. After all, there are so many "Heart" pictures, and the idea of feeling things in the heart doesn't quite fit with the way we think now--we're so much more cynical. So we are ready to sneer at Hearts of the World, The Heart of the Matter, Heartland, Heart Condition, Heartburn, The Heartbreak Kid, Heartbeeps, Heart Beat, Heartbeat, Heart and Souls and Heartaches. There was even a picture called Heart--in 1987--about a boxer.

So get rid of hearts, whenever you can? OK, but Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is one of the great titles of all time--because there's something so wrong it's intriguing to have the heart (the pump of life) being overshadowed. And what about The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter? Carson McCullers borrowed that from an earlier, lesser writer, Fiona MacLeod, who wrote, "My heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely hill." The title doesn't guarantee the power of the novel, of course; but it surely readies you for it. There's a rhythm to "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter," as well as a pregnancy and a guiding light of mood or tone that leads you on.

In January 1950, the head of Twentieth Century Fox, Darryl F. Zanuck, was looking at a treatment prepared for him by his crack writer-director, Joseph L. Mankiewicz. It was called Best Performance, and it was derived from a short story by Mary Orr called "The Wisdom of Eve." The treatment was 82 pages--much longer than the story, in fact--and it included this in the narrative voice of Addison DeWitt: "Eve ... but more of Eve later. All about Eve, in fact." Zanuck underlined "All about Eve" in pencil. Some people said he was a monster: the boss in Hollywood often gets known that way; it's part of the attitude behind The Bad and the Beautiful, another title from two years later. But give Zanuck credit: he could hear and feel, and he could feel for the public. He knew that Best Performance was flat, while All About Eve sang. A year later it won Best Picture and nearly everything else.

You may argue that the movie we call All About Eve turned out so well that it would have ridden to glory whether known as Best Performance, Margo's Bumpy Night or Fox #11765. There are great and famous paintings that have titles as exact and unhelpful as the last. And just because it's clear that often enormous trouble is taken over titles, then our inability to measure the impact should never stop us from believing in it. At Warner Bros, in the early 1940s, Hal Wallis gave the go-ahead to purchase the screen rights to an unproduced play called Everybody Comes to Rick's by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison. A few days later Wallis sent out a memo saying that the property would henceforward be known as Casablanca. Who could challenge that, even in hindsight? It's accurate; the name is memorable, romantic and nearly melodic. But you could argue that Rick's Place, Letters of Transit and The Usual Suspects aren't bad, either.

I don't know if there are things that deserve to be called laws or principles in these matters. But you might conclude that, at the moment, single strong words are in favor: Traffic, Pollock, Hannibal, Chocolat, Memento, Quills, Snatch. I happened to write something recently about the independent producer Ed Pressman, and I was struck by the way he has favored forceful one-word titles: Sisters, Badlands, Plenty, Walker, Hoffa. Take Badlands, for instance: it doesn't really apply to the film, except that it partly takes place in the Montana badlands. But the word conjures up place, the whole Western genre, outlawry and desolate horizons.

There are clearly unwritten conventions about how long a title can be to fit a marquee or a memory. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb has come down to Dr. Strangelove--because that is so evocative and disturbing a name, as well as one that makes the ironic reassurance of the subtitle irrelevant. Still, there was a period when longer titles were naturally in fashion. It was a more romantic age, more credulous about the romance of stories and the glamour of the movies. I'm thinking of All That Heaven Allows, To Have and Have Not, For Whom the Bell Tolls, History Is Made at Night, It's a Wonderful Life, The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, Since You Went Away, A Place in the Sun. Many of those titles come from novels (and evidently the movie business hopes to keep the interest and loyalty of people who enjoyed a book). But what did the titles mean on the book jacket?

To Have and Have Not is one of Ernest Hemingway's lesser known novels. Indeed, it's rather more the gathering of several long stories about Harry Morgan, a down-and-out freelance fisherman who works Cuba and the Florida Keys. When it was published in 1937, Hemingway had two other titles in mind: The Various Arms or Return to the Wars. In the end, he preferred the sound of To Have and Have Not, a concept that, arguably could encompass the ideas and events of every novel ever written. It did less well than most Hemingway books (far less well than A Farewell to Arms). But Warners bought it for the movies and let Howard Hawks make it.

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