“Titled Film Stills” series*:
“Arson, Incorporated”
“The Accidenter”
“Dazzle, Hero!” **
TO SEE THE REST OF THE “One Frame Movie” IMAGES IN THIS SERIES, (FOR TITLES/TEXT BELOW), SEE THE SUBSTACK SERIES on “THE WINDOW” HERE: LINK
“Assassin, Bikini, Cuccinelli”
“Two Clones Grown (One Gone)”
“Steven Dies Seven Times”
“Rock Paper Flowers”
“Hello, Halo”
“Wait When’s Payday?”
“The Last Temptation of Chris”
“The Second Last Temptation of Chris”
NOTES:
* artist Cindy Sherman’s first major photo series (1977-80, and acquired in 1995 by MoMA) was entitled “Untitled Film Stills”, where she staged herself in various stereotypical female lead roles (bombshell, fashion victim, schoolgirl and so on). In each of the seventy photographs her characters seem to be caught mid-narrative, just before or after an important event, and, just as in the movies, they never look directly at the camera ****
Sherman didn’t title her “films” because it would ruin their ambiguity (even though the photos are carefully staged with costuming and settings chosen to refer to existing films or genres, and are specific statements or critiques about culture and identity). The Window “films” above, because they are unstaged —they are real, ephemeral found moments — are titled to make them fictional and (even more) ambiguous as narratives, observations, or critiques. The subjects, unaware of the camera, also never break the fourth-wall (look directly at the viewer/photographer).
“The Accidenter” above is kinda like M. Night Shyalaman’s movie “Glass”, because three different characters show up in the one pic. The man to the left who is painting, the man bottom left holding the cardboard sign up, and the man on the ground at right have all starred in their own photos, i.e. sign man from Protest/Antitest.
Also “The Accidenter” is unlike “Glass” because Rotten Tomatoes reviewers like CelIn D couldn’t realistically say of the single frame “Too long, at any length”.
Tagline for “2 Clones Grown, 1 Gone”: Me, Myself, and A.I. Tag for “Wait When’s Payday?”: Always the bride, never the bridesmaid and for “Hello, Halo”: Heaven, we have a problem
Titlelists, aka professional movie-namers, can make — for coming up with great titles like “Back to the Future”— between $250,000 and $413,000 a year.
“Pacific Air Flight 121” was a very vanilla title that got changed to the very visual and visceral “Snakes on a Plane”. The movie flopped. When a team of marketing specialists were analyzing its financial failure, someone in their focus-group responded “Great title! When I read it I saw the entire movie in my head.” When asked why he then didn’t go on to experience it in the theatre, he answered “It wasn’t worth seeing a second time”. Samuel Jackson, who had suggested the title change, had to give back the $413,000 bonus he had negotiated.
The movie with the longest title (according to the GBOWR***) is: “The Sundevil and the Dragonmaker With Halo Duress Use Giant Sorcery, Magyck, and Dark Shroud To Turn Offensive Utopia Into an Eternal Burn, Part Two” (148 characters). Gary Busey came up with the title spontaneously (and sans bonus) when talking at the producer, insisting that the title needed to be too long to fit on a marquee. (The movie turned a minor profit, primarily from DVD sales in Norway).
Movies are often retitled for overseas markets. For example “Zootopia” was radically renamed for the UK market, and called “Zootropolis”.
** US re-title of the hit Japanese movie “Power Man, Dazzle Stand!”
In Norway, the Sundevil movie was retitled “Sundevil og Dragonmaker Med Thor Bruker Gigantiske Trolldom, Magyck og Mørkt Likklede For å Gjøre Offensiv Utopia Til en Evig Forbrenning, Del To”. The local profesjonell tittelist made the full 4,574,149.95 kroner that year (4,317,000.93 of it because he snikja’d “Thor” into the title, which significantly boosted DVD sales, especially in Svalbard.)
“Untitled” was the original title for “Almost Famous”
*** Guinness Book of World Records Gary Busey Owns Word Records
After hearing about Samuel Jackson’s near-bonus, Gary Busey devoted the entire seventh chapter of his third biography to what he thought the title for “Snakes on a Plane” should have been. The chapter starts with: Snakes on a Plane should have been called and ends about 150 marquees-worth pages later. Had that sesquipedalian title been used, he would have gotten into both the GBOWR and the GBOWR. Busey has yet to be hired as a Titleist. He has, however, started writing his fourth biography. (The seventh, eight, and ninth chapters of which will be about what CelIn D should have included in their RT review of “Glass”).
the first found film series photos from The Window, including the box-office hit “Vampires VS IV”, Palm d’Or winner “Annie May”, and Razzie-awardee “Angel Raguel”, can all be seen here: LINK . All of the characters are caught just before, or after, a narrative event, and none of them (alien bride, cam girl, angel etc) look at the camera.
didactic panel: All photos in The Window series (unlike Sherman) are unstaged, shot 24/7/365/1 (single location), eventually grouped in sets as themed visual poems (w/ retinal rhymes), and ultimately interconnected as a recombinant installation explained in didactic panels.
*****
Sets, L to R: Crosswalk I, Singing Pi, Horses They Fly, What’s the Point, Crosswalk II, How Far the Man
BONUS IMAGE:
**** “Untitled Film Still #71”
