May 31, 2004

Curious George! Mad Libs verb & noun movie titles? Am I imagining some sort of pattern to movie titles like Chasing Amy, Raising Arizona (now Helen!), Stealing Harvard, Kissing Jessica Stein, Saving Silverman. Are there more? Who started this? What does this all mean? Where is the creativity? Help!
posted by umeboshi 20 years ago
  • Finding Nemo, Saving Private Ryan, Being John Malkovich. OK, I cheated and combed the IMDB top 250 list. But I think that statistically, this style (verbs acting on a person) barely register on the list; including current releases. Another style I find intriguing is an ambiguous title that makes no sense until you watch the movie (e.g. The Green Mile, Gattaca, etc).
  • Finding Forrester. I love Nemo (as does my toddler) but it always brings that awful movie to mind because of the similarity in titles.
  • America finally loves the gerund, that's all.
  • Gerunds.
  • Fucking gerunds.
  • Leapin' lizards! Arf!
  • My theory: a gerund or participial phrase is a very terse structure that conveys both action (either direct, in the gerund, or implied in the participle) and an actor or object. And culturally, we like that combination of terseness and action. E.g., Blazing Saddles! has a pithy punch that The saddle, she is blazing lacks.
  • Yay for grammar lessons!! Schoolhouse rocks ROCKS! I almost wonder how Free Willy didn't become Freeing Willy. (Pushing Tin, Crossing Delancey, Feeling Minnesota...)
  • I remember in eighth-grade English class "gerunds" initially got snickers when it was introduced, then later the guys started telling each other "oh man, I've got the gerunds". Well, you know, it WAS eighth grade.
  • I meant, The saddle, she blazes. Didn't mean to use the present progressive. Could this be a canonical list? It seems pretty particular, excluding e.g. Working Girl the participial. Shrekin' II: Electric Boogaloo. Feel the restraint that Dreamworks must have exercised.
  • Film Threat had a recent feature on exactly this topic, including a fairly comprehensive list. "There
  • Bringing Up Baby (1938) is the earliest film title of this sort I can think of offhand.
  • Movies I'd like to see: Waxing Hussein Taunting Bishop Spong Flossing Stephen Hawking Slapping Urchins Spanking Prime Ministers
  • umeboshi, i've been wondering the same thing, recently.
  • I think Freeing Willy was a pr0n flick...