A movie by any other name?

Posted Monday, November 9, 2009 at 4:48 PM Central

by John Couture

Would Citizen Kane be the classic example of American filmmaking that it is today had it been given another name? What if it were called "Rosebud"?

If you're a fan of Family Guy, you'll probably get where I'm going with this. If you're not, don't worry, I'll clue you in a bit later.

I was scouring the Internet today (aka doing my job) and I came across this very cool video put together by Gabe over at Videogum.com.

This little clip got me thinking about the Family Guy bit I mentioned earlier (see below) in which Peter explains that he gets really excited when characters say the movie title in the movie. Of course, it also made me think about those movies that don't have the titles spoken in them and what exactly goes into choosing a movie's title.

If you've seen RKO 281 (great movie by the way, if you haven't), then you know that Citizen Kane's title came from Orson Welles' thought that it would look good on the movie poster. Something about the way the "Z" and "K" would pop out and grab the average person's attention and make them want to watch the movie.

And I doubt Star Wars would have gone on to garner as much acclaim and success as it did had George Lucas called it "Nerf Herder." Speaking of Star Wars, it seems that there's still some argument over whether there's a titular in the movie. I'll let you watch this clip and decide for yourself.

At the end of the day, I suppose the main thrust behind the title of any movie is get more people to come out and watch it. Whether that title is actually ever spoken in the movie or not makes for a nice Monday afternoon distraction, but at the end of the day it's the actual movie that determines whether it's good or not.

What do you think about a movie's title? Do you think that you would be more apt to see a movie or less likely to if the title was terrible? I mean, even Star Wars would have flopped had it been called Gigli.