Mark Twain once said, “I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one instead.” I wonder how much time gets spent on those loglines that describe movies in the little boxes on digital cable menu grids? I’ve become a bit of an aficionado of these bite-sized descriptions, and often find myself scrolling the menu not simply to see what’s on but also to see what the logline writers said about it.
Descriptions generally don’t exceed 25 words and often come in closer to 10. That’s a tight window, so it's no wonder that logline writers would put functionality first. Yet the best still manage to suggest a point of view towards the material. “War of the Roses,” for instance, is described on my cable grid (Time Warner of Brooklyn) as, “Rich couple divorce, both get the house.” “The Turning Point” is described as, “Aging ballerina and ex-rival bicker.” The first description will tease a grin from anyone who knows what mayhem ensues after the Roses’ divorce. The second description suggests thinly-veiled contempt, as if the writer is trying to warn potential viewers, “That’s all there is to this movie.”
The description of the 1955 western “The Kentuckian” – Burt Lancaster’s directorial debut – invokes the only element that has stopped the movie from sliding off film history's radar screen, a notorious setpiece in which Walter Matthau’s bad guy attacks an unarmed Lancaster with a whip. “A frontiersman heads for Texas with his son and meets two women and a guy with a bullwhip,” says the logline. (Where's Gregg Araki when you need him?) A blasé description of “The Outlaw Josey Wales” plays up familiar Clint Eastwood tropes but doesn’t begin to hint at the movie’s quirky richness: “A Missouri farmer hunts down the Union soldiers who killed his family and left him for dead.”
Sometimes, though, the logline writers hit one out of the park. My all-time favorite is a nine-word summary of “A Place in the Sun": “Poor boy woos rich girl, takes poor girl boating.”
Sunday, February 26, 2006
To the point
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23 comments:
This is a rather odd little entry, as I'm sure you know, but I am grateful for any opportunity to look at those two. So thank you.
My favorite was the Comcast listing years ago for All About Eve. It simply said "It's gonna be a bumpy night."
Comcast's listings for those late night Skin-e-Max movies are a lot better than those movies. "Husband and wife caught in erotic web of deception at (fill in the blank: resort, island, supermarket). Viewer caught in auto-erotic web of deception."
I need a job, Matt, so I'm going to start writing for your Time Warner blurb screen. Let me know if I have what it takes:
"Splitting headaches plague Canada." -Scanners
"Boy Meets Girl. Boy Gets Girl. Boy Loses Girl...Literally." -The Crying Game.
"Casablanca, remade for dirty old men." -Barb Wire
"Mary Poppins shows her Mary Poppins." -S.O.B.
"Faster, Pussycat, Kill, Kill." -Basic Instinct
"God's mission gives Chicago a makeover." -The Blues Brothers
"For the love of all that's 'money'" -Swingers
"Two women on the lam make wrong turn at Grand Canyon." -Thelma and Louise
"She takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'." -A History of Violence
"The fish aren't biting, and neither are the cowboys." -Brokeback Mountain
"Classic Vincente Minelli musical (colorized)." -Cabin in the Sky
Look for my handiwork soon!
Another actual logline was for "Psycho": "Thieving beauty meets boy who loves his mother."
The capsules I write for New York magazine aren't exactly *that* much longer (usually about max. 70 words), so I look on some of those comcast type reviews in awe. Oh for the ability to conjure that kind of pointed brevity!
Odie: "For the love of all that's money" should have been the tagline for "Swingers."
The nutshell critical judgments in Halliwell's Film Guide are also quite amusing.. L.A. STORY is described by Halliwell as, "A pleasant romantic comedy, though the love affair is mainly with Los Angeles itself." APOLLO 13 is dispensed with thusly: "A gripping documentary style recreation of an averted tragedy, excellently done but one that is an uncritical celebration of the American way and which makes no attempt to put the mission into a wider historical context; it settles for simple patriotism." Halliwell's totally wrong on LAST TANGO IN PARIS, but the one-liner judgment still makes me laugh: "Pretentious sex melodrama mainly notable for being banned."
My favorite Halliwell is his one-setnence kissoff of "Return of the Jedi": "More expensive fantasy for the world's children of all ages, especially the undemanding ones."
Writers from the UK seem to excel at vicious brevity. Here's one of my favorite critics, Tom Shone, on TRAINSPOTTING: "Spends far too much time with its nose pressed up against the glass of American cinema, desperate for a piece of the action, but merely fogging up the screen with longing. Until British cinema kicks this habit, it will continue to churn out films such as this, which bear the same relation to real filmmaking that drugs to to real pleasure."
Yee-ouch.
Armond White's no slouch at the one-line fuck you summary. Of "Good Night and Good Luck," he wrote, "With this worshipful remembrance of CBS newscaster Edward R. Murrow, director, co-writer and co-star George Clooney climbs atop the ever-mounting frustrations of Hollywood ideologues, looks back from this great height to the golden subject of the 1950s blacklist and waves his Liberal bandanna."
Another thing Comcast does is assign star ratings that make absolutely no sense. I am reading this from my TV RIGHT NOW:
The Cookout. Ja Rule, Storm P (2004) A fine cast cooks up funny performances in this hilarious urban comedy.
Considering the one star out of four rating that accompanies this blurb, I'm afraid to see what they'd say about a four star comedy. "You'll laugh 'til your breast implants explode!"
And does a rapper who sounds like The Cookie Monster constitute a "fine cast?" Admittedly, I've laughed twice at the dialogue coming from my TV, but that's because I'm high on Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal. Tom Shone, this pleasure is real to me, baby.
My former colleague Robert Wilonsky of the Dallas Observer also had a knack for cruel brevity. His review of the Black Crowes' "The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion" was one sentence: "I seem to recall loaning this album to a friend in 1973 and not asking for it back."
"Mission to Mars" -- Banal fantasy re: life's origins. Good photography.
My favorite cruel capsule is found in The Rolling Stone Album Guide. J.D. Considine's entire entry for the band GTR reads:
"Pointless, pompous guitar wank-a-rama, featuring Steve Hackett (formerly of Genesis) and Steve Howe (periodically of Yes). Ttl Sht."
I've since resolved that if I ever put out an album, "Pointless, Pompous Guitar Wank-a-Rama" is going to be the title.
Right now there are a couple of Time-Warner blurbs that aren't bad. The one for BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES reads like the headline of a New York Times metro section column: "Arrogant trader and his mistress go wrong." KILL ME AGAIN is more in the spirit of the New York Post: "Flirt with mob loot pays private eye to fake her murder."
PS, to Jeff V: I always say that if I ever start a band, I'm going to call it English Teeth.
The very best I ever read was years ago in TV Guide describing the movie "Ninja III: The Domination." It read: A breakdancer with ESP is possessed by the spirit of a nasty ninja.
A breakdancer with ESP is possessed by the spirit of a nasty ninja.
I used to date her!
You, too?
Jeff V, regarding "Pointless, Pompous Guitar Wank-a-Rama." Can I write the liner notes?
Top Gun is a recruiting poster that isn't concerned with recruiting but with being a poster." -- Pauline Kael
Thought of a couple of others.
Another TV Guide synopsis, circa the mid-1980s. I think the movie was called "Razorback" which they called "Arguably the best movie ever made about a man-eating hog."
The other was part of a capsule review of Tim Burton's "Batman" in a local alternative weekly: "A neo-Byronic, chaos-of-the-cities, technogothic wonder movie."
I'm sure this is far and above the radar nowadays (and slightly hijacked), but Jay Carr describing Shakes the Clown as "the Citizen Kane of alcoholic clown movies" launched a fleet of Kane descriptions like a viral outbreak of Die Hard story pitches.
Tiffany: Yeah, a few years back I realized I too was falling into a "The CITIZEN KANE of (blank)" rut. So I swapped KANE with THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, and I was good to go!
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