WHAT'S IN A TITLE?

THE NEWS-TIMES/ John Horn / June 27, 1997
http://www.newstimes.com/archive97/jun2797/mvd.htm

Demi Moore's new movie is called G.I. JANE.

Or is it?

Maybe its name today is A MATTER OF HONOR or PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE. Or, depending on the week, IN PURSUIT OF HONOR or NAVY CROSS. Does PRIDE OF A NATION do anything for you?

Fact is, Moore's film has gone through more titles than Frank Gifford has excuses. And once upon a time, before all the flip-flopping, G.I. JANE was called ... G.I. JANE.

Its titular tiltings are scarcely unique among summer and fall films.

AMY FOSTER became FOREVER which became TO LOVE AND BE LOVED which became, at last check, SWEPT FROM THE SEA. THE MARK OF ZORRO turned into ZORRO which then turned into THE MASK OF ZORRO. THE DAY OF THE JACKAL is now known as JACKAL, meaning another movie previously called JACKAL is now known as THE ASSIGNMENT. BOOKWORM was changed into THE WILD and then THE EDGE.

Got all that?

Some title changes almost defy detection. COPLAND is now COP LAND. SHE'S DE LOVELY has turned into SHE'S SO LOVELY. DR. BEAN is now BEAN. ANTS is now ANTZ.

From large to small, the changing titles all reflect the same basic battle: How do you create eye-catching (meaning: profitable) names that don't stomp on somebody's toes (meaning: lawsuit)?

The movie formerly known as THE DAY OF THE JACKAL, due Nov. 14, stars Bruce Willis in a reworking of the 1973 assassination thriller based on Frederick Forsyth's novel. Forsyth and the first film's director, Fred Zinnemann, went ballistic over the cloned title.

Unless Universal Pictures altered the name, the two said, the studio would be "destroying not only our film, but erasing its memory." Under no legal obligation to switch names, Universal did so anyway: It's bad business to have an Academy Award-winning filmmaker calling you artistically bankrupt. Zinnemann died soon after the title change.

Bad titles can kill a good movie, and good titles can redeem a mediocre project.

The Oscar-winning prison movie THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION was confined in part by its swollen title - and that was shortened from RITA HAYWORTH AND THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION. The acclaimed chess prodigy movie SEARCHING FOR BOBBY FISCHER didn't win its match, either, and producers blamed the ambiguous name.

Conversely, when TEENY WEENIES was renamed HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS, it went huge. Julia Roberts' PRETTY WOMAN was originally known as 3,000, the dollar cost of her services. Sandra Bullock's COMA GUY was turned into WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING.

It also pays to make sure a name translates. Chevrolet couldn't sell its Nova car in Latin America because in Spanish the word "nova" means "doesn't go." Warner Bros. struggled with FREE WILLY in the United Kingdom because a "willy" is, well - ask Howard Stern.

Movie studios test virtually every aspect of movie distribution, using research screenings and focus groups to check endings, cut unfunny jokes, change music. Problems with titles usually surface long before the sneak previews - the names just don't feel right.

"There's no such thing as accurate testing of movie titles," says Mark Gill, Miramax's president of marketing. "You just have to go with gut instinct."

If the average moviegoer can't pronounce the title, switch it. Hence, this fall's KILRONAN became BLOODLINE. The 1995 foreign-language movie GAZON MAUDIT was renamed FRENCH TWIST. Short and succinct - AIR FORCE ONE - is far better than long and obscure - THE ENGLISHMAN WHO WENT UP A HILL, BUT CAME DOWN A MOUNTAIN.

And don't send an unintended message. SHOELESS JOE turned into FIELD OF DREAMS because audiences thought star Kevin Costner might be playing a homeless person. The comedy DR. BEAN became BEAN over Gramercy's concern that moviegoers might assume it's a medical yarn.

Moore's G.I. JANE, an account of a female commando that opens in theaters Aug. 15, certainly has had its share of name troubles. G.I. JANE was among many suggested titles, but there was one small problem: G.I. Joe.

The toy's maker, Hasbro, declined to give the Walt Disney Co. permission to use the G.I. JANE name, according to people familiar with the movie. Disney floated a series of alternative titles, but kept coming back to G.I. JANE - it was concise, capturing the essence of the film. So they went back to Hasbro, checkbook in hand - and Hasbro dropped its objections.

THE EDGE, which will be released Sept. 26, is based on a David Mamet script called THE BOOKWORM. But the latter title, in 20th Century Fox's view, conveyed nothing about the drama set in the Alaskan wilderness. So the studio changed names to THE WILD, but couldn't get legal clearances. Hence, THE EDGE, which still sounds like a documentary about the U2 guitarist with the same name.

SHE'S SO LOVELY, debuting Aug. 15, couldn't be called SHE'S DE LOVELY because Cole Porter's estate wouldn't share the Porter song title with Miramax.

"There's just a whole bunch of protected titles around," says Bob Levin, Sony Pictures' marketing chief. "You can have a great title, and can't clear it." A studio can challenge another studio's title even if it only sounds like one of its movies.

Movie titles are supposed to convey an emotion - just not too much of one.

The romantic drama once known as AMY FOSTER first suffered from a generic title - who is Amy Foster and why should we care? Then came FOREVER, which didn't mean anything, either.

TO LOVE AND BE LOVED was closer, but it sounded like a Harlequin Romance, which could scare men off?

"We really struggled with this one - it was not easy," says the film's producer, Mike Medavoy. Tim Rice had written a soundtrack song called "To Love and Be Loved," and artists were poised to start making TO LOVE AND BE LOVED posters. But Medavoy grew nervous: "TO LOVE AND BE LOVED skews very female," he says.

So the former AMY FOSTER became SWEPT FROM THE SEA.

A difficult title can just as easily be a sales hook as a sales dilemma. Fox Searchlight worried that the title of its Aug. 13 release THE FULL MONTY, an English comedy, was meaningless to Americans.

"Only a handful of the population in England knows what 'The Full Monty' means,'' says Fox Searchlight's Lindsay Law. "It's a title that's so obscure and difficult that we thought we would make it part of the marketing campaign."

So what's a FULL MONTY?

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