AL: "Hey, have you looked up how many other movies are called The Chameleon*?"
EB: "Nah, I haven't"
AL: "I checked to see if your blog is registering in the search engines and all these other movies came up - so I had a look at IMDB - there's like five or six, and one coming out this year - did you know that?"
EB: "Oh shit - what's it about? Who's in it - anyone massive??"
AL: "Hang on, I'll have a quick look"
My heart is in my mouth. I can see it now... The Chameleon - the story of a man searching for his con man brother starring George Clooney and Matt Damon, coming soon to a multiplex near you!
AL: "You there?"
EB: "Yeah"
AL: "No one that big - ah, Famke Janssen... Ellen Barkin"
Crap.
AL: "...Nick Stahl"
Double crap.
EB: "What's the synopsis?"
I sit down and brace myself for the worst. A year's work is potentially down the drain.
AL: "An FBI agent is hot on the tracks of Frederic Boud - Bourdin? Some French sounding name.. He's taken the identity of a woman's long lost son completely convincing the police and the boy's family of his identity"
EB: "Oh... okay"
Phew. At least it's not the same storyline or anything.
What's in a title? Everything. I imagine it's a bit like naming a child. It shouldn't be too long and it has to look good in print. A film can go some distance with a good title, a great poster or photographic still and a well written synopsis.
Case in point, Snakes on a Plane. I heard that Samuel L. Jackson threatened to quit when he heard the powers-that-be were going to change the title to Pacific Flight 121.
Pacific Flight 121? What were they (momentarily) thinking?? That sounds like a TV movie of the week where a passenger jet has to make an emergency landing because it lost cabin pressure...
Pacific Flight 121 doesn't encapsulate that movie at all. The best part of the movie Snakes on a Plane IS the title!
So, even in a dire worst case scenario where the only people who end up seeing my film are my family and the cinema's janitor, it looks like I need to change the title.
I'm sure something will come to me.
*Title has since changed to FINDING HONK.
.
