Reel life: When movies are "based on a true story"
Hollywood loves a good story, especially when it's "inspired by true events," but the reality can be far from the truth
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Here are some of the MOST INNOVATIVE! and UNFORGETTABLE! examples of Hollywood's coming attractions
"The Man With the Golden Arm"
For the opening of Otto Preminger's 1954 drama about drug addiction, title designer Saul Bass created striking, abstract graphics, including an illustration of a disjointed arm, appearing disconnected from a body, accompanied by Elmer Bernstein's jazz score. The graphic was carried through in the film's print advertising and posters.
"The Naked Gun"
The jokesters behind the "Naked Gun" films didn't let up even for the film's titles. Taking a cue from the opening of TV policers like "NYPD" (in which a cop car's flashing light pulls us through the streets of New York City), the siren-blaring cop car of "The Naked Gun" (1988) wantonly careens through the streets, over sidewalks, into a car wash, through a ladies' locker room and over a rollercoaster, ending up at Valhalla for cops: a donut shop. Later entries in the franchise repeated the scenario but with ever-more bizarre detours, from a birth canal to a dive into the Death Star trench. Title design: Douy Swofford.
"The Fall"
In slow motion, shot in crisp black-and-white, the stylized opening sequence of "The Fall" is enigmatic, as we witness a rescue attempt off a railroad bridge crossing, the details and meaning of which won't be clear until later in the film. Director Tarsem Singh, who edited the opening of his 2006 fantasia, said he wanted the sequence to portray chaos without energy. Title design: Stefan G. Bucher. Music: Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 in A Major.
"Superman"
One of the most rousing and effective introductions into the world of a movie character is the swooping opening title sequence for "Superman" (1978). Beginning with a black-and-white prologue of Superman's introduction in Action Comics back in 1938, we are pulled up, up and away into space on a widescreen journey to the Man of Steel's home planet. Along the way names and titles animated through a "slit-scan" technique (similar to one used for the effects of "2001") streak past the camera, accompanied by John Williams' epic, buoyant score. Title design: R/Greenberg Associates.
"North by Northwest"
In Saul Bass' brilliant titles for the Alfred Hitchcock thriller "North by Northwest" (1959), intersecting lines forming abstract patterns assimilate into the mirrored facades of New York City's gleaming skyscrapers. Bolstered by Bernard Herrmann's music (a maddening dance with death), the film cuts to shots of the hustle and bustle of Manhattan - where spies are no match for women fighting over a cab - capped by one of the director's trademark cameo appearances.
"Lord of War"
The brief narrative that opens the 2005 film "Lord of War," about an illegal arms dealer, presents the life of a bullet - from munitions factory to illicit arms trading to its use against a human being. Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth" is an example of a familiar trope: a popular song that provides ironic counterpoint to the film's message. Title design: l'EST.
"Dr. Strangelove"
One of the most famous movie title sequences was for Stanley Kubrick's 1964 satire, "Dr. Strangelove." Created by graphic designer and commercial director Pablo Ferro, hand-lettered type is stacked and crowded over stock footage of military aircraft, accompanied by an airy rendition of the standard "Try a Little Tenderness." The cheeky sexual undertones of the planes engaging in a refueling pas de deux set the tone for a comedy in which sex and concerns over "precious bodily fluids" presage the end of the world.
"Do the Right Thing"
Inspired by Ann-Margret's sprightly dance routine at the beginning of the musical "Bye Bye Birdie," director Spike Lee fashioned a stylized opening for his 1989 drama "Do the Right Thing" that briefly starts with a Branford Marsalis sax rendition of "Lift Every Voice and Sing," before plunging headfirst into Public Enemy's "Fight the Power." The angry dance moves of Rosie Perez, performed before projections of Brooklyn townhouses, are ferocious and brimming with raw emotion. (So heated was her routine that Perez was injured and driven to tears by the end of the exhausting shoot.) Title design: Balsmeyer & Everett, Inc. Cinematography: Ernest Dickerson.
"Blue Valentine"
The fireworks erupting in the final, heart-wrenching scene of the romantic drama "Blue Valentine" (2010) are evoked in the abstract end title sequence that follows. By layering high contrast and out-of focus firework explosions with Davi Russo's set photography of Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling, underscored by Grizzly Bear's "Alligator," the bursting imagery evokes passionate memories of an incandescent, fiery relationship which (like fireworks) burst and then fade into memory. Title design: Jim Helton.
"Deadpool"
The tongue-in-cheek superhero movie gives movie title sequences a delirious, over-the-top send-up. As the camera weaves through a hyper-violent set piece frozen in time, we are fed in-jokes, fake title cards, and Juice Newton's "Angel of the Morning" to introduce us to the violence and snark of the central character. Title design: Blur Studio.
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