I would personally love to see Transformers: A Michael Bay Joint, Schinder’s List: a Steven Spielberg Joint, or Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever: a Kaos Joint. In my eyes, all confusion and conflict would disappear.

I think we should also encourage directors to think about coming up with their own creative nouns to describe their movies. A Spike Lee “Scoop”, perhaps? A Spike Lee “Infliction”, maybe? A Spike Lee “Aroma”? Malcolm X: A Spike Lee Aroma. That’s way better.

I saw one short film preceded by the creative title card: “A Mateen Kemet Shot To Tha’ Dome.” This particular director ended up ON THE LOT… and I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the sole reason why.

To go one step further, we could even allow the writers to change their simple and rather un-hip “written by” credit. Joe Gould’s Secret: A Howard Rodman Rag. Big Fish: A John August Stack a’ Pancakes (under some gooey Dan Wallace Maple Syrup).

I’m not in the WGA, but if I was, I would run for WGA President, get elected, and then add this to the agenda. I would also refer to the agenda as a “joint” because I wrote it and I can and will do that.

My mother was a script supervisor, so I spent my childhood knowing, intimately and on a daily basis, just how many people it takes to make a film, and just how essential is each person’s contribution. For that reason if for no other, the phrase “a film by” sets my teeth on edge.

except for the “written by” credit. although i think the “a film by” credit is an egotistical act of credit theft, i don’t agree that writers are the author of a film. writers write scripts, not films. in many ways yes, a studio or whoever financially backs a film and makes it possible, is the author of the film.

it would seem to me this question of authorship has been at least begged if not actually asked for years. who gets credit for the eiffel tower? isn’t making a building in many ways analogous to making a film? there’s an architech who writes it down, a company in charge of building it, usually a financial backer. are the same contentions of author/ownership being waged in other arenas?

As for the topic of copyright, in general, here’s a comment I made a while back on another internet forum:

The root of the problem is that we allow corporations to hold copyrights and we tie the term of the copyright to the life of the copyright holder. (e.g. life of the author plus 75 years.)

This runs counter to reason copyright laws were created–to increase the creation of new works–because it removes the incentive; the work will remain copyrighted for as long as the company “lives” (read: is in business) which is essentially “forever”, especially when viewed from the company’s standpoint. (If you knew your meal ticket would last until you died, how motivated would you be to find a new one? Compared to if your meal ticket expired in ten years? In ten days? The counter point to this is: how motived would you be to create a meal ticket for yourself if someone else could take it from you immediately upon creation.)

If I were king, the first thing I would do is abolish the “for the life of the author” clause in favor of a fixed term from the date of creation (or perhaps, from the first time the copyright is exploited). The second thing I would do is implement a sliding scale, maybe something along the lines of: 80 years for copyrights held by individuals; 40 years for copyrights held by partnerships, i.e. groups of individuals; and 20 years for copyrights held by corporations. (It seems logical to me that a corporation should have an easier time creating new works than, say, a group of three or four individuals, who in turn would probably have it easier than a single individual working alone.) This would reintroduce a temporal incentive in addition to maintaining the financial one.

P.S. Thanks for running a great blog!