But the whole credit thing is a mess, as some who should be listed aren't and vice versa. Do we really want to know who was the accountant? "Great accounting!" Too many people are mentioned now, the majority will be of no interest to the public who will be no help in furthering their careers. Acknowledgment? They got paid for doing the job. A trawl through classic films on IMDB will reveal actors who went uncredited. In one of my favourite film noirs there's three dozen actors who were not credited. Some had small but memorable parts. Joy Barlow the taxi driver. A great line. "If you can use me again call me, day or night. Night's better, I work during the day." (not included in the clip) Sonia Darrin, "Agnes." "You do sell books hmm?" "What do those look like, Grapefruit?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sNhPdJFZcQ
I watched The Killing again. It's always amusing to see an uncredited Rodney Dangerfield at the racetrack watching the fight that breaks out.
My wife and I are usually the last ones to leave the auditorium after a film. We stay not so much to watch the credits (though once in a blue moon I see a familiar name) as to hear the music. It's also a way to decompress and process what we just saw.
It's not an either/or... entry level wages are low because working in the film industry is highly coveted. they are working to gain experience, etc. Contrary to popular belief not everyone who works on movies is living a glamourous life. It's like the joke about the man with the carnival whose job it was to clean up the smelly bucketloads of prolific elephant dung. A passerby, who saw him hip-deep in the excrement, asked, “My good man, how can you put up with such demeaning conditions? Haven’t you ever thought about another line of work?” To which the carnival worker replied, “What—and give up show business?”
I recently watched Airport with Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, Jacqueline Bisset, Jean Seberg, Helen Hayes, George Kennedy, Maureen Stapleton. The closing credits were 2 seconds long. It went from 'The End' to the top dozen or so cast to nothing.
I don't care about the length of end credits as one cannot be forced to watch them, whether in the cinema (where I no longer go) or at home. BUT What I hate is the pointless boring tedium of four or five animated logos for the various companies who have joined forces to make the picture. THEN After the the separate logos have finally finished the same names appear in a list as being jointly responsible for what we hope we're SOON going to be allowed to see.
Which is why the way it was before with just one major studio logo (Blue Mtn. of Paramount, Sunburst/Abstract Torch of Columbia, etc., and then text credits for that one studio and any applicable side companies/other producers at the top of the film) was far better than it is now.
If a $50 million dollar movie took 10 years to make (from the time it was written to the time it actually got released), and five companies each chipped in $10 million in order to get it made, shouldn't they be allowed to have their company names at the beginning of the film? I bet there were about 250 staff Universal Studios employees (and freelancers) who did all the technical work: the lighting, the camerawork, the sets, the grips, the sound, the editing, the effects and so on. Would you deny giving them credit for working on a film like this for months and months?
Yes, but only as a text credit after the credit that says "(studio name) presents...a film by such-and-such a person...in association with x and y people," like they used to do back in the old days.
When did end credits get so long? When Lucas and Spielberg started directing movies. They started it.
I used to always see the Disney credits at the end of their Sunday night television show, where they'd put just the bare minimum of episode credits on their sequence, and then something curt and impersonal like, "the talents of our creative staff are especially appreciated"...and that was supposed to cover acknowledging decades of studio labor! I know nobody watches teevee for the credits, but...damn it, give credit where credit is due, and all that.
Contracts are contracts. Some people just get a title... some get a logo. If the company says, "it's standard for us that if we give you $10 million to make the movie, we get a logo and our little music sting," then you either do it or you don't get the money. Which would you choose if you had no other offers?
