99% Invisible - Top Billing

Episode Date: August 6, 2024

When you’re watching the opening credits to a movie, it’s not just a list of names. What you’re actually seeing is intense negotiations by Hollywood stars and their agents playing out in text form. Title designers have to create something that’s entertaining to watch, while also presenting the names of all the creative people in a very particular order. It’s like a game of Tetris, to make sure everybody gets their due.Top Billing Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to ad-free new episodes and get exclusive access to bonus content.

This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. In 1987, Touchstone Pictures released a buddy comedy called Outrageous Fortune. Outrageous Fortune wasn't a flop, but it was overshadowed by some of the year's bigger movies. Robocop, Predator, Three Men and a Baby. That's producer Jacob Reed. The main reason I know about Outrageous Fortune is a bizarre rumor I heard in film school.

A rumor about how the stars were credited. The film starred Shelley Long and Bette Midler. Or maybe it was Bette Midler and Shelley Long. It depends who you ask. Supposedly the studio somehow promised both actresses they'd be the top-billed star of the film. And it got pretty contentious. Here's Bette Midler doing a Q&A the following year. You and Shelly Long were great together in Outrageous Fortune.

I was wondering if you guys were going to work together again. I don't think so. No? No, I don't think so. Did you enjoy working with her? I, I, it was pretty rough. It was rough. The rumor about Outrageous Fortune is they could never decide who got top billing and ended up releasing two different cuts. One where Bette Midler's name comes first and one where the first name is Shelley Long.

To satisfy the two stars, the studio allegedly created two versions of the film and released them on opposite sides of the country. The East Coast got Shelly Long as the top build star and on the West Coast, Bette Midler was the top build star. And releasing two cuts of a film at the same time, that's almost never done. I know because I'm a director and a graphic designer.

So I've done a little work in title design for my own films and I've designed title sequences for other people. They can get messy, but it always gets figured out by the final cut. Deciding who gets top billing in a movie can be a delicate balancing act. Because when you're watching the opening credits to a movie, it's not just a list of names. What you're actually seeing is intense negotiations by Hollywood stars and their agents playing out in text form.

Title designers have to create something that's entertaining to watch, while also presenting the names of all the creative people in a very particular order. It's like a game of Tetris to make sure everyone gets their due. Hollywood agents, producers, and studios decide who gets top billing in a movie. But it's title designers who figure out how to represent that information visually.

You know, what I do is I look at the history and the breadth of this art form, because it truly has been an art form that has existed since the dawn of cinema. That's Lola Landekich. She runs one of my favorite websites. I'm the editor-in-chief of Art of the Title, an online resource and archive for title sequence design in film, TV, and beyond. Art of the Title is a visual encyclopedia of title sequences that counts directors like Ava DuVernay, David Fincher, and Guillermo del Toro among its fans.

One thing I love about title sequences is how they use design to artfully and efficiently set up story elements for the movie or TV show. You especially see this in TV because, you know, each episode is meant to begin with the same sequence, so you watch it over and over, so it's sort of meant to get you into the world, get you right into the tone. Title sequences can be metaphorical. Like in Mad Men, an enigmatic figure tries to maintain control as he spirals from the height of the 1960s Madison Avenue advertising industry as it falls apart in his wake.

Title sequences can also be a detailed guide to the show you're about to watch. -♪ Like each season of Game of Thrones, where an intricate map helps viewers keep track of the complicated locations, characters, and plot points. And, of course, title sequences can also be literal. Like the opening sequence from the min-series Little Fires Everywhere.

Big idea. We were going to start a lot of little fires. We were going to burn their props, their key props. Karen Fong is a title designer who led the team that created the opening sequence for the mini-series Little Fires Everywhere. It's an evocative sequence where multiple items burn to a crisp in slow motion. We did the last day of the shoot when they didn't need the props anymore, obviously. We took their key props of key items that were very important to the plot and the story,

and we lit them on fire. To Karen, the job of a title sequence is setting tone, and maybe more importantly, setting audience expectations. You know, as a title designer, I believe my primary goal is to set the audience up for what they're about to see. You know, to set a tone, set an emotion, and it's almost like creating a portal into another world. Right, it's a kind of a ritualized way

of entering a story space. But while setting a tone is important, title sequences primarily exist to give us information. Here's Lola Landekich. Title design is primarily a vessel for information. That's why it's a design rather than necessarily what we would consider a kind of standalone fine art. It's a project created to serve a larger work.

A title sequence can be creative, it can be clever, but the primary goal is to give the list of credits. Early in her career, Karen learned this lesson working for legendary comedy director Harold Ramis. Karen was trying to get fancy with the typography and the title sequence for one of his movies, and Ramis didn't like that. And just Harold Ramis just looked at me once during a screening and he said, Karen, people need to see their names. So that was just like a lesson to us, like, oh, right. You know, we can do all these things for the mood and we do, but at a fundamental level, right, we are showing, we're showing the cast and crew days.

All title projects include guidelines, but with Hollywood egos involved, title designers need to be very careful how names are laid out, since there are always a series of negotiated placements that have to be respected. I would describe film credits as potentially the most hotly negotiated term in a performer's contract. That's Daniel McDill, an entertainment attorney who focuses on film production.

An agent or a talent attorney and production counsel will negotiate three-second type-8 font credit for weeks trying to get the performer the best position possible. I've designed title sequences for features, and let me tell you, it is wild how many requirements there are. One actor's contract might say same size and type as other leads, but then the lead actor's contract says no less than the size of the director's title, and the DGA, which is the director's guild, requires the director's title be no less than 50% of the film's title, and it is a mess.

Everyone wants to be no less than 50% of the film's title, and it is a mess. Everyone wants to be first. Top billing is the best credit, usually before title. So if you're on your own card, that means you're by yourself before the title and you're number one. You have most of the time the best position possible, we call that top-billed star. Like Bette Midler and Shelly Long in Outrageous Fortune.

Or Shelly Long and Bette Midler in Outrageous Fortune. Beyond top billing, the hierarchy is usually dictated by the size of the role and the name recognition of the actor, with all the major characters in the main title sequence and everyone else in the end credit scroll. One exception, Daniel says, is that within a whole bunch of names, any name that stands out can be valuable. The first, the last, and then any modifiers like introducing or featuring. Sometimes you'll see at the last credit is

and Robert De Niro or with Dame Judi Dench. Like these are very prolific established actors, but they're not top-billed, and you're probably wondering why and when they'd be first. A lot of the times we reserve the and credit or the with credit for a prominent, established, esteemed performer who's not a star of the film.

Top billing can go along with better career prospects, more money, and a big reputational boost. Actors want the credit they deserve because they haven't always gotten it. In the early days of the Hollywood studio system, actors were signed to years-long contracts as repertory players for a studio. Those studios could decide what roles they could play

and had total control over an actor's career and image. But over time, actors won more autonomy. If you look at the egos behind these positions that they're taking, it's kind of reclaiming yourself, your profession, and your craft. And if fighting over a credit position helps you do that, it's legitimate in the sense that when you look at a $400 million movie, you want to get as much of that as you can. A big part of a title designer's job, whether they like it or not, is being the last stop on the legal train.

They're the ones who turn specific legal negotiations into something that holds an audience's attention. Here's Karen Fong again. When we get a title sequence project, there is a legal document or there's a credit list that has all the specs of the credits. This document is essentially a blueprint that lists all the specs for credit sequence,

including order, sizing requirements, and anything else the studio, production companies, agents, and guilds have agreed on. My Guild, the Directors Guild of America, requires that a director must be listed closest to the title of a project. So when you see a main title, the director's name is always last. But if you're seeing an end title, movie ends, directed by comes up. So you have this whole list of requirements, which Karen says can be several pages in a Word doc with two columns.

The actual title or name on the left and then any corresponding legal requirements on the right. It is incredibly thorough. Lola and I watched the title sequence of one of my favorite movies, The Fugitive, and it has a particularly interesting design challenge. What I want out of each and every one of you is a hard target search of every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, which tells you that they both have top billing. Both of their names are very clearly made to be the exact size of the title.

This is something that you see a lot, especially in the 80s and 90s with like lead action stars, Bruce Willis, Schwarzenegger, Jackie Chan. They would often have stipulations in their contracts saying their name has to appear 100% the size of the title of the film. Which is challenging since not all names are created equal. The Fugitive is 12 characters, Harrison Ford is 13, and Tommy Lee Jones is 15.

To make them all the same size, the title designers did an interesting thing where the letters turn to reveal the first and last names of each actor and the letters subtly stretch out. And despite the different character count, it's pretty seamless. There's a flashlight going through the text,

kind of beginning that theme of investigation and darkness and trying to seek the truth. So everything's on point. The toughest title design challenge is when two stars both want top billing. You know, the Bette Midler-Shelleylong situation. Because there's only one name that can actually be first on a list. For decades, this was a central conundrum of title design. No one could settle on the best way to do it because no matter what was tried,

one star's name would inevitably just look better than the other. In the end, a solution was found on a beloved 1970s network comedy. What we call in the industry normally is a Laverne and Shirley. I learned that in law school and I had to look up what Laverne and Shirley was. So I didn't know the show, but I knew about the telesequence before I knew about the show. Three, four, five, six, seven, eight, chlamile, chlamas, Austin Bebven, corporate. We're gonna do it.

Give us any chance we'll take. Laverne and Shirley was a sitcom that ran for eight seasons on ABC from 1976 to 1983, starring Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams. Hearing the music, you might picture the two of them skipping through the streets of Milwaukee to their job at a beer bottling factory. This is shot at the brewery in Van Nuys. I think originally in the outline they were just walking down the street and then they go, again, they were, you know, oh, no, I don't want to do that.

That's kind of boring. So they did their little skip, and that became the thing. I got to watch the Laverne Shirley title sequence with producer Nick Abdo, and he worked on the show from 1976 to 78. One of his first jobs was as an associate producer on Happy Days. There was an episode of Happy Days where they were dating.

And Richie ended up dating Shirley, and Fonzie was dating Laverne. And they scored really big. I mean, the audience loved them. The network says, well, why can't we do a show about them? The producers took all the Laverne and Shirley parts from the Happy Days episode, edited that together, and then filled in some other scenes to make a pilot.

The network loved the pilot, but there was a practical issue getting the show off the ground. Both actresses wanted top billing. Sound familiar? According to Nick, this had never come up before in TV. No, no, I think this was the first one. With up-and-coming actors based on characters that organically developed on another show, there wasn't a clear way to establish the hierarchy of the credits.

One idea was to switch the names every week. At some point, there's going to be a mistake. They're going to put the wrong one and then there's going to be a big lawsuit. How can we solve this now? Let's troubleshoot it before it's trouble. According to Nick, one of his colleagues had a flash of inspiration for how to fix this. And I don't know who it was that came up with it. It might have been Eddie Milka

said, I'm not sure. Said, well, why don't we put the left bottom and the top right? This was a major turning point in title design. You have one name top right, the other name bottom left. Imagine the hands of a clock at two and seven. Top right, bottom left. When it comes to design, there are a couple of givens. In English, we read text top to bottom,

left to right, and big to small. This kind of title card split means two names can be given roughly equal prominence. Here's Karen Fong. Karen Fong, Author, The New York Times Because they're splitting the difference, right? One person's lower, but the first read on the left and one person is higher and is on the right side, which is the second position when you're going left to right.

So it's evening it out, right? Because if somebody, you know, was top and left, that would definitely be the first thing you'd read. And the first position in the hierarchy of titles is the superior position. So, as far as I could tell, Laverne and Shirley wasn't the first project to do this. You could actually see it in the 1974 film, The Towering Inferno. Bottom left is Steve McQueen, top right is Paul Newman. But in Hollywood, everyone associates this kind of title with Laverne and Shirley.

These days, it's pretty common to see Laverne and Shirley titles. The entertainment industry has been going through enormous changes over the last decade. And while everyone we asked had different reasons about why stars are sharing cards more often, today the Laverne and Shirley layout is everywhere, especially on television. In The Last of Us for Bella Ramsay and Pedro Pascal and a lot of things like that that very clearly have two major stars. I think even May December has a similar layout for Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman. There's Damian Lewis and Paul Giamatti in Billions,

Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston in The Morning Show, Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson in True Detective, Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch in Sherlock. Oh, yeah, and Kerry Washington and Reese Witherspoon in Little Fires Everywhere. ["FIRE"] Previously on Little Fires Everywhere, we were talking about the little fires. They're everywhere.

They're even burning up a Laverne and Shirley title card with Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington on it. That was pretty obvious, I think, from the front, from the very first credit list. They were always double billed or double equal billing. To get them equal, one person's lower to the left and one person's upper to the right. Giving two people top billing seems like it shouldn't be possible. And for a long time, it wasn't. Until Laverne and Shirley codified a simple solution to a Hollywood problem.

But as I reported this story, something kept eating at me. The Laverne and Shirley compromise was invented in the 1970s. Why wouldn't they use it for outrageous fortune ten years later? Remember the movie where Shelley Long and Bette Midler fought over top billing? Was the rumor really true about two different releases? I had to get to the bottom of what is maybe the greatest mystery in all of title design. I got in touch with reps for both Midler and Long, but they declined to comment. had to get to the bottom of what is maybe the greatest mystery in all of title design. I got in touch with reps for both Midler and Long, but they declined to comment.

I watched the movie on streaming. But if there were multiple versions of the film, it's likely only one was digitized. So I went to the pantheon of arcane cinema knowledge. I'm talking, of course, about a video store. My name is Matt Booth. I'm the owner of Videodrome, the last video store in Atlanta, Georgia. And my name is Millie DiCerico. I was a former employee of Videodrome. Millie didn't say this, but she was also a programmer at TCM. For those who don't know, that's Turner Classic Movies.

Yeah. OK, so just to recap here, the rumor about outrageous fortune isn't just that both actresses were promised top billing. The bigger story here is the completely bizarre way the studio honored that deal. They came to this sort of compromise where there was a divided the United States down the middle and created two separate releases. Bette Midler would take the West Coast and be the top billing,

and Shelly Long would be the top billing on the East Coast. Let's use the Mississippi River as the dividing line between who was gonna be on top for this release. I mean, that is wild to me. Depending on which side of Mississippi you saw the film, supposedly the newspaper ads, the posters, the movie marquee, and even the title sequence of Outrageous Fortune was different.

The cover is very, it's very iconic. It's kind of the two of them holding on to the edge of a cliff. There's a helicopter below, their them holding on to the edge of a cliff. There's a helicopter below. Their nails are on point from hanging on to this cliff. The cover is actually reversed. The art's reversed on the different releases. So they're switched in their places. Yeah.

Depending on who was billed on the two separate releases. It's the kind of solution that only worked in the pre-internet age. You know, like a two-timing Lothario telling two women they were his number one and hoping they just never found out about each other. Which by the way, happens to be the plot of Outrageous Fortune. To find out if there was any validity to this rumor, we asked Matt and Millie to find and watch multiple copies of the film in the middle of the video store.

All right. So we're here to run an experiment on both versions of Outrageous Fortune. Two laser discs. One of the laser discs has Shelley Long's name and Shelley Long's body on the cover art on the left. And then the other one, which is flipped. Then we have two VHS covers. So we've got one working laser display, we have two VHS players, and we have two monitors that we're going to sort of pop each movie in at the same time. And we're going to check the credit sequence to see if it matches the cover boxes. As Matt and Millie fired up their Laserdiscs, a technology that was introduced when a

movie ticket cost $2.75, something occurred to me. It's a PSA. Oh, man, I have trailers on the beginning of mine. And she's got trailers. She has a Good Morning Vietnam trailer is playing on mine. Even with the existence of a practical design solution in the Laverne and Shirley Compromise, the outrageous fortune story is kind of perfect. Mine's Bette Midler.

Oh, Shelley Long. This one has Shelley Long at the top. Oh my God, what in the world? Oh my God, what in the world? Because in the end, no design solution can totally account for Hollywood egos. Shelly Long is first. And this one had... ...Beth Midler on the top.

More with Jacob Reed and some of our favorite opening title sequences after this. So we're back with Jacob Reed. Well thank you so much for doing that story with us. We talked a lot about the technical, legal aspects of title design, but I know you want to talk about some of the more artistic part of title design. Yes. I am a huge title design geek, and getting to talk to someone like Karen, who Karen Fong who works at Imaginary Forces, I could have talked to her forever. I mean, they've worked on Counterpart, which is one of my favorite shows ever, Spider-Man No Way Home. Her

team also did Stranger Things and South Park. I mean, Mad Men. They've done it all. And she has just so many good stories. Okay, like what? Okay, so did you ever watch the show Boardwalk Empire? No. I've been told it's great, but I missed that one. It's a great show. and it has this iconic title sequence where Steve Buscemi is kind of just looking out at the Atlantic Ocean and then a,

just a bunch of bottles wash up on the shore. Oh, that might be the one thing I have seen of Boardwalk Empire. That's all you gotta know. There's some story, but that's mostly what it is for however many seasons. Well, it's this iconic title sequence. What's so funny is in talking to Karen,

I learned that was not her pitch at all. She had this whole other idea that had come from seeing the set for the first time. He would go to Brooklyn and there'd be these shipping containers and then lo and behold, you go around the secret passage, the shipping containers to the outside world, was the set and it was this full-on boardwalk. Like, he would go inside the candy store and

there's a taffy machine that works and everything was completely dressed so you could shoot from inside to outside. And so the original ideas all had to do with showing off, I mean, this amazing place that all of the researchers and production designers and costumers had made. So, that was Karen's original idea. But the show's creator, Terry Winter, really wanted to focus on introducing Buscemi's character because he's kind of like the center of the show. And at first, they couldn't do that because, I don't know, it was like a scheduling thing or something.

But then he became available. And I think they actually had started prepping the shoot for this entire other opening, and then they pivoted to just focus on Steve Buscemi. Suddenly it was all about him and his point of view, and that central idea being that the world was ever changing, but he was always going to be in the center of it. This is also something that speaks to being a tile designer.

It's like, what do we do? And this is something, when I'm working with the team, we're always pondering, like, what do we do to make this show ownable? Like, if you create a tile sequence and it can go on another show, then it's not specific enough. What makes Boardwalk Empire different? And one thing that didn't make a difference

is that it was a story that took place on the Atlantic city, on the sea, which made it such a fertile place for all the rum running. And, you know, this is during Prohibition, and so the fortune of the city and of our main character was tied very much to smuggling liquor via the ocean. And so he looks out, and the bigger idea was he looks out and sees hundreds of bottles of whiskey floating. And that was really fun and a lesson for me just to be like, it's not our job to show what's in the show. You know, our job isn't to duplicate, that we're supposed to compliment it.

We're supposed to lead into it. It's not a title, isn't a trailer. Karen also talked about some of her first experiences watching title sequences, being the interstitials on Sesame Street. And she had this cool full circle moment when they parodied Boardwalk Empire as Bird Walk Empire. That was one of the highlights of my career

is to see shot for shot, like instead of the liquor bottles in the water, there were saltines floating in the sea, and it was big birds feet instead of Steve Buscemi's on the sand. All right, quackers, follow me. We're going to take a walk on the bird walk. Whatever you say, Nucky Ducky, you're the boss. All right, you heard a movie.

Water, water, water. Quack, quack, quack ["Water, Water, Water," by The Bachelorette plays.] That's hilarious. Burnwell, Campfire. I love it. It's great. Roman, do you have any favorite TV or movie title sequences? I mean, the first one that really knocked me flat was the title sequence to Seven, because it was doing so much work. It was really trying to solve this problem of introducing the serial killer.

You don't end up encountering him in the movie for an hour or so into it. Do you have a favorite of your own? I don't know if it's a favorite, but I've been rewatching Dexter a lot recently. And I think it's a great title sequence. It's all of it. It's really good.

Yeah. So it's basically him making breakfast in the morning, but everything, these mundane, cracking an egg, pouring Tabasco onto toast, pulling a shirt over his head, flossing with the string of the floss tied up in his hands like he's about to choke someone. It takes all of these mundane things and gives them the serial killer treatment, and it just puts you in exactly the right mindset for the show.

It's brilliant. I totally love that one. Dead on. Well, this is awesome. It's fun talking about title sequences. I can see why people like the art of the title folks just have devoted their lives to these. Oh, yeah. I mean, we should plug that. I don't know if we're allowed to plug stuff, but we should plug that website.

It's the art of the title is one of my favorite websites ever. And it's if you're a graphic designer, a filmmaker, really anyone for inspiration, even if you're just like a film fan, it's really cool. That's awesome. Well, thank you so much, Jacob. I really had fun. Yeah, thank you, Roman.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 99% Invisible was produced this week by Jacob Reed, edited by Chris Berube, fact checking by Graham Haysha, mix and sound design by Haseek Ben Ahmad Fareed, music by Swan Royale, our intern is Nikita Apte.

Cathy Tu is our executive producer, Kurt Kolstad is the digital director, Delaney Hall is the senior editor. The rest of the team includes Jason DeLeon, Emmett Fitzgerald, Gabriella Gladney, Martin Gonzalez, Christopher Johnson, Vivian Ley, Lashma Don, Jacob Maldonado-Medina, Nina Potuck, Kelly Prime, Joe Rosenberg, and me, Roman Mars. The 99% visible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence. Special thanks this week to Grace Callis, Quincy Serresmith, Maya Croft, and Yang Yi. And a very special thanks to Claire Reynolds and to Matt Booth and the team at Videodrome in Atlanta,

who tracked down multiple copies of Outrageous Fortune for our ridiculous experiment. If you're in the Atlanta area, absolutely you must go check them out. We are part of the Stitcher and SiriusXM podcast family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building in beautiful Uptown, Oakland, California, home of the Oakland Roots Soccer Club, of which I'm a proud community owner. Other teams may come and go, but the Roots are Oakland first, always. You can find us on all the usual social media sites, as well as our brand new Discord server. There are over 4,500 people talking about Power Broker,

talking about different episodes, talking about architecture in general. There's a link to that, as well as every past episode of 99PI at 99PI.org.