Those darn ellipses

It's the day before the Oscars (two days, but I live in Australia) and I still haven't written much, or maybe anything, related to the upcoming telecast. Today is not going to change that. What can I say, I'll try to crap out some thoughts on them tomorrow.

I can, however, at least talk about one of the nominated films, however superficially. And it's something I've been meaning to get off my chest for some time.

It's this: I hate the stupid ellipses.

I usually try to honor a movie's chosen way of presenting its own title, even finally coming around on Se7en as the preferred way to spell the David Fincher film (as discussed in this post). But for some reason I just haven't been able to adopt the way Quentin Tarantino wants me to write the name of his latest, which also stars Brad Pitt.

I think he wants us to write Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood, because that's how it appears in the movie, but I just can't. The ellipses have got to go.

I say "I think" because the jury is out on the matter, as embodied in the contradictory image above.

Look closely, and you'll see two distinct ways of writing this title, smashed right up next to each other. It's from the iTunes rental page, if you can't tell.

The text has the "right" way, the way I've written above. The poster, though, puts the ellipses one word later: Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood.

Now, I don't know if that's an authorized poster or just some mock-up the guys at Apple threw together without running it by the copy editor. But you'd think that if anything, the poster would get it "right" and the accompanying text would contain the error.

I don't like either of those titles, but the former is definitely preferable. The ellipses have the effect of preparing you for a surprise, something ironic, something unexpected. They also separate the familiar phrase ("Once Upon a Time") from the "punchline" ("in Hollywood.") The latter works well enough in the surprise department, but no better than the former, and the former is the only one that meets the standard of separating the familiar phrase from the punchline. The familiar phrase is not "Once Upon a Time in." So yeah, it's probably just a fuckup by the guys at Apple.

But wouldn't Once Upon a Time in Hollywood just be a lot easier?

IMDB thinks so. I'm glad I can rely on it to be a successful arbiter in this case. It lists Once Upon a Time in Hollywood as the title and Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood only as an "original tile."

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood does a third thing that I think this film is definitely trying to do: It reminds you of a couple of cinematic greats directed by Sergio Leone. That's no coincidence, as the very text of the film grapples with one man's decision to start doing spaghetti westerns. The title should then be faithful to Leone's best spaghetti western (Once Upon a Time in the West) and also to his gangster masterpiece (Once Upon a Time in America). A couple other films have already paid homage to these films, those being Once Upon a Time in Mexico and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, and certainly others that I haven't seen or aren't thinking of right now.

And none of those films has a damn ellipses.

Now, I am not opposed to ellipses in titles as a general rule. I somewhat reluctantly will include the ellipses in Say Anything ... or When Harry Met Sally ..., both films that are in my top 50 of all time. I'm not even necessarily opposed to ellipses in the middle of the title, and there's even one film I've seen whose title starts with "Once Upon a Time" and has ellipses in the middle. That's Once Upon a Time ... When We Were Colored. Something tells me, though, that Tarantino is not paying homage to that particular film.

Trying to dissect what I don't like about Tarantino's usage, I'm landing on the fact that it's patting itself on the back for being clever. "Get it? It's a story about a place where they make stories! What could be more meta?" Look man, I don't care. I don't get to the end of that title and feel like congratulating you on how brilliant you are. Just can the ellipses and get on with the show.

And it's a good show, I've decided after my second viewing back in November. It's only the seventh best nominee for best picture in an unusually good year for the Academy with regards to honoring the year's best films, but it's a lot better than the two stars I gave it on first viewing. Pitt should pick up an Oscar for his efforts and there's an outside chance Tarantino will too for his writing, though Parasite oughtta win that category.

But it would be every so slightly better without those superfluous three dots.