The mis-crediting of Tarsem Singh

Given how frequently I feel I watch The Cell, it was a real surprise that last night's viewing was my first in almost five years. My last Cell viewing, according to my meticulously kept records, was October 1, 2017. Which means that when I asked myself it it was time for another Cell viewing last night, the answer was certainly "yes," given that the previous four were in much closer succession (2010, 2013, 2014 and then of course 2017). 

For once I'm not going to write a post that gives you some new Cell takeaways. Instead, I'll write about something extra-textual that's in conversation with something else I wrote a few days ago.

On Thursday I sort of cheekily gave one possible reason for the critical hatred of Catwoman: the single-name moniker of its director, Pitof. In making this specious point, I listed other single-name monikers that had raised ire among cinephiles, like McG and Tarsem.

Interestingly, Tarsem Singh -- the director of The Cell -- is not actually credited as "Tarsem" in The Cell. 

I'm having trouble recreating the narrative of how I came to think of him as Tarsem, then, given that The Cell was easily the first time I became aware of him. I say "easily" because his follow-up, The Fall, didn't come for another six years, meaning that even if I hadn't seen The Cell in the theater (which I did), it would have taken not seeing it for another six years to have possibly heard of him first through The Fall.

Now, according to IMDB, he is credited as just "Tarsem" on The Fall. But the knowledge of his unique crediting was with me long before then. (And given that some people hold The Fall a lot more dear than they hold The Cell -- in fact, some people hate The Cell -- I'm thinking I really need to prioritize another Fall viewing to remind myself why it never really struck a chord with me.)

So in continuing to scan those IMDB credits, I'm deciding the conversation about his proclivity to credit himself with just his first name must have dated back to his earlier work, when he was making music videos. His 1990 video for En Vogue's "Hold On" lists him as being credited as just Tarsem, though that's the only one of five videos listed (which include R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion") where it says "as Tarsem." We can't assume the crediting on IMDB is 100% accurate, but it's all we have to go on unless we do a deeper dive, and that's not in the cards for me on this Sunday morning.

So maybe I was reading articles about The Cell at the time, and the writer knew of his earlier crediting and made some snide remark about it. Or, maybe some of the 2000 advertising for the movie said it was from "Tarsem," but when it came to the actual movie he was credited with both his first and last name. 

The other thing the IMDB credits showed me is that these are not the only two ways Singh has referred to himself in his credits. In fact, considering that he has only made five features, the means of crediting him that is tied for the most common is as Tarsem Singh Dhandwar, which is how (according to IMDB) he was credited on Immortals (2011) and Mirror Mirror (2012). Then for Self/less (2015) it was back to "Tarsem Singh." 

Yes, what I'm saying is that "Tarsem" is actually the least likely way for him to have been credited, a lark he tried for one movie that persists in our collective memory of his identity as an artist. 

Maybe his sixth feature will be the tiebreaker. IMDB lists something called Nanda Devi in pre-production, which I will welcome even if none of his last four features had anything like the impact on me that his first did. But I don't even see any actors attached so it may be a while.