Friday, December 19, 2008

I Couldn't Find The UK Version Of The De Niro Film Poster, But It's The Same In Language Terms












Sometimes in life we may face awkward questions, but surely that doesn't mean that we should be inherently afraid of question marks? For some reason people seem a bit keen to remove them from the titles of various media. as shown above.

Anyone have any idea why this is ?

Er, I mean, "anyone have any idea why this is"...

3 comments:

Andrew Tibbs said...

I think it started in the mid-80s when theystarted covering Doctor Who in question marks.

Stevyn Colgan said...

John - Actually, I can answer this one. It's an old superstition, rather like all of that 'Scottish Play' nonsense that a show should never have a question mark in the title. The tradition simply crept across into movies with the invention of celluloid. As to why a question mark is unlucky, I have no idea. Perhaps because it offers the critics a feed line? At the turn of the 19th century, the Duchess Theatre in London put on a show called A good time. Despite the lack of question mark, one reviewer wrote simply 'No.'

John Soanes said...

Thanks for that Steve, I genuinely had never heard that.
I've heard it suggested that films and plays and the like should never contain lines such as "I don't know how much more of this I can bear" as it gives critics an easy target, I didn't realise it had migrated over to film... though it does explain why the correctly-postered Whatever Happened To Harold Smith? didn't set the box office on fire.
Mind you, I like Andrew's theory better - the BBC used up the allocation of question marks, eh?
J