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Comment by nkozyra | Hacker News Reader

> What does the article purport them to be? Right at the top I see:

It seems to imply a concerted effort to mention the title of the movie in the script in a meta, fourth wall breaking sort of way.

In some cases that's obviously true - Hot Tub Time Machine, Suicide Squad from their examples - but other times an untitled script just needs a title and it's plucked from the script.

I think there's a distinction there, because the latter is less of an Easter Egg sort of thing and more "ok now we need a title."

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> It seems to imply a concerted effort to mention the title of the movie in the script in a meta, fourth wall breaking sort of way.

It makes zero difference to the movie watching experience if the script line came from the script or the other way around. While you’re watching the movie, the effect is exactly the same. So even if you took a line of dialog to make your title, it becomes a title drop nonetheless because the audience doesn’t know (nor should they care) which came first.

I don’t think anyone would regard using Barbie’s name in the movie as a title drop.

The article does:

> Unsurprisingly, movies named after one of their characters have an average of 24.7 title drops, more than twice as much as the usual 10.3.

And this thread started exactly with the point of what the article considers title drops.

The article also highlights the interesting case of “movies named after a character with single title drops”. I’m willing to bet that in those movies, if the name is proffered late enough in the runtime, it may feel like a title drop because the the audience suddenly becomes aware the name had never been said before. When the name is said all the time or once but too early (so you’ll be primed to expect it more often) then the effect is bound to be lessened.

> It makes zero difference to the movie watching experience if the script line came from the script or the other way around.

I disagree; if it's a quote that serves the narrative and isn't jammed in as a reference it doesn't have the same effect as the meta examples. Less of a fourth wall break.

That’s just called good writing. You could decide on a title first then skilfully add it as a quote that servers the narrative. Again, as an audience member you don’t know¹, except when it’s glaringly bad. It’s the toupée fallacy.

¹ I hope it’s obvious I’m excluding cases where someone deliberately seeks behind-the-scenes information. We’re talking about having only the result of the work as context.

It’s like anything in film. The viewer can speculate how it was constructed based on evidence in the work itself. The writing divide is certainly not the only source of evidence.

More generally we are not limited only to the film when trying to categorize based on this distinction. The distinction exists even if it is not always discernible.

That said, I think trying to construct separate lists based on this distinction would be nearly impossible.

> It makes zero difference to the movie watching experience if the script line came from the script or the other way around. While you’re watching the movie, the effect is exactly the same.

Certainly not true in the case of a work adapted from another source like a novel. The words "The Fellowship of the Ring" are never uttered in The Fellowship of the Ring, and Peter Jackson's ham-fisted insert there was obvious even to people who hadn't read it, but especially to those of us who have.

And, by that token, if the dialogue suddenly seems awkward and stunted for no other reason than to insert the title, most people would probably conclude that the title came first.

And as I pointed out several hours ago, that complaint is about bad writing, which can happen in either direction.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42062800

The movie "It" neither uses title drops, nor was the title plucked from the script.

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