One word should suffice; name your narc saga “Vice.”
That Alaskan adventure; simply call “Ice.”
One word titles are winners. There are a few exceptions. For example, if you name your project “Apathy,” no one will care. If you call your book “Nostalgia,” no one will remember it, not even wistfully. They’ll say it isn’t what it used to be.
To be serious for a moment, titles are tricky deals. How tricky? It’s like deciding on the color of your car. You must live with this decision so make sure you choose a title (or car color) wisely.
“This show is about all kinds of caves, including ice caves,” Gizmo was telling me the other day at The 3Monkeys. “I think it’s called ‘Ice.’”
“Everything I see or hear these days reminds me of an unpublished poem or manuscript,” I said, referring to my Alaskan adventure. “I blame the media.”
(Hey, it really is easy to blame the media. It’s painless and pleasant. Now I get it.)
To recap: Gizmo was watching a High-Def TV show about scientists who rode underwater scooters in caves in the Yucatan, looking for microbes. I know that CSI TV guys are better known for examining microbes but these lady scientists actually discovered new drugs and new cures from rare plants they found. They even retrieved ice from ice caves that fell as snow 300 years ago!
Gizmo had a block of the ice on the bar. He had purchased it online, he claimed. He didn’t seem to mind that the square snowball from the year 1707 was melting.
“It won’t hurt anything,” Gizmo said about the melting ice on the counter.
“Yeah, but it’s historical,” I said.
“Historical treasures, old junk; who’s to say?”
(I hadn’t heard that line since my wife and I moved from a house to an apartment. I claimed that most of the old objects were “treasures” while she referred to them as “junk.” I’m happy to say that I won the argument. I’m sad to say that we live in an apartment cluttered with dozens of old umbrella stands.)
Gizmo and I watched scientists on TV travel into great black voids like jungle pools and ice rivers.
“I’d name the show, ‘Great Black Void,’” I said.
“Hell,” Gizmo barked, “I’d name it ‘Ice.’”
Gizmo’s voice dropped to appropriately reverent tones, like Captain Jean-Luc Picard on “Star Trek TNG.” He said, “I’d start the show with a narrator belting out, ‘Where No One Has Gone Before.’”
There was a big flap about that intro a few decades ago. After the teaser in the original 1960’s version of “Star Trek,” featuring Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock, Kirk’s V.O. boomed, “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” In the 1980’s version of TNG, Captain Picard boomed, “Where No One Has Gone Before.”
True story: My baby boomer friend and I wrote and performed a “Star Trek” parody in 8th grade and we were so under-prepared that the show became interactive, like “Tina & Tony’s Wedding.” Inventing the interactive format was our early gift to the theater arts, although he went on to become an osteopath. Happily, I went into theater.
To clarify: when I just wrote that I went into theater, I meant that I left the horse racing room with my wife and went into the Atlantic City casino’s theater, to see an Elvis impersonator.
I knew a guy who knew a guy who was an Elvis impersonator. Here is something you might not know about Elvis impersonators. They really do believe they’re Elvis. Even if they weren’t born Elvis, they are now. Sure, Elvis impersonators evoke smiles when we see them on the street or on the big screen but, as Hurley would say in Lost, “Let me tell you, dude, they scare me.”
“‘Lost’” is a good one word title,” I told Gizmo.
“‘Alien.’ That’s short and sorta familiar,” he replied.
“Ditto for ‘24.’”
“That’s easy to remember, too,” he said. “The critics will scream it’s even better than The Number 23.”
“Sure it’s better. It’s got two less words.”
I thought of a Jack Nicholson film.
“‘Departed.’ It won the prize,” I told him.
“One word. Won the prize.”
“‘Cassablanca.’”
“That’s a long title,” he said.
“Still, it meets the one word requirement.”
“‘Spiderman.”
“‘Jockettes.’”
The list is impressive.
(I just snuck one of my titles in there, to see if anyone noticed. The “Jockettes,” my film project, includes all rights to the life story about the first female jockey to ride in the Kentucky Derby. Let the bidding begin. OK, forget the bidding. If you want to talk about producing the film, I’m amenable.)
“Tell the people,” Gizmo insisted. “One-word titles will get you through the door.”
You know, I go to school with a whole lot of MFAers who would really go for a book called APATHY. I think you might be overlooking a whole demographic with your dismissal of it as a valid title idea...
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