Alone in the dark

[muckefuck]

As far back as I can remember, I've always stayed until the end of the credits. A friend of mine condemned this as affectation, as if I had no deeper motivation than burnishing my cinephile credentials. It's long since become habit, but I can think of several reasons that keep me from abandoning it:

• Curiosity There's hardly a film, no matter how crappy, that doesn't leave me with at least one question that can be easily answered by the credits. It could be the identity of an actor, the title of a song, the location of a mountain, the number of female stunt doubles--there's always something. The IMDB is excellent for such things as cast questions, but there are always things it can't answer. It might tell me that a movie was filmed in Russia, but it won't thank the workers of the Staritsa Concrete Combine for generously allowing filming in their gasworks.
• Names I love names. Everything about them--their look, their sound, their history, their significance. I've been known to read the obituaries just to savour them. Movie credits list lots of names--and the speed by quickly enough that you don't get bored looking at them, yet slowly enough that you can spot the interesting ones. And call attention to them, if your companion(s) appreciate that. "Look--Ebenezer Cheung! Hermenegildo Van Straten!"
• Impatience I absolutely hate filing out of a venue in slow-moving herd behind people who are lethargic, inconsiderate, or just plain dumb. By the end of the credits, though, even the stragglers have managed to drag their sorry asses out the door and way is clear.
• Surprises You never know when there'll be an easter egg.
• Music Sometimes the closing song is just really fabulous and I want to hear it all. Particularly if it's an obscure feature whose soundtrack will not be available in 100,000 record stores the next day, this may be my only chance to listen to it in full.

Now, this leads directly in to what may be the most important reason; certainly, it's the most emotional and the hardest to explain.

Any really worthwhile performance creates its own world. For the duration of time that the lights are off, you're transported to a different realm where you belief is suspended and some percentage of the rules of existence you've come to accept do not apply. This, in my mind, is the major reason for seeing an ordinary film in a theatre instead of on the small screen. (All films lose something in the transition to a t.v. set, but only some lose so much that they are hardly worth viewing on one.) A truly superior production could draw you in and hold you there even on a fuzzy screen in the back of a noisy bus, but most performances could use the assistance.

Once I've been transported in this fashion, I'd rather ease back to everyday existence rather than be rashly immersed in it. At live performances, such as the opera or the theatre, the curtain calls can function as this buffer. The cast lines up and faces you, breaking down the fourth wall, and then clearly departs, bringing home to you that there is no more to come. Some people are already talking to their friends and packing up their belonging while this happens, but if the production had been good, I'm still too caught up in it to want to let go of it so hastily. Besides, the applause is my one opportunity to respond openly to the performances that I've been mutely enjoying all evening.

Unless it's a special screening and the director is taking questions afterwards, there's nothing analogous for films. The end credits are an adequate substitute. I have a chance to examine my reactions and begin filing them away before I suddenly have to decide where to eat dinner or which direction I need to go in order to catch the bus home.

Comments

[niemandsrose.livejournal.com]

I watch credits too, but I always blame it on wanting to see if they had a Dialect Coach, and if I know them!

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

See, that's exactly the kind of thing that the Internet won't tell you!

[fengshui.livejournal.com]

But it is! Once the film has come out on DVD and the credits can be transcribed by a crazy fanboy, the full cast and crew option at IMDB pretty much lists everyone in the credits. Check out the full credits for _The Mummy_ <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120616/fullcredits>. It lists everything from Arabic translators to an (originally uncredited) shipping coordinator to a hat maker. The only thing really missing is the special thanks, the production babies and the like.

[foodpoisoningsf.livejournal.com]

You mean you don't scream brava! at the end of an aria?

Since the Bay Area is teeming with special effects types it's not unusual to see the name of someone you know in the credits, which is fun in that degrees-of-seperation way. And I like your concept of decompression, especially if it's a film that involved substantial weeping, before the frenzy and florescents of the parking garage.

But since film is an often-vast collaborative effort, reading the credits both honors the craftspeople who made it and gives an insight into how it all came together. Of course I always want to know who the caterer was.

[keyne.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on all the bullet points, and with foodpoisoningsf on honoring the collaborative effort. I never thought about the decompression thing before, though, and I'm not sure if it applies to me. Hmmmm.

[teapot-farm.livejournal.com]

Definitely with you on the slow return to reality. It seems so wasteful to let all that atmosphere and emotion just vanish - I want to feel it a little longer, and come to terms with letting it go :)

[sconstant.livejournal.com]

I totally agree, and you hit a lot of my main points, especially the thanks-to section, easter eggs (both film ones, e.g. at the end of Ferris Bueller, and crazy credits), and the music credits. I am a superfan of a mostly obscure folk musician because I stayed to the end of a movie and fell in love with the closing song, the first time I ever heard his work, I went out the next day and bought two albums.

I could add, maybe, a kind of a cross between two of your points - curiousity and surprises. Sometimes I haven't noticed that something spectacular has happened until I see, in the end credits, how many people it took to make that thing happen. I'll take animation or set design or something for granted, so I won't really be curious about them, but then in the credits the number of people who were involved or (better yet) the detailed job titles will let me in on some movie magic that just happened the right way - without me noticing that it has happened.

Additionally, sometimes the credits are just beautifully done. The _Series of Unfortunate Events_ movie had end credits which were lovely, in a kind of Edward Gorey meets the Pink Panther movie animations way.

S.

[0595.livejournal.com]

It's good how you don't feel any of the peer pressure to get up and leave while everyone else is. It shows you have good strength of character, or something like that.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Unless, as my friend charged, I'm doing it just to prove that I can do my own thing regardless of those around me. That would be a weakness as surely as following along.