What's In A Name?

Posted Tuesday, February 26, 2002 at 2:05 PM Central

by John Couture

A movie by any other name would sound as sweet, right? Think again. In today's pressure packed, box office means everything world of movie making, they hire people to market and come up with movie titles that the movie-going public will eat up.

Well, the "title artists" on Stealing Harvard have been working overtime. First, it was "Promises, Promises, Promises," but that was too long, so they shortened it to "The Promise." Then, they thought that it wasn't hip enough, so they tried the ambiguous "Uncle," which morphed into "Say Uncle." But that was too lecherous given the subject matter of the movie (an uncle carrying through with his promise of sending his niece to a top flight college through any means necessary). Finally, they came to an agreement that "Stealing" was hip and should be incorporated.

The title became "Stealing U," since the University in question was a mythical Northern University, but the whole made up University confused test audiences. So, they decided to send the niece to Stanford and call it "Stealing Stanford." That title worked fine until Stanford called and demanded that they add a little post script to the movie explaining that the niece earned a full scholarship, since Stanford has a little known clause that no one admitted to Stanford will be prevented from learning there because of financial need.

And that leaves us with Stealing Harvard. It seems the once stuffy shirt university is looking for a new image with the recent rash of movies poking fun at it (Legally Blonde, How High, and Harvard Man).

Did you get all that? There will be test. Better sharpen those #2 pencils...