Apparently PTA is still fuming about it. But I'm not a huge fan of the title Sydney. I don't think it would have added to or changed the film. No secret meaning. It was just a character's name. Anyone agree/disagree?
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I respect Paul Thomas Anderson's opinion, but I think Hard Eight is a much better title.
shareI agree, respect to PTA but Hard Eight is a dope ass title...Sydney is cool as well, but too unspecific.
shareEvery time I am trying to find this movie in google or imdb I search for hard eight. Sydney, what is that, the city? What does that have to do with anything.
shareSydney is a pretty generic sounding title. If PT Anderson hadn't become a very well-known director, I don't think many people would see an obscure movie called Sydney (it's still fairly unknown). Hard Eight is a cool sounding title, and actually reflects the movie's themes better. Yes Syndey is the main character and it's about him, but Hard Eight tells us something about the character.
shareTotally agree with you.
shareIt's Philip Baker Hall's character name.
Have you even watched it?
The title always reminds me of myself.
shareAgree
shareSometimes the studios/producers know what's best. Hard Eight all the way, it sounds more legit. I also think that naming a movie from the name of a character is pretty weak, creatively.
shareI haven't seen the movie in a long time. What does Hard Eight reference? Does it have to do with gambling?
DISPLAY thy breasts, my Julia!
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Hard Eight, didn't PTA later comment that it sounded like a porn film?
I personally don't have anything against it but I don't think it really means anything other than the fact that it sounds hard-bitten and tough and sparse, a near-affectation which the dialogue seems to pine for most of the movie. But truthfully the movie has more veracity in PTA's creation of mood, in the slightly dilapidated world he depicts, the losers and two-bit gangsters and hookers and low-wattage neon, and especially in Sydney's baggy, beleaguered face.
Sydney really embodies most of the movie. He is everyone: he is John and Clementine, once upon a time, at least, or maybe that never transpired for him...he is Jimmy and the rest of the algae in the Vegas cesspool; in the gloaming of his life you feel he represents both the seediness and the decency existing in the film. He's the master of this place, this hinterland of human debris, so I think calling the film Sydney would have had more sad truth, a blueish melancholy, but less commercial viability, not that the film has much of that anyway.
I agree, "Hard Eight" is a better title.
shareI agree
shareI agree, Hard Eight is a better title..and its kinda weird how you click on "Hard Eight" here at moviechat and you get "Sydney" on the page.
I suppose what's interesting about this is that PTA saw the movie as "Sydney," imagined the movie as "Sydney," FILMED the movie as "Sydney," so he just couldn't believe his vision was being messed with.
24 or so years later, PTA learned his lesson, however.
He put a movie partially about waterbeds into production as "Soggy Bottom" (a character's intended name for a waterbed company.) It says "Soggy Bottom" on the click boards for the movie in certain photographs.
And PTA himself renamed the film "Licorice Pizza." Which was obscure to many people -- unless you were old enough to remember that as the name of a record store chain back in the day.