Movies

‘Couple of Dicks’ Isn’t ‘Couple of Dicks’ …or Kevin Smith’s Movie

By  · Published on December 9th, 2009

In our hearts, we all sort of knew the day would come when we heard word that Warners (a studio who showed serious creative freedoms this year) finally tipped the scales and turned Dicks into plain old Cops.

According to /film, the title of professional public speaker, sometimes director, and Reject Radio-promotional-bump-recorder Kevin Smith’s latest flick is officially going to change from A Couple of Dicks to something else. Something that probably doesn’t involve slang penile terms.

I suggest A Couple of Engorged Love Snakes. It’s inoffensive and it references cops.

The money quote from Smith:

The Movie Formerly Known as A Couple of Dicks has finally settled on a (network-policy-dictated) replacement title! While we’ll always have Dicks in our hearts, the title we just now locked makes me smile on a bunch of different levels – including this 1: we can now advertise our movie properly (& ironically). And said marketing begins…on every print of Sherlock Holmes, Christmas Day!

So not only is the new title not horrible (apparently), but it allows a larger audience to become subject to its market throes (as it turns out). I can only assume they took my advice.

According to the director, Warners will spread word of the new title within a few days, and even if they don’t, we’ll know what it is by Christmas Day when we see the trailer in front of Sherlock Holmes. And by “Christmas Day,” I mean “tomorrow when the trailer leaks online.”

Here’s my confession: I never thought that A Couple of Dicks was a very good title. It lacked imagination. It was obvious. On the nose. A pun title. I’m desperately hoping that the new title isn’t A Couple of Cops, but barring that, I have a good feeling that the new title could be far, far greater than the original.

Also, in response to fans clamoring for the new title, Smith via his quite popular twitter account made a startling claim. That the movie wasn’t necessarily his film, but a film that he’d been hired to direct. Not so startling considering its his first flick directing someone else’s writing, but it does show a certain distance between him and the product. Not full ownership of the material. Just a job.

Of course, that’s reading a lot into something that was less than 140 characters.

What do you think? What? You want me to plug my interview with Kevin Smith again? Really? If you insist. But stop being so damned pushy.

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Movie stuff at VanityFair, Thrillist, IndieWire, Film School Rejects, and The Broken Projector Podcast@brokenprojector | Writing short stories at Adventitious.