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Okay, actually none of these questions have ever been asked, but I think that's because we've already answered them. But if you find you still have a question, knock yourself out and ask by emailing me.
| Using the Site... | About Films... | About Us... |
Q: Why spoil movies?
A: Why not? If you're here, you're either bored, curious,
or looking for spoilers. We're here to help.
Q: Do you work alone?
A: No duck is an island, so no, I don't work alone. There's
a team of three humans and myself working on the Films project, a few
other humanoids who officially contribute to the site, as well as those
totally awesome site visitors who send
in spoiled endings.
Q: Where do you get the endings?
A: From the films themselves. Between the three people
on the team, and the other periodic contributors, we have about 2,500
movie titles on video tape and DVD. Plus, we go to the movies a lot. When
that all fails, we have a nifty Netflix subscription that keeps us up
to our wing-pits in films, five titles at a time.
Q: How often do you go to the movies?
A: At least once a week, but if there are lots of movies
out, we'll just hang out all afternoon at the theater, and a group of
us will watch 'em all.
Q: Isn't spending all day at the theatre expensive?
A: Not really, all things considered. We only go to matinee
shows (with rare exception), and $6.50 for a movie isn't a bad deal...
it's cheaper than renting the movie, and if you figure the movie is two
hours, you've just gotten entertainment cheaper than Disneyland, Chuck
E. Cheese or a date (even a bad date).
Q: How do I get involved if I want to join the spoiled movie
team?
A: Let
me know you're interested. Honestly, the more folks helping keeping
this going, the easier it for everyone involved. After all, if it were
just me, with national and limited (aka artsy-fartsy) release films, I'd
be in the theatres watching between six and 12 movies a week. Very time
consuming.
So, if you go to the movies already, don't mind writing a brief summary of what happens at the end and sharing it with us, let me know and we'll talk turkey (or whatever meal-time bird you prefer). We don't have an official spoiler team t-shirt (yet), but there are Frank Staff shirts I hand out to my crew (XL only, in red), and I'd be happy to pass one along if you're on board with being part of the gang.
Q: I'm studying the history of movie ratings. What came before
the MPAA?
A: Prior to 1960, when the Motion Picture Association of America
began rating films, there was a privately-formed group handling the decision
of what was good, moral, and appropriate. The major movie studios came
up with a standard of decency that would become a de-facto standard from
the early 1930s until MPAA's rating system won as the law of the land.
- For my short version of it all, you can read my summary of it without going to the library.
- If you need a history of the formation of the MPAA, try here, and
- If you want to read the Hays Code, it's here.
Q: Can you help me with the whole Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon
thing?
A: No, but this
site can. Put in the name of the person you're trying to link to Kevin
Bacon, and in a matter of seconds, you'll have the answer -- it's way
cool. Maintained by the University of Virginia, they also have a place
where you can link any actor or actress to any other -- check
it out!
Q: What's with the IMDb link on your pages?
A: Our thinking is, if you're curious about the film, you may
want to read more about it (reviews, comments, see who was in it, that
sort of thing). We use the Internet Movie Database --
IMDb -- as our source of information, and since we're saving the movie
details in our database, it seems only fair to share the direct link to
the IMDb page about the film with you.
Q: Okay, so what's with the IMDb link to Carmencita?
A: You caught us. There are rare times where a film isn't
listed by IMDb. This is typically either a made-for-TV movie that somehow
slipped past the IMDb folks, or maybe it was a film we caught at a local
film festival. (Them film festival flicks are sometimes produced and shown
in one area only, and again, fly under the IMDb radar.) Since the link
has to go somewhere, when we have no other IMDb reference point, we share
with you the first movie in the IMDb database.
Carmencita, as a film, was a one-minute short, silent film shot in 1894, and as near as anyone can determine, was the first American-made movie, and Carmencita was the first person to set foot before a camera and show her stuff (she was a dancer).
Q: How do I find a foreign film title?
A: The Search feature will get you there. As a rule, we will
list the English equivilent film title on the Titles list (the groupings
by the title's first letter). The foreign names are displayed as an "aka"
-- also know as -- but are not cross-listed under the foreign title. If
the film does not have an English name (rare, but possible), or did not
have one at the time it was added to the database, it will be listed by
the foreign title only.