(Sunday Paper, Year VII, Issue 51)

This week’s post is going to fall under one of two categories.

You’ll either think:

“Wow! I didn’t know that either!”

“Oh John, everyone who watches movies knows that.”

But anyone who has read this space for any amount of time knows that I like to keep count of certain things (to wit: Year VII, Issue 51 of the Sunday Paper).

And you also know I’ve watched a bunch of movies this year.

Would you believe those two things came together in a fascinating way?

I think the first thing you need to know is that I’ve become a credits watcher.

It started with the Marvel movies, because they often have scenes at the end of the credits.

But then I just watched every movie through to the absolute end because, for one thing, I’m a little weird about things like that and there’s a satisfaction that comes with seeing the 00:00:00 at the end of a Netflix movie or something like that, and secondly, I actually like seeing all of the names and all of the jobs involved in the making of a movie.

(And sometimes you’re rewarded: sometimes there are fun little Easter eggs hidden in the credits.)

But the biggest discovery I made by doing this is at the end of the credits there’s always an MPAA (or MPA - I think the name has been shortened over the years - it stands for Motion Pictures Association) symbol.

And above that symbol is a number.

That’s the symbol/number pictured above - a not-so-great picture I took in the theater when we saw the new Black Panther movie.

It’s hard to see and it’s blurry (sorry, it’s hard to take a picture in the dark) - but the movie number is 54071.

I resisted reading up too much on these numbers all year because I didn’t want to go too far down that rabbit hole before I wrote about it, so I finally looked it up this week.

Turns out, ever since the 1930s, movies that agreed to the Production Code were assigned a certification and certification number. In 1968 that turned into agreement with the rating system. So any movie that has been given an MPA rating (you know, G, PG, PG-13, R, etc.) has a number. And that’s why, if you’ve ever seen a NR next to a movie (I used to see that in TV Guide every so often years ago), it actually is relevant that they were ‘not rated’.

This year, there have only been two movies I watched that didn’t have a number, so I guess they were not rated by the MPA. Those were the Weird Al Yankovic movie Weird, and the Nolan Ryan documentary. (Which kind of makes sense because the doc was kind of put together independently by his family, and the Yankovic movie was a Roku release. Both seem like why would they bother going through [and paying for] the ratings process.)

I wish I could remember which movie it was that got me thinking about these numbers. I noticed it on one movie and then it just took one or two more for me to confirm that they were issued in order.

It’s fun for me knowing the numbering exists. We’re up to the low 54000s with new releases, but I have a general idea of which numbers correspond to which years, so I like to guess before it pops up.

With Die Hard, for example, I guessed it would be somewhere around 27000…it was in the 29000s. That’s a pretty close guess when you consider we’re dealing with decades of movies and tens of thousands of numbers.

Believe it or not, there does not appear to be a comprehensive publicly available list of the movies and their numbers. The closest I could find was one that stopped in around 2010.

I’m sure the MPA has a list somewhere that they just haven’t published.

But maybe that’s a project worth considering for 2023.

What I’ve Been Enjoying

“Wrapped In Red” - Kelly Clarkson
“Dance Fever” - Florence & The Machine
“There’s A Riot Going On” - Yo La Tengo
Moonstruck
Frances Ha
Coach Carter
X-Men: Days Of Future Past
Pitch Perfect

With two weeks left, a total of 365 is realistic. I guess that’s a goal now, to cover one a day on average. It depends on how I do over the holiday break and visiting family.

Notes

*I’m sure you’re wondering what Movie Number 1 is in the certification process? According to a few internet pages I looked through it’s a movie called The World Moves On from 1934.

*Here’s another fun movie fact (which I learned from solving a cryptogram puzzle): In the early days of movies the movie ‘previews’ came after the feature presentation…that’s why they’re called “trailers.” And, for a long time, the credits actually ran at the beginning of movies…maybe you’ve noticed that in older movies. Some of the earlier James Bond movies have credits at the beginning - that’s how far back those date.

*You may remember in past years I get super excited this time of year for the Super Mega Crossword in the special print issue of the New York Times that includes the PuzzleMania section. This year I forgot all about it…until I remembered in a panic this week that it usually happens in mid-December. I thought I missed it last week…but it looks like today is the day the issue comes out. So I looked around here and it seems like fewer and fewer stores sell the New York Times these days…which I guess isn’t that surprising. But my mom is pulling through and picking me up a copy in New York, so crisis averted.

*My long run was up to 11 miles this weekend. I was able to do it later on Saturday, when the temperature was about 40, which was the first time in a while. I wore neither a hat nor gloves, which is probably the last time for a while I can get away with that. I kind of regretted not having the gloves by the end of this run.

*Football is getting too complicated figuring out who to root for week in and week out so that the Jets benefit. The easiest way to do it is to just have the Jets win - hopefully they get back in that ‘W’ column this week. The game is on local TV, so I’m taking advantage of that in the week before Christmas and not making the trip two weeks in a row.

*Remember, you can follow along with my social media, particularly the running Instagram which is the one I use the most these days. The links are below. Thanks!