The billing in a motion picture is a set of hotly negotiated
and legally contracted formulae that dictate the size in
points of a screened name relative to the size of the name
of the film. The names of actors and technical personnel
must appear on posters and all other advertising for the
film and in the opening credits. Other considerations
include the individuality of a credit—that is, whether
the worker’s name appears alone onscreen or along with
others’—and the placement of the contributor’s credit
within the syntax of the credit sequence, relative to the
name of the film. Writers’ credits—awarded onscreen
since 1941—are interesting in this regard. A film
‘‘Written by Joseph Jones and James Smith’’ is one in
which the principal writing, the bulk of the writing, or
the dominant writing was done by Mr. Jones; however, a
film ‘‘Written by Joseph Jones & James Smith’’ is one in
which the two writers equally shared in the creative
process. Regardless of its point size—and this usually
matches that of the principal stars—the director’s screen
credit has been mandated by the Directors Guild since
its 1939 agreement with motion picture producers as the
final credit to appear before the action begins. As of
1972, without a specific waiver from the Directors
Guild, no film could credit more than one director.
Sometimes a director wishes in the end to dissociate
himself from a film; traditionally, the credit ‘‘Directed
by Alan Smithee’’ has been used to signify this. Actors
have also employed this credit.
Since the mid-1990s, directors and writers have been
wrangling over what is known as the ‘‘possessory’’ screen
credit, one frequently received by directors like Rob
Reiner (b. 1947) and Ridley Scott (b. 1937): ‘‘a film by
Rob Reiner’’; ‘‘a Ridley Scott film.’’ Screenwriters have
argued that the director’s possessory credit reinvigorates
the notion of the auteur, in a production era in which no
one person can reasonably take credit for all of what is
onscreen. Stanley Kubrick’s (1928–1999) credit in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) as not only writer and director
but also special effects designer caused some dissension in
the film world. By the 1990s, however, four out of five
films had some kind of possessory credit, even though
fewer than a fifth of these were directed and written by
the same person. On the other hand, some filmmakers
are multi-talented and can reasonably take credit for
more than direction. The director of Once Upon a Time
in Mexico (2003) received a main credit that reads, ‘‘Shot,
Chopped, and Scored by Robert Rodriguez.’’ Rodriguez
(b. 1968) also produced and designed the film, as well as
designing its special effects.
A celebrated star with considerable box-office draw
often negotiates for billing ‘‘above the title’’—that is, an
explicit reference to the position of the performer’s name
in print or poster advertising; in main titles, it signifies
that the name is to precede the film title on the screen.
The process of billing competition has been described by
Danae Clark (1995) as labor fragmentation: above-thetitle billing emphasizes not what screen actors have in
common with one another but how they can be seen as
different, thus isolating them in the bargaining process.
Stars, for example, have large credit billings or names
above the title, while character actors and extras emphatically do not. Credit billings are negotiated by the casting
director in the producer’s stead, and agents representing
actors and technical personnel exercise considerable emotion and energy in securing advantageous ones—this
because billing can be tied to future earning capacity.
Occasionally, pressure may be mounted by technical
personnel or actors themselves to lobby for a colleague’s
screen credit: in 49th Parallel (Michael Powell, 1941), for
example, the British actor Eric Portman (1903–1969)
was to receive second billing, but his screen partners—
Leslie Howard (1893–1943), Raymond Massey
(1896–1983), Laurence Olivier (1907–1989), and
Anton Walbrook (1896–1967)—insisted that he share
main title billing with them.