Headline Writers at Loss for Puns for Upcoming Cloverfield Reviews
Across the nation’s newsrooms, distressed copy editors are working feverishly around the clock to find puns for Cloverfield related headlines. Sources indicate little headway has been made and several newspapers have signed a petition for Paramount to change the film’s title to something more accessible to puns and play on words, such as Monstrous, Wreck, Colossus or Go-Go Monster Stomp.
“Cloverfield. C’mon what kind of dumbass title is that? I just don’t know how to make it work,” said a frustrated Matt Saddle, copy editor for the Orlando Sentinel. “For a positive review, I so far have ‘A 4-Leaf Clover of a Movie’ and for a poor review I got ‘Cloverfield Sucks Balls, Dawg.’”
According to Saddle and other copy editors contacted around the country, there is a little known pact between movie studios and the media that essentially forces all film titles to include words that allow for lazy pun-heavy headlines.
“Take Mad Money for instance, where boom, off the top of my head I can give you ‘Mad Funny’ or ‘Bad Money.’ This ability for puntastic headline writing is my gift. My gift to the world. And Cloverfield is killing me here, man.” said an unshaven, armpit stained Saddle as he crushed an empty coffee cop and tossed it among a pile of crumpled pieces of paper with rejected headlines.
This crisis came about after the film’s producers refused up until a month before release to acknowledge that the movie’s title was indeed Cloverfield. “Yeah, I can create a decent headline off the top of my head, but in reality we need at least three months of prep time to deliver a truly inspiring piece of punnery,” said Saddle after smashing an empty coffee pot against the wall in the break room. “Take my headline for Spider-man 3, ‘All Webbed Up and No Place to Go.’ It took me 4 and a half months to nail that. It’s a frickin’ work of art. But since [producer] J.J. Abrams apparently gets his jollies by toying with the audience, we didn’t get that prep time–plus the dork goes and picks a title that doesn’t make any sense. Well let’s just hope they change the title or otherwise I don’t know how people will find a proper ‘in’ to the reviews without a pun in the headline.”
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