Talk:The Lords of Flatbush

Oxymoron
"It is a well-known obscure fact"

Oxymoron.

Fair use rationale for Image:Movielordsofflatbush.jpg
Image:Movielordsofflatbush.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

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Fair use rationale for Image:D16660.jpg
Image:D16660.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot 06:55, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Lord's
The title at the IMDB is The Lord's of Flatbush, after a slogan on a jacket. Presumably this has been mentioned before, judging by the hidden text in the article. Before I mention this in the article itself, what's your intention? Are you going to just revert it? This is the kind of article that attracts the kind of editor that racks up hundreds of edits on his - always his - pet topic, I know you. I also suspect you're the kind who would just revert it with a snarky comment - I used to be like you - so in order not to waste my time let's duke it out on the talk page. I get the same amount of edits whether you revert me or not. -Ashley Pomeroy (talk) 16:18, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Couldn't detect any hidden text in the article code. Didn't go through the history, though. Whatever. But you're right, on IMDb, it's still given as "Lord's" – and not only there. This genuinely seems to be / have been an alternative way of spelling the title (however grammatically dubious), so it might merit mention in the article. Anybody know the reason for / history behind it? – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 22:43, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Wording
No changes, but "coming to blows" and "given walking papers"...? What do these phrases mean? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.76.64.126 (talk) 23:49, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
 * "given the walking papers" means Gere was fired. I like the phrase...--80.133.141.234 (talk) 09:07, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Move to "Lord's"?
I saw this movie decades ago and always remember it being called Lord's on the VHS case or whatever it was, and then recently saw it again and was surprised upon reading here that it was just listed as Lords, even though the misspelling was intentional and undoubtedly the actual name of the film. Looking for a consensus to move the page. JesseRafe (talk) 03:08, 1 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Interesting. At first glance, the idea seems ridiculous, because it is grammatically incorrect, but that does seem to be the title.  This was discussed here on talk before, but nothing ever resulted from the discussion.  If the title is "Lord's", that is where the article should be. --- The Old Jacobite The '45  13:39, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I did a very quick search and generally saw covers that did not have the apostrophe, FWIW. Also, per WP:RS/IMDb I hope a more reliable source would be available for this. I'm not really advocating either way, just stating what I observed. DonIago (talk) 13:57, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Curious. This appears to be the title card in the film, as I remember it. And the VHS cover I remember was probably more similar to this but with significantly less Japanese and no re-write of the title as different than the jacket. I am generally surprised at the GISs yielding Lords overwhelmingly, though it seems to be a lot of the same image. JesseRafe (talk) 15:05, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I found another picture that supports my first image actually be in the in-film title card and not just an alternate poster or promotional shot, as the guy on the left must be moving as he's out of focus. Otherwise appears to be exactly the same, so maybe screen-grabbed or whatever a second after the first image. JesseRafe (talk) 15:10, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I feel like a doofus, looking for stills of the title card before checking if the opening sequence, or even, the entire movie is on YouTube. I don't know the protocol of whether the actual movie and its creative makers and their title card trumps the studio's promotional team's art department in their posters and covers to what would be considered official. JesseRafe (talk) 15:21, 1 September 2013 (UTC)


 * A move is premature, but including a mention of the two different titles seems warranted. When it comes to the name for the article remmeber that it does not matter what the official title of the film is. According to WP:AT the article title should be the "common" name, whether or not it is the "official" name. An example given is for the article for the play Romeo and Juliet which they say should not be titled The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. So the question here for the article title is not what is the "official" title, but by what title is the film most commonly known? Google hits is certainly not definitive, but as a start on answering that question I got three times as many hits for "Lords" as I did for "Lord's". In fact, when I used the apostrophe Google asked me "Did you mean: 'lords of flatbush'." 99.192.79.173 (talk) 16:16, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
 * The google hits seem all-in-all irrelevant (especially the auto-suggestion). Or should the 17 million hits for "Pursuit of Happiness" trump the 3 million hits for "Pursuit of Happyness". I'm sure a similar situation would be seen for "She Hate Me". In fact, the similarity between these three films is much stronger than the Romeo and Juliet. If, in fact, the title was meant to be "Lord's" then its agrammaticality is not only intentional for the film, but intentional to illustrate the agrammaticality of the characters and situations or vernacular, as in She Hate Me or Happyness. That is simply not the case for Romeo and Juliet's title. JesseRafe (talk) 16:28, 1 September 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree that "Lord's" is probably used intentionally to indicate their poor English, and with a reliable source that can and should be mentioned in the article. But the issue of the name of the article is a different one. To settle that the question of how the film is most commonly known needs to be determined. Borat, Precious, and The Butler are all common names for articles about films with different official titles, too. 99.192.79.173 (talk) 16:46, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Right, but those are just more examples of the Romeo and Juliet reasoning, not relevant to the case at hand. If there were precedent of moving the page to "Pursuit of Happiness" or "She Hates Me" then that'd be a point, otherwise you're making an exceptionally well-backed-up point that no one is contesting and doesn't really apply here. JesseRafe (talk) 20:55, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Oppose The apostrophe may well just be a stylisation in this case, and it's not immediately clear which version is more common in English language resources i.e. "Lords" or "Lord's". It is worth pointing out that the copyright registration (Search on registration number RE0000870265) has "The lords of Flatbush". The Movie Poster uses "Lords" in both the styling, and more importantly the billing block; the title is slightly obscured in the billing block but you can see there is no apostrophe there. Betty Logan (talk) 17:20, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't see how the billing block or any marketing material means more than the movie itself, in which the title is unambiguously displayed as "Lord's". JesseRafe (talk) 20:55, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
 * The title isn't unambiguously displayed as "Lord's" on the title card you posted; "Lords" is spelt out all in joined up writing signifiying a single word—not a possessive—with an apostrophe added in for effect. In short it is neither "Lords" nor "Lord's" on the title card, and yet it is both. It's a word that does not exist in the English language. This doesn't actually impact on our naming policy though, WP:COMMONNAME, which instructs us to use the variant that most frequently occurs in English language sources. So let's consider those for the moment: all the sources and external links in the article spell it "Lords", apart from IMDB which spells it "Lord's". The American Film Institute and the AMPAS Motion Picture Credits database spell it "Lords" while the British Film Institute spells it "Lord's". There seems to be no uniformity in reliable sources. However, both the billing block on the theatrical poster which offers a non-stylised version of the title and the copyright registration database both spell it "Lords". It does appear that the producers of the film use the "Lords" spelling when writing out the title in plain English, and that use is reflected in third party secondary sources, so that is why I oppose the move. Betty Logan (talk) 22:22, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Comment: I'm torn since I can see both arguments. On the one hand, the official onscreen title is the final arbiter in most cases: I applaud Wikipedia and careful newspaper and magazine editors for noting that the title of the 1978 Superman film is Superman and not the colloquial "Superman: The Movie", which the article addresses as "Superman (also known as Superman: The Movie)." On the other hand, we have "Iron Man 3 (stylized onscreen as Iron Man Three)" since all of Disney/Marvel's own material everywhere but onscreen called it "Iron Man 3." Same with "Sunset Boulevard (stylized onscreen as Sunset Blvd.)." Then again, the deliberate misspelling of "cemetery" is understood in the movie (and Wikipedia article) Pet Sematary (film) and, as noted, The Pursuit of Happyness; one could argue the deliberate misspelling in The Lord's of Flatbush is likewise integral to the title &mdash; although unlike those examples, it's less obvious that it's a deliberate mistake, since so many people misuse apostrophe-s, and so having the literal title might simply create confusion.

Perhaps one compromise solution is to follow the Iron Man 3 and Sunset Boulevard examples and have ''The Lords of Flatbush (stylized onscreen as The Lord's of Flatbush)." That way both issues are addressed, and the reader isn't left hanging with something unexplained. --Tenebrae (talk) 21:16, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment: I, too, can see both/all lines of arguments. The only thing I flat out dispute is the claim that "joined up writing" somehow changes the meaning of the apostrophe's presence. The other stuff Betty Logan comes up with (like the AFI, BFI and AMPAS entries), however, is obviously very useful for this discussion. Still, as long as there is no clear evidence that "Lords" is the most common name by far (and Betty Logan says it herself: "There seems to be no uniformity in reliable sources."), I don't see how the on-screen title can be trumped by anything, let alone WP:AT. So I think we should "default to the default" (and with films, the default should always be the on-screen title, as that's a reliable expression of the makers' intent). If, however, there is strong consensus for the status quo, I'd insist on at least doing something along the lines of what Tenebrae suggests, as no mention of this idiosyncrasy at all strikes me as willfully ignoring an aspect integral to this flick, as it obviously was a "deliberate mistake" on part of the creators, meant to convey something [about the characters / the milieu they live in]. – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 12:56, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Just saw that this was on TV again and reopening this argument. Does the "the on-screen title can't be trumped by anything" argument still stand, or is the consensus to keep the compromise mention, even though the movie (and the gang) are very much intentionally named "Lord's"? JesseRafe (talk) 18:54, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Just a note, I find hilarious this argument over an apostrophe :) Pekoebrew (talk) 21:28, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

Theatrical release poster
Add poster for movie now is just with DVD COVER — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.215.120.159 (talk) 22:15, 28 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Sure! Do you have a file of the poster that complies with the guidelines at Image use policy? JesseRafe (talk) 22:21, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

this poster is good for wikipedia ? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071772/mediaviewer/rm1444425472 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.215.120.159 (talk) 08:41, 30 January 2019 (UTC)  Add Theatrical release poster for avatar of film --2A00:4802:2800:0:0:0:0:D5B (talk) 09:23, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Create a page for Paul Mace
I suggest that actor Paul Mace, who portrayed "Wimpy" in the film, be given his own Wikipedia page. I recently added a redlink to his name in the article to make obvious the fact that this actor does not have a page, so I suggest that one is created for him. Dark Lord of Apes (talk) 23:03, 22 April 2023 (UTC)


 * So...create one? You might want to review WP:YFA first. DonIago (talk) 04:22, 23 April 2023 (UTC)