The Sentence Brian Duffield Kept Using to Sum Up Whalefall
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Whalefall is out in theaters, adapted from Daniel Kraus's novel and directed by Brian Duffield for 20th Century Studios and Imagine Entertainment. Duffield had a running joke he used to describe the film: that "men would rather get swallowed by a [...]" — a line whose missing ending is carrying an unusual amount of weight.
It is the shortest possible logline, and a reminder of how much a joke can do that a synopsis cannot. The shape of the sentence tells you what kind of film you're in for before it finishes. Whether that counts as a director being honest about his own premise or neatly dodging the question is a judgment each listener gets to make.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
I'll take a director with a joke over a director with a synopsis. Anyone who can compress their film into one sentence probably knows exactly what they made.
A joke flatters a film. What plays as the funniest thing in an interview can be the thinnest thing on screen — the gag is not the movie.