Bring On the Job Offers
I've got a thingamajig up at McSweeney's today: Favorite Gerund Movie Titles, Un-Gerunded. Check it out, 'n' shit.
Update: Since there's been some question as to whether these gerund movie titles acutally were gerunds or participles, I did a little research. From the Online Writing Lab (OWL):
A gerund is a verbal that ends in -ing and functions as a noun. The term verbal indicates that a gerund, like the other two kinds of verbals, is based on a verb and therefore expresses action or a state of being. However, since a gerund functions as a noun, it occupies some positions in a sentence that a noun ordinarily would, for example: subject, direct object, subject complement, and object of preposition.On participles:
A participle is a verbal that is used as an adjective and most often ends in -ing or -ed. ... However, since they function as adjectives, participles modify nouns or pronouns. ... Present participles end in -ing.One could argue that "Drowning Mona" could be interpreted as functioning as a participle plus a subject—the drowning Mona—but I think most people would agree it's functioning as a noun—the act of drowning Mona (or the act of gleaming the cube, or the act of boxing Helena and making a piece of shit movie about it).
So participle movie titles would include The Running Man, The Crying Game, The Killing Fields; if the same movies were gerunds, we'd have Running the Man, Crying the Game, and Killing the Fields. Pphhht.
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