Johnny:

Like the majority of campus and a hefty portion of alums, we love Tit Head. For some, it’s a beautiful excuse to expose themselves and their less ‘appropriate’ ideas. For others, it’s an invigorating excuse to sit/stand, slightly intoxicated, and cheer and jeer their peers’ movies. And for everyone, it’s an excuse to fill Harris auditorium and enjoy a film festival that comes only once a year to one place.

The mainstay of Tit Head is, obviously, the films. But alongside the films are several important factors, such as the host, the offbeat awards ceremony and audience participation. A balance between these areas is all needed to keep Tit Head an event, and not just a rushed screening of films. This year was an event, but the amount of films shown—32 total—many of which exceeded the already lengthy five-minute limit, makes the future of Tit Head seem destined for unwelcome change.

Because digital cameras and editing are the unanimous choice for students now, larger chunks of film can be edited in shorter amounts of time, by relative novices. While this development is good, as the more movies submitted in the vein of Tit Head, the better, it also could lead to an overcrowding of the film festival if new rules aren’t adapted to measure the cementation of Tit Head’s atmosphere.

If the organizers stuck fast to the five-minute time limit, minutes could be shaved off of movies that everyone already thinks are too long. Even better, a 4-minute time limit could be adopted. The best films of Tit Head (and the “best” terrible films), usually fall well under this mark, already. It is in the drunk and tweaked interest of Tit Head to be short and sweet, not long and opining.

Furthermore, if organizers held and stuck to a deadline, there would not be a resulting shortage of films. Instead, people who truly felt strongly about Tit Head would know to finish their movie on time. And, the resulting pool would be lower, giving time for the host to perform their job and keeping the audience interested long enough to stick around for arguably the best part of the night—the awards, both traditional and quirky. This year, very few audience members were left at 11:30. Next year, if there were five to ten more minutes of films, and the one-intermissioned, no-bathroom-break, no-beer-allowed event went until after midnight, how many people would stick around for the whole event?

It is about the night, not the films. Do the right thing.

Chloe:

After this year’s Titular Head, the masses cried out “that sucked” and “that was awesome” and “man, that was just weird” like they do every year. What’s strange about this year is that for one reason or another, students think there is a way in which we can “fix” Tit Head.

Fix? Fix Tit Head? Fix what about Tit Head? Okay, granted the show ran a bit long, security not allowing people to leave Harris was wack and the fact that they weren’t giving out soda was unfortunate. Personally, I think the fact that Harris was packed far beyond capacity, despite the draconian no-peeing rules, and the nearly three-hour run time, makes it the most successful Tit Head in a long, long time.

If anything needs to be changed, it’s not really in a rulebook. We can’t say, “Oh man, whoever is running Tit Head CAN’T let people turn their movies in late.” Why not? It’s their prerogative. Having movies turned in late doesn’t necessarily have any effect on the quality of the film, it just has an effect on the amount of sleep Mark Sullivan gets. The idea that a film can’t be submitted late is similar to the idea of a paper being submitted late—except I don’t think professors get drunk and rowdy in order to judge papers (but you never know).

Well, we could cut the amount of movies shown. How? The chairperson arbitrarily decides which he/she doesn’t think should go in? Half the point of Tit Head is to make TERRIBLE films. The other half is to make awesome films. But the real point is that anybody can submit anything and then EVERYBODY gets to boo it.

Let’s just address the length of Tit Head for a second. So many films were submitted that it ran for three hours. Some students may not know this, but Tit Head used to have a lot of talking in between films, a lot of banter with the audience. But so many people were so excited about submitting films that we barely got to enjoy the comedic genius of Margie Scribner.

Well, the movies could be shorter. Oh wait, there’s already a five-minute time limit. Just because you think your film can capture the hearts and souls and attention of a crowd of 500 drunk people doesn’t mean that it actually can. Nobody’s can. Five minutes is an extraordinary amount of time for anybody to pay attention to. So I guess the answer is really self-gov that shit and when it says five-minute time limit, stick to it.

Mostly, we just can’t pretend that Tit Head is a serious endeavor. There may be a space at Grinnell for a real film contest that doesn’t involve gold spray-painted items from Goodwill as its prizes, but that space is not Tit Head, so we should stop pretending it is.