Was watching From (horror series from MGM) and one of the episodes had the credits listed in a strange order. I know there’s some politicking in who gets listed in what order, but this was odd because it was for very minor parts.
There’s a gaggle of 7 scary children who are basically there to look creepy, and while they technically have speaking parts, they all just say the same gibberish word over and over. In the credits for S02E10, after the one guest star, the next screen lists (among other cast) “ghoulish child” #5 and #7, then the screen after that lists #2, 3, 4, and 6 (one of the kids is called “ghastly child” and I guess is more main, though I couldn’t really see a difference).
Any idea what could cause this? Could kids 5 and 7 be related to the director or something? What possible reason could there be for listing such minor parts out of order? And if they wanted a couple kids featured more prominently, why wouldn’t they just call those kids 2 and 3 instead of 5 and 7?
edit: here’s a link to the imdb cast page
I haven’t seen the show, but my guess is that the script numbers the kids in order of appearance – because it would be really confusing to get stuff ready if they weren’t numbered in order of appearance. Imagine reading the script and seeing a first mention of the kids like:
Ghoulish child #2 darts across the hall and disappears.
You wonder, “Was there a #1?” Then you see more ghoulish kids on the pages: 4, 7, 1, 5. Are there numbers 2 and 3? 6 or 8? How many costumes do we need, and are theses kids going to appear together? Were some cut? Did the script editor forget something?
If they are in order of appearance, then the kids with bigger/speaking parts might get higher billing, but they wouldn’t get earlier numbers since non-speaking/smaller parts appeared earlier.
Hm, so maybe they counted each time the kids got to say the gibberish word and listed them in that order with the highest word count first? I guess that’d be one way to do it.
The order and way actors appear in the credits is, as you alluded to, often part of the negotiations and contracts. Seems like these kids had better contacts than the others. That could be because they have more experience, their parts were supposed to be more prominent and changed (although I doubt that with these character names) or they simply had the better agent(s).
Alphabetical based on surname perhaps?
Nice idea I hadn’t thought of but no alphabetizing by first or last name-- I edited the imdb page into the post
