They really are. They have to be short(ish), catchy, and relevant. What do we call this movie? Before we even got to thinking about a proper title, the movie’s first working title was simply Urban Farms. I would say that, in the end, there is still a non-zero chance the movie’s going to end up with that title. Not a big chance - just non-zero.

I started googling “farm quotes” and “poems about farms” and other various blurbs related to the subject matter, to see if perhaps I could find a small, catchy gem of wisdom in one of them. A few quotes showed up on most sites, including: “farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field” by Eisenhower, and: “the first farmer was the first man. All historic nobility rests on the possession and use of land” by Emerson. Nice quotes - but no titles there. And it was thus for essentially every quote I found.

We started pinning our hopes on finding something in an interview with someone, or from an article, or something that was said during a shoot. So far, though, nothing satisfactory has emerged. This photo I took, from the fridge at Jim’s place, has a nice ring but doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for our movie. I, however, would certainly see a documentary called Hand Milking Lessons with Roy. I think.

Right now, as any loyal reader of this blog knows, the movie is called (On) Common Ground. But, besides sharing its name with a local magazine, it’s just a little too cheesy. We thought we’d hit paydirt when Food Chains emerged from a conversation, but after the excited subsided we realized it’s not really all that relevant or accurate. An early candidate was A Growing Movement, but there’s just no getting around how ridiculous that is.

So what now? I asked MetaFilter for advice, which yielded some exciting possibilities. The Seedy Part of Town is pretty clever. Farm and the City is also clever, but I don’t really like titles that riff on other ones, unless they’re utter genius. There was also The Concrete Jungle or various iterations like The Concrete Farm/garden. The best so far was probably The Edible City (though I’m not sold on the the), especially as we hope to feature Alice Waters’ Edible Schoolyard somewhere in the film, if we can get access to it.

That’s where we stand. If anyone has a brilliant idea, please contact me. You will get your name in the credits.