MovieChat Forums > Outrageous Fortune (1987) Discussion > Could the opening titles have LESS to do...

Could the opening titles have LESS to do with the movie?


If you watched the opening credits and decided to switch the movie off you would probably go away thinking the movie was about two go-getter eighties business women fighting the way to the top of the fashion world or the fashion magazine world or something to do with fashion because all we see is a montage of fashion photographs zipping by. What do shots of women wearing gold bracelets and high heels have to do with a movie about two actresses (they're not EVEN models they're actresses) getting involved in hair-raising adventures and espionage? What was the director thinking with this sequence? It's a shame cause it's a great song but the imagery is just ridiculously unrelated to the film.

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It's about their contrasting styles. The photos are of onservative, mostly beige outfits for Long's character, more colorful and attention-getting stuff for Midler's character. Some (if not all) of the clothes they show during the credits are things they actually wear during the movie. I'm sure there have been other "opposites attract" movies that do similar things with the credits (Lord knows there have been plenty of other "opposites attract" movies).

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It was the 80s and all opening credits were crap back then. At the time, people probably thought it modern and cool. I like that they feature the clothes they wear in the movie

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Hey now, Sally Cruikshank credit sequences were always pretty cool. But yeah, not a lot of beautifully designed credits from the 1980s that I can recall. Give me Saul Bass anytime.

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Or Kyle Cooper

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It was the 80s and all opening credits were crap back then. At the time, people probably thought it modern and cool.


I've noticed films of the 1980s get a bad rap in general, when they are actually some of the most fun, entertaining, funny-without-today's-toilett-humor, films ever made!

I find whatever the genre, the 1980s did it better---comedies were funnier, fantasies were more fantastical, dramas were more original, film scores were more moving, romance was more sensual, thrillers were more thrilling, the special effects were more prop and less CGI, and the casts were a whole lot classier, better looking, and with better style than we see in most any film from the 21st century, except for period-pieces (films set in the past).

There was a wonderfully relaxed feel to films of the 1980 that we haven't seen since the 1990s! And I think that's because in this, the 21st century, film-makers think that the more "modern" they make something, i.e. the more processed it seems, the better it will be, when just the opposite is true. So, I usually love 1980s film openings. That being said, I agree with the OP--I was very disappointed in this one.

Please excuse typos/funny wording; I use speech-recognition that doesn't always recognize!

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The credits in OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE always struck me as being part of the "formula" for many of Touchstone's most successful films during this period, including but not limited to the ones starring Bette Midler. Those films, plus SPLASH, PRETTY WOMAN, and others, depict characters who go through major changes and/or rags-to-riches stories, and who are featured at some point going out and getting all new clothes and/or coming into wealth.

The "fashionable" presentation in these OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE opening credits (plus the scene in NM in which Shelley and Bette both get new clothes) seemed cut from the same cloth as Julia Roberts' entire arc in PRETTY WOMAN, Bette's slender and "high fashion" comeuppance via Helen Slater's designs in RUTHLESS PEOPLE, Darryl Hannah "going shopping" in SPLASH, both Bettes' preoccupation with luxury clothes and shopping in BIG BUSINESS, Bette's broadway success (and consequent new money, new clothes, new apartment, etc) in BEACHES, et al.

Touchstone Pictures seemed to understand the viable hook of 80's/early 90's consumerism, as it was somehow worked into the fabric of many of their most successful pictures.

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