What's in a Name

Ever had to name a baby? That can be a pretty gruelling task... trying to come up with a name that pleases everybody.

We've had to name babies. And we've also had to name characters for our screenplays. It's not always easy to find the right name. Especially if you work as collaborators, as we do.

Take for instance, the name "Paige" in our film Dear J. Someone (of us -- can't really remember who) chose the name as we were first working on the script. Then later, we considered using the name "Ruth" instead. We even made the change and did a read of that version of the script. But something just didn't seem right. The character was Paige, not Ruth!

For our newest screenplay, we have to go with Russian-type names. So, we're using a lot of k's in the spellings... Jakob, Nikolai, Pepchik... to name a few.

Shakespeare may have believed that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet; but then again, did he ever try changing the names of his most famous duo, Romeo and Juliet? Maybe he could have used Rocko and Janice? Ralph and Janie? We suspect that even Mr. Shakespeare (for all his talk on roses) wouldn't have been able to stomach those name changes.