Talk:Ordinary People

Novel article

There needs to be a separate article on the novel, so I'm creating it. Daniel Case 23:02, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Contradiction

From this article:

However, all of the pool scenes were filmed on location at Libertyville High School, which was believed to have superior aquatic facilities.

From Lake Forest High School (Illinois):

The 1980 film Ordinary People is set at Lake Forest High School, and parts of the film were shot at LFHS, altough the swim team scenes were filmed at Lake Forest College.

We need an authoritative source on this one. Daniel Case 06:58, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

See Talk: Lake Forest High School (Illinois) The PKPerson 03:25, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Location for school scenes

The sentence:

"Libertyville High School was originally considered as the location for the school scenes, but it was decided that the LFHS campus was too beautiful with its lakeside setting to be believable[citation needed], and the decision was made to film at Lake Forest High School because it was more realistic and appropriate for the story."

doesn't make sense. If it were to say "..it was decided that the Libertyville HS was too beautiful with its lakeside setting..." that would make sense, I suppose. The original author should review the sentence and ensure that it is saying clearly what the author intended.

Tony 15:12, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Ordinary99.jpg

Image:Ordinary99.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 19:10, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:OrdinaryPeople.jpg

Image:OrdinaryPeople.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 19:10, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Continuity

Is this section relevant? RJFJR (talk) 18:25, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

• When Karen and Conrad are at the restaurant, a glass leaps across the table repeatedly between shots.
• When Karen and Conrad are at the restaurant, the straw in Karen hands starts unwrapped, then becomes wrapped, and then suddenly jumps into the Coke.
• The golf scene is set on the 18th hole of the golf course but they are seen leaving the practice green (multiple holes in the putting surface are visible).
• When Conrad enters the elevator to Dr. Berger's office for the first time, his hair changes length and style between shots.
• When Karen and Conrad are at the restaurant and Karen is leaving, the Cokes have disappeared from the table.
• When Conrad is crying in the car there the tear running down his cheek disappears and reappears between shots.
• While Conrad is watching the swim meet and fighting outside of school, he has a red plaid shirt under a gray sweater. When he arrives back at his grandmother's house and the subsequent scenes, he has a white with thin blue stripes shirt and a beige sweater.

It adds interest to the article, of a fun, verifiable, and non-harmful kind, so yes. I might put it back in myself, but I've got another issue with this article to attend to myself. Thanks for posting it to the Talk page; some people just ax out whole sections and slip away without having the courage or courtesy to explain themselves. --63.25.14.133 (talk) 11:32, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I removed this section. The English was garbled,and it looked like a cut/paste from IMDB. It made the article look like a trivia page. It is useless and unverified.--72.154.193.191 (talk) 18:50, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. It is not part of Wikipedia's mission to add "fun" interest to articles, and it violates WP:Trivia. To discuss this sort of thing, go to www.nitcentral.com Nightscream (talk) 14:40, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Reception: Reversion and Undoing of same, re: Oscar reference in Feb 2009 "Batman Confidential"

I just wrote a rather long message to User: Spidaman23, on his Talk page, regarding his questionable revert of my addition to the "Reception" section. I meant to come here and write the definitive defense to end all debate before it starts . . . but I overrated myself, and now I'm tired. Hopefully I'll get to it tomorrow or the next day . . . if it's even necessary. For now, I'll just say:

29-year-old movie . . . Oscar controversy . . . an unexpected reference to all that in a comic book dated this very month (Feb. 2009) from one of the comic industry's (AND the silver screen's) most popular characters . . . I thought it was a no-brainer of noteworthiness, myself! An example of how memorable it all was. --63.25.253.126 (talk) 16:25, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Okay. Any further reversions that do not have an explanation here on this talk page may be treated as vandalism. There may be a request for page semi-protection in the near future.

Seriously? "Any further reversions that do not have an explanation here on this talk page may be treated as vandalism"? Not very Wiki-like. 38.109.88.194 (talk) 19:58, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

If you don't think the reference to the Oscars for OP in a Feb 2009 publication is relevant (a reference that explains the exact controversy, through dialogue of fictional characters, as effectively as this non-fictional Wikipedia article), explain why not. Do you think the information about the Oscars is relevant to OP in the first place? Or is it because it's a comic book?!? Or is there some other reason?!?

I say . . . What better way to illustrate that the 1980 Best Director award was controversial, and isn't just some contributor's opinion? If you are not willing to explain yourself, do not be surprised when no one defends your actions 63.25.97.165 (talk) 09:42, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, so far, nobody who attempted to remove this item has bothered to come to the Talk page and explain themselves. They have not answered the questions above, nor have they shown any understanding of why I added this item to the article in the first place, why I continue to think it's perfectly relevant and quite interesting. Folks, I don't care what you put in your edit summary, these summaries are invariably statements of opinion (i.e., "It's not interesting", etc.) If you can't take 10 minutes to even check the Talk page (I always try to explain any cutting I do on the relevant Talk pages) and accept the invitation to a dialogue, I'm going to treat you like a vandal and simply put the item back in. I'm not going to chase you down to your user pages anymore, either. You know what the rules are (I assume you should know Wikipedia very well, if you're so bold as to chop large sections out of articles). You know where the discussions are supposed to be held. Here. If you won't do that, I'll treat you like a vandal.

As stated above, I found it astonishing to read this reference to a 1980 movie, and the 1980 Oscars, in a comic book dated February 2009. It isn't random non sequitur of the sort you often find on Family Guy-related articles. This section of the comic story actually explains the general gist of the Oscar controversy. It's probably more attention than Ordinary People has been paid for years, now. These unusual connections are a large part of what Wikipedia is all about. Remember what Wikipedia is not: A paper encyclopedia. We are not in competition with them. 63.25.20.83 (talk) 03:57, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

This information is anecdotal at best and contains far too much detail. Additionally, including "Interestingly" overuse of quotes/nicknames such as "killer clown", "throwaway" does not add anything. At best, this should contain a one or two sentence reference to the comic and issue number. And what's with all the <br> tags in this section? Very hard to follow. Sottolacqua (talk) 04:51, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

The info has been added and subsequently removed by at least four different editors. Perhaps it would be a good idea to try and establish consensus about whether the info should be in the article before adding it again. I personally think this is worth mentioning, provided that it's written in an encyclopedic tone, and suitably referenced. decltype 08:30, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I would imagine its the same unregistered editor adding it using different IP addresses. All of them are similar – perhaps the user is at a college campus. Sottolacqua (talk) 11:57, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, definitely. I was referring to the fact that four different editors have removed the info. decltype 12:08, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you both for coming to the Talk page to discuss your opinions.
Sottolacqua, I think you might need to check your definition of "anecdotal": The section in question reports on the content of a major publication, and includes the issue number. What's "anecdotal" about that? And as far as I can tell, going by the WP: pages, it is not "original research" by any definition. What did you mean in your use of these terms?
As for "too much detail", that's your opinion, and you're entitled to it. I disagree.
As for "Interestingly," . . . how is that different from "Notably"? There is always some element of opinion, from the decision to create the article on the given topic in the first place, and so forth. But the item could easily be written without the term "interestingly" in it. If you removed the whole paragraph because of things like "interestingly", and "killer clown", I don't think you're exactly being intellectually honest.
"Killer clown" was used -- ONCE, I remind you -- only to avoid a clunky sentence like “Batman . . . gets himself imprisoned in a cell right next to The Joker, after The Joker has been incarcerated for the first time.” I thought it better to avoid that. Characters in the story refer to him as "the killer clown". I also thought it might help remind the 12 to 14 people left in the civilized world who don't know who The Joker is. ;) But, again, that can be changed easily without removing the item. Did you even try rewriting the paragraph to fix your little objections? I wonder why not. Well, don't worry, I'm going to do it for you.
Why on earth would you complain about the use of "Matches"? Did you understand that the character, Batman, was in disguise as a criminal known as "Matches" Malone? It's a character in a crime story; nicknames are common in this genre. Then again, I only referred to him as "Matches" twice, so what's the problem here? When you are referring to the actions of a character who is in disguise as another character, is it not proper to use quotation marks?
As for your contention that “"throwaway" does not add anything” . . . Sure. I'll go along with that. It's gone.
None of your objections seem reason enough to delete the paragraph in question. Wouldn't it have been better to post to the article's Talk page, "Here's what I think you need to change . . . ", if you couldn't bear to try fixing it yourself? Going by your User Talk page, it seems like you spend a LOT of your time on Wikipedia deleting other people's work. Even making the same mistake regarding the definitions of "anecdotal" and "original research" to justify these deletions. If you really hate fancruft and like pissing off fanboys, check out Star Wars opening crawl. Or just about any article on any popular rock star. There's a lot more out there that's a lot worse.

Decltype: I appreciate your opinion. As for your contention that the information has been removed by "four" different editors, I think you might be counting DWShaw (who was pretty rude about it) twice. And I don't really care how many people immediately delete the section with little more than a snarky statement of opinion in the Edit Summary by way of explanation.
Which reminds me: I have never pretended to be more than one user. My IP changes every few hours -- you can see that on the User: Spidaman23's Talk page. I have no idea why. Perhaps it's because I'm using a dial-up connection? Dunno.
And that leaves my formatting on this very Talk page -- the line breaks, which apparently contributed to Sottalacqua's decision to revert my addition to the article(?!?) Well, I thought it made more sense for the same person's different comments to stay on the same plane. I thought using the colons to indent would create the impression I was more than one editor, or, worse, pretending to be. I was trying to avoid that confusion. Maybe it didn't work. Anyway, Sottalaqua added the colons to indent my later remarks, not me.
Thanks for getting involved.
--63.25.236.247 (talk) 19:09, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Just for the record, I was counting DWShaw, Spidaman23, Sottolacqua and an anon (74.56.142.213). But that's not important. Now I must admit that I too feel that there is too much detail. As I see it, the gist of it are these two quotes by Joker: "Wait a second. That wasn't my life. That was Ordinary People! (...)" and "Did Redford rob Scorsese of the Oscar that year, or what?". And yes, using a dial-up connection is likely to change your IP address since a new IP is assigned dynamically by your ISP when you connect. decltype 20:08, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I removed the Batman comic paragraph. It is unsourced and I have seen no proof or verifiable claims of any Oscar controversy of that year.--72.154.193.191 (talk) 18:54, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

The Batman comic section itself was sourced, but you're right -- I've never heard that there was any morning-after madness over Scorsese getting ripped off or whatever -- never heard of it 'til I read this article, that is. As long as the whole section about the Oscars is gone, I'm satisfied.

This article sure seems to attract a lot of minimalists! I wonder why.

--Ben Culture (talk) 23:30, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Production

I moved the following unsourced material here until it can be sourced:

Robert Redford had the film rights to the novel. He chose to direct since he had wanted the opportunity to direct a feature for some time. While looking for a producer he began planning the various scenes. Eventually, Redford gave the project to producer Ronald L. Schawary, who also served as unit production manager.

The film was shot in and around Lake Forest, Highland Park and Lake Bluff, and the school scenes were shot in Lake Forest High School. However, all of the pool scenes were filmed at Lake Forest College, because the pool at Lake Forest High School was not large enough to move the filming equipment into the balcony and bleachers.

Conrad's lunch with Karen was filmed at the Original Pancake House in Wilmette, Illinois. A photograph of Redford, taken during production for the film, hangs above the cash register at the front entrance. Cal and Beth's lunch scene was filmed at the Zodiac Restaurant in Neiman-Marcus' Northbrook Court location. Nightscream (talk) 14:07, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Mention of its lack of Editing nomination

Where it calls this film "the first, and so far, only, Best Picture winner without a Film Editing nomination (or win)" is incorrect. With early Best Picture winners like Grand Hotel winning its sole Best Picture nomination, I'm pretty positive that it's not the very first to win without a nomination in editing (though it's the only one to have won under such circumstances since then). It's certainly not the first or only one to win without WINNING editing either, as I can off the top of my head think of examples like No Country for Old Men, Million Dollar Baby and A Beautiful Mind off the top of my head from just the past decade. I'll edit it, more accurately, as "[i]t is the last Best Picture winner without a Film Editing nomination." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.8.199.253 (talk) 06:16, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

The Paramount Pictures logo in Ordinary People

The logo for Paramount Pictures is shown at the start of the movie, but unlike most of its other movies, it is not shown after the end credits. Why? --E2e3v6 (talk) 23:33, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Plot Alert

The plot in this article is too long. I say, somebody should shorten it to three or four paragraphs. See you next time. Feedback please.--E2e3v6 (talk) 23:40, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

I agree. It's been almost 2 months since E2e3v6 wrote this, and there have been no objections. I've edited down the plot. It's by no means perfect, but I was striving for a more neutral style. The original style was written like a paper submitted to a film class. I can only describe it as "over-written." Here's one example: "her facade is momentarily shattered by a moment of sheer pain at the magnitude of her losses, but she struggles and semi-successfully restores the mask of denial." A great description: I'd give it an "A" if a student turned it in to me. But it's a little much for Wikipedia. The Plot section should briefly summarize the film, not go into detail about the emotional agony of a character. 170.145.0.100 (talk) 22:16, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Location Wrong

Kind of difficult for the father to commute every day from Illinois to Manhattan, wouldn't you think?  ;) Maybe he takes a Lear Jet. Except - they show him taking the Long Island Rail Road. The family lives in Lake Forest, QUEENS, in New York, which is an "upper-middle class" planned community set in the middle of Queens. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.196.248.241 (talk) 18:33, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Not sure what you are on about. Both the book and the film are set in Illinois. From what I can find no scenes were filmed in NY but even if they were lots (some might say most) films are shot in cities other than the one that they are set in. Gone with the Wind wasn't filmed in Georgia and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem wasn't filmed within a 1000 miles of Gunnison. It looks as though there is nothing to change in the article at this time. MarnetteD | Talk 18:57, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Addendum six years later: It's too bad we don't have a production section for this article, because I have distinctly remembered that the movie uses a great deal of locations in Lake Forest, Illinois: Conrad's school is a nearby private school (or at least its pool), and the house is right around the corner from where Tom Cruise's family lives in Risky Business.

Perhaps the train scenes did use the LIRR; Metra may not have given permission to the filmmakers, but as both they and the filmmakers knew, there are plenty of other commuter railroads that would have. Daniel Case (talk) 19:18, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Requested move 26 January 2017

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: No move of the film's article or the dab page, move Ordinary People (song). There's no agreement that other topics challenge the film as primary topic. However, moving the John Legend song seems uncontroversial as there are other articles on songs of the same name. Cúchullain ^t/c 18:34, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

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• Ordinary People → Ordinary People (1980 film)
• Ordinary People (disambiguation) → Ordinary People
• Ordinary People (song) → Ordinary People (John Legend song)

– With the amount of articles with the term "Ordinary People", I have determined that there is no primary topic and that all these pages need proper disambiguation. 2601:8C:4001:DCB9:5174:1F92:D639:AB5E (talk) 16:34, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

• Support per second part of Primary Topic. The song has to be moved anyway. In ictu oculi (talk) 17:43, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose moving the film and DAB page. It is clearly the primary topic: even if you discount the recent spike it got because of Mary Tyler Moore's death; it gets much more pageviews than any other article with the name Ordinary People (82%), and I don't think the above claim that a movie that won the Academy Award for Best Picture does not have much long-term significance rings true. The John Legend song should be moved though, it's incomplete disambiguation. Nohomersryan (talk) 19:46, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose per Nohomers; numbers are staggering, here's what they look like without the spike [1] The anon's main concern is the number of pages with the "Ordinary People" title; there may be plenty, but this is why God invented disambiguation pages and WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Ribbet32 (talk) 19:32, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - The film adaptation is the most significant and most viewed out of other titles of the same name. No objection to dabbing the John Legend song, nonetheless, as there is Ordinary People (Clay Walker song). George Ho (talk) 10:27, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose pageviews discounting the recent spike indicate that the film is primary.  InsertCleverPhraseHere  22:55, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.