It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That <i> -ing</i>

In its endless quest for a little zing, Hollywood has developed a thing for -ing .

Studios and filmmakers have embraced commonly used but little understood grammatical constructions known as gerund phrases, resulting in a growing number of two-word titles of the “Raising Arizona” ilk.

Upcoming are “Surviving Picasso,” “Feeling Minnesota,” “Meeting Ourselves,” “Becoming Rebecca,” “Stealing Beauty” and “Hurting Dannile.”

Recent entries include “Being Human,” “Guarding Tess,” “Killing Zoe,” “Losing Isaiah” and “Trading Mom.” (And Daily Variety recently reported that a “Shooting Elvis” is in the works.)

Gerund phrases were used for “Boxing Helena,” “Eating Raoul,” “Leaving Normal,” “Raising Cain,” “Regarding Henry,” “Splitting Heirs” and “Trading Places.”

Time out for a grammar lesson.

Moorpark College English professor Michael Strumpf, who fields as many as 400 calls a week on his 25-year-old National Grammar Hotline, explains gerunds: “A word that used to be a verb which always ends in -ing and which always does the work of a noun. A gerund phrase is a group of words normally starting with a gerund and normally ending with a noun or pronoun. The smallest number of words in a gerund phrase must be two.” (Examples: “Seeing movies,” “rubbing elbows.”)

“There’s something about these titles that is mysterious,” observes Douglas Cazort, a visiting professor of English at Pepperdine University. “A title like ‘Raising Arizona’ makes you wonder what the movie’s about . . . whereas ‘Custer’s Last Stand’ doesn’t leave you much to think about.”

Adds one grammar-conscious studio executive: “When you use gerunds, they’re active. There’s a rhythm to these titles that promises some kind of action.”

New Line’s theatrical marketing president, Chris Pula--whose studio is behind “Feeling Minnesota”--says a film’s title has to pass the cocktail party test. “It’s always bad to have a title that’s so complicated . . . so unmemorable or so unpronounceable that you can’t say it at a cocktail party.”

Dennis Baron, professor of English at the University of Illinois, says studios are “looking for titles that fit a familiar pattern . . . or that break a pattern to catch your attention. The point is to have a title that works. You can’t hold a title to grammatical restrictions.”

The just-wrapped “Feeling Minnesota”--with Keanu Reeves and Cameron Diaz starring for Danny DeVito’s Jersey Films--received its title from screenwriter-director Steven Baigelman, who took it from the Soundgarden song “Outshined.”

“I just liked the way it sounded,” Baigelman says of “Feeling Minnesota.” “It evoked a feeling of being stuck, of needing to get out of someplace, and a general feeling of malaise.”

Did he know he was using a gerund? “What does that mean?” he responds. “Can you spell that for me?”

Screenwriter-director Steve Tackitt says the title “Becoming Rebecca” replaced a working clunker, “The Choreworker.”

Tackitt, who starts shooting his low-budget film in Los Angeles next month, finally hit upon the new title after realizing that his main character becomes transformed from Becky the girl to Rebecca the woman. He also was influenced by the 1992 Castle Hill title “Becoming Colette.”

Could Hollywood be slouching toward -ing burnout?

Says Baron: “First, they’ll want it to sound like ‘X,’ and then they’ll say it sounds too much like ‘X.’ When you get enough of them, they’ll move on to something else.

“Some executive is going to be saying, ‘Enough of the -ings !’ ”