I was reading this article today and thinking how I've had to learn so much American pop culture and language over the years in order to understand films and TV. I suppose it's because Americans have all the money,* but you never hear of things being changed for UK release because the American wording wouldn't make sense to us. I think here they assume that we'll just guess at what it means and leave it in. American publishers and film distributors seem to have a staggeringly low opinion of the American public; things like The Madness of King George III being renamed just 'Madness of King George' because they thought people would wonder why they hadn't heard of the first two episodes**. They seem perfectly willing to release a film like Memento or LA Confidential, confident that people will be able to keep up with their twisty turny narratives, but they don't trust the same people to be able to figure out that this is a squash preferring, bafflingly, to call it a melon.
It's especially baffling seeing as it's a very English film, and you can't grow melons here. But hey, we are a small nation film revenue wise, although if they were only interested in the big markets then they'd do well to shoot their films in Hindi as well and put in elaborate musical numbers.
-Ben
*When it comes to film making and distribution, I don't want to get into the broader argument again.
**There are much better examples than this but I can't be bothered to find any, sorry.
