Why Do Movie Trailers Come Before a Film and Not After?

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Piper. I’m from Reno, Nevada.

And I’m calling about a question for movie trailers.

And why do you watch them before the movie?

Because the camping trailer you tow behind the car.

Yeah, that’s a good question.

So you’re sitting in the movie wondering if you’re watching everything backward.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, like you don’t push a trailer, you pull it.

Well, Piper, that is an excellent question, and a lot of adults have wondered that same thing.

Because as you said, a trailer goes behind a vehicle, right?

So why would the movie trailer be up at the top of the show?

Exactly.

Well, there’s some history behind that that’s really interesting.

Do you usually watch movies at home, or do you go to a theater?

Usually at home.

Mm—

Yeah, and it wasn’t always like that.

In the early 20th century, you know, you didn’t have HBO or Netflix or anything like that.

And so you would have to actually go to the movie theater.

And this was a big deal back in those days, Piper.

I mean, you would go and you would watch, say, at least two films.

You would pay your ticket and you could go in and you could see a double feature.

So that would mean that they would see one movie.

And then after the movie, there would be like a little preview of coming attractions.

And then they would show the second movie.

The preview of coming attractions in between those movies followed the first movie.

It trailed the first movie.

And that’s why it started to become called a trailer.

And then after people figured out that, wow, maybe we better put the preview of coming attractions at the beginning of the movie,

Then they started doing that because, you know, maybe people left before the second movie.

So they started putting it at the beginning of the first film, but they still called it a trailer.

That name just hung on.

It was like a little fossil or something, you know?

Yeah.

One interesting thing is that the trailer name stuck for about 100 years.

They switched from the end of the movie to the beginning very quickly after movies were invented.

So by the 1920s, they were already moved mostly to the beginning of pictures and not exclusively at the end.

But they were called trailers.

So the name has kind of been weirdly inaccurate for a long time.

Oh.

So, Piper, what’s the last good movie you saw?

What do you recommend to us?

I would say it’s a really new movie called Luca.

Luca, -huh.

It’s about this fish guy who goes on to land and then tries to win this huge race.

Oh, okay.

That’s right.

He’s a big bicycling fan, right?

Yeah.

And his parents don’t want him to go ashore because when he goes ashore, he turns human.

He’s no longer a fish.

Yeah, exactly.

We watched it.

It was very good.

Is this the one that happens in Italy and there’s a lot of pasta involved?

Yeah.

Mm—

And there’s a lot of Italian in the film, which is a good language thing.

Cool.

Well, Piper, thank you for that question and that recommendation.

You’re welcome.

And thank you for letting me be on your show.

Absolutely.

Do you listen every week?

Yes, I do.

Excellent.

Well, call us again sometime.

Take care.

Okay.

All right.

You too.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

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