Today we threw down the gauntlet of the 50 Best Opening Credit Sequences Of All Time, and Gaspar Noé‘s trippy "Enter The Void" made the cut. The nearly seizure inducing blitzkrieg that opens the movie, with super stylized, neon soaked lettering that races by and changes font, is arguably more remembered than the movie itself, and has spawned more than a couple of imitators who have paid homage to the sequence. It’s a subject that The Daily Beast notes seems to irritate Noé, but when asked he revealed one particular example of someone "borrowing" the "Enter The Void" sequence that gets under his skin.
"… the director [Hype Williams] was someone else who ripped off the titles to my movie,” Noé said. “I was more shocked by the fact that that guy who copied all the typography of my titles put his name in it—Hype Williams—when you never usually see a director’s name in a music video. He was putting his name on it over and over! It was so weird that he was not only copying it, but adding his name into the credits over and over again.”
The video he’s referring to is Kanye West‘s "All Of The Lights," which brazenly features Noé-esque credits at the beginning and end of the video. And while Noé sounds frustrated, he’s also pragmatic about it. “The truth is that when you put something out there, if you put any idea out there that’s kind of flashy, you have many, many people that are going to be copying it,” he said. “This happens whether you do movies, paintings, or music.”
Judge for yourself with this video that compares Noé’s and Williams’ credits side-by-side.
