Appreciating The Magic Of The With...And

One of things I like best about movies is the credits, the end of the credits specifically, when they're running through the principal cast members. You get your stars, then your lesser stars, then your role players, then, at the end, if you're lucky, you get a decent "With...And".

You're probably wondering what a "With...And" is. Simple: it's the spot at the end of the credits where two actors are listed as a way of separating them from the rest of the cast, usually because they or their role in this particular movie doesn't fit with any of the other parts of the credits. "The Dark Knight" is a good example. Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman are great actors who had important roles in the movie, but not a ton of screen time. They probably don't belong with the top-billed stars, and they're definitely not lesser stars or role players, so you stick them at the end: "...with Michael Caine...and Morgan Freeman."

(Caine actually had second-billing in the credits, behind Christian Bale and before Heath Ledger, but it's still a good example since his placement there was based more on the fact that he's Michael Caine than on his actual part in the movie. He really belonged in the "With...And".)

Occasionally you get a movie with just an "And" (again, "The Dark Knight", where the credits actually read, "...and Morgan Freeman") or one with a "With...And...As" ("...with Michael Caine...and Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox). Rarely there may be one with just a "With", though I'm not sure I've ever seen it happen.

The quality of actors in the "With...And" usually tells you something about the overall quality of the movie. Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman? You know it's good. Hayden Christiansen and Shia LaBeouf? The existence of such a film would surely destroy the Earth.

Why am I going on and on about this? Because today I saw maybe the best "With...And" ever. We were watching "Tropic Thunder" for the second time (my wife fell asleep in the middle of last night's viewing) and I saw something I'd never seen before. At the end of the credits, we get: "...with Matthew McConaughey...and Tom Cruise as Les Grossman."

I had to appreciate that. McConaughey is maybe my favorite actor, mostly because he plays some variation of the exact same character in every single movie he is in. Even when he was the crazy dude in "Frailty", it wasn't tough to imagine him hanging around the local dive, thirty years old, hitting on high school girls. And Cruise might have revealed himself to be a tad crazy in recent years, but we'll always have "A Few Good Men" (and "Top Gun" is my wife's favorite movie of all time). So this particular "With...And" was kinda big. So big that it now holds the top spot in my personal rankings on the topic, which don't really exist right now (beyond #1) but might if I start keeping track of them in the future.