Diagonal Billing (or Staggered Billing)

What is diagonal billing in cinema, film credits, titles, and design? Example of Steve McQueen and Paul Newman from the Towering Inferno in a movie theatre. Also staggered billing.

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A solution for equal movie star billing

The 1974 disaster movie The Towering Inferno had the advantage of two huge stars: Steve McQueen and Paul Newman. Supposedly, neither of them wanted to be portrayed as second to the other. So the studio had a problem: whose name should go first on the movie poster and in the credits?

What is Diagonal Billing?

Diagonal billing, sometimes called staggered billing, is a way of arranging the names of movie stars to give them equal prominence. Instead of listing one above or in line with the other, the names are placed diagonally:

• one name in the bottom-left,

• the other in the top-right.

This balances the natural reading hierarchy—left to right, top to bottom—so that either name can be read first. It was the clever compromise used for McQueen and Newman in The Towering Inferno, and it has been repeated in many Hollywood films since.

Why Diagonal Billing Works

In English, we naturally read from left to right and top to bottom. We start reading this way in articles like this, but also posters, adverts, and web pages. Which means what we see top-left is naturally emphasised compared to what we encounter towards the end in the bottom-right.

It's also why my sketches typically have a title in the top-left and a logo in the bottom-right: you're meant to see them in that order.

Diagonal billing cancels out a name on the left by placing it at the bottom, and emphasises the name on the right by placing it at the top.

Examples of Diagonal Billing

Balancing Steve McQueen and Paul Newman in The Towering Inferno is how I first learned of staggered but equal billing (from my Dad, though he denies it). You can see the staggering of names in the original movie poster .

Other examples include:

Cheers TV credits: Ted Danson and Shelley Long
Scenes from a Marriage (2021): Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac
Chicago (2002): Renée Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones
Westworld (1973): James Brolin, Yul Brynner, Richard Benjamin
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004): Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow
Righteous Kill (2008): Robert De Niro, Al Pacino

Keep an eye out for it in movie posters and opening credits, and help me add to the examples!

Related Ideas to Diagonal Billing

Also see:

The site TV Tropes also discusses diagonal billing.

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The Buttered Cat Paradox goes like this: Cats always land on their feet Falling toast always lands butter side down So what will happen if you strap buttered toast to the back of a falling cat? Presumably, the cat righting reflex will fight against the pull of the buttered toast. John Frazee proposed the buttered cat paradox in a July 1993 competition in Omni magazine, including a practical application based on the inevitable hovering that must result: "When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet, and when toast is dropped, it always lands with the buttered side facing down. I propose to strap buttered toast to the back of a cat. The two will hover spinning, inches above the ground. With a giant buttered cat array, a high-speed monorail could easily link New York with Chicago." The Buttered Toast Phenomenon Incidentally, the buttered toast phenomenon—why toast always lands butter side down—was the subject of an experiment on the British TV show QED, finding that buttered toast, when thrown into the air, landed equally on the buttered and unbuttered sides. However, Robert Matthews conducted a mathematical analysis of toast falling, as it would more commonly, from the edge of a table. His work showed that landing buttered-side down is the most likely result given the height of an average table, the gravitational constant, and the typical mass of toast. It won him an Ig Nobel Prize in 1996. Buttered toast has been falling for a long time. There's an 1884 poem by James Payn: I never had a slice of bread, Particularly large and wide, That did not fall upon the floor, And always on the buttered side! The Cat Righting Reflex The innate ability for cats to twist around and land on their feet is called the cat righting reflex. They can do this thanks to a very flexible spine and no collarbone. I dropped no cats in the making of this sketch. Please don't drop cats. Here's a print of the cat only More paradoxes The coastline paradox: the length of a coastline depends on how close you measure The transparency paradox: the more transparent the workspace, the more privately people behave The paradox of choice: more choice can make it harder to choose The automation paradox: the better the machines get, the more we struggle when they fail The Abilene paradox: a group can take an action that no one thinks is good The liar paradox: I am lying The paradise paradox: the belief that moving to paradise will solve all our problems Jevon's paradox: Fuel efficiency gains tend to increase fuel use Also see: Murphy's Law: What can go wrong, will go wrong Learn more This archived Scientific American article on the murphodynamics of toast gives more detail about the buttered toast phenomenon.The Buttered Cat Paradox goes like this: Cats always land on their feet Falling toast always lands butter side down So what will happen if you strap buttered toast to the back of a falling cat? Presumably, the cat righting reflex will fight against the pull of the buttered toast. John Frazee proposed the buttered cat paradox in a July 1993 competition in Omni magazine, including a practical application based on the inevitable hovering that must result: "When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet, and when toast is dropped, it always lands with the buttered side facing down. I propose to strap buttered toast to the back of a cat. The two will hover spinning, inches above the ground. With a giant buttered cat array, a high-speed monorail could easily link New York with Chicago." The Buttered Toast Phenomenon Incidentally, the buttered toast phenomenon—why toast always lands butter side down—was the subject of an experiment on the British TV show QED, finding that buttered toast, when thrown into the air, landed equally on the buttered and unbuttered sides. However, Robert Matthews conducted a mathematical analysis of toast falling, as it would more commonly, from the edge of a table. His work showed that landing buttered-side down is the most likely result given the height of an average table, the gravitational constant, and the typical mass of toast. It won him an Ig Nobel Prize in 1996. Buttered toast has been falling for a long time. There's an 1884 poem by James Payn: I never had a slice of bread, Particularly large and wide, That did not fall upon the floor, And always on the buttered side! The Cat Righting Reflex The innate ability for cats to twist around and land on their feet is called the cat righting reflex. They can do this thanks to a very flexible spine and no collarbone. I dropped no cats in the making of this sketch. Please don't drop cats. Here's a print of the cat only More paradoxes The coastline paradox: the length of a coastline depends on how close you measure The transparency paradox: the more transparent the workspace, the more privately people behave The paradox of choice: more choice can make it harder to choose The automation paradox: the better the machines get, the more we struggle when they fail The Abilene paradox: a group can take an action that no one thinks is good The liar paradox: I am lying The paradise paradox: the belief that moving to paradise will solve all our problems Jevon's paradox: Fuel efficiency gains tend to increase fuel use Also see: Murphy's Law: What can go wrong, will go wrong Learn more This archived Scientific American article on the murphodynamics of toast gives more detail about the buttered toast phenomenon.

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