Category: Movies

16 Fascinating Facts About Marlon Brando

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Roger Cormier and Mental_Floss present 16 Fascinating Facts About Marlon Brando.  Here are three of my favorites…

5. HE BROKE HIS NOSE DURING A PERFORMANCE OF STREETCAR WHEN HE WAS BOXING WITH SOMEONE BACKSTAGE.
To alleviate the boredom of playing Kowalski on stage for, at that time, over one year, Brando started to fight with one of the stagehands, who was an amateur boxer. The stagehand took it easy on Brando until the actor insisted he fight for real. The stagehand then popped him in the nose, and blackened his eyes. Having just been punched in the face, and with his nose bleeding, Brando stepped back on to the stage. His co-star, Jessica Tandy, hid her surprise at his appearance by ad-libbing the line “You bloody fool” and playing it off as if Stanley had just been in a street fight.

After the performance, Brando walked to the nearest hospital to get himself fixed up. Irene Selznick, the show’s producer, told Brando to get his nose reset. She was glad he did not to listen to her. “I honestly think that broken nose made his fortune,” she said. “It gave him sex appeal. He was too beautiful before.”

 

7. BRANDO INITIALLY TURNED DOWN ON THE WATERFRONT, AND DIDN’T CARE FOR HIS PERFORMANCE IN IT.
After Brando returned the unread script—twice—Frank Sinatra was cast as Terry Malloy. While costumes were being fitted for the crooner to star, Brando changed his mind after producer Sam Spiegel convinced the actor to put his politics aside and re-team with his A Streetcar Named Desire director Elia Kazan, who had testified as a witness before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1952.

When Brando first saw the movie, he was “so depressed” by his performance that he left the screening room without saying a word. Brando won his first (of two) Best Actor Oscars for the role.

 

9. BRANDO AND SINATRA FEUDED DURING GUYS AND DOLLS.
Still upset over having the role of Terry Malloy taken away from him, Sinatra held a grudge, and repeatedly referred to Brando as “Mumbles.” Sinatra also declared that he didn’t go for Brando and “that Method crap.”

The two ended up starring in Guys and Dolls (1955) together, with Sinatra as Nathan Detroit and Brando as Sky Masterson. To get back at Sinatra for his adamant dislike of rehearsing, Brando purposely screwed up at the end of scenes to necessitate a retake. In one scene, Brando reportedly messed up nine times in a row because Sinatra had to eat a piece of cheesecake every time. After the ninth mistake, Sinatra threw his plate to the ground, jammed his fork on the table, and screamed at the director, “These ****** New York actors! How much cheesecake do you think I can eat?”

10 Facts About Tarzan That Will Surprise You

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Mathew Baugh and Listverse present 10 Facts About Tarzan That Will Surprise You.  Here are three of my favorites…

Tarzan Was Not Raised By Gorillas
Everybody knows Tarzan was raised by gorillas. It’s part of the established Tarzan lore . . . right? Well, this is a common misconception. In fact, it’s so common that a number of movies have gotten it wrong.

Tarzan was actually raised by a species of ape unknown to science. These creatures resemble gorillas in size and strength, but they differ in other ways. These great apes often walk upright, hunt animals, eat meat, and have a spoken language. They call themselves the “mangani,” and Burroughs describes them as “huge,” “fierce,” and “terrible.” He adds that they’re “a species closely allied to the gorilla, yet more intelligent.” Thanks to their smarts and strength, the mangani are “the most fearsome of these awe-inspiring progenitors of man.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs Killed Jane
The first actress to play Jane Porter was Enid Markey in Tarzan of the Apes. Unfortunately, Ms. Markey was a brunette, which went against Burroughs’s image of Jane. In the novels, Jane is actually a blonde. (She isn’t British, either. She’s actually from Maryland.) It didn’t help that Burroughs hated Markey’s performance. In fact, he supposedly hated it so much that he killed off Jane in his next story.

In the first chapter of Tarzan the Untamed, Tarzan is away from home when World War I breaks out. When he returns, he finds that German soldiers have looted and burned his home, killing many of his servants and friends in the process. And shockingly, they’ve murdered Jane.

Tarzan Auditioned For A Tarzan Movie
Edgar Rice Burroughs had a love/hate relationship with Hollywood. He loved the exposure and extra income, but he hated the way movies changed his character. He particularly disliked Elmo Lincoln, the first movie Tarzan, who was afraid of heights. Lincoln was also a beefy man with a 132-centimeter(52 in) chest in contrast to the lean, athletic Tarzan of the books.

Nor was Burroughs happy with Johnny Weissmuller (pictured above), the most famous movie Tarzan. He wanted Tarzan to be articulate, but Weissmuller’s version could barely speak English.

The author took out his frustration in Tarzan and the Lion Man. In this novel, our hero rescues a movie crew filming in the African jungle. Along the way, Burroughs mocks the actors, directors, and moviemaking in general. But the coup de grace comes in the last chapter. After his adventure, Tarzan visits Hollywood, and he’s taken to meet a casting director:

“The casting director sized Clayton up. ‘You look all right to me; I’ll take you up to Mr. Goldeen; he’s production manager. Had any experience?’

‘As Tarzan?’

The casting director laughed. ‘I mean in pictures.’

‘No.’

‘Well, you might be all right at that. You don’t have to be a Barrymore to play Tarzan. Come on, we’ll go up to Mr. Goldeen’s office.’

They had to wait a few minutes in the outer office, and then a secretary ushered them in.

‘Hello, Ben!’ the casting director greeted Goldeen. ‘I think I’ve got just the man for you. This is Mr. Clayton, Mr. Goldeen.’

‘For what?’

‘For Tarzan.’

‘Oh, m-m-m.’

Goldeen’s eyes surveyed Clayton critically for an instant; then the production manager made a gesture with his palm as though waving them away. He shook his head. ‘Not the type,’ he snapped. ‘Not the type, at all.’”

10 Hush-Hush Facts About “L.A. Confidential”

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Mathew Jackson and Mental Floss present 10 Hush-Hush Facts About L.A. Confidential.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. THE SCRIPTING PROCESS WAS TOUGH.
Writer-director Curtis Hanson had been a longtime James Ellroy fan when he finally read L.A. Confidential, and the characters in that particular Ellroy novel really spoke to him, so he began working on a script. Meanwhile, Brian Helgeland—originally contracted to write an unproduced Viking film for Warner Bros.—was also a huge Ellroy fan, and lobbied hard for the studio to give him the scripting job. When he learned that Hanson already had it, the two met, and bonded over their mutual admiration of Ellroy’s prose. Their passion for the material was clear, but it took two years to get the script done, with a number of obstacles.

“He would turn down other jobs; I would be doing drafts for free,” Helgeland said. “Whenever there was a day when I didn’t want to get up anymore, Curtis tipped the bed and rolled me out on the floor.”

 

3. JAMES ELLROY DIDN’T THINK THE BOOK COULD BE ADAPTED.
Though Wolper was intrigued by the idea of telling the story onscreen, Ellroy and his agent laughed at the thought. The author felt his massive book would never fit on any screen.

“It was big, it was bad, it was bereft of sympathetic characters,” Ellroy said. “It was unconstrainable, uncontainable, and unadaptable.”

 

10. ELLROY APPROVED OF THE MOVIE.
To adapt L.A. Confidential for the screen, Hanson and Helgeland condensed Ellroy’s original novel, boiling the story down to a three-person narrative and ditching other subplots so they could get to the heart of the three cops at the center of the movie. Ellroy, in the end, was pleased with their choices.

 

“They preserved the basic integrity of the book and its main theme, which is that everything in Los Angeles during this era of boosterism and yahooism was two-sided and two-faced and put out for cosmetic purposes,” Ellroy said. “The script is very much about the [characters’] evolution as men and their lives of duress. Brian and Curtis took a work of fiction that had eight plotlines, reduced those to three, and retained the dramatic force of three men working out their destiny. I’ve long held that hard-boiled crime fiction is the history of bad white men doing bad things in the name of authority. They stated that case plain.”

24 Things We Learned from Ben Affleck’s “Gone, Baby, Gone” Commentary

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Rob Hunter and Film School Rejects present 24 Things We Learned from Ben Affleck’s Gone, Baby, Gone Commentary.   Here are three of my favorites…

7. Affleck worried about a shot of Jerry Springer on Helene McCready’s (Amy Ryan) TV thinking it might be too cliched, but “literally one in every two houses that I went into had Springer on while we were scouting in the afternoon.”

8. The extra with the hole in his throat was in the bar when they arrived for shooting so Affleck just asked him to stay. The man moving quickly behind him is actually Affleck who was passing by unaware they were grabbng the shot. Stockard wonders if this is Affleck’s stab at a Hitchcock cameo, but the director denies it.

3. One of the changes they made from the novel was adjusting the private eyes’ ages from being in their 40s to being in their 30s, “but that presented its own challenges,” says Stockard.

13 Monumental Facts About “North by Northwest”

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Eric D. Snider and Mental Floss present 13 Monumental Facts About North by Northwest.  Here are three of my favorites…

3. JAMES STEWART WANTED TO PLAY THE LEAD.
Stewart had been in four Hitchcock movies at this point, and he wanted North by Northwest to be the fifth. But while Hitch loved him, he didn’t think he was right for the glibly debonair Roger Thornhill. He wanted Cary Grant for the part. Not wanting to hurt Stewart’s feelings, Hitchcock waited until Stewart was committed to another film (Bell, Book and Candle) before casting the role.

4. CARY GRANT HAD NO IDEA WHAT WAS GOING ON.
The star found the screenplay baffling, and midway through filming told Hitchcock, “It’s a terrible script. We’ve already done a third of the picture and I still can’t make head or tail of it!” Hitchcock knew this confusion would only help the film—after all, Grant’s character had no idea what was going on, either. Grant thought the film would be a flop right up until its premiere, where it was rapturously received.

5. PART OF IT WAS SHOT SECRETLY.
You wouldn’t expect Hitchcock to have to sneak around, but even the Master of Suspense was no match for the United Nations, which did not allow filming at its New York headquarters, not even in the plaza outside. So to get the shot where Grant walks into the building, Hitchcock hid a camera in a nondescript truck and filmed in secret from across the street.

John Wayne’s Epic Struggle to Get “The Alamo” Made

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For decades John Wayne was one of the biggest box office stars in the world.  Wayne’s dream project was to direct the story of The Alamo.  Although film fans know that Wayne did get the film made, most don’t know what a struggle it was.

Wayne had hoped to just direct The Alamo, but financing was impossible unless he not only starred in it, but signed a three picture deal with the studio.  Casting was also a nightmare.  Wayne was hoping to get Clark Gable or Frank Sinatra for one role and that didn’t work out.  Burt Lancaster was Wayne’s first choice for another role but he ended up with Richard Widmark.  To make matters worse Wayne and Widmark developed an instant dislike to each other.

During filming there were natural disasters, the murder of a co-star and more.  Even after filing wrapped there were troubles.

Nolan Moore documents Wayne’s struggles to get The Alamo made in 10 Amazing Stories About John Wayne’s Epic Failure.  It is well worth the read.

Source: Listverse.

32 Things We Learned from Zack Snyder’s “Dawn of the Dead” Commentary

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Rob Hunter and Film School Rejects present 32 Things We Learned from Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead Commentary.  Here are three of my favorites…

13. Snyder cameos during the opening credits montage as a soldier with a machine gun on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol.

19. The original’s Tom Savini, Ken Foree, and Scott H. Reiniger all cameo here as a sheriff, a preacher, and a general, respectively.

 

29. Someone after a test screening questioned Snyder as to why/how the zombies pause at the bottom of the stairs at 1:32:25, and it put him on the spot when they asked if the zombies could even do that. He replied, “in real life, no, but in film where you dramatize…”

15 Fun Facts About the Indiana Jones Movies

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Sean Hutchinson, Michael Arbeiter and Mental Floss present 15 Fun Facts About the Indiana Jones Movies.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. ONE DOG INSPIRED BOTH INDIANA JONES AND CHEWBACCA.
While developing the film with Spielberg and screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan, Lucas named the main character “Indiana Smith.” But Spielberg protested that it was too similar to the 1966 Steve McQueen western Nevada Smith and requested a change. The three agreed that the last name should be as universal and nondescript as “Smith,” so Lucas threw out “Jones” as a possibility. Indiana came from Lucas’ dog, an Alaskan malamute named Indiana. The big, hairy pup was also the inspiration for Chewbacca from Star Wars.

14. SEAN CONNERY SAID NO TO A CAMEO IN THE CRYSTAL SKULL.
As tempting as it may have been for Sean Connery to re-team with Ford on The Crystal Skull, the happily retired former James Bond turned down the part.

15. THE CRYSTAL SKULL INSPIRED AN ALTERNATIVE PHRASE TO “JUMP THE SHARK.”
Ever since Henry Winkler attempted to sail over a shark in a late-season episode of Happy Days, the phrase “jump the shark” has been used to describe the point where a television series goes off the rails in its ridiculousness. The Crystal Skull spawned an alternative phrasefor that, known as “nuking the fridge.” And Spielberg seemed surprisingly pleased about it.

“What people really jumped at was Indy climbing into a refrigerator and getting blown into the sky by an atom-bomb blast,” Spielberg told CNN. “Blame me. Don’t blame George. That was my silly idea. People stopped saying ‘jump the shark.’ They now say, ‘nuked the fridge.’ I’m proud of that. I’m glad I was able to bring that into popular culture.”

15 Out-of-This-World Facts About “Forbidden Planet”

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Bryan Reesman and Mental Floss present 15 Out-of-This-World Facts About Forbidden Planet.  Here are three of my favorites…

7. ROBBY RACKED UP A LOT OF OTHER CREDITS.
Forbidden Planet made its lovable bucket of bolts a star, and throughout his career Robby racked up more than two dozen film and TV credits, including The Invisible Boy, The Thin Man(TV series), Lost In Space, The Twilight Zone, Wonder Woman, Morkand Mindy, and Gremlins.He has also done TV spots for Charmin, AT&T, and General Electric (that last one in 2012).

15. THE FILMMAKERS WERE RECYCLERS.
Forbidden Planet was shot on same stage as The Wizard of Oz, with bits of Munchkinland used for Altaira’s garden. In an interesting twist, some of Forbidden Planet‘s costumes (including the crewmen uniforms and Altaira’s clothing) were re-used in Queen of Outer Space, a 1958 sci-fi movie starring Zsa Zsa Gabor in which a space crew that has crash landed on Venus attempts to overthrow its female dictator, who has banished men from the planet.

5. ROBERT KINOSHITA DESIGNED ANOTHER ICONIC ROBOT.
That electronic entity being, of course, The Robot from the ’60s sci-fi series Lost In Space. While their design was somewhat different, the two cybernetic companions shared a similar “talk box,” a display that lit up in tandem with the rhythm of their speech. Robby actually guest starred on three episodes of Lost In Space.

Was the Biggest Batman the Best?

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So how big is Batman, really?  That, of course, depends on which Batman you’re talking about.

The comic book Batman was supposed to be about 6’2″ and 210 pounds.  Adam West came closest to that version at 6’2″ and 200 pounds.  All of the other actors who played the Dark Knight, except for Ben Affleck, were smaller.

So does size matter?  Who made the best Batman?

You can check out a larger version of the chart here.

Source: Bleeding Cool.