Category: Movies

12 Stately Facts About “The American President”

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Matthew Jackson and Mental_Floss present 12 Stately Facts About The American President.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. IT BEGAN AS A ROBERT REDFORD VEHICLE.
Though the film ultimately starred Michael Douglas, it started as a vehicle for another of Hollywood’s great leading men: Robert Redford. So, what happened? Well, Redford was reportedly more interested in the film’s love story, while director Rob Reiner was leaning more toward the political subplots. So the two parted ways, and the part of President Shepherd ultimately landed with Douglas.

2. ANNETTE BENING WAS NOT THE FIRST CHOICE FOR THE LOVE INTEREST.
Just as the film began as a project that would star Robert Redford, so too did it originally feature other leading ladies. Redford himself had hoped to land Emma Thompson for the role of lobbyist-turned-President’s girlfriend Sydney Ellen Wade. Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer were also considered for the meaty role, and by the time Douglas came onboard Jessica Lange was also up for the part. Ultimately, Bening won it.

11. MANY CAST MEMBERS ULTIMATELY ENDED UP ON THE WEST WING.
The American President wasn’t just a template for The West Wing in terms of theme; it also featured a number of actors who would ultimately play key roles in the series. Martin Sheen,The American President’s A.J. MacInerney, went on to play the President himself, Josiah Bartlet, on The West Wing. Anna Deavere Smith eventually played The West Wing’s National Security Advisor Nancy McNally while Joshua Malina went on to play Communications Director-turned-Congressman Will Bailey. The list goes on.

36 Things We Learned from the “Top Gun” Commentary

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Rob Hunter and Film School Rejects present 36 Things We Learned from the Top Gun Commentary.  Here are three of my favorites…

15. The advisors agree that a person can’t give themselves a call sign. Pettigrew recalls one poor fellow who did just that with the call sign “‘Shark,’ so of course he was known as ‘Minnow’ for the rest of his Navy career.”

19. The earlier shot of Maverick and Goose flying upside down just a few feet above a MiG is obviously unrealistic, but McCabe does share that American pilots were known to “communicate” back and forth with their Soviet counterparts. They weren’t flipping each other the bird though. “It was always very positive,” and included holding up vodka and Playboy magazines. “They’re doing their job, we’re doing our job, we don’t set the policy, we just execute it.”

27. The elevator scene between Charlie and Maverick was shot five months after production wrapped when they decided the characters’ relationship needed to be strengthened. McGillis is wearing a hat because her hair was different due to filming on a different movie, and even Cruise’s hair is noticeably longer. “Kelly had lost like 60 pounds and Tom was actually shooting Color of Money,” says Scott, so they had to shoot the scene in Chicago. They did some pick-ups for the love scene then as well.

16 Thrilling Facts About the Bourne Movies

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Roger Cormier and Mental_Floss present 16 Thrilling Facts About the Bourne Movies.  Here are three of my favorites…

3. BRAD PITT, SYLVESTER STALLONE, AND RUSSELL CROWE COULD HAVE BEEN BOURNE.
Pitt was offered the part, ultimately turning it down to work on Spy Game. Liman met with Crowe and Stallone, too. Matt Damon was the actor Liman thought best understood what he wanted to do with the material.

8. LIMAN INSTRUCTED DAMON TO WALK LIKE A BOXER.
Damon said it really helped in finding his character. He spent six months learning boxing for the first movie, in addition to six months of martial arts training, and hundreds of hours of gun training.

9. THE MARTIAL ARTS STYLE USED IS CALLED KALI.
In Kali, one uses the energy of his or her opponent against them. Liman figured that’s what Bourne would use.

10 Vigilant Facts About “The Boondock Saints”

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Emily Becker and Mental_Floss present 10 Vigilant Facts About The Boondock Saints.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. THE SCRIPT WAS INSPIRED BY SEVERAL REAL-LIFE EVENTS.
Writer-director Troy Duffy based the story for The Boondock Saints on things he saw when he was working as a bartender in Los Angeles, including watching a drug dealer steal money from a dead body. The film also opens with the story of Kitty Genovese, a young woman who was murdered in Queens in 1964 and whose story has become a bit of an urban legend after it was widely (but inaccurately) reported that, despite her cries for help and dozens of witnesses, no one came to her rescue.

3. TROY DUFFY WAS HIS OWN BIGGEST OBSTACLE IN GETTING THE FILM MADE.
Like most artists, Duffy had a very clear vision for the film. This led to some contentious meetings with potential collaborators, including getting into an argument with Ewan McGregorover the death penalty during their first meeting. Duffy’s volatile personality ended up costing him his deal with Miramax, leading him to have to shop the film around to other distributors. Eventually, the film was picked up by Franchise Pictures, despite the negative chatter now surrounding both Duffy and his movie.

9. A THIRD FILM IS PRETTY MUCH CONFIRMED.
When asked whether a third film might be coming during a Reddit AMA last December, Norman Reedus, who played Murphy MacManus (and, more famously, is The Walking Dead’s Daryl Dixon), responded, “Yeah it’s on. In the works, happening.” Though no official announcement of it has been made, that hasn’t stopped some outlets from reporting on what it might look like.

17 Super Facts About “The Incredibles”

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Roger Cormier and Mental_Floss present 17 Super Facts About The Incredibles.  Here are three of my favorites…

9. IT WAS THE FIRST PIXAR MOVIE COMPRISED ONLY OF CG HUMAN BEINGS.
Copies of the medical school text Gray’s Anatomy were given to the digital sculptors to help them figure out how the human body moves. Live action footage of Pixar animators walking was also used.

14. THE “A113” EASTER EGG DEFINITELY MADE IT IN.
“A113′ is a classroom number at the California Institute of the Arts, where Bird and several others in the animation industry learned about graphic design and character animation. Bird was the first person to purposely drop in an “A113” reference, when he did so on the 1987 TV show Amazing Stories. It has since been in every episode of The Simpsons Bird worked on (Bird was a creative consultant and director on the series from 1989 to 1998 and directed the “Do the Bartman” music video), as well as every Pixar film. In The Incredibles, Mr. Incredible has a meeting in Conference Room A113, and he’s later held on Level A1, Cell Block 13 on the island.

11. BIRD DIDN’T REALIZE THAT HE RESEMBLED THE VILLAIN UNTIL IT WAS TOO LATE.
The writer-director admitted if he had noticed the resemblance earlier in the process, he would have asked to change Syndrome’s look.

17 Bankable Facts About “The Color of Money”

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Roger Cormier and Mental_Floss present 17 Bankable Facts About The Color of Money.  Here are three of my favorites…

5. JACKIE GLEASON PASSED ON MAKING A CAMEO.
Gleason famously played Minnesota Fats in The Hustler, and his character played a big part in the book version of The Color of Money. “We desperately wanted the character to return,”Newman told The New York Times, ”but every time we put him in, it seemed like we were trying to glue an arm on a man and make it stick.” Added Scorsese: ”We finally presented a script to Gleason with Fats in. But he felt it was an afterthought.” As such, Gleason passed.

14. SCORSESE GOT THE IDEA FOR GOODFELLAS WHILE SHOOTING  THE COLOR OF MONEY.
In a rare moment of downtime, “I read a review of [Nicholas Pileggi’s] Wiseguy when I was directing The Color of Money, and it said something about this character Henry Hill having access to many different levels of organized crime because he was somewhat of an outsider,”Scorsese told Rolling Stone. “He looked a little nicer. He was able to be a better frontman and speak a little better. I thought that was interesting, because you could get a cross section of the layers of organized crime—from his point of view, of course. So I got the book, started reading it and was fascinated by the narrative ability of it.”

15. DAVID GEFFEN WAS UPSET OVER THE SOUNDTRACK.
Robbie Robertson put the soundtrack together, which is best known for featuring Eric Clapton and Robertson’s “It’s in the Way That You Use It” and Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London.” Geffen would not allow Robertson permission to use his own voice at any point on the album, because he felt that the singer’s first solo record was being delayed on account of his work on the soundtrack. The Band performer still managed to get music from the likes of Clapton, Don Henley, B.B. King, Robert Palmer, and Willie Dixon.

14 Colorful Facts About “Reservoir Dogs”

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Eric D. Snider and Mental_Floss present 14 Colorful Facts About Reservoir Dogs.  Here are three of my favorites…

11. A MISTAKE LED TO ONE OF THE FILM’S MYSTERIES.
In the climactic showdown, Joe’s pointing a gun at Mr. Orange (on the floor, already dying), Mr. White is pointing a gun at Joe, and Nice Guy Eddie (Joe’s son, played by Chris Penn) is pointing a gun at Mr. White. Joe shoots Orange, White shoots Joe, Eddie shoots White … butfour gunshots are heard, and everyone who wasn’t already on the ground ends up that way. So who shot Nice Guy Eddie? (You can find T-shirts asking that question.) The only logical answer, and the way it was supposed to have played out, is that Mr. White did. He shot Joe, then shot Eddie at the same time Eddie was shooting him. But according to Chris Penn, when they filmed it, the squib on Keitel’s (Mr. White’s) body went off slightly prematurely, Keitel went down as he fired his second shot (which looks like it’s still aimed at Joe), and then Penn’s squib exploded as planned. Penn noticed right away that it was ambiguous, but Tarantino decided to leave it that way.

4. IT WENT THROUGH SEVERAL CASTING PERMUTATIONS.
In the early stages, Tarantino was going to play Mr. Pink himself, with producer Lawrence Bender as Nice Guy Eddie. Steve Buscemi was later considered for Nice Guy Eddie, but ended up playing Mr. Pink, a role for which Michael Madsen (Mr. Blonde) auditioned. Samuel L. Jackson and Ving Rhames both almost played Holdaway (the cop Tim Roth works with in flashbacks). Robert Forster, who later appeared in QT’s Jackie Brown, auditioned for the part of Joe, which went to Lawrence Tierney.

5. THERE WERE SOME UNUSUAL OFFERS FROM PRODUCERS.
While searching for producers to finance the film and save them from having to make it themselves on a minuscule budget, Tarantino and Bender fielded several offers that sounded good but had a catch to them. One producer offered $1.6 million, but only if the ending was changed so that everyone who was dead came back to life, the whole thing having been a hoax or a con of some kind. Another offered $500,000 … but only if his girlfriend could play Mr. Blonde. (Bender said it was such a bizarre idea that he and Tarantino actually considered it.)

“Therefore I Am” by The McCoubrey Brothers

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The McCoubrey Brothers present the very cool short film, Therefore I Am.

A mysterious encounter between a man who claims to be from the future and the man that he claims is his former self. A surreal psychological thriller about loss and regret. All set within the framework of a time travel story that loosely operates in accordance to the paradox-less MWI (many-worlds interpretation) in quantum mechanics.


Therefore I Am from Peter McCoubrey on Vimeo.