Category: Trivia

The Top Ten Action Movie Stars of All-Time

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Alex Maidy and JoBlo.com present the Top Ten Action Movie Stars of All Time.

Using just their list, here are my top five [and where they placed at JoBlo]…

  1. Sly Stallone [1st at JoBlo]
  2. Bruce Lee [4th at JoBlo]
  3. Arnold Schwarzenegger [3rd at JoBlo]
  4. Jackie Chan [9th at JoBlo]
  5. Clint Eastwood [2nd at JoBlo]

Overall, their list wasn’t bad.  They definitely got #1 right, but are there others who should have made the Top 10 but didn’t?

Off the top of my head I’m thinking of Charles Bronson, Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson [perhaps it is too early in Diesel and Johnson’s career], Harold Lloyd, Jean Claude Van Damme… others?

 

16 Hard-Hitting Facts About the Rocky Movies

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Roger Cormier and Mental_Floss present 16 Hard-Hitting Facts About the Rocky Movies.  Here are three of my favorites…

3. ADRIAN WAS ALMOST PLAYED BY SUSAN SARANDON.
Stallone and the producers decided that she was “too sexy.” Cher was also considered. Bette Midler was offered the role but turned it down. Carrie Snodgress had in fact won the part, until her agent asked for too much money. Talia Shire auditioned at the last minute to save the day.

7. CHARLIE CHAPLIN AND ELVIS PRESLEY WERE FANS OF THE FIRST MOVIE.
Chaplin wrote to Stallone that Rocky reminded the silent film star of a character he used to play. Stallone regretted turning down Chaplin’s invitation to visit him in Switzerland after the director died a few months later. Similarly, Stallone turned down Elvis’ offer to watch Rocky with him in Memphis months before The King passed away.

16. ROCKY’S TURTLES CUFF AND LINK OUTLIVED A COUPLE OF THE CHARACTERS.
The female red-eared sliders that appeared in 2006’s Rocky Balboa are the same turtles from the original 1976 picture.

11 Far Out Facts About “Lost in Space”

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Bryan Reesman and Mental_Floss present 11 Far Out Facts About Lost in Space.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. THE ORIGINAL UNAIRED PILOT SET A DARKER TONE. IT ALSO COST $600,000.
The original pilot “No Place To Hide”—which cost $600,000, or $4.5 million in today’s dollars—was a more straight up sci-fi tale that did not include either Dr. Smith or the Robot in the cast. The Space Family Robinson saga—inspired by a comic book with that title from Gold Key Comics that began in 1962—started with their 1997 mission going awry thanks to a meteor shower, and the Jupiter 2 crash landing on a seemingly barren planet with harsh weather conditions and inhabited by dangerous cyclops giants. It was pretty impressive for the day and hinted at a more intense show than the one that ultimately aired. We still love the series, but this episode—unseen until early last decade—promised many more dramatic possibilities.

2. THE JUPITER 2 COST MORE THAN THE ENTERPRISE.
The cost of the Robinson family’s Jupiter 2 spacecraft was $350,000 ($2.6 million today), more than the Enterprise on Star Trek, which began airing when Lost In Space started its second season. Of course, a major difference is that the Jupiter 2 was a smaller ship, so we saw every chamber in it, whereas the Enterprise was a larger wessel (as Pavel Chekov would say) with many unseen nooks and crannies. It was all about scale.

7. GUY WILLIAMS RETIRED FROM ACTING AFTER LOST IN SPACE.
The man who was famed for playing Zorro on TV between 1957 and 1961 and Dr. John Robinson from 1965 to 1968 decided to retire from the spotlight at the young age of 44 following the cancellation of Lost In Space. He later moved to Argentina, where he was reportedly beloved and where he lived until his death in 1989.

16 Sure Facts About “Mrs. Doubtfire”

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Roger Cormier and Mental_Floss present 16 Sure Facts About Mrs. Doubtfire.  Here are three of my favorites…

3. THEY WENT THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHS OF OLD WOMEN.
Director Chris Columbus claimed that he and his fellow filmmakers looked through “hundreds and hundreds” of photographs until finding a 1940s-era English woman to base Mrs. Doubtfire’s look on.

7. CHUCK JONES SUPERVISED THE OPENING ANIMATION.
Jones was the iconic animator of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons for Warner Bros. The full five minutes of Pudgy Parakeet and Grunge the Cat was released as a DVD feature.

8. COLUMBUS USED MULTIPLE CAMERAS SIMULTANEOUSLY TO CAPTURE THE CAST WHEN WILLIAMS IMPROVISED.
The director mostly shot one or two takes of each scene as it was written in the script before shooting something Williams made up. Columbus said the resulting footage gave him the option of cutting a PG, PG-13, R, or NC-17 version of the movie. (He ended up going with the PG-13 version.)

18 Epic Facts About “Dances with Wolves”

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Jeff Wells and Mental_Floss present 18 Epic Facts About Dances with Wolves.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. IT STARTED AS A NOVEL THAT NOBODY WANTED TO PUBLISH.
Inspired by books he’d read about the Plains Indians, screenwriter Michael Blake (who died earlier this year) pitched Costner on the idea for Dances with Wolves. Costner told Blake, whom he’d met in a Los Angeles acting class, to write a novel instead of a screenplay, reasoning that a novel could generate studio interest more effectively than a cold script. So Blake spent months writing and sleeping on friends’s couches (including Costner’s). “I wrote the entire book in my car, really,” Blake said in a behind-the-scenes feature. Once finished, Blake submitted Dances with Wolves, to numerous publishers, all of whom passed on his manuscript. Finally, after more than 30 rejections, a small publisher called Fawcett accepted it.

2. IT BECAME THE FILM THAT NO STUDIO WANTED TO FINANCE.
Turned down by American studios, Costner looked abroad for help, eventually securing startup funds from a handful of foreign investors. With only a fraction of the movie’s $15 million budget secured, he began filming. Orion Pictures eventually stepped in with $10 million, but Dances with Wolves ended up going more than $3 million over budget. Costner covered the overage out of his own pocket.

18. THERE’S A SEQUEL.
A sequel to the book, that is. In 2001, Blake published The Holy Road, which continues the story of John Dunbar, now a full-fledged Sioux warrior, as he tries to protect his tribe from encroachment by white settlers. Critics praised the novel for the ways it portrayed westward expansion and the plight of Native Americans without coming off heavy-handed. There have been rumblings about a possible miniseries, but nothing is confirmed at this time.

12 Intense Facts About “Platoon”

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Eric D. Snider and Mental_Floss present 12 Intense Facts About Platoon.  Here are three of my favorites…

6. IT TOOK MORE THAN A DECADE TO GET THE FILM PRODUCED.
Stone wrote a screenplay based on his experiences in Vietnam as soon as he got back from the war, in 1969. (He sent a copy of it to Jim Morrison, hoping the Doors frontman would star in it.) By 1976, that draft morphed into what he was then calling The Platoon. Stone couldn’t find anyone willing to make the movie, though. The war was still too fresh in people’s minds; it would be another few years before films like Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter addressed it. And after that, studios had another excuse not to make Platoon: why bother, when Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter had already covered it?

8. IT CHANGED THE WAY HOLLYWOOD LOOKED AT WAR.
A much-decorated retired Marine named Dale Dye, who loved war movies but was disappointed by their failure to convey the mental and emotional realities of combat, offered Stone his services as an advisor. Dye had been turned down by other filmmakers, who felt the way Hollywood had been doing it—you hire a consultant to make sure the medals, guns, and uniforms are accurate, and you don’t worry about the less tangible details—seemed to be working just fine. (Dye said: “They had been making zillions of dollars making war films for decades, and here was some clown coming in to tell them they had a better mousetrap? Go away.”) But Dye’s vision matched Stone’s, and the psychological authenticity they created together was a major factor in Platoon’s success. For the first time, Vietnam veterans were seeing their experiences portrayed realistically. Dye has since become the foremost military consultant in Hollywood, advising (and occasionally acting in) everything from Saving Private Ryan to the Medal of Honor video games.

11. CHARLIE SHEEN ALMOST LOST THE LEAD ROLE TO HIS OWN BROTHER.
Sheen auditioned during one of Stone’s earlier, unsuccessful attempts to get the movie made, and didn’t impress him. The guy Stone really liked was Sheen’s older brother, Emilio Estevez. But financing fell through and the film was shelved. By the time Sheen auditioned again a few years later, he had grown into the role. “This time I knew in 10 minutes he was right,” said Stone.

15 Elevated Facts About “White Men Can’t Jump”

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Roger Cormier and Mental_Floss present 15 Elevated Facts About White Men Can’t Jump.  Here are three of my favorites…

2. DENZEL WASHINGTON WAS THE ORIGINAL CHOICE FOR SIDNEY.
Denzel Washington was dead set on playing Malcolm X next and turned them down. Shelton considered Cylk Cozart for the lead role, too. Ultimately, Cozart was cast in the role of Robert.

3. KEANU REEVES, CHARLIE SHEEN, AND DAVID DUCHOVNY WERE CONSIDERED FOR BILLY.

Part of the audition involved shooting hoops at a basketball court at a Culver City casting office. Reeves just didn’t cut it, and Woody Harrelson acknowledged that Reeves’ lack of talent in the sport helped change his career. “I probably would’ve just been Woody Boyd but for the fact that Keanu Reeves didn’t play great basketball,” Harrelson told the Daily Express. Sheen was offered the part after Reeves’ failed audition but passed. Duchovny said he auditioned and really wanted the role.

10. HARRELSON HUSTLED SNIPES OUT OF MONEY.
There was constant gambling on set. Cozart threatened to take all of Woody’s Cheers money and estimated he won $5000 off of him. Harrelson won money off of Snipes though when he successfully dunked. Snipes never realized that the crew lowered the rim before Harrelson’s attempt.

12 Smooth Facts About “The Hustler”

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Eric D. Snider and Mental_Floss present 12 Smooth Facts About The Hustler.   Here are three of my favorites…

2. JACKIE GLEASON DID HIS OWN TRICK SHOTS, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
The comedian, best known for playing working-class loudmouth Ralph Kramden on The Honeymooners (which he created), had grown up in Brooklyn. Like Rossen, Gleason mixed it up with neighborhood toughs and got to be a pretty good pool hustler. He required no assistance for his trick shots in the film, and Rossen always positioned the camera so we’d be able to see that for ourselves.

4. THERE WAS A REAL MINNESOTA FATS … BUT ONLY BECAUSE A GUY STARTED CALLING HIMSELF THAT AFTER THE MOVIE.
When the movie came out, Rudolf Wanderone was up there with Willie Mosconi as one of America’s best pool players. A hefty gentleman, Wanderone had several nicknames, including Double-Smart, New York Fats, and Chicago Fats. There was no Minnesota Fats; The Hustlernovelist Walter Tevis had made the character up. But in a promotional interview for the movie, Mosconi said Wanderone had been Tevis’s inspiration (which Tevis denied for the rest of his life, adamantly and with great annoyance). Wanderone seized the opportunity, perhaps flattering himself into thinking Tevis really had had him in mind. He embraced the nickname and declared himself the real Minnesota Fats for the rest of his career.

7. THE MOVIE ISN’T VERY LONG, BUT IT WAS WIDER THAN USUAL.
The Hustler was shot in Cinemascope, the widescreen technique that had been in use since 1953. But it was mainly used for lavish epics and colorful musicals, not black-and-white dramas set in dingy pool halls. Yet as film critic Michael Wood pointed out, Rossen used Cinemascope “to create an oppressive, elongated world in which ceilings always seem terribly low; and people terribly separate from each other; in one shot Newman is even separated from his own image in a mirror by the whole width of a very wide screen. It is a world in which the pool table seems the one natural shape, while human beings seem untidy intruders.” Neat, huh?

10 Not-So-Scary Facts About “Monsters, Inc.”

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Tara Aquino and Mental_Floss present 10 Not-So-Scary Facts About Monsters, Inc.  Here are three of my favorites…

5. PAUL DOCTER’S ORIGINAL PITCH WAS TO HAVE A GROWN MAN BE HAUNTED BY THE MONSTERS HE DREW AS A KID.
On Jeff Goldsmith’s Creative Writing podcast, director Pete Docter recounted his original pitch: “My idea was that what it was about was a 30-year-old man who is like an accountant or something, he hates his job, and one day he gets a book with some drawings in it that he did when he was a kid from his mom. He doesn’t think anything of it and he puts it on the shelf and that night, monsters show up. And nobody else can see them. He thinks he’s starting to go crazy, they follow him to his job, and on his dates … and it turns out these monsters are fears that he never dealt with as a kid … And each one of them represents a different kind of fear. As he conquers those fears, the guys who he slowly becomes kind of friends with, they disappear … It’s this bittersweet kind of ending where they go away, and so not much of that stayed.”

6. THE FILM WAS THE FIRST TO INTRODUCE THE ONSCREEN REPRESENTATION OF FUR.
In order to animate each individual strand of hair on Sulley, which reportedly took 12 hours to fill a single frame, Pixar developed a new software program called Fizt. According to WIRED, the software was extremely advanced for its time, as it had the power to simulate each of the three million hairs that covered the lovable monster. “We made the simulator able to digest anything,” said Andy Witkin, one of the studio’s senior animation scientists.

7. JOHN GOODMAN AND BILLY CRYSTAL RECORDED THEIR LINES TOGETHER—A RARITY IN ANIMATION.
Typically, voice actors get into the booth at separate times to record their dialogue. But Billy Crystal pushed for the opportunity to work alongside his co-star, John Goodman. “I did the first two sessions alone and I didn’t like it,” Crystal told Dark Horizons. “It was lonely and it was frustrating.” Goodman was also a fan of the joint process; he told the BBC: “When Billy and I got together, the energy just went through the roof, so it was great.”

Exploring Brian Helgeland’s “Payback,” a Tale of Two Movies

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Over at Film School Rejects, Jack Giroux weighs in on which version of Payback is the best in his piece: Exploring Brian Helgeland’s Payback, a Tale of Two Movies.

Award-winning screenwriter and director Brian Helgeland was fired from the production of the Mel Gibson starrer Payback when the studio and Gibson felt Helgeland’s version was too dark.  Gibson ended up directing the re-shoots and it was his version that was released to theaters.  Years later Helgeland’s movie was released on dvd.

I’ve got both versions in my collection, so it should be clear that I dig both takes on the film.  If I had to choose one, I’d go for the theatrical release [by a hair] but thankfully, since both versions rest in my collection, that isn’t a choice I’ll ever have to make.

15 Facts About “Silence of the Lambs”

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Hollywood.com presents 15 Facts About Silence of the Lambs.  Here are three of my favorites…

3. The moth cocoons Buffalo Bill placed in his victims throats were actually made from a combination of Tootsie Rolls and gummy bears, in case they were swallowed.

9. Jonathan Demme always had characters speak directly into the camera for conversations with Clarice, yet he always filmed Jodie Foster looking slightly off camera.
The idea was to make audiences directly experience her point-of-view to more easily empathize with her character. We think anyone who has watched those gripping last few moments of the film can confirm the success of this technique.

10. Anthony Hopkins is only on screen for 24 minutes and 52 seconds. This makes his performance the second shortest to ever receive a nomination for Best Actor.

16 Cutting-Edge Facts About “All in the Family”

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Kara Kovalchik and Mental_Floss present 16 Cutting-Edge Facts About All in the Family.  Here are three of my favorites…

2. ARCHIE BUNKER WAS ORIGINALLY ARCHIE JUSTICE.
Lear thought that the BBC show’s set-up—a middle-aged, blue collar conservative man who never hesitated to express his racist viewpoints, his doting wife, and his liberal daughter and son-in-law—could be mined for humor for American audiences. Justice for All, as the show was called in his original pilot script, starred Carroll O’Connor as Archie Justice and Jean Stapleton as his wife, Edith. Kelly Jean Peters and Tim McIntire rounded out the cast as Gloria and Richard (Meathead’s original name). ABC passed on the show, however; their main complaint being Archie and Edith’s lack of chemistry with the younger actors. Lear recast the roles with Candy Azzara and Chip Oliver, changed the name of the show to Those Were the Days and shot a new pilot, but ABC was still uninterested.

5. MICKEY ROONEY TURNED DOWN THE ROLE OF ARCHIE.
When Norman Lear pitched the series to Rooney, he only got as far as describing Archie as “a bigot who uses words like ‘spade’” before Mickey interrupted him. “Norm,” said the actor with a penchant for shortening names, “they’re going to kill you, shoot you dead in the streets.” Carroll O’Connor read for the role after Rooney’s refusal and had landed the part by the time he got to page three of the pilot script. But even he was dubious about the show and told Lear that CBS would cancel it after six weeks tops.

15. SAMMY DAVIS JR. CAUSED THE LONGEST LAUGH RECORDED ON THE SERIES.
O’Connor and Sammy Davis Jr. were good friends in real life, and All in the Family was Davis’ favorite TV show. So at his request, a guest spot was arranged for him in season two’s “Sammy’s Visit.” The kiss at the end was O’Connor’s idea, and the audience reaction was the loudest and longest laugh in the history of the series.

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.