Category: Trivia

10 Things You May Not Know About Teddy Roosevelt

Posted on by

Christopher Klein and History.com present 10 Things You May Not Know About Teddy Roosevelt.  Here are three of my favorites…

His mother and his first wife died on the same day.

On Valentine’s Day in 1884, Roosevelt’s mother passed away from typhoid fever. One floor above in the same house, his first wife, Alice, died less than 12 hours later from Bright’s disease and complications from giving birth to the couple’s first child just two days before. “The light has gone out of my life,” Roosevelt wrote in his diary that night.

He won the Nobel Peace Prize.

The man famed for his exploits at San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War and “Big Stick” diplomacy captured the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in mediating the Treaty of Portsmouth, which ended the Russo-Japanese War. Roosevelt was the first American to capture the award, and he used the prize money to fund a trust to promote industrial peace.

A boxing accident left him virtually blind in one eye.

Roosevelt boxed for Harvard University’s intramural lightweight championship and continued to spar recreationally during his political career. During his days in the White House, he regularly put up his dukes against former professional boxers and other sparring partners until a punch from a young artillery officer smashed a blood vessel and left him nearly blind in his left eye.

15 Rapid Facts About “Speed”

Posted on by

Roger Cormier and Mental_Floss present 15 Rapid Facts About Speed.  Here are three of my favorites…

4. STEPHEN BALDWIN TURNED DOWN PLAYING JACK.
In addition to that Baldwin brother, Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Wesley Snipes, and Woody Harrelson were all approached to play the lead. Director Jan de Bont thought Keanu Reeves was a great fit after seeing him in Point Break.

5. HALLE BERRY TURNED DOWN PLAYING ANNIE.
Berry wasn’t interested, nor were Meryl Streep or Kim Basinger. Yost wanted Ellen DeGeneres for the role (DeGeneres recently claimed she was never officially asked.) Demolition Man star Sandra Bullock won the role, and was paid $200,000.

13. IT TESTED THROUGH THE ROOF.
At a test screening, some audience members walked up the aisles backward so that they would miss as little of the movie as possible before going to the bathroom. It helped convince 20th Century Fox to move up the release date from August to June.

16 Repeatable Facts About “Groundhog Day”

Posted on by

Roger Cormier and Mental_Floss present 16 Repeatable Facts About Groundhog Day.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. TOM HANKS AND MICHAEL KEATON TURNED DOWN PLAYING PHIL.
Hanks was busy, and figured if he starred in the film audiences would just expect him to become nice because he’s always nice anyway. Keaton didn’t understand the script. He admitted to regretting the decision.

13. NOBODY REALLY KNOWS HOW LONG MURRAY WAS STUCK IN THE SAME DAY.
Ramis refuted an earlier estimate of 10 years, guessing in 2009 it was more like “30 to 40 years.” In Rubin’s original script, Murray was looping for 10,000 years, and he marked the time by reading one page in one of the B&B’s library books every day.

16. MURRAY AND RAMIS’ FRIENDSHIP FELL APART ONCE FILMING ENDED.
Ramis admitted that his old friend and fellow Stripes and Ghostbusters star was “really irrationally mean and unavailable” at times, and often late to set, though he attributed the behavior to a divorce Murray was going through at the time. Outside of a few words at one wake and one bar mitzvah, Murray stopped speaking entirely to Ramis for 20 years, only to finally bury the hatchet on Ramis’ death bed before he passed away from complications due to autoimmune inflammatory vasculitis in 2014.

9 Mournful Facts About Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”

Posted on by

Joy Lanzendorfer and Mental_Floss present 9 Mournful Facts About Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. AS POE WAS WRITING THE POEM, HIS WIFE WAS DEATHLY ILL. 
When Poe was writing “The Raven,” his wife, Virginia, was suffering from tuberculosis. It was a weird marriage—Virginia was Poe’s first cousin and only 13 years old when they married—but there’s no doubt that Poe loved her deeply. Having lost his mother, brother, and foster mother to tuberculosis, he knew the toll the disease would take. “The Raven” is a poem written by a man who’d lost many loved ones, and was soon expecting to lose one more.

6. “THE RAVEN” WAS AN IMMEDIATE HIT.
After Graham’s Magazine rejected the poem, Poe published it in The American Review under the pseudonym “Quarles.” In January 1845, it came out in The New York Mirror under Poe’s real name. Around the country, it was reprinted, reviewed, and otherwise immortalized. It soon became so ubiquitous, it was used in advertising.

And then there were the parodies. Within a month after “The Raven” came out, there was a parody poem, “The Owl,” written by “Sarles.” Others soon followed, including “The Whippoorwill,” “The Turkey,” “The Gazelle,” and “The Parrot.” You can read many of themhere. Abraham Lincoln found one parody, “The Polecat,” so hilarious that he decided to look up “The Raven.” He ended up memorizing the poem.

7. “THE RAVEN” MADE POE INTO A CELEBRITY …
Poe was soon so recognizable that children followed him in the street, flapping their arms and cawing. Then he’d turn around and say, “nevermore!” and they would run away, shrieking. Trying to capitalize off this fame, he gave lectures that included dramatic readings of the poem. They were apparently something to see. His lecture was “a rhapsody of the most intense brilliancy … He kept us entranced for two hours and a half,” said one attendee. Yet another said that Poe would turn down the lamps and recite “those wonderful lines in the most melodious of voice.” Another said, “To hear him repeat ‘The Raven,’ which he does very quietly, is an event in one’s life.”

The 100 Greatest Horror Movies of All Time

Posted on by

Hitfix polled more than 100 luminaries for the world of horror to come up with their list of The 100 Greatest Horror Movies of All Time. 

Here’s their top ten and my comments on each…

1. “The Exorcist” (1973; d. William Friedkin):  While it’s hard to argue with the popularity of The Exorcist as the greatest horror movie of all time – it is arguably the scariest – I’d put Romero’s Night of the Living Dead in the number one spot.

2. “The Shining” (1980; d. Stanley Kubrick): I like Kubrick’s take on Stephen King’s novel [even if King doesn’t] but it wouldn’t make my top ten.

3. “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” (1974; d. Tobe Hooper): Texas Chainsaw Massacre wouldn’t make my top ten… or top 50.

4. “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968; d. Roman Polanski): I’d like to see this one again.  I liked it when I saw it, but the last time was years ago.  I wonder if it would hold up.  The fact that it placed so high on the list indicates it would.

5. “Alien” (1979; d. Ridley Scott): I prefer Aliens.

6. “The Thing” (1982; d. John Carpenter): Yeah, I love that people are coming around to love this film.  It was ahead of its time.

7. “Halloween” (1978; d. John Carpenter): Love the love that John Carpenter received on this list!

8. “Psycho” (1960; d. Alfred Hitchcock): A classic!

9. “Night of the Living Dead” (1968; d. George A. Romero): You know I love this movie!

10. “Jaws” (1975; d. Steven Spielberg): Jaws is a great film but I always have a bit of trouble placing it in the horror category.

25 “Titanic” Facts You Never Knew

Posted on by

Hollywood.com presents 25 Titanic Facts You Never Knew.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. The movie features 2 hours and 40 minutes of scenes set in 1912. This is the exact amount of time the Titanic took to sink.

GIPHY/Peculiargroove.Tumblr.Com

The film also has 37 seconds between the iceberg warning and the actual collision, which is the same amount of time that transpired in real life.

3. It was the first movie to receive two Academy Award nominations for the same character.

GIPHY/Fyeah80s-90s.Tumblr.Com

Both Kate Winslet and Gloria Stuart were nominated (Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, respectively) for playing the role of Rose. The next time two actors were nominated for playing the same role was 2001’s Iris, also starring Winslet.

8. And Jack’s ice-fishing story is a Titanic survivor’s quote about the North Atlantic water.

Secretwithinsecrets.Tumblr.Com

He was dissuading Rose not to jump off the back of the boat, in the scene where they meet.

40 Fascinating Facts About Your Favorite Horror Movies

Posted on by

Mental_Floss presents 40 Fascinating Facts About Your Favorite Horror Movies.  Here are three of my favorites…

5. STEPHEN KING WASN’T A FAN OF THE SHINING.
In 1983, Stephen King told Playboy, “I’d admired [Stanley] Kubrick for a long time and had great expectations for the project, but I was deeply disappointed in the end result. Parts of the film are chilling, charged with a relentlessly claustrophobic terror, but others fell flat.”

King didn’t like the casting of Jack Nicholson either, claiming, “Jack Nicholson, though a fine actor, was all wrong for the part. His last big role had been in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and between that and the manic grin, the audience automatically identified him as a loony from the first scene. But the book is about Jack Torrance’s gradual descent into madness through the malign influence of the Overlook—if the guy is nuts to begin with, then the entire tragedy of his downfall is wasted.”

24. GENE HACKMAN WAS SLATED TO STAR IN—AND DIRECT—THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS.
Gene Hackman and Orion Pictures split the $500,000 needed for the movie rights to the book. But Hackman dropped out days after he watched clips of himself at the 1989 Oscars as FBI Agent Alan Parker in the violent Mississippi Burning, deciding not to follow up a dark role with an even more unlikeable character.

38. SISSY SPACEK WAS ADAMANT THAT HER OWN HAND APPEAR INCARRIE’S FINAL SCENE.
Though Brian De Palma wanted to get a stunt person for the final scene, where Sue Snell visits Carrie’s grave, Spacek insisted that it needed to be her hand that was shown, which required her to be buried in the ground. “I laughed about that,” Spacek told NPR. “I do all my own foot and hand work, and always have.”

10 Aquatic Facts About “Creature from the Black Lagoon”

Posted on by

Mark Mancini and Mental_Floss present 10 Aquatic Facts About Creature from the Black Lagoon.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. THE MOVIE’S CONCEPT WAS CONCEIVED AT A CITIZEN KANE DINNER PARTY.
One night during filming of Citizen Kane, Orson Welles invited one of the movie’s actors, William Alland, over for dinner along with a cinematographer named Gabriel Figueroa. While there, Figueroa shared a story he had heard during his travels of a race of amphibious beasts—half man, half reptile—that stalked the Amazon River. More than a decade later, still intrigued by the concept, Alland dramatized it by producing Creature from the Black Lagoon.

4. A FORMER FRANKENSTEIN ACTOR TURNED DOWN THE MAIN ROLE.
When Boris Karloff retired from playing Mary Shelley’s reanimated monster, Glenn Strange took over. From 1944 to 1948, Strange terrified audiences in Universal’s House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, and Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein. Years later, the studio tapped him to play their web-footed “Gillman” in Creature from the Black Lagoon, but because swimming wasn’t his forte, Strange declined the part.

9. ITS 1955 SEQUEL WAS CLINT EASTWOOD’S FIRST MOVIE.  
Pleased by the box office success of the original film, Universal rushed a sequel production.  Revenge of the Creature premiered in Denver on March 23, 1955. At one point, audiences got to see future star Clint Eastwood portraying a lab assistant. Though his appearance was uncredited, it hardly went unnoticed when the cast of Mystery Science Theater 3000 riffed  Revenge of the Creature in a 1997 episode:

For Revenge of the Creature, Arnold resumed directing duties and he didn’t care for the young Eastwood’s bit, telling Alland, “I told you I don’t want to do that ******* scene!” Eventually, he relented and the footage stayed in. Eastwood never forgot the experience. As he told The Telegraph, “It was a hell of a way to start your acting career: walk on a set and you know that the director hates the scene. Therefore you know he hates you.”

31 Things You Didn’t Know About Your Favorite Horror Movies

Posted on by

Jenna Mullins and E! present 31 Things You Didn’t Know About Your Favorite Horror Movies.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. The Exorcist is the first horror movie to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards.

9. The blood used in Night of the Living Dead is chocolate syrup.

21. Crewmembers were so creeped out by Tim Curry‘s performance as Pennywise in It that most people avoided him during filming.

15 Must-Watch Facts About “The Ring”

Posted on by

Roger Cormier and Mental_Floss present 15 Must-Watch Facts About The Ring.  Here are three of my favorites…

2. THE DIRECTOR FIRST SAW RINGU ON A POOR QUALITY VHS TAPE, WHICH ADDED TO ITS CREEPINESS.
Gore Verbinski had previously directed MouseHunt. He said the first time he “watched the original Ringu was on a VHS tape that was probably seven generations down. It was really poor quality, but actually that added to the mystique, especially when I realized that this was a movie about a videotape.” Naomi Watts struggled to find a VHS copy of Ringu while shooting in the south of Wales. When she finally got a hold of one she watched it on a very small TV alone in her hotel room. “I remember being pretty freaked out,” Watts said. “I just saw it the once, and that was enough to get me excited about doing it.”

6. THE TWO WEREN’T SURE IF THE MOVIE WAS GOING TO BE SCARY ENOUGH.
After shooting some of the scenes, and not having the benefit of seeing what they’d look like once any special effects were added, Henderson and Watts worried that the final result would not be scary enough. “There were moments when Naomi and I would look at each other and say, ‘This is embarrassing, people are going to laugh,'” Henderson told the BBC.” You just hope that somebody makes it scary or you’re going to look like an idiot!”

11. CHRIS COOPER WAS CUT FROM THE MOVIE.
Cooper played a child murderer in two scenes which were initially meant to bookend the film. He unconvincingly claimed to Rachel that he found God in the beginning, and in the end she gave him the cursed tape. Audiences at test screenings were distracted that an actor they recognized disappears for most of the film, so he was cut out entirely.

10 Amorphous Facts About “The Blob”

Posted on by

Mark Mancini and Mental_Floss present 10 Amorphous Facts About The Blob.  Here are three of my favorites…

6. ITS THEME SONG CRACKED THE BILLBOARD TOP 40.

Titled “Beware of the Blob,” this catchy anthem spent three weeks on the Billboard charts,peaking at #33. The song was co-written by Burt Bacharach, who also penned such hits as “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on my Head” and “What’s New Pussycat?” Thus far, Bacharach’s career has included six Grammy and three Oscar wins. Mack David—his partner on The Blob—was a seasoned vet, too (and eight-time Oscar nominee) who’d written lyrics for Disney’sCinderella (1950), among many other films.

7. ED MCMAHON CAN BE HEARD DURING THE MOVIE THEATER SCENE.

When the throbbing invertebrate descends upon an unsuspecting cinema, the audience is watching a genuine, real-life thriller flick. Daughter of Horror (a.k.a. Dementia) was released in 1955 and features narration from Johnny Carson’s future Tonight Show sidekick. Keep your ears open for McMahon’s familiar voice near the beginning of the clip above.

5. LEADING MAN STEVE MCQUEEN CHEATED HIMSELF OUT OF A HUGE PAYCHECK.
Despite a handful of television roles—including a guest appearance on the NBC series Tales of Wells Fargo—Steve McQueen (credited here as Steven McQueen) had yet to establish himself as Hollywood’s favorite bad boy. So Harris got him for a bargain price. After taking on the lead role (his first) in The Blob, McQueen was offered a choice: $3000 upfront or 10 percent of the film’s gross profits; he didn’t hesitate in opting for the former. At the time, McQueen was in dire financial straits and didn’t have much faith in The Blob’s box office prospects. He’d soon regret that call. Within a month of its release, The Blob had earned $1.5 million and went on to snag $12 million (nearly $97 million in today’s dollars) domestically.

13 Judicious Facts About “To Kill a Mockingbird”

Posted on by

Eric D. Snider and Mental_Floss present 13 Judicious Facts About To Kill a Mockingbird.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. ROCK HUDSON ALMOST PLAYED ATTICUS FINCH.
Universal Pictures offered the role to Rock Hudson when the project was first being developed, and the actor was prepared to take it. Things stalled, however, when the film’s producer, Alan J. Pakula, wanted an even bigger star: Gregory Peck. Universal basically said, “Well, sure! If you can get Gregory Peck, we’ll not only agree to it, we’ll finance the movie!” And that’s what happened. Sorry, Rock.

3. GREGORY PECK WANTED TO CHANGE THE TITLE.
He wasn’t the only person who felt the phrase “to kill a mockingbird” didn’t accurately reflect the content of the story. He was the most influential, though, and he pushed for a change before he’d even read the screenplay. Lee’s literary agent, Annie Laurie Williams, was furious at the suggestion, and wrote to the publisher (who naturally wanted the bestselling book’s title to carry over) to assure him that Peck “has been signed to play the part of Atticus, but has no right to say what the title of the picture will be.” Mulligan and Pakula publicly stated that the title would remain intact, and Peck dropped the subject.

8. THERE’S A REASON THE MOVIE FOCUSES MORE ON ATTICUS THAN THE BOOK DOES, AND THAT REASON IS NAMED GREGORY PECK.
After seeing a rough cut of the film early in the summer of 1962, Peck sent a memo to his agent and to Universal execs listing 44 problems he had with it. What it boiled down to was that the children had too much screen time, Atticus not enough. “Atticus has no chance to emerge as courageous or strong,” Peck wrote. He said in a later memo, “In my opinion, the picture will begin to look better as Atticus’ story line emerges, and the children’s scenes are cut down to proportion.” Universal wanted the star to be happy, but Mulligan and Pakula’s contract had stipulated they’d get final cut. Still, they made more changes to appease Peck, deleting some of the children’s scenes in favor of Peck’s. In the end, the trial occupies some 30 percent of the film, despite being only about 15 percent of the book

10 Blood-Curdling Facts About Dracula

Posted on by

Joy Lanzendorfer and Mental_Floss present 10 Blood-Curdling Facts About Dracula.  Here are three of my favorites…

2. VAMPIRES SHARE A HISTORY WITH FRANKENSTEIN.
In 1816, on a gloomy day in Lake Geneva, Lord Byron proposed a ghost story contest that led to Mary Shelley writing Frankenstein. It was also the birth of The Vampyre by John Polidori, he first-ever vampire story written in English. Polidori was Byron’s personal physician and he may have based his aristocratic bloodsucker on his patient—which would make Lord Byron the basis for the bulk of vampire depictions that followed. (Other accounts say that Polidori stole a fragment of fiction that Byron wrote and used it in his story.) In any case, The Vampyreinfluenced Varney the Vampire, a popular penny dreadful from the 1840s, and Carmilla, a novella about a lesbian vampire from the 1870s, and, of course, Stoker.

3. STOKER STARTED WRITING DRACULA RIGHT AFTER JACK THE RIPPER.
Stoker began Dracula in 1890, two years after Jack the Ripper terrorized London. The lurid atmosphere these crimes produced made their way into Stoker’s novel, which was confirmed in the 1901 preface to the Icelandic edition of Dracula. Stoker’s reference links the two frightening figures in such a way that raises more questions than provides answers, but no doubt confirms the terrifying real-life influence on his fictional world.

9. IT WAS ALMOST CALLED THE UNDEAD.

Amandajm, Wikimedia Commons // Public Domain

The working title of the novel was The Dead Un-Dead, which was later shortened to The Undead. Then, right before it was published, Stoker changed the title once more to Dracula. What’s in a name? Well, it’s tough to say. Upon release, Dracula got good reviews, but it was slow to sell, and by the end of his life, Stoker was so poor that he had to ask for a compassionate grant from the Royal Literary Fund. The Gothic tale didn’t become the legend it is today until film adaptations began popping up during the 20th century.

13 Epic Facts About “Once Upon a Time in America”

Posted on by

Eric D. Snider and Mental_Floss present 13 Epic Facts About Once Upon a Time in America.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. SERGIO LEONE TURNED DOWN THE GODFATHER TO MAKE IT. 
By his own account, Once Upon a Time in America was Leone’s pet project, the one he devoted most of his adult life to making. He became interested in the story while he was making 1968’s Once Upon a Time in the West , and was so fixated on it that when Paramount approached him a few years later to make The Godfather, he politely declined. If he’d known it would take another 12 years to get Once Upon a Time in America produced anyway, maybe he would have accepted. But then where would Francis Ford Coppola be?

8. NOBODY HAS EVER SEEN LEONE’S COMPLETE VERSION.
After the nine-month shoot, Leone had eight to 10 hours’ worth of material. He trimmed it down to six hours, hoping to release it in two three-hour parts, but the producers were having none of that. So he reduced it to 269 minutes—four and a half hours—but it still wasn’t enough. He chopped out another 40 minutes, and this 229-minute version is what premiered at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival and subsequently played in European theaters.

American distributors butchered the film even more, cutting out another 90 minutes and rearranging the scenes into chronological order (no more flashbacks), which rendered the movie incomprehensible. The American version flopped, of course, and Leone was devastated. A Martin Scorsese-led effort to restore Leone’s original version resulted in a 251-minute cut playing at Cannes in 2012, but some 18 minutes were still missing due to legal issues over who owned the missing scenes. The 251-minute version is now available on Blu-ray and DVD. Someday, perhaps the complete version will be restored.

12. LEONE WAS A PERFECTIONIST. 
Leone and De Niro had their different approaches, but one thing they had in common was perfectionism. According to one of the screenwriters, Leone did 35 takes of a large (and expensive) crowd scene, only to insist on one more because he noticed a kid in the crowd looking directly at the camera.