Category: Trivia

11 Expert Facts About “Leon: The Professional”

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Tara Aquino and Mental_Floss present 11 Expert Facts About Leon: The Professional.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. NATALIE PORTMAN’S PARENTS WERE COMPLETELY AGAINST HER PLAYING MATHILDA.
It was an extremely complicated role for an 11-year-old: Not only would she have to deal with a broken home and violence, but she’d also have to deal with the unwanted sexualization of a young girl. In Starting Young, a documentary about Portman that’s included on the 10th anniversary DVD edition of Léon, the actress admits that after she read the script, she was so moved to tears by the film that she knew she had to have the role. Her parents weren’t as convinced. “My parents were like, ‘There is no way you’re doing this movie. This is absolutely inappropriate for a child your age … and I was like, ‘This is the greatest thing I’ve ever read! You’re gonna ruin my life!’” she shares in the doc. “[I] was basically just fighting with them so much.”

4. PORTMAN’S PARENTS ARE THE REASON WHY MATHILDA QUITS SMOKING IN THE FILM.
As per the agreement Portman’s parents outlined with Besson, the actress was allowed five fake cigarettes in her hand during the entire film shoot, and she was never allowed to inhale a single one of them. If you pay close attention to her character, you’ll see that she only puts the cigarette to her lips, but never blows smoke out. Additionally, her parents demanded that her character quit smoking at some point in the movie. In the film, Léon scolds Mathilda for smoking, and later you see her throwing her unfinished cigarette away when she’s alone.

10. BESSON HAS SHUT DOWN RUMORS THAT A SEQUEL IS IN THE WORKS.
So stop asking. During his press tour for Lucy, Besson told The Guardian, “You can’t imagine how many people ask me for a Léon sequel. Everywhere I go they ask me. If I was motivated by money, I would have done it a long time ago. But I don’t feel it.”

In an earlier interview with Cinema Blend, Besson elaborated on the topic, saying, “Natalie is old now, she’s a mother … It’s too late. If I got an idea tomorrow about a sequel, of course I would do it. But I never came up with something strong enough. I don’t want to do sequels for money; I want to do a sequel because it’s worth it. I want it to be as good or better than the original.”

11 Things You May Not Know About John Lennon

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Eddie Deezen and Mental_Floss present 11 Things You May Not Know About John Lennon.  Here are three of my favorites…

9. HE WAS ORIGINALLY SUPPOSED TO SING LEAD ON THE BEATLES’ FIRST SINGLE, 1962’S “LOVE ME DO.”
Lennon sang lead on a great majority of the early Beatles songs, but Paul McCartney took the lead on their very first one. The lead was originally supposed to be Lennon, but because he had to play the harmonica, the lead was given to McCartney instead.

10. “ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE” WAS THE BEST LYRIC HE EVER WROTE.
A friend once asked Lennon what was the best lyric he ever wrote. “That’s easy,” replied Lennon, “All you need is love.”

11. THE LAST PHOTOGRAPHER TO SNAP HIS PICTURE WAS PAUL GORESH.
Ironically (and sadly), Lennon was signing an album for the person who was to assassinate him a few hours later when he was snapped by amateur photographer Paul Goresh on December 8, 1980.

Lennon obligingly signed a copy of his latest album, Double Fantasy, for Mark David Chapman. Later that same day, Lennon returned from the recording studio and was gunned down by Chapman, the same person for whom he had so kindly signed his autograph.

Morbidly, a photographer sneaked into the morgue and snapped a photo of Lennon’s body before it was cremated the day after his assassination. Yoko Ono has never revealed the whereabouts of his ashes or what happened to them.

$2 Billy the Kid Photo Expected to Bring $5 Million at Auction

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In 2010, Randy Guijarro purchased the vintage photo above for two bucks. Guijarro is a collector of old photos and the shot of some folks in the wild west playing croquet would make a nice addition to his collection.

It was recently confirmed that one of the croquet players in the photo is none other than Billy the Kid and the other folks playing are the Kid’s gang known as the Lincoln County Regulators.

The photo has been verified to be legit and is going to auction.  Guijarro’s two buck purchase could bring in as much as five million dollars.

I’m not sure which surprises me more…

  1. The fact that someone recognized that the small figure in the photo was Billy the Kid.
  2. That a two dollar purchase is going to bring in millions.
  3. Billy the Kid, the notorious killer was playing croquet.

Source: People.

14 Unusual Ways McDonalds Did Business in the ’60s

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Jake Rosen and Mental_Floss present 14 Unusual Ways McDonalds Did Business in the ’60s.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. THEY DIDN’T HIRE WOMEN.
Fast-service restaurants in the ‘40s and ‘50s were renowned for their carhops—perky young women who delivered trays of food to parked automobiles. But franchise founders Maurice and Richard McDonald held a negative opinion about these jobs: They felt it created an atmosphere where families would be uncomfortable visiting a burger stand populated by obnoxious teen boys ogling employees. They eliminated the carhop position, expecting customers to instead approach windows on foot. Subsequent owner Ray Kroc held firm to the no-women policy: “We don’t hire female help,” he told the Associated Press in 1959. The freeze lasted until franchise operators began insisting on a gender-balanced staff in the mid-to-late-‘60s. Even then, Kroc ruled that female employees be “flat-chested” and not work the grill since they didn’t possess the “stamina” for such intensive labor.

6. THEY DIDN’T WANT BUSINESS FROM DIRTY HOBOS.
Family was a key selling point for McDonald’s. Time and again, spokespeople for the chain reinforced the idea of creating an environment parents would be comfortable in. The companytold press that new locations were scouted based on the number of church steeples, schools and residential streets nearby, not foot traffic. McDonald’s, Kroc said, didn’t want to cater to “transients.”

9. YOU COULDN’T SIT DOWN.
With an average transaction time of just 50 seconds, McDonald’s didn’t really have the time or resources to put into washing dishes. Virtually all locations in the early ‘60s amounted to front counters and drive-in windows: There was no place to sit down inside the restaurant itself until 1962, when a Denver, Colo. location became the first to offer stools.

15 Fun Facts About “Meet the Parents”

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Roger Cormier and Mental_Floss present 15 Fun Facts About Meet the Parents .  Here are three of my favorites…

2. JIM CARREY CAME UP WITH THE NAME “FOCKER.”
At one point in the film’s development, Jim Carrey was set to star as Greg, with Steven Spielberg directing. It was during this back and forth that Carrey came up with the idea that the main character’s last name should be “Focker.” After Carrey and Spielberg moved on, the studio offered the project to Austin Powers director Jay Roach.

7. THE IDEA FOR THE LIE DETECTOR CAME FROM DE NIRO.
While researching a role, De Niro read up on polygraphers. He then talked about what he had read to Roach at a pre-shoot dinner. “At that point, there was no lie detector scene in the script,” Roach told Entertainment Weekly. “But after hearing all this, I thought, ‘Oh, this has to be in our movie.’ Now it’s become the central image of all the ads, the trailers, everything.” Jack Byrnes being ex-CIA was in the script from the very beginning.

14. YOU CANNOT SEE GREG’S AIRPLANE RANT ON AN AIRPLANE.
If you happen to be watching Meet the Parents on an airplane, you won’t see the airplane scene. It was cut out of the in-flight version.

15 Awfully Big Facts About “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”

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Kara Kovalchik and Mental_Floss present 15 Awfully Big Facts About The Mary Tyler Moore Show.  Here are three of my favorites…

4. GAVIN MACLEOD AUDITIONED FOR THE ROLE OF LOU GRANT.
Allan See started losing his hair at age 18, while he was studying drama at New York’s Ithaca College. By the time he graduated he was pretty much bald, which limited his roles as an actor. He changed his name to Gavin MacLeod and maintained a fairly steady career playing heavies, thanks to his bald pate and bulky physique. MTM co-founder Grant Tinker invited MacLeod to audition for the role of Lou Grant, which he did, but afterward he asked to read for the role of Mary’s co-worker, Murray Slaughter. He thought he could bring more to the affable Murray character than the gruff and imposing Lou. The producers agreed with him after Ed Asner tested for the role of Mary’s boss.

6. TED KNIGHT WAS LIVING PAYCHECK-TO-PAYCHECK WHEN HE WAS CAST AS TED BAXTER.
The second choice for the role of the anchorman was Lyle Waggoner, but he was happily ensconced on The Carol Burnett Show and had no desire to leave a successful series for an untested one. Jennifer Aniston’s father, John, read for the part of Ted and was called back twice, but the producers were not quite sure he was “the one.” Producer Dave Davis happened to see Ted Knight performing in a local production of the Broadway comedy You Know I Can’t Hear You When the Water’s Running and reported to the rest of the team that Knight was hilarious and that they should have him read for the role of Ted Baxter.

Even though the silver-haired Knight was a far cry from the hunky heartthrob-type they originally had in mind, Knight came to the audition wearing an anchorman-style blue blazer he had purchased from a thrift store with part of his rent money and impressed them with his booming voice and comedic chops. During that brief reading, he brought some layers to the anchorman character (cocky and arrogant on the outside, but secretly vulnerable and very human) that impressed the MTM staff and inspired some new newsroom story ideas for the show.

14. MARY REALLY DID HAVE TO STRUGGLE TO KEEP A STRAIGHT FACE DURING THE “CHUCKLES BITES THE DUST” EPISODE.
Often listed as one of the best sitcom episodes, this entry touched on a dark subject: the death of WJM children’s show host Chuckles the Clown. (He’d been dressed as Peter Peanut to serve as Grand Marshall of a circus parade and a rogue elephant tried to shell him.) Mary was supposed to remain grim and mournful while the rest of the newsroom made jokes about his unusual demise, but during every rehearsal she continually cracked up whenever Mr. Fee-Fi-Fo (one of Chuckles’ many characters) was mentioned. She recalled in her autobiography that the insides of her cheeks were almost raw from biting them so hard to keep from laughing during the actual taping of the episode.

15 Behind-the-Scenes Facts About “Taxi”

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Kara Kovalchik and Mental_Floss present 15 Behind-the-Scenes Facts About Taxi.  Here are three of my favorites…

2. TONY DANZA WAS “DISCOVERED” IN THE BOXING RING.
In the mid-1970s “Tough” Tony Danza was a professional boxer who trained at Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn. Gleason’s was home to many famous fighters, and the go-to place for filmmakers and authors who were researching the sport. That was how producers Larry Gordon and Joel Silver happened to be ringside one night when Danza knocked out Billy Perez and they invited him to audition for Walter Hill’s The Warriors, which they were producing. He was just about ready to ink a deal with them, too, when James L. Brooks called and asked him to read for the part of a boxer on his upcoming sitcom, Taxi.

9. KAUFMAN’S CONTRACT STIPULATED THAT HIS ALTER EGO, TONY CLIFTON, WAS GIVEN A SEPARATE CONTRACT.
Tony Clifton was another of Kaufman’s characters, a sleazy, obnoxious Vegas lounge-lizard. Kaufman insisted not only that Tony Clifton be written into several Taxi episodes, he also insisted that Clifton be treated as a separate and unique entity, with his own contract, dressing room, and parking spot. Kaufman also required that all the staff and actors address him as “Tony,” never “Andy.”

Clifton was cast as Louie’s brother in the episode “A Full House for Christmas,” and he didn’t endear himself to the cast when he arrived late and then retreated to his dressing room for over an hour to have very loud sex with two prostitutes he had brought with him. When rehearsals finally got underway, Tony kept changing the dialogue and announced that he’d written parts for his hooker friends as well. Jeff Conaway stormed off the set and Judd Hirsch got into a shouting match with Tony that ended up with punches thrown. Ed. Weinberger summoned security guards to escort Tony Clifton off the Paramount lot, which Andy Kaufman later stated had been his entire purpose behind that bit of “theater.”

10. REVEREND JIM’S LOOPY CHARACTER WAS ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED TO TONY.
The evolution of the show’s characters got a little confusing: In the beginning, Phil Ryan (the boxer) was supposed to be somewhat punch drunk and dim-witted. When Tony Danza was hired, the producers decided that he was more convincing playing a young, somewhat naive and innocent type, rather than a confused bumbler. Problem was, Randall Carver had already been cast as John Burns, a wide-eyed country bumpkin new to New York City. As season one progressed, the producers realized that the two characters were too similar and their lines were almost interchangeable. So John Burns was written out after the first season and Christopher Lloyd, who played 1960s drug casualty Reverend Jim Ignatowski, was added to the cast to provide the eccentric goofiness originally intended for Tony Banta.

10 Dangerous Toys from Decades Past (and the Commercials that Sold Them)

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Kara Kovalchik and Mental_Floss present 10 Dangerous Toys from Decades Past (and the Commercials that Sold Them).

Of the ten shown I had (or at least played with) Sixfinger, Slip ‘N Slide, Water Wiggle, Johnny Seven One Man Army, Creepy Crawlers, Wham-O Air Blaster, Wham-O Wheeler Bar and Super Elastic Bubble Plastic.  My favorite was the Johnny Seven One Man Army.  The most dangerous was probably the Creepy Crawlers (that metal got hot!).

I loved seeing these commercials again. Click over and check them out for a laugh.  Ah, the golden days of youth.

11 Dizzying Facts About “Vertigo”

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Tara Aquino and Mental_Floss present 11 Dizzying Facts About Vertigo.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. ALFRED HITCHCOCK BLAMED JIMMY STEWART FOR VERTIGO’S FAILURE.
Marred by mixed reviews, the $2.5 million Vertigo did comparatively less than Hitchcock’s previous movies, and was widely recognized as a failure. Frustrated with its reception, Hitchcock partly blamed star Jimmy Stewart’s aging appearance. At the time of filming, Stewart—who had starred in Hitchcock’s three previous films—was 50 years old which, according to the director, was too old to convincingly play then-25-year-old Kim Novak’s love interest.

5. AN UNCREDITED CAMERAMAN CAME UP WITH THE FAMOUS “VERTIGO EFFECT.”
According to associate producer Herbert Coleman, it wasn’t Hitchcock who came up with the film’s famous camera technique (which essentially involves zooming forward while pulling the camera backward); rather, it was an uncredited second unit cameraman, Irwin Roberts. “He didn’t get screen credit on Vertigo because they gave the screen credit to another close friend of ours [Wallace Kelley] who did all the process work on the stage,” Coleman said.

9. ALFRED HITCHCOCK CHANGED THE SETTING FROM PARIS TO SAN FRANCISO.
The French source novel, D’entre les Morts, was set in Paris, but Hitchcock believed that San Francisco was more interesting. As noted by Auiler, with the city’s vertiginous streets and hilly landscape, the location perfectly matched the film’s themes. In a city where there were such extreme physical highs and lows, awful for anyone with acrophobia, Scottie’s vertigo became a character in and of itself.

Here’s Looking at 10 Facts About “Casablanca”

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Rebecca Pahle and Mental_Floss present Here’s Looking at 10 Facts About Casablanca.  Here are three of my favorites…

3. THE SHOOT GOT OFF TO A ROUGH START.
The first scene that director Michael Curtiz and company shot was one of the flashback scenes in Paris, which caused some problems for stars Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. Bogart because, in his own words, “I’m not up on this love stuff and don’t know just what to do,” and Bergman because, as the script had not yet been finished, she didn’t know whether her character was supposed to be in love with Rick or Victor Laszlo. Curtiz, who did not know himself, covered marvelously and told her to “play it in between.”

5. PART OF THE POSTER IS FROM ANOTHER BOGIE MOVIE.
In many of Casablanca’s better-known posters, the shot of a trench coat- and fedora-wearing Bogart wielding a gun was pulled almost exactly from a publicity shot from earlier Bogie film,Across the Pacific, by poster artist Bill Gold, who repainted it in a photorealistic style.

7. THE FIRST SCENE WAS SHOT BY ANOTHER FAMOUS DIRECTOR.
Casablanca’s opening scene, the map sequence with a voiceover explaining how refugees from World War II came to be in Casablanca, was created by Don Siegel, who in later years would direct some classics of his own, including Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and Dirty Harry (1971).

21 Things You Didn’t Know About the “Fast and Furious” Franchise

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Hollywood.com presents 21 Things You Didn’t Know About the Fast and Furious Franchise.  Here are three of my favorites…

13. Vin Diesel got the right to another movie franchise…just for showing up. 
In lieu of a paycheck for his cameo at the end of the film, Vin Diesel traded with Universal – his cameo, for the rights to the Riddick franchise.

18. The Rock’s part was written for…Tommy Lee Jones?
The role of Luke Hobbs was written with Tommy Lee Jones or Josh Brolin in mind for the part, but when Dwayne Johnson (née The Rock) approached the studio about joining the franchise, Universal had the filmmakers rework the part for him instead.

21. The films’ timeline makes no sense. 
On the surface, the Furious franchise seems pretty simple: Cars go fast, stuff gets smashed, beginning-middle-end. But the films are actually this weird non-linear series, told out of sequence. When you look at the whole story, it constantly jumps back and forth through time, and major plot points are told through flashbacks. Fast & Furious, Fast Five, and Furious 6 are an internal trilogy of prequels, that actually circle back to the third film,Tokyo Drift.

9 Things You May Not Know About the Warren Commission

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Evan Andrews and History.com present 9 Things You May Not Know About the Warren Commission.  Here are three of my favorites…

Earl Warren suppressed key evidence from the Commission.

Chief Justice Earl Warren was a close friend of the Kennedy family, and his personal attachment may have interfered with his duties to the Commission. In one of the most infamous episodes of the investigation, Warren denied his fellow Commission members access to Kennedy’s autopsy photos because he deemed them too disturbing. He later refused to allow the Commission to interview certain witnesses whom Lee Harvey Oswald may have known in Mexico, and even tried to block an interview with first lady Jackie Kennedy because he didn’t want to invade her privacy.

The Commission secretly interviewed Fidel Castro.

Many believed that Fidel Castro might have conspired in Kennedy’s murder, and it turns out that the Cuban dictator personally proclaimed his innocence in an off-the-record interview with the Warren Commission. According to journalist Philip Shenon, at one point in the investigation, Commission lawyer William Coleman met face to face with Castro on a fishing boat off the coast of Cuba. During a three-hour exchange, Castro repeatedly denied having any involvement in the assassination. No notes were taken during the secret rendezvous, and only Earl Warren and one other investigator were ever made aware of it.

The FBI and the CIA intentionally misled the Commission.

The FBI and the CIA had monitored Lee Harvey Oswald in the months before the assassination, but both agencies later tried to downplay their knowledge of him to the Warren Commission. Oswald had once even left a threatening note for an FBI agent at the Bureau’s office in Dallas. Fearful of catching blame for not preventing the assassination, the FBI later destroyed the note and even removed the agent’s name from a typewritten transcript of Oswald’s address book provided to the Warren Commission. Congressman Hale Boggs would later say that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover “lied his eyes out” to the Commission’s investigators.

Evidence also suggests that the CIA had Oswald under surveillance when he made a trip to Mexico in September 1963 and visited the Cuban and Soviet embassies, but the agency repeatedly denied any connection to the alleged shooter. The CIA also neglected to inform the Commission about its many covert operations in Cuba—including several schemes to assassinate Fidel Castro—even though those revelations might have helped shape the investigation.

13 Fascinating Facts About “Natural Born Killers”

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Roger Cormier and Mental_Floss present 13 Fascinating Facts About Natural Born Killers.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. QUENTIN TARANTINO WROTE THE ORIGINAL SCRIPT.
It was titled Mickey and Mallory and focused more on the media than on Mickey Knox and Mallory Wilson. He sold the rights to the movie for $10,000 because he was unable to get it made himself (this was before Pulp Fiction). Tarantino ended up getting a story credit forNatural Born Killers, while Richard Rutowski, Oliver Stone, and David Veloz each got a screenwriting credit.

3. MICHAEL MADSEN ALMOST TOOK THE LEAD.
Michael Madsen was considered for the lead role of Mickey: “Oliver Stone wanted me, but the studios offered him an extra $20 million to cast Woody Harrelson,” Madsen told The Guardian.

11. MICKEY AND MALLORY DIE IN THE ALTERNATE ENDING.
The killers survive in the final version because Oliver Stone believed that the 1990s were a time when the bad guys got away with it.

13 Things You Might Not Know About “Modern Family”

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Roger Cormier and Mental_Floss present 13 Things You Might Not Know About Modern Family.  Here are three of my favorites…

2. CRAIG T. NELSON WAS OFFERED THE ROLE OF JAY PRITCHETT.
Like many things in Hollywood, Nelson’s decision to pass on the project came down to money. “I really wanted to do Modern Family,” Nelson said. “I really liked the script and I liked the people. I just said, ‘You know what? I’ve been doing this too long.’ We’re in the middle of a cutback here, ladies and gentlemen, in Hollywood and salaries have gone way, way down … I just felt disrespected to tell you the truth.” The next year, Nelson signed on for Parenthood.

5. FIZBO THE CLOWN WAS A REAL CHARACTER ERIC STONESTREET PLAYED AS A CHILD.
Stonestreet began dressing up as Fizbo when he was nine years old (his dream was to be a clown in the circus). By the time he was 11, he was performing at kids’ birthday parties. “It was my way then as a young man to express my desire to entertain and perform,” he told The Kansas City Star. “I didn’t know what I was saying then was that I wanted to be an actor. I had parents, fortunately, who didn’t think I was weird. They thought it was funny and cute and encouraged me to do it. And I had a grandma who would make my costumes.” He doesn’t know where the name Fizbo came from.

7. SOFIA VERGARA THOUGHT ED O’NEILL SPOKE SPANISH.
Sofia Vergara watched Married … with Children growing up in Colombia, where the voices were dubbed into Spanish. She didn’t realize that it wasn’t Ed O’Neill saying Al Bundy’s lines in Spanish, and was surprised to find that he couldn’t speak her native language when they first met. “He had a very sexy Antonio Banderas voice, the guy who was dubbing him,” said Vergara.