Category: Trivia

‘THE GODFATHER’: A HISTORICAL CURIOSITY THAT PROVED INSTRUMENTAL FOR OUR FILMMAKING EDUCATION AND APPRECIATION

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Those are Francis Ford Coppola’s notes from a page of Mario Puzo’s novel The Godfather.  If you’re a fan of The Godfather movies and love behind-the-scenes materials, then you’ll absolutely love Cinephilia and Beyond’s ‘THE GODFATHER’: A HISTORICAL CURIOSITY THAT PROVED INSTRUMENTAL FOR OUR FILMMAKING EDUCATION AND APPRECIATION.

If you click over, plan to stay a while because there are a treasure trove of Godfather items waiting.

13 Fascinating Facts About “Miller’s Crossing”

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Matthew Jackson and Mental_Floss present 13 Fascinating Facts About Miller’s Crossing.  Here are three of my favorites…

2. THE COEN BROTHERS TURNED DOWN BATMAN TO MAKE MILLER’S CROSSING.
After Raising Arizona’s success established them as more than one-hit indie film wonders, the Coens had some options with regard to what project they could tackle next. Reportedly, their success meant that they were among the filmmakers being considered to make Batman for Warner Bros. Of course, the Coens ultimately decided to go the less commercial route, and Tim Burton ended up telling the story of The Dark Knight on the big screen.

8. GABRIEL BYRNE HAD TO CONVINCE THE COENS TO LET HIM KEEP HIS IRISH ACCENT.
Though he was an Irish native playing a lieutenant to an Irish mobster, the Coens did not originally want Gabriel Byrne to use his own accent in the film. Byrne argued that his dialoguewas structured in such a way that it was a good fit for his accent, and after he tried it, the Coens agreed. Ultimately, both Byrne and Finney used Irish accents in the film.

11. JON POLITO HAD TO CONVINCE THE COENS TO CAST HIM IN A DIFFERENT ROLE.
When Polito read the Miller’s Crossing script, he loved it and immediately wanted to audition for the role of Johnny Caspar. The Coens had different ideas, and were considering the 39-year-old actor for the role of Caspar’s enforcer, Eddie Dane, instead. The role of Caspar was originally supposed to go to an actor in his mid-50s, but Polito was adamant.

“Anyway, I said I won’t read for anything but Johnny Caspar,” Polito told The A.V. Club. “’And tell them that they’re gonna have to come back to me cause I’m gonna play Johnny.’”

The Coens ultimately gave in, and Polito was cast. They must have liked what they saw, too, because they ended up casting him in four more films after that.

13 Spooky Facts About “The Monster Squad”

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Mark Mancini and Mental_Floss present 13 Spooky Facts About The Monster Squad.  Here are three of my favorites…

3. THE CREATURE DESIGNERS WORKED HARD TO AVOID LEGAL PROBLEMS WITH UNIVERSAL.
First and foremost, The Monster Squad is an affectionate tribute to Universal’s iconic horror movies of the 1930s, ‘40s, and ‘50s. Nevertheless, the studio passed on producing the film, which was ultimately picked up by TriStar. This forced The Monster Squad’s visual effects team to get creative.

“Although we were doing a movie that was a takeoff on the Universal classics,” said legendary monster creator Stan Winston, “… none of our designs infringed on the original designs of the Universal characters. There were subtle changes; we had to be sure that nothing about them could be considered a copyright infringement of a design.” Which is why Dracula has no Lugosi-esque widow’s peak, Frankenstein monster’s neck bolts have migrated to his temples, and Wolfman has pointy ears and a face that Dekker describes as “more lupine” than what Universal had come up with.

8. DUNCAN REGEHR BEAT OUT LIAM NEESON FOR THE ROLE OF DRACULA.
In 1986, Liam Neeson was still a relative unknown and, like many struggling actors, decided to try out for a horror movie. Apparently, he nailed his audition with a superb take on the Count. “We thought for sure we [were] going to hire this guy,” producer Jonathan Zimbert revealed inMonster Squad Forever. “Then Duncan came in and was not only as brilliant, but he was terrifying also.” Twenty years later, Wizard magazine named Regehr the “greatest Dracula of all time” for his chilling performance in The Monster Squad.

12. THE MOVIE SPENT JUST TWO WEEKS IN THEATERS.
Released on August 14, 1987, The Monster Squad was both a commercial and critical flop.Vincent Camby of The New York Times called it “a silly attempt to cross breed an Our Gangcomedy with a classic horror film, which usually means that both genres have reached the end of the line.” After a two-week theatrical run, the movie was pulled. However, it slowly built a following via video rentals and cable broadcasts.

Today, The Monster Squad commands a dedicated fan base. When the cast and crewreunited for a special two-night showing at Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in 2006, both screenings sold out. As Dekker once put it, “It took 20 years for the movie to find its audience.”

13 Facts About L. Frank Baum’s Wonderful Wizard of Oz

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Joy Lanzendorfer and Mental_Floss present 13 Facts About L. Frank Baum’s Wonderful Wizard of Oz.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. BAUM FRAMED THE PENCIL HE USED TO WRITE THE NOVEL.
L. Frank Baum—former chicken rancher, traveling salesman, and theater manager—had already published two successful children’s books when he started The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1898. He finished the book in October 1899. He must have been proud of his work, for he framed the pencil stub and hung it on the wall of his study. On the attached paper he scrawled, “With this pencil I wrote the manuscript of The Emerald City.”

2. HE GOT THE NAME “OZ” FROM HIS FILING CABINET.
At first, Baum had trouble coming up with a name for the magical land Dorothy visits. Then one day he found himself looking at the filing cabinet in his study. There were three drawers marked “A to G,” “H to N,” and “O to Z.” And so Oz was born.

9. THE BOOK SOLD OUT IN TWO WEEKS.
Full distribution began in August. According to the publisher, the first printing of 10,000 copies sold out in two weeks, followed by a second printing of 15,000 and a third printing of 10,000. In November, there was a fourth printing of 30,000 and in January, a fifth printing of 25,000. That’s 90,000 books in the first six months. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz remained a bestseller for two years.

The Other Frankenstein Monster: The Strange Fate of Glenn Strange

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Quick, name the famous actor in the photo above who played Frankenstein.

Nope, it’s not Boris Karloff.  Try again.  No, he’s not Lon Chaney, Jr..  Try again.  No, it’s not Bela Lugosi either.  The actor playing Frankenstein in the photo above is Glenn Strange.

Although Glenn Strange played the Frankenstein monster three times (tying Karloff’s record), most folks seldom think of Glenn Strange when they think of Frankenstein.  In a career that spanned over 300 roles in 43 years, Strange was best known as Sam the Bartender on Gunsmoke.

If you’ve read this far, you’ll enjoy the short piece by Jim Knipfel titled The Other Frankenstein Monster: The Strange Fate of Glenn Strange at Den of Geek.

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.