Category: Trivia

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.

13 Fascinating Facts About “Dog Day Afternoon”

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Eric D. Snider and Mental_Floss present 13 Fascinating Facts About Dog Day Afternoon.  Here are three of my favorites…

2. THE REAL BANK ROBBER LOOKED A LOT LIKE AL PACINO.
Fluge’s magazine article described John Wojtowicz as “a dark, thin fellow with the broken-faced good looks of an Al Pacino or Dustin Hoffman,” so naturally the screenplay found its way into both actors’ hands. (Pacino was Lumet’s first choice, but Hoffman was reportedly approached when Pacino, seeking to take a brief break from movies, initially turned it down.) We see a bit more De Niro in Wojtowicz than Pacino or Hoffman, but Pacino was a good fit, too.

9. THEY LOST A DAY’S WORK BECAUSE OF PACINO’S MUSTACHE.
One of the things the actor did as a means of getting into character was grow a mustache—not because the real robber had one, but because the character was gay, and in the mid-’70s, many gay men had mustaches. In Lumet’s words, however, Pacino’s mustache “looked terrible.” And after the first day of filming, Pacino agreed. Watching the footage, Pacino told Lumet, “The mustache has got to go,” and asked if he could shave it and redo that day’s work. Lumet agreed, and the mustache was gone—as was a day’s worth of footage.

10. IT’S THE ONLY TIME LUMET EVER INCORPORATED IMPROVISATION INTO ONE OF HIS MOVIES.
Sidney Lumet’s first film was 1957’s 12 Angry Men. He made 20 more between that and Dog Day Afternoon (and 22 more afterward), and by his own account, he never used improv. “I don’t like actors to improvise, to use their own language,” he said in the Dog Day AfternoonDVD commentary. “They are not going to come up with something … better than a really talented writer who has done months of work on something.”

But as Lumet and the cast rehearsed Dog Day Afternoon—especially the parts where the robbers and bank employees are just sitting around killing time—someone asked about the possibility of improv, and Lumet realized it could be useful for helping the actors bond, as well as making the characters’s interactions feel more natural. With screenwriter Frank Pierson present, Lumet let the actors improvise in rehearsal; recorded it; and ended up adding some of their conversations to the script (which won the film’s only Oscar, by the way).

15 Critical Facts About “ER”

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

2. GEORGE CLOONEY “BEGGED” FOR AN AUDITION.
“George Clooney begged me for a part,” said executive producer John Wells. The 33-year-old was by that time a TV veteran who hadn’t yet found his breakout role (one of his earlier roles had been on a short-lived 1984 CBS sitcom titled E/R). “George was the first person to audition. He came after me for it,” recalled Wells. “Our second day in the office, George showed up and wouldn’t leave until I’d let him audition … George got his hands on the material and was like a dog with a bone.”

12. SOME ACTORS ASKED TO BE KILLED OFF.
Maura Tierney, who played Dr. Abby Lockhart from 1999 to 2009, asked to be killed off. Instead, she was given a juicy enough storyline that she was okay with sticking around until the end of the series. When Edwards told John Wells that he was leaving the show after eight seasons, Wells said that Dr. Greene was too important a character to just walk away from the show, so he asked Edwards: “‘Do you mind if we kill him?’ And I was like, ‘Nope!’ You’ve gotta do what’s best for the show, so that’s okay.” When Kellie Martin decided her character, Lucy Knight, wasn’t working for her, she requested that her departure be made “big.”

15. THE SHOW SAVED LIVES.
A 28-year-old woman in Texas discovered she had a brain tumor because her tongue went out to the side, just like Dr. Greene’s tongue did when his brain tumor returned. The woman’s tumor was caught early and she survived. A USC study found that subjects were 65 percent more likely to change their eating habits if they watched the episode about obesity. And a 2002 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation discovered viewers “increased their knowledge”of HPV and contraception after viewing episodes of the show.

15 Facts About Silly Putty

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Kristin Fawcett and Mental_Floss present 15 Facts About Silly Putty.  I loved playing with Silly Putty when I was a little kid (for about 10 minutes).  Here are three of my favorites…

3. SILLY PUTTY WAS FIRST MARKETED TOWARD ADULTS.
Silly Putty wasn’t a hit at the 1950 International Toy Fair. Still, buyers at Neiman-Marcus and Doubleday bookstores picked it up, and before long, the novelty item had received a shout-out in the New Yorker’s “Talk of the Town” section. Thanks to the New Yorker, Hodgson received more than 250,000 orders in three days.

But Silly Putty really took off once the savvy marketing man identified a more lucrative customer base: children. Hodgson created a TV ad campaign for Silly Putty that’s today credited as one of the first commercials for kids. The strategy paid off; when Hodgson died in 1976, his estate was worth $140 million. Today, it would be worth close to $590 million.

7. IT ONCE LIFTED INK OFF NEWSPRINT.
Before Photoshop, crafty kids could digitally manipulate and distort images by placing Silly Putty over newspaper, lifting it off, and transferring the ink onto a new surface. Sadly, this is no longer the case; today’s newspapers are printed using nontransferable ink. [This is what was fun for me.  Copying comic strip panels onto the Silly Putty. – Craig]

14. ITS PRICE HAS NEVER CHANGED.
Silly Putty was first sold in 1950 for $1. Today, it retails for the same price—but don’t think you’re scoring the same deal as your parents or grandparents. Silly Putty eggs used to contain 1-ounce lumps. Now, they hold less than .5 ounces.

9 Great Remake Cameos from the Original Movie’s Stars

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Christopher Campbell and Film School Rejects present 9 Great Remake Cameos from the Original Movie’s Stars.

My favorite of those listed is the same as Christopher Campbell’s — Kevin McCarthy in Invasion of the Body Snatchers…

McCarthy shows up near the start of the movie hysterically running through the street, just as he’d been seen doing at the end of the first version from 1956. It’s like a passing of the torch in a way.

Although Michael Caine’s appearance in the Get Carter remake didn’t make the list, it is also a favorite of mine.

15 Rules from the Hobo Ethical Code of 1889

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When I was growing up it wasn’t unusual to see references to hobos in television shows and movies.  These were men [can’t remember seeing or hearing of female hobos, but there must have been] who rode the rails, traveled the country, picking up odd jobs or a free meal before moving on to the next town.

Perhaps hobos are now lumped in the homeless category, although I think there is a difference.

Mental_Floss presents 15 Rules from the Hobo Ethical Code of 1889.  I wish more people in 2015 followed the Hobo Code of over 100 years ago.