Category: Trivia

Roger Cormier and Mental_Floss present 15 Epic Facts About Gladiator. Here are three are my favorites…

1. STEVEN SPIELBERG GREENLIT THE MOVIE AFTER ASKING THREE QUESTIONS.

Screenwriter David Franzoni received a three-picture deal with Dreamworks SKG after writing the script for Amistad. During a “surprisingly brief” pitch meeting with Spielberg for what would become Gladiator, Franzoni told the Writers Guild of America that the director “really had three basic questions. My gladiator movie, it was about ancient Roman gladiators—not American, Japanese, whatever else? Yes, I said. Taking place in the ancient Coliseum? Yes. Fighting with swords and animals to the death and such? Yes. Great, let’s make the movie.”

10. CROWE WASN’T THRILLED WITH THE SCRIPT (OR LACK THEREOF).

While appearing on Inside the Actors Studio, Crowe said that only 32 pages of the script were completed when shooting commenced. Co-writer William Nicholson recounted how Crowe once told him, “Your lines are garbage but I’m the greatest actor in the world, and I can make even garbage sound good.” Initially, Crowe didn’t care for the now-famous line “And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next,” but repeatedly failed to ad-lib anything better.

13. JOHNNY CASH WAS A FAN OF THE FILM.

Before he was hired to play the legendary singer in Walk the Line, Phoenix recalled to The Guardian how he once met Johnny Cash by pure coincidence, and how he “started quoting to me the most sadistic dialogue from Gladiator with obvious relish.”

Sean Hutchinson and Mental_Floss present 15 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About American History X.   Here are three are my favorites…

2. TONY KAYE [Director] TRIED TO DISOWN THE FILM.

Kaye was unsatisfied with the final cut of the movie, so he tried to use Alan Smithee—the official pseudonym (coined in 1969 and discontinued in 2000) for directors looking to disown their projects—in the credits. The Directors Guild of America blocked the effort, however, because DGA guidelines stipulated that directors could only use the Smithee pseudonym if they agreed not to publicly disparage the film, something the overly vocal Kaye had already done.

5. EDWARD NORTON WAS ALLEGEDLY CAST WITHOUT KAYE’S APPROVAL.

Norton stepped in when Phoenix passed on the project—reportedly against Tony Kaye’s wishes. Kaye wanted to find another actor, but let Norton keep the part because Kaye simply couldn’t find anyone better prior to the start of shooting.

9. NORTON TURNED DOWN A ROLE IN SAVING PRIVATE RYAN FOR AMERICAN HISTORY X.

He would have played Private Ryan (Matt Damon got the part instead).

Michael Arbeiter and Mental_Floss present 15 Things You Might Not Know About One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.  Listed below are three of my favorites…

7. MANY SCENES WERE SHOT WITHOUT THE ACTORS’ KNOWLEDGE.

To complete this realistic immersion, Forman led his performers in unscripted group therapy sessions in which he directed the actors to develop their characters’ psychological maladies organically. He would often capture footage of the actors, both in and out of character, without explicitly mentioning that the cameras were rolling. The film’s final cut includes a shot of a visibly irritated Fletcher reacting to a piece of direction fed to her by Forman.

8. FORMAN AND NICHOLSON HAD A TREMENDOUS SPAT OVER THE FILM’S PLOT.

While the intensity of the turmoil varies from rumor to rumor, reports from the set were consistent on one fact: The star refused to speak with Forman for a large chunk of the production process. Nicholson took issue with Forman’s suggestion that the hospital inmates would be an unruly bunch upon the initial arrival of McMurphy. Instead, the actor insisted that such disavowal of the medical staff’s authority should only begin after the introduction of McMurphy into their lives and routines.

Although the version of the story that we see in the film today is more closely associated with Nicholson’s alleged reading, suggesting that Forman ultimately took his advice, Nicholson refused to interact with his director from that point forward. When the star and Forman needed to communicate with one another, they used cinematographer Bill Butler as a middleman.

13. ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST WAS THE FIRST FILM TO WIN ALL “BIG FIVE” ACADEMY AWARDS IN 41 YEARS.

Not since 1934’s It Happened One Night swept the Oscars had a film walked away with awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest took home the lot, with Nicholson and Fletcher winning the top acting awards. The feat would not be matched again for another 16 years, with Silence of the Lambs becoming the next (and last to date) movie to earn the distinction.

Hollywood.com presents 21 Facts About The Matrix That Will Blow Your Mind.  Here are three of my favorites…

2. The film differentiates the Matrix and the real world through color.

The scenes that take place within the Matrix are tinted green; those that happen in the real world have more of a normal coloring. The fight scene between Neo and Morpheus has a yellow tint, since it takes place in neither.

7. Morpheus, in Greek mythology, is the god of dreams.

GIPHY/reddit.com

Which is ironic, since he’s the man who wakes people from their dream states and introduces them to reality.

8. Keanu Reeves only has 80 lines in the first 45 minutes of the film.

dodgediz.tumblr.com

Of those 80 lines, 44 are questions. That’s over his half his dialogue, and it amounts to about one question per minute.

Michael Arbeiter and Mental_Floss present 15 Things You Might Not Know About  Dr. Strangelove.   Here are three of my favorites…

1. THE MOVIE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A DRAMA.
The international climate of the early 1960s piqued Stanley Kubrick’s interest in writing and directing a nuclear war thriller. Kubrick began consuming piles of literature on the topic until he came across former Royal Air Force office Peter George’s dramatic novel Red Alert. Columbia Pictures optioned the book, and Kubrick began translating the bulk of the novel into a script.

During the writing process, however, the director found himself struggling to escape a persistent comedic overtone because he found the vast majority of the political calamities described in the story to be inherently funny. Eventually, Kubrick abandoned the idea of fighting the adaptation’s dark sense of humor and embraced it wholeheartedly. Tone aside, the plot of Dr. Strangelove is strikingly similar to that of George’s novel. There’s one notable exception: Dr. Strangelove doesn’t appear in the novel—Kubrick and writer Terry Southern created the new character.

3. TWO OTHER FAMOUS COWBOYS WERE APPROACHED TO PLAY KONG.
Before landing on Pickens, the production team sought fellow Western mainstays John Wayne and Bonanza star Dan Blocker for the part of Major Kong. Wayne never replied to Kubrick’s messages, and Blocker’s agent passed on the project. Co-writer Southern later remembered the agent sending a telegram that read, “Thanks a lot, but the material is too pinko for Dan. Or anyone else we know for that matter.”

4. NOBODY TOLD PICKENS ABOUT THE CHANGE IN TONE.
Before being cast as Dr. Strangelove’s gung-ho bomber pilot Major. T. J. Kong, actor Slim Pickens had starred almost exclusively in Westerns, with nary a comedy part to his name (much less a political satire). This didn’t pose much of a problem, however, as Kubrick deemed the actor’s natural cadence and decorum to be perfect for the cowboy soldier.

Kubrick led Pickens to believe that the film was supposed to be a serious war drama, prompting him to carry himself as he might in any of his Western pictures. Furthermore, according to James Earl Jones (who made his film debut in Dr. Strangelove) and Kubrick biographer John Baxter, Pickens behaved, and dressed, identically onscreen and off…not because he was “staying in character,” but because he apparently always acted like that.

Rob Hunter and Film School Rejects  have posted 30 Things We Learned from Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” Commentary.

Here are three of my favorites…

1. It was Scott’s choice to have the opening credits be simply text against a black screen. “I knew my opening shot would be so spectacular,” he says, “that I didn’t want the titles to upstage them in any form.”