Category: Trivia

A Few More Things About Abraham Lincoln

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Eddie Deezen at Neatorama posts A Few More Things About Abraham Lincoln.  Here are three of my favorites…

  • When Lincoln was nine, a horse kicked him in the forehead while he was in the middle of a sentence. He fell unconscious for several hours and when he awoke, his first words were the completion of the sentence he had been saying when the horse kicked him.
  • The tall, black stovepipe hat that Lincoln used to wear was more than just a hat. Lincoln used it as a portable filing cabinet and kept notes, money and letters in it.
  • Lincoln once left the stage during a political rally because he spotted one of his supporters being beaten. He picked up the assailant by his trousers and physically hurled him twelve feet away.

15 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About “Predator”

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Sean Hutchinson at Mental_Floss is back with 15 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Predator.   Here are three of my favorites…

2. THE PITCH FOR THE MOVIE NAME-DROPPED SOME RECOGNIZABLE MOVIE HITS.
The screenwriters pitched Predator to studios as “Rocky meets Alien.”

4. SHANE BLACK WAS CAST FOR HIS SCRIPT EXPERTISE, NOT HIS ACTING CHOPS.
Black, who plays Hawkins, had previously written the screenplay for Lethal Weapon; he was covertly cast in the film so that he would be available to make on-the-fly and uncredited script changes while on set. Most famously, Black would later write and direct Iron Man 3.

6. THE LOOK OF THE COMMANDOS WAS BASED ON THE SGT. ROCK COMICS.
Hawkins can be seen reading a Sgt. Rock comic in the end credits.

15 Things You Didn’t Know About “The Godfather”

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Sean Hutchinson at Mental_Floss presents 15 Things You Didn’t Know About The Godfather.   My three favorites are…

9. HE [Coppola] ALSO TOOK ADVANTAGE OF MISTAKES.
Lenny Montana, who played Luca Brasi, was a professional wrestler before becoming an actor. He was so nervous delivering his lines to a legend like Brando during the scene in the Godfather’s study that he didn’t give one good take during an entire day’s shoot. Because he didn’t have time to reshoot the scene, Coppola added a new scene of Luca Brasi rehearsing his lines before seeing the Godfather to make Montana’s bad takes seem like Brasi was simply nervous to talk to the Godfather.

14. THE “TAKE THE CANNOLI” LINE WAS IMPROVISED.
The line in the script only had actor Richard Castellano as Clemenza say “Leave the gun” after the hit on the mobster who ratted on the Corleones. He was inspired to make the sweet addition after Coppola inserted a line in which the character’s wife asks him to buy cannoli for dessert.

1. COPPOLA WAS AT RISK OF BEING FIRED DURING PRODUCTION.
Coppola (who got the job because of his previous movie, The Rain People) wasn’t the first director Paramount Pictures had in mind for The Godfather (Elia Kazan, Arthur Penn, Richard Brooks, and Costa-Gavras all turned the job down), and after filming began, executives didn’t like the brooding, talky drama that Coppola was shooting.

The studio wanted a more salacious gangster movie, so it constantly threatened to fire Coppola (even going so far as to have stand-in directors waiting on set). Coppola was reportedly getting the ax until he shot the scene where Michael kills Solozzo and McCluskey, which the executives saw and loved.

14 Things You Might Not Know About “Se7en”

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Jake Rosen lists 14 Things You Might Not Know About Se7en.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. From the Mind of a Record Store Employee

Screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker was a graduate of Penn State’s film program. Several years later, however, he was no closer to achieving his goal of working in the industry. Making ends meet at a New York City Tower Records store, Walker was so depressed that he wrote a bleak and oppressive script about the hunt for a killer who uses the seven deadly sins as inspiration for his crimes.

Satisfied with the outcome, he sent it to professional writer David Koepp, and then followed up with a phone call. Koepp agreed to send it to his agent, who found a buyer in New Line Cinema. (After reading it, Koepp also advised Walker that he “needed professional help.”)

3. Brad Pitt Worked Himself to the Bone

During a scene in which Pitt’s character, Detective David Mills, is chasing the killer through a perpetually rainy backdrop, Pitt slipped and drove his arm through a windshield. The resulting injury (a severed tendon) was so deep it went down to the bone. Pitt had to wear a cast for the rest of filming, which was written into the script; for scenes that had to be shot that took place earlier than the chase, the actor had to conceal his arm as best he could.

4. Kevin Spacey Got No Credit

When Fincher hired Kevin Spacey to portray killer John Doe, Spacey thought it would be more interesting to keep his involvement a secret, figuring that if he were to be billed then it would be obvious who the “mysterious” antagonist was. As a result, Spacey—who had just become a hot commodity for his work in The Usual Suspects—did not appear in any advertising, nor was his name included in the opening credits. While the studio disliked the idea, the part was late to be cast and, in Spacey’s words, “I was either going to be on a plane to shoot the movie or I wasn’t.” He got his wish.

Source: Mental_Floss.

10 Things We Learned About Evel Knievel from Being Evel, the New Documentary About the Daredevil’s Unbelievable Life

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Esquire recently posted Ryan Bort’s 10 Things We Learned About Evel Knievel from Being Evel, the New Documentary About the Daredevil’s Unbelievable Life.   Here are three of my favorites…

2. He was a legendary insurance salesman.

Knievel’s success was due just as much to his ability to sell himself as it was to his fearlessness. And if he could sell the appeal of a guy running his motorcycle off of ramp, you could damn well bet he could sell some insurance, which he did while still living in Butte, where he famously went into a mental hospital and sold 271 policies. But when he asked the president of the company if he could be the VP if he broke every sales record and the president said no, Knievel quit and moved to Moses Lake, Washington, to sell motorcycles.

4. There’s a story behind his name.

This may come as a shock, but “Evel” is not Knievel’s real name. Born Robert Craig Knievel, the future daredevil once found him in jail with a man named Knofel, where together they became known as “Awful Knofel and Evil Knievel.” The nickname stuck, and Knievel changed the “i” in evil to an “e” because he didn’t want it to sound too evil.

5. He conned his way into his famous jump at Caesar’s Palace.

Before Knievel could jump over the fountains at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, he was going to have to convince the casino to let him make a spectacle of the death-defying feat on their property. Because at this point no one had heard of him, this was going to be difficult. Before even pitching the event to Caesar’s, Knievel called every news outlet he could think and told them that he’d be jumping the fountains and to make sure they came out and covered the event. Once he had the media interested, he called the casino owner repeatedly, pretending to be a different person clamoring to see the jump each time. Word spread to such a degree that Caesar’s had to let Knievel attempt the jump. He didn’t make it, of course, but in the long run it was for the best; the cringeworthy footage of his body tumbling across the concrete made him famous.

15 Things We Learned from “The Breakfast Club” Commentary

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Film School Rejects recently posted Rob Hunter’s 15 Things We Learned from The Breakfast Club Commentary.  Here are three of my favorites…

5. Nelson had improv’d the bit where he spits a “loogie” into the air and catches it back in his mouth during rehearsal, and Hughes loved how much it grossed out Ringwald so he added it to the scene.

12. The hallway montage where the kids try to avoid Vernon (Gleason) strikes them as a combination of M.C. Escher and Scooby-Doo in the way the angles, near-misses and obvious playfulness lacks any semblance of logic.

9. Hall and Ringwald were the only two of the five who had to attend actual classes during production.

Frazetta and 15 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About “From Dusk Till Dawn”

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Mental_Floss presents 15 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About From Dusk Till Dawn.  Here are my three favorites…

7. IT’S GEORGE CLOONEY’S FIRST HOLLYWOOD FILM ROLE

Tarantino pitched Clooney on the film after directing him in ER.

9. THERE’S A GREAT HOMAGE TO RODRIGUEZ’S FAVORITE DIRECTOR

The character Scott Fuller wears a t-shirt that reads “Precinct 13,” a nod to the film Assault on Precinct 13, the second film by John Carpenter.

13. IT USED TO INCLUDE A FAMOUS TARANTINO SPEECH

The infamous Ezekiel 25:17 speech from Pulp Fiction was originally in Tarantino’s script for From Dusk Till Dawn. It was meant to be spoken by Harvey Keitel’s character as he fends off the vampires before being killed.

Furious 7: Fun Facts & Trivia You Need To Know

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Coming Soon posted Furious 7: Fun Facts & Trivia You Need To Know.

All of the trivia is interesting, but these are my two favorite facts from the list:

Denzel Washington turned the film down.
It’s rumored that Denzel Washington was originally asked to take part in the flick, but the Academy Award winning actor declined the role. Instead he was replaced with Kurt Russell who reportedly plays the role of Brian O’Conner’s father figure. Some speculation paints him as Dominic Toretto’s father figure instead.

Furious 7 is the sequel to The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.
According to the storyline, the franchise’s fourth, fifth, and sixth releases were actually prequels to The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. The storyline for Furious 7 reportedly picks up after “Tokyo Drift” and continues the storyline.

Schwarzenegger in “King Lear” & Robin Williams in “Jack and the Beanstalk”

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The screen-grab above is from The Last World: Jurassic Park  and features two fake movie posters.  Arnold Schwarzenegger in William Shakespeare’s King Lear and Robin Williams in Jack and the Beanstalk.

If you want to know more about these two particular Easter eggs, you can get the full story on them and others here.  I love stuff like this.

Source: JoBlo.com.

36 Things We Learned from John McTiernan’s “Predator” Commentary

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Film School Rejects posted  36 Things We Learned from John McTiernan’s Predator Commentary by Rob Hunter.

Here are five of my favorites from the list…

2. Producer John Davis developed the script with the idea that it was “Rocky meets Alien, I guess,” but McTiernan liked the idea of it feeling closer to King Kong. “Bunch of guys go to an island, and go deeper and deeper in, and shazam the thing they’re chasing turns out to be a lot bigger than they thought, and they have to turn around and run away!”

5. He points out that this was his first studio film, and it’s actually only his second feature period after the moody horror thriller, Nomads. “Terrifying in a lot of ways, and a learning experience in a lot of other ways.”

7. Carl Weathers came onboard because McTiernan wanted an actual actor to work against Schwarzenegger. The director had to fight to get a quality actor in the role. It’s unclear if Weathers was a first choice.

9. Shane Black was cast because McTiernan and producer Joel Silver wanted a writer on the set. “And he has a great wise-ass manner.”

14. Before they could cast Sonny Landham the insurance company insisted that the production provide a bodyguard, “not to protect Sonny, but to protect other people from Sonny.”

The piece is definitely worth a read if you get a kick out of behind-the-scenes information.

18 Things You Might Not Know About “Silence of the Lambs”

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Mental_Floss presents 18 Things You Might Not Have Known About Silence of the Lambs.

Here are three of my favorites…

1. IT’S THE THIRD FILM TO EVER WIN ALL OF THE “BIG FIVE” OSCARS—BEST PICTURE, ACTOR, ACTRESS, DIRECTOR, AND SCREENPLAY.

The other two were It Happened One Night in 1934, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in 1975.

2. GENE SISKEL GAVE IT A THUMBS DOWN.

Siskel infamously didn’t see what all the fuss was about, dismissing the movie as a “star-studded freak show” on TV and writing that Lambs was “a case of much ado about nothing.” The Oscars, and Ebert, disagreed.

7. SEAN CONNERY WAS THE FIRST CHOICE TO PLAY LECTER.

Connery read the script and found it “revolting.” Daniel Day-Lewis and Derek Jacobi were also considered.

15 Quirks of U.S. Presidents You Didn’t Learn in School

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Mental Floss presents: 15 Quirks of U.S. Presidents You Didn’t Learn in School.

From their list here are three of my favorites…

3. CHESTER A. ARTHUR’S RUMMAGE SALE

You couldn’t call Chester A. Arthur the sentimental type. The 21st president was happy to hand over wagonloads of White House furniture—the former belongings of his long line of esteemed predecessors dating all the way back to John Adams’s term—to the highest bidder. Rumor has it he only snagged $8,000 for the priceless haul.

6. MARTIN VAN BUREN’S LOADED ARGUMENTS

Seemingly of Monroe’s school of thought, Martin Van Buren was known to bring a pair of loaded pistols to Senatorial assemblies, just in case an argument became too heated.

7. BENJAMIN HARRISON’S LIGHT TRAUMA

Benjamin Harrison, whose presidency was the first to oversee a White House wired with electricity, might be commended for embracing scientific progress … if it weren’t for the desperate fear of light switches that kept him from ever actually utilizing this new technology.