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.

15 Creepy Facts About “Carrie”

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Jennifer M. Wood and Mental_Floss present 15 Creepy Facts About Carrie.  Here are three of my favorites… [Beware of Spoilers!]

5. THE STARS OF CARRIE COULD HAVE BEEN THE STARS OF STAR WARS.
Brian De Palma ended up casting for Carrie at the same time his good friend George Lucas was doing the same for a little sci-fi film he was making called Star Wars. So the two made the rather unorthodox decision to hold joint auditions, which ended up becoming a bit confusing. De Palma liked Amy Irving for the lead in Carrie, but she was also considered for Princess Leia in Star Wars. William Katt also auditioned for Star Wars, alongside Kurt Russell.

7. BRIAN DE PALMA DIDN’T SEE SISSY SPACEK AS CARRIE.
Though De Palma was a fan of Spacek’s work, he was convinced that he had already found his Carrie in another actress. His decision to let Spacek audition at all was mostly out of courtesy to her husband, Jack Fisk, the film’s art director. “He told me that if I wanted to, I could try out for the part of Carrie White,” Spacek recounted to Rolling Stone. “There was another girl that he was set on and unless he was really surprised, she was the one. I hung up and decided to go for it.”

Spacek showed up at her audition in an old dress she hadn’t worn since grade school and with her hair slicked back with Vaseline. When she was done, she waited in the parking lot while her husband reviewed her audition with the rest of the production team. After Fisk came out to tell her that the part was hers, “We sped off before anybody could change his mind,” Spacek said.

13. SPACEK LOVED TO WITNESS MOVIEGOERS’ REACTIONS TO THE ENDING.
“When I was in New York, and Carrie came out, I would go to theaters just for the last five minutes of the film to watch everyone jump out of their chairs,” Spacek recalled. “People are all relaxed. The music is really beautiful and relaxing, and all of a sudden that comes up, and people just go crazy.” [I saw Carrie at a midnight movie during the original theatrical release and had no  idea of the shocking ending.  I jumped out of my seat and probably scared others around me worse than the movie. – Craig]