11 Transformative Facts About “The Fly”

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Andrew LaSane and Mental_Floss present 11 Transformative Facts About The Fly.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. IT WAS PRODUCED BY MEL BROOKS.
Known as a master of comedy, Mel Brooks is also a fan of the horror genre. Producer Stuart Cornfeld convinced the reluctant studio to distribute the film if he could find the money to make it, and Mel Brooks was the first person he went to for help (the two had previously collaborated on David Lynch’s The Elephant Man in 1980). It was Brooks who encouraged Cronenberg to take the movie as far as he wanted. “[Brooks] said ‘I want you to go all the way. Let yourself go, and don’t hold back.’ There were no restraints,” Cronenberg recalled. “They were willing to lose that percentage of the audience that would have liked the love interest stuff, but couldn’t take the horror.”

2. BROOKS CAME UP WITH THE FILM’S MOST FAMOUS LINE.
“Be afraid, be very afraid” is a quote that many people have heard, but not everyone knows comes from The Fly. Cronenberg revealed in a commentary track that the iconic line was invented by Mel Brooks while discussing how characters should react to the early stages of Seth Brundle’s transformation. The quote also became one of the film’s taglines.

5. JEFF GOLDBLUM AND GEENA DAVIS WERE A COUPLE.
Goldblum was the one who campaigned for then-girlfriend Geena Davis to co-star in the film as journalist/love interest Veronica Quaife, a.k.a. Ronnie. Goldblum admits in a special features documentary that he became jealous of her scenes with actor John Getz and had to be told to leave the set because of his emotional attachment. Their relationship also affected the way they performed the roles. “The problem really in working with a couple who were so close and had been together for quite some time was that Geena, who was an adept mimic, she would basically do Jeff,” Cronenberg said in his commentary track. “She was like Jeff in her linguistic rhythm, her speech rhythm, and her body language because Jeff has a very strange and infectious way of speaking and moving …one of the things we had to do was to disconnect Geena and Jeff for the sake of the movie.”

21 Things We Learned from the “Tropical Thunder” Commentary

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Rob Hunter and Film School Rejects present 21 Things We Learned from the Tropical Thunder Commentary.  Here are three of my favorites…

9. Downey’s promise to himself — or, Osisris’ promise that he makes in the film — was that he doesn’t “drop character till I done a DVD commentary.” He commits to it here and is a man of his word.

19. “This moment,” says Stiller, “I wasn’t really expecting even when we shot it.” He’s referring to Tom Cruise‘s shift into dance moves after Les Grossman (Cruise) explains to Peck how they’re going to make an insurance claim against Tugg’s death. “I don’t think anybody was really expecting that he was going to go to that place.”

21. Downey finally drops the Osiris voice as the character does the same onscreen, but it’s clear he’s not keen on saying goodbye. “This is Lincoln Osiris signing off forever now. Thank you people. Thanks for letting me float with you. I love you ladies and gentlemen. Man, it’s hard to let go.” He then pauses briefly… and begins speaking in Kirk Lazarus’ Australian accent.

Z-View Twilight Zone: “The Whole Truth” [Season 2, Episode 14]

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Twilight Zone: “The Whole Truth” [Season 2, Episode 14]
Original Air Date: January 20, 1961

Director: James Sheldon

Writer: Rod Serling

Starring: Jack Carson.

The Overview: Beware of Spoilers

Harvey Hunnicutt [Carson] is all that the worst used car salesmen are said to be.  He stretches the truth and only cares about making the sale.  All of that changes when Hunnicut buys a used car for resale that compels him to tell the truth in all situations.

A nice change of pace that is under-rated.

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15 Fun Facts About “Everybody Loves Raymond”

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Roger Cormier and Mental_Floss present 15 Fun Facts About Everybody Loves Raymond.  Here are three of my favorites…

6. RAY IS OLDER THAN HIS “OLDER” BROTHER.
Brad Garrett, who played Ray’s older brother Robert, was 36 when the series first aired. Romano was a few months shy of his 39th birthday.

4. PETER BOYLE WAS PERFECTLY ANGRY AT HIS AUDITION FOR FRANK.
Peter Boyle had trouble just getting into the studio lot. He then couldn’t find a parking space. Then he went into the wrong building. By the time he reached Romano and show creator/showrunner Philip Rosenthal he was, in his own words, “enraged”—and perfectly in character for Frank Barone. The topper of it all was that, according to Romano, the CBS President was going to give Boyle the gig anyway.

12. THE SHOW MADE ROMANO THE HIGHEST PAID ACTOR ON TELEVISION.
Romano made $1.7 to 1.8 million per episode during the last two seasons of Raymond, surpassing Kelsey Grammer’s $1.6 million per episode salary for Frasier at the time.

Z-View Twilight Zone: “Back There” [Season 2, Episode 13]

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Twilight Zone: “Back There” [Season 2, Episode 13]
Original Air Date: January 13, 1961

Director: David Orrick McDearmon

Writer: Rod Serling

Starring: Russell Johnson and Paul Hartman.

The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…

Pete Corrigan [Russell Johnson of Gilligan’s Island fame] spends the evening debating the possibility of time travel to the past to change events.  When he walks outside that evening Corrigan finds himself transported back in time to the evening that President Lincoln was assassinated.  With little time to spare, can Corrigan change history?

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Z-View Twilight Zone: “Dust” [Season 2, Episode 12]

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Twilight Zone: “Dust” [Season 2, Episode 12]
Original Air Date: January 6, 1961

Director: Douglas Heyes

Writer: Rod Serling

Starring: Thomas Gomez, John Larch and Vladimir Sokoloff.

The Overview: Beware of Spoilers

Gallegos’ son is scheduled to be hanged for the accidental death of child. Gallegos begs the Marshall for mercy, but unless the dead child’s parents give consent to stop, the hanging must go on.

An unscrupulous traveling salesman offers to sell Gallegos magic dust which has the power to grant his wish.

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Z-View Twilight Zone: “The Night of the Meek” [Season 2, Episode 11]

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Twilight Zone: “The Night of the Meek” [Season 2, Episode 11]
Original Air Date: December 23, 1960

Director: Jack Smight

Writer: Rod Serling

Starring: Art Carney and John Fiedler.

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

Henry Corwin [Carney] is an alcoholic who gets seasonal work playing Santa at a department store.  When Corwin shows up late to work and under the influence he is fired.  Corwin thinks about all of the children he has let down and how he wishes he were the real Santa and could give out presents to all.  Sometimes wishes do come true…

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10 Mind-Blowing Facts About “Scanners”

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Tara Aquino and Mental_Floss present 10 Mind-Blowing Facts About Scanners.  Here are three of my favorites…

4. CRONENBERG SHOT TWO ENDINGS TO SCANNERS.
According to Michael Ironside, who played Darryl Revok, he and Stephen Lack filmed a less exciting version of the ending. “With one ending, we had this psycho-battle between my brother and I and it didn’t work, we shot it right up until Christmas and sent the script to [special effects wizard] Dick Smith in New York and asked him what he could come up with in terms of cutting edge makeup,” Ironside explained. “You know, something that would give us a more memorable battle and a different ending. Dick then came up with the idea of the exploding heads and that was a very collaborative thing.”

5. ACCORDING TO LACK, THE SCANNERS SCRIPT WASN’T EVEN WRITTEN WHILE FILMING.
It’s no surprise that Cronenberg allegedly called Scanners his most frustrating film to make. In addition to delays in filming, the script wasn’t even completed when production commenced. “Not only was Scanners not rehearsed, but it wasn’t written,” Lack told Film Comment. “David was coming in with pink, blue, and yellow pages for the day for the version of the script that we were doing, and he was working on it right there. As a result I had to deal with the dialogue in such a way that I was not reacting to things, because the information hadn’t been given to my character in the linear progression of the story. If you chop it up and look at it, 50 percent of my dialogue is not an assertion of anything but rather a question: ‘You called me a Scanner, what does that mean?’ ‘You’re part of an organization, who are you?’ Everything is a freaking question!”

6. MICHAEL IRONSIDE WORE DUSTIN HOFFMAN’S EYES FROM LITTLE BIG MAN IN A CRUCIAL SCENE.
Scanners was all about making its special effects work at all costs, which is why Ironside’s story about his peculiar eyes at the end of the film fits in perfectly. “There’s a scene … where I’m set on fire and my head comes up and those scleras they put on your eyes, they had scratched all my corneas,” Ironside recalled. “So the contact lenses they had made for me to change my eye color didn’t fit properly because my eyes had been scratched. Dick Smith happened to have with him Dustin Hoffman’s eyes from Little Big Man and they were actually oversized, and you wouldn’t normally do this because they have to be fitted, but when you see me come out from under that coat at the end of Scanners, those blue eyes of mine are Dustin Hoffman’s from Little Big Man.”

Z-View Twilight Zone: “A Most Unusual Camera” [Season 2, Episode 10]

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Twilight Zone: “A Most Unusual Camera” [Season 2, Episode 10]
Original Air Date: December 16, 1960

Director: John Rich

Writer: Rod Serling

Starring: Fred Clark, Jean Carson and Adam Williams.

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

When a husband and wife team who are small time hustlers get their hands on a camera that takes photos that are five minutes in the future, they head to the race track to get rich. All is good until the brother-in-law shows up.

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10 Facts About “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”

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Mark Mancini and Mental_Floss present 10 Facts About Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. IT’S BASED ON A MAGAZINE SERIAL.
In November and December of 1954, Collier’s magazine ran a three-part series that would come to be called “the year’s most original story of suspense.” Written by Jack Finney, The Body Snatchers wowed producer Walter Wanger, who began negotiating the story’s movie rights before he’d even read part two.

5. ORIGINALLY, THE MOVIE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A LOT FUNNIER.
“I felt that pods growing into a likeness of a person would strike the characters as preposterous,” Siegel recalled. “I wanted to play it that way, with the characters not taking the threat seriously.” Hoping to offset the scares, he filmed a number of comedic scenes, which were later cut out by Allied Artists, the film’s distributor. “In their hallowed words, ‘horror films are horror films and there’s no room for humor,’” Siegel explained. “I translated [this] to mean that in their pod brains there was no room for humor.”

8. THE PROLOGUE AND EPILOGUE WERE LAST-MINUTE ADDITIONS.
Allied Artists didn’t just cut a few jokes here and there; the studio also insisted on a completely different ending. Originally, the movie was going to close with a shot of Dr. Bennell watching hopelessly as truckloads of pods drive out into the distance. Wanting to end the film on a more hopeful note, Allied Artists came up with a slightly happier conclusion. Over his strong objections, Siegel was told to film a new intro and a new final scene (“I reluctantly consented,” he said.) The revamped opening puts Bennell in a police station, where he tells the story as anextended flashback. After the famous “You’re next!” sequence, his tale ends and, after a while, the authorities begin to believe him.