22 Fresh Facts You Probably Didn’t Know About “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”

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Hollywood.com presents 22 Fresh Facts You Probably Didn’t Know About The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.   Here are three of my favorites…

1.  The show was nearly canceled after the fourth season.  During the season finale, Will returns to Philly with the Banks to visit his mom and he decides to stay. Fresh Prince fans were so outraged by the show’s cancellation that NBC brought it back for two additional seasons.

7. Will Smith would memorize and mouth the other actors’ lines so that he could remember his own. If you look closely you can see him doing this in various episodes.

12. Alfonso Ribero who plays Carlton Banks in the series credits Eddie Murphy’s “white man dance” in Delirious and Courteney Cox in Bruce Spingsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark” video for his iconic Carlton Dance.

Big Beatty, Mitch Hyman and the Infinity Toy and Comic Show

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I spent the day yesterday with my buddy, John Beatty at the Infinity Toy and Comic Show in Orlando, Florida.  When Big John wasn’t selling prints of his art or signing autographs for fans, much of the day was spent conversing with Mitch Hyman [in the photo above].  I can’t remember the last time I laughed so much.

The Infinity Toy and Comic Show had a nice turnout and some surprisingly great cosplayers [for such a small show].  The show was big enough that it took up three hotel meeting rooms — and that may have been the biggest downside.  I generally prefer one room for shows and my guess is most folks do as well.  That aside (and it is a small quibble), the Infinity Toy and Comic Show made for a fun day.  Of course hanging with Beatty and Hyman didn’t hurt either.

15 Fiery Facts About “Barton Fink”

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Roger Cormier and Mental_Floss present 15 Fiery Facts About Barton Fink.

1. THE COEN BROTHERS WROTE IT WHILE STUCK ON MILLER’S CROSSING.
Writer-director siblings Joel and Ethan found themselves struggling with the script for their next project, 1990’s Miller’s Crossing, so spent three weeks writing a movie about a screenwriter with writer’s block. From the beginning, they knew that they wanted John Turturro involved in Barton Fink, and they planned to feature the concept of a “huge abandoned hotel.”

14. IT FORCED THE CANNES FILM FESTIVAL TO CHANGE THEIR RULES.
Barton Fink won the Palme d’Or, Best Director, and Best Actor honors at Cannes. Because of the hat trick, the rules were changed so that no movie could ever win all three awards again.

15. THERE MIGHT BE A SEQUEL.
Joel said it would be called Old Fink, and they’re waiting for Turturro to be old enough to play Fink in 1967, after turning friends over to the House Un-American Activities Committee.

“The Six” by George Pelecanos & Andrew Ewington and Mack Chater

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I am going to be all over this one.

From master author George Pelecanos, (HBO’s The Wire, The Pacific, Treme), comes a searing tale of warfare at its worst and fighting soldiers at their best. When the wife of a former Marine buddy finds herself a target of a vicious Mexican cartel, she ends up turning to her husband’s old squad for help. Sergeant James McQuade and five former members of the Five-One Sand Scorpions find themselves outnumbered and outgunned against the most lethal and unpredictable enemy they ever went head-to-head with.  It was someone else’s war but it was their fight.  Just the way they like it.

The Six, written by George Pelecanos with Andrew Ewington, art by Mack Chater  from Michael Bay‘s 451 Media Group this November.

Source: Bleeding Cool.

21 True Facts About “The Matrix”

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Who besides my wife doesn’t love The Matrix?

Hollywood.com presents 21 True Facts About The Matrix.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. The Wachowskis risked the film’s entire budget just to make it the way they wanted. 

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The original budget that the Wachowskis pitched Warner Bros. was over $80 million. Warner gave them $10 million, so they used all of it on the opening sequence with Trinity. The opening scene impressed executives at Warner so much when they showed it, they green-lit the original budget.

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

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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.

12. Other actors considered to play Neo were Nicolas Cage, Tom Cruise, and Leonardo DiCaprio.

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Thankfully, Keanu won out. He’s really the only Neo we can imagine. #canttouchthis

15 Immortal Facts About “Highlander”

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Jake Rossen and Mental_Floss present 15 Immortal Facts About Highlander.

Before I present my three favorite facts, let me tell you I am a HUGE fan of Highlander.  The sequels were bad and I never watched the tv series.  For me, “There can only be one!”

2. THE ROLE WAS ORIGINALLY OFFERED TO KURT RUSSELL.
At the time, Russell was a former Disney kid star who had gotten some notice for his genre work with John Carpenter in Escape From New York (1981) and The Thing (1982). Highlanderdirector Russell Mulcahy met with him for the film; though he appeared ready to take on the role, Mulcahy told Cinefantastique that Kurt’s then-girlfriend, Goldie Hawn, talked him out of it.

4. LAMBERT BARELY SPOKE ANY ENGLISH.
Aside from grunts, Lambert didn’t have much dialogue as Tarzan, so Mulcahy was unaware that his English was limited at the time he was cast in Highlander. In the end, his unique accent—Lambert was raised in Switzerland—worked for the character, who was supposed to have immersed himself in various cultures over his 400-year existence.

12. FANS AREN’T BLAMELESS IN THE SENSELESS TRAGEDY OF THE SEQUEL, EITHER.
According to producer Bill Panzer, the idea of exploring the origins of the Immortals was a result of fans constantly asking about it after the 1986 original. “The question we were most asked by fans after the first film was, ‘Where did the immortals come from?’” he told Video Watchdog. “It made sense to answer that question in the second film. What we didn’t realize at the time was that the fans didn’t really want to know their … origins because then the romanticism and mystery of the story was stripped away.” Good job, fans.

Zablo the Barbarian by Jim Ivey

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As promised, the first caricature that my buddy, Jim Ivey, drew for me.  I was probably 19 at the time.  So that would date the art at around 1977.  Don’t you love the broken sword?

For those who came in late, Jim Ivey had a 40 year career as a political cartoonist [Washington Star, St. Pete Times, San Francisco Examiner and the Orlando Sentinel].  When I first met Jim in the mid-1970’s he was running The Cartoon Museum in Orlando, Florida.

Jim had a lot of irons in the fire; working as a syndicated cartoonist [The Thoughts of Man], a political cartoonist [The Orlando Sentinel], a publisher [CartooNews], teacher [UCF cartooning class] and even a comic book convention organizer [OrlandoCon]. At the time, I was into collecting comic books and later original art. Jim’s Cartoon Museum was like heaven.

Super Z by Jim Ivey

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I was going through the vault and I came across a caricature that my buddy, Jim Ivey, did for me six years ago when he was just 84.  I think if Jim sticks with it, he may have a career as an artist.

Actually, Jim Ivey had a 40 year career as a political cartoonist [Washington Star, St. Pete Times, San Francisco Examiner and the Orlando Sentinel].  When I first met Jim in the mid-1970’s he was running The Cartoon Museum in Orlando, Florida.

Jim had a lot of irons in the fire; working as a syndicated cartoonist [The Thoughts of Man], a political cartoonist [The Orlando Sentinel], a publisher [CartooNews], teacher [UCF cartooning class] and even a comic book convention organizer [OrlandoCon]. At the time, I was into collecting comic books and later original art. Jim’s Cartoon Museum was like heaven.

Tomorrow I’ll show you the first caricature Jim ever drew of me.  It was drawn way back in the late 70’s when Jim was in his 50’s and I was still in my teens.

14 Things You Might Not Know About “Ghost”

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Garin Pirnia and Mental_Floss present 14 Things You Might Not Know About Ghost.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. WHOOPI GOLDBERG CREDITS HER OSCAR WIN TO PATRICK SWAYZE.
On The View, Goldberg revealed that she only got the role of Oda Mae Brown because Swayze fought for her. The producers resisted casting her, but Swayze told them he wasn’t doing the film unless Whoopi was in it, too, and that she was right for the part—even though at that point she and Swayze had never met. “And I won an Oscar because of Patrick Swayze,” Goldberg said. In her 1991 Oscar speech, she thanked Swayze, calling him “a stand-up guy.”

4. DIRECTOR JERRY ZUCKER SAID HE’D CAST PATRICK SWAYZE “OVER MY DEAD BODY.”
In a video that appears on the Ghost DVD, screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin—who won an Oscar for his script—talks about how Zucker was at first against casting Swayze as Sam. “Jerry wanted to see him on film, so went out and saw the movie Roadhouse, and we walked out of that movie and Jerry said to me, ‘Over my dead body,’” recalls Rubin. Swayze really wanted the role, and because Zucker appreciated Swayze’s gusto, he let Swayze audition. After Swayze read the end of the script aloud, Zucker changed his mind. “We all had tears in our eyes, right there in the office—and we knew how it ends,” Zucker told People in 1990. “I saw a side of Patrick that I never knew existed.”

3. GHOST TURNED DEMI MOORE INTO THE HIGHEST-PAID ACTRESS AT THE TIME.
By the time Ghost was released, Moore was already famous for her roles in St. Elmo’s Fire and About Last Night…, but she wasn’t considered a bankable star. After the unexpected $200 million domestic gross of Ghost, she hit box office gold with a trifecta of other huge hits: 1992’s A Few Good Men ($141,340,178), 1993’s Indecent Proposal ($106,614,059), and 1994’s Disclosure ($83,015,089). If you add up all of Demi’s film grosses, it comes out to more than $1 billion. In 1995, she was paid an unprecedented $12.5 million to take her clothes off in Striptease. The film wasn’t a huge hit, and a few years later she traded Hollywood for Idaho.