14 Deep Facts About “The Hunt for Red October”

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Eric D Snider and Mental_Floss present 14 Deep Facts About The Hunt for Red October. Here are three of my favorites…

1. Even though the novel had been a bestseller, nobody wanted to make the movie.

Tom Clancy’s book is a complicated story with a lot of technical jargon, which made Hollywood executives antsy. It also made the movie hard to summarize. “In Hollywood, because of time constraints, very few people in a position to say yes to a project like this read the book,” admitted producer Mace Neufeld. “They generally read the reader’s report. [And] this book doesn’t condense well into two or three pages.” Neufeld got the project off the ground by getting a Paramount executive to read the novel—not just the book report—and see for himself how cinematic it could be.

3. Sean Connery was a last-minute replacement.

The film had been under production for two weeks when word came that Klaus Maria Brandauer (Out of Africa), the Austrian actor who’d been signed to play the rogue Soviet sub commander Marko Ramius, couldn’t do it after all because of a prior commitment. Connery took the part instead, needing only one day for rehearsal. Coincidentally, he and Brandauer had acted together in 1983’s Never Say Never Again and would reunite again for 1990’s The Russia House, which was shot shortly after The Hunt for Red October.

9. Alec Baldwin wanted to return for the sequels but was edged out when Paramount learned they could get Harrison Ford.

It’s complicated, and there are at least two sides to every story, but here’s the gist: While negotiations with Baldwin were still ongoing, Paramount allegedly offered the part to Ford, who was a bigger box office draw and to whom the studio owed money anyway because of a previous project that had fallen through. Baldwin had been dithering over the specifics of his deal, and now a Paramount executive used that indecision to force his hand: either commit right now to an open-ended contract for Patriot Games and whatever came next, or the offer would be withdrawn. Not wanting to give up a chance to appear in A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway, Baldwin left Jack Ryan behind.

15 Things You Should Know About “The Last Supper”

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Kristy Puchko and Mental_Floss present 15 Things You Should Know About The Last Supper.  Here are three of my favorites…

2. The Last Supper captures a climactic moment.

Everyone knows the painting depicts Jesus’ last meal with his apostles before he was captured and crucified. But more specifically, da Vinci wanted to capture the instant just after Jesus reveals that one of his friends will betray him, complete with reactions of shock and rage from the apostles. In da Vinci’s interpretation, the moment also takes place just before the birth of the Eucharist, with Jesus reaching for the bread and a glass of wine that would be the key symbols of this Christian sacrament.

6. Very few of da Vinci’s original brushstrokes remain.

Although the painting itself was beloved, da Vinci’s tempera-on-stone experiment was a failure. By the early 16th century, the paint had started to flake and decay, and within 50 years, The Last Supper was a ruin of its former glory. Early restoration attempts only made it worse.

Vibrations from Allied bombings during World War II further contributed to the painting’s destruction. Finally, in 1980, a 19-year restoration effort began. The Last Supper was ultimately restored, but it lost much of its original paint along the way.

3. You won’t find it in a museum.

Although The Last Supper is easily one of the world’s most iconic paintings, its permanent home is a convent in Milan, Italy. And moving it would be tricky, to say the least. Da Vinci painted the religious work directly (and fittingly) on the dining hall wall of the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie back in 1495.

15 Fun Facts About “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”

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Roger Cormier and Mental_Floss present 15 Fun Facts About Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. ANTHONY MICHAEL HALL BELIEVES THAT JOHN HUGHES WANTED HIM TO PLAY FERRIS.

Hall told Vanity Fair that his relationship with the director ended rather abruptly following their work together on Weird Science, and after Hall had begun working with other directors. But he believed that Hughes wrote the roles of Duckie in Pretty in Pink and Ferris Bueller for him. For his part, Hughes said Broderick was the actor he had in mind when writing the screenplay. Casting directors Janet Hirshenson and Jane Jenkins only seriously considered one other actor for the part: John Cusack.

6. LOVE WAS IN THE AIR.

Matthew Broderick and Jennifer Grey (who played Jeanie, Ferris’ sister) met and got engaged just before the movie’s release. Cindy Pickett and Lyman Ward, who played Ferris’ parents, met on the set of the movie and eventually got married and had two children.

7. BEN STEIN WAS INITIALLY SUPPOSED TO DO HIS LECTURE OFF-CAMERA.

The student extras laughed so hard that Hughes decided to put Stein in front of the camera for his speech on supply-side economics. Stein himself picked the topic after Hughes asked him to speak about something he knew a lot about. Before he became a familiar movie and television presence, Stein—who is also a lawyer—was a speechwriter for Presidents Nixon and Ford.

The Return of The Three Stooges

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Cake, animation studio Titmouse, Inc. and C3 Entertainment Inc.— owners of The Three Stooges brand have announced that Larry, Curly and Moe will be returning in a new animated series of 52 eleven minute episodes.

While I’m happy that three of our favorite knuckleheads will be exposed to a new generation of fans, wouldn’t it be cool if each new cartoon was paired with one of the original Three Stooges shorts for a thirty minute episode?  The cherry on the top would be to include Shemp in the cartoons paired with original shorts that he co-starred.

Source: Entertainment Weekly.

19 Fun Facts About “Married with Children”

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Roger Cormier and Mental_Floss present 19 Fun Facts About Married with Children. Here are three of my favorites…

5. THE SHOW WAS PITCHED WITH SAM KINISON AS AL AND ROSEANNE BARR AS PEGGY.

Both Kinison and Barr’s managers told Moye, Leavitt, and the other producers that their clients were shooting for the movies, not television.

9. THE SHOW BRIEFLY RUINED O’NEILL’S MOVIE CAREER.

O’Neill had to be recast long after the 1991 war film Flight of the Intruder had finished shooting because test audiences kept laughing whenever he appeared on screen, even though he was playing a Navy captain involved in a court-martial.

6. MICHAEL RICHARDS AUDITIONED TO PLAY AL.

Two years before he landed the career-making role of Kramer on Seinfeld, Richards auditioned to play the Bundy family patriarch. Moye estimated that out of the many people who auditioned for the role, “80 percent” played Al like Jackie Gleason as Ralph Cramden and “five percent” went the Jack Nicholson in The Shining route.

15 Giant Facts About “Shrek”

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Roger Cormier and Mental_Floss present 15 Giant Facts About Shrek. Here are three of my favorites…

4. CHRIS FARLEY WAS THE ORIGINAL SHREK.

Farley was not only cast in the title role, but he had actually completed recording somewhere between 80 to 95 percent of his dialogue before he passed away in 1997. In the version of the film Farley worked on, Shrek was a teenage ogre who didn’t want to go into the family business and had aspirations of becoming a knight.

12. THE MOVIE WAS SCREENED BY DREAMWORKS AND DISNEY LAWYERS TO AVOID POSSIBLE LAWSUITS.

Shrek was considered by some to be a series of jabs at Disney, with its general cynicism toward the traditional fairy tales that Disney had presented in movie form since 1937, Farquaad’s castle resembling Disneyland, and Farquaad’s diminutive stature possibly a reference to an infamous quote by Katzenberg’s former Disney boss Michael Eisner about his hatred of the former employee in a lawsuit. While there was no legal action, some Radio Disney affiliates did not allow Dreamworks to buy ad time to promote Shrek.

5. NICOLAS CAGE TURNED DOWN THE LEAD ROLE BECAUSE HE DIDN’T WANT TO BE AN OGRE.

Dreamworks executives considered Tom Cruise and Leonard DiCaprio for Shrek, until Katzenberg offered Nicolas Cage the part. Cage told the Daily Mail that he turned the role down because “I just didn’t want to look like an ogre.” Though, upon reflection, Cage realized that “Maybe I should have done it looking back.”

R.I.P. Virgil Riley Runnels Jr. aka Dusty Rhodes

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Virgil Riley Runnels Jr. passed away today.  Perhaps you knew him better as Dusty Rhodes aka  The American Dream.

Pro Wrestling fan or not, I’ll bet you knew of him.

Dusty began his career in 1968 in the AWA as a bad guy.  That’s when I first saw him wrestle on late night tv.  Dusty was a bad guy and partnered with Dirty Dick Murdock.  They were a couple of cowboys chasing the tag team title.

I was a kid living deep in WWA territory that was run by Dick the Bruiser and we considered the AWA a lesser organization.  I knew who Dusty was but since I never saw him in “my” territory, going against my champs, I didn’t give him much thought.

In 1973, I moved to Florida and into NWA territory.  Remember this was when pro wrestling wasn run by several smaller organizations with no national company like the WWE.  Dusty showed up as a singles wrestler.  He was still a cowboy but definitely a more modern man of the people.

Given the mic, Dusty shined.  He didn’t look like the typical champion, but once he dropped his atomic elbow and did a little victory dance, he became the people’s champ.  Dusty’s career flourished and he went on to great success not only in the NWA, but also Vince McMahon’s WWF (later the WWE), the WCW and ECW.

Dusty Rhodes was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame on March 31, 2007 and continued to be a force behind the scenes as a writer and creative director.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to Dusty Rhodes’ family, friends and fans.