LIST: MOVIE TRIVIA: in-jokes, cameos, signatures
Murray Chapman
Version: 1.5 (July 1993)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MOVIE TRIVIA
Frequently Asked Questions
Copyright (C) 1993 Murray Chapman
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Compiled by Murray Chapman (muz...@cs.uq.oz.au), from sources too numerous too
mention. Thank-you one and all.
INTRODUCTION
------------
This is a list of interesting trivia, "did you notice"-type things for
movies.
The list will be posted monthly to: alt.cult-movies, rec.arts.movies, rec.arts
sf.movies, rec.answers, news.answers.
This, and MANY other FAQs are available for anonymous FTP wherever news.answers
is archived, for example:
rtfm.mit.edu:/pub/usenet/news.answers/movies/trivia-faq
Sites in Europe include:
nic.switch.ch
cnam.cnam.fr
ftp.win.tue.nl
The followup field is set to rec.arts.movies.
Additions and suggestions welcome: if you can confirm any rumours, or dispute
any "facts", then please do so! Just read the notes at end before you submit
anything. Thanks!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This list is now compatible with the other r.a.movies lists and is supported
by Col Needham's movie database package. All the lists are available via
anonymous ftp from refuge.colorado.edu [128.138.240.1] in the directory
pub/tv+movies/lists. The latest version of the database package (v2.5) is in
pub/tv+movies/lists/tools.
Information from these files is also availble via mail server. Contact Col
Needham (c...@otter.hpl.hp.com) for details.
The following table gives further details of the other lists:
List | Last Post | Maintained by | Next Post
----------------|-----------|--------------------------------------|----------
Plot Summaries | 04/07/93 | Colin Tinto <col...@spider.co.uk> | May
Writers | 04/15/93 | Jon Reeves <ree...@zk3.dec.com> | May
Cinematographers| 04/28/93 | Michel Hafner <haf...@ifi.unizh.ch> | June
Actresses | 04/30/93 | Andy Krieg <kr...@titan.med.ge.com> | UNKNOWN
Directors | 05/06/93 | Col Needham <c...@otter.hpl.hp.com> | June
Trivia | 05/12/93 | Murray Chapman <muz...@cs.uq.oz.au> | June
Character Names | 05/19/93 | Steve Hammond <sham...@indirect.com>| FTP only
Dead | 05/21/93 | Col Needham <c...@otter.hpl.hp.com> | July
Movies | 05/31/93 | Michel Hafner <haf...@ifi.unizh.ch> | FTP only
Alt. Titles | 05/31/93 | Michel Hafner <haf...@ifi.unizh.ch> | FTP only
Composers | 05/31/93 | Michel Hafner <haf...@ifi.unizh.ch> | July
Actors | 06/10/93 | Col Needham <c...@otter.hpl.hp.com> | August
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
--------
1. Director's Trademarks
2. Film Trivia
- DIRCAMEO: Directors appearing in their own films
- DIRTRADE: Director's trademark [with tag]
- ACTTRADE: Actor's trademark
- CAMEOS: cameos roles
3. Crazy Credits
A NOTE ABOUT CAMEOS:
A "cameo" is a small, unbilled role. If their name appears in the credits,
it's NOT a cameo. A cameo is NOT defined a famous person with a small role,
despite the fact that this may be interesting. If they are billed, then
please don't send it in as a "cameo", but decide if it's siginifcant enough
to be included in the trivia secion.
A NOTE ABOUT "GOOFS"
There is a seperate list for technical and plot errors in movies. It is kept
by Michael Gaines (meg...@hertz.njit.edu). Please send goofs to him.
THIS FILE CONTAINS SPOILERS
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT*
I HAVE DECIDED THAT I WILL NO LONGER BE UPDATING THE "CRAZY" CREDITS SECTION
OF THIS FAQ, DUE TO A LACK OF TIME. IF ANYONE IS INTERESTED IN TAKING THIS
OVER, PLEASE CONTACT ME.
I WILL BE DELETEING THIS SECTION IN THE NEXT VERSION. IF NOBODY WANTS TO LOOK
AFTER IT, IT WILL BE GONE FOR GOOD.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DIRECTOR'S TRADEMARKS
Woody Allen
- often makes films about a director making films, casts himself in lead role.
- frequently plays a neurotic New Yorker.
- frequently casts Diane Keaton and Mia Farrow.
- often talks to the camera directly.
Kenneth Branagh
- frequently casts his wife Emma Thompson.
Mel Brooks
- frequently casts himself, Gene Wilder, Harvey Korman, and Madeline Kahn.
Tim Burton
- his films often have a Gothic feel to them.
John Carpenter
- often casts Kurt Russell.
- often casts his wife, Adrianne Barbeau.
James Cameron
- strong female characters.
- frequently casts Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen, and Bill Paxton.
- his films frequently feature scenes filmed in deep blues.
- likes to make nice/effective cuts [nice cut]
- likes close-ups from a camera perspective close to the ground [close-up]
- likes to have Terminators walk/drive over things in close-up [stamp]
David Cronenberg
- films often include explicit carnage.
Joe Dante
- always casts Dick Miller in a cameo or supporting role. His films are
therefore good for playing the "spotting Dick Miller" game.
- frequently has films/TV shows with themes similar to the movie in various
scenes.
Jonathan Demme
- frequently casts Charles Napier.
- frequently casts Chris Issak.
- frequently casts Buzz Killman in a cameo role.
- frequently uses Tak Fujimoto as his director of photography.
Brian DePalma
- many Hitchcock homages, using similar locations and camera techniques.
- frequently casts wife Nancy Allen.
Clint Eastwood
- frequently casts one-time partner Sondre Locke.
Alfred Hitchcock
- has a cameo in most of his films.
Ron Howard
- frequently casts brother Clint in small roles.
Stanley Kubrick
- his films have a common theme of dehumanization.
- symmetric image composition and long "zooming out" and "zooming in"
sequences [zoom].
- constructs three-way conflicts [three-way]
John Landis
- the phrase "See You Next Wednesday". Supposedly, the phrase is the title
of a film that Landis had an idea for at the age of 15. He describes the
film as the kind of movie that a 15 year old adolescent boy would have made.
He sometimes uses ideas from this movie, and when he does he puts the phrase
in as a "homage". It is not in all of his movies [SYNW].
- airport scenes in _Into The Night_ and _Coming To America_ have a call over
the PA system for a "Mr Frank Ozkerwitz" to pick up the white courtesy phone.
This is Frank Oz's real name. Landis has a fetish for Oz and The Muppet
Show.
- Music: "The Girl from Ipanema". [ipanema]
Spike Lee
- all his films examine black people and their lives.
- has appeared in every single one of his films, usually as a weak character,
contrasting the strong lead character.
David Lynch
- frequently casts: Kyle MacLachlan, Laura Dern, Jack Nance, Everett McGill.
- Finds small-town USA fascinating.
- has a predelection for low/middle frequency noise, dark and rotting envi-
ronments, distorted characters, a polarised world (angels vs demons,
madonnas vs whores.), and debilitating damage to the skull or brain.
- frequently casts Isabella Rosselini
John Milius
- frequently casts Gerry Lopez.
George Miller
- subliminals, often of eyeballs bulging.
Jerry Paris
- frequently appears in a small (often one scene) role.
Sam Raimi
- Three Stooges tributes [3-stooges]
- Often lists a character called "Fake Shemp", a homage to the Three Stooges
shorts where a stunt man was used in place of Shemp Howard. [fake-shemp]
Harold Ramis
- frequently casts himself in bit parts.
- frequently casts fellow SCTV alumni: Bill Murray, John Candy, Dan Aykroyd,
Mary Gross, Eugene Levy, etc.
Rob Reiner
- His production company is called "Castle Rock Productions", named after
"Castle Rock", a fictitious town where many Stephen King stories are set.
(Reiner's _Misery_ was based on the book by King).
Ken Russell
- frequent snake imagery [snake].
Martin Scorsese
- frequently casts Robert De Niro, a student of his from film school in New
York.
- his mother appears in most of his films.
Henry Yaglom
- usually makes films about himself, sometimes about himself making films.
Robert Zemeckis
- generally finds a role for Wendie Jo Sperber and/or Marc McClure.
- likes to cite/imitate famous movies/commercial spots [citation].
David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahms.
- films usually feature puns, slapstick, and visual gags.
- frequently cast Leslie Nielsen and Lloyd Bridges.
- David and Jerry's mother is frequently cast in a small role.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
FILM TRIVIA
# 'Crocodile' Dundee
- The wild and ferocious buffalo that Mick Dundee pacified was drugged.
- The "quotes" around "Crocodile" in the title were added for the American
release to ensure people didn't think that Dundee was a crocodile.
# 1900
- Original uncut version is 5.5 hours long, and features pornographic sequences
with Robert De Niro, Gerard Depardieu, and a woman.
# 2001: A Space Odyssey
- This film was made before man walked on the moon.
- Director Stanley Kubrick originally planned narration for the prehistoric
scenes.
- The complex toilet instructions were a deliberate joke.
- Incrementing each letter of "HAL" gives you "IBM". Arthur C Clarke
co-screenwriter) claimed this was unintentional, and if he had noticed it
before it was too late, he would have changed it.
- Kubrick had several tons of sand imported, washed, and painted for the moon
surface scenes.
- Multiple references to birthdays: Dr Floyd's daughter, Frank Poole, HAL.
- DIRTRADE(Stanley Kubrick): [zoom]: retrieving Frank Poole's body.
- DIRTRADE(Stanley Kubrick): [three-way]: MAN vs HAL vs ALIENS
# 2010
- One of the characters is "Kirbuck", which is an anagram of "Kubrick".
Stanley Kubrick directed _2001: A Space Odyssey_.
- CAMEO(Arthur C Clarke): sitting on a park bench in front of the White House,
feeding the pigeons.
# 3 Men and a Baby
- When Jack's mother comes to look at Mary, you can see in the background what
appears to be a little boy standing in a doorway. There is a rumor that this
is the ghost of a little boy who used to live where the film was shot. This
rumor is untrue: the "ghost" is actually a cardboard cut-out of Jack wearing
a tuxedo. This prop appears later in the film, when Mary's mother comes to
collect her.
# 39 Steps, The (1935)
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): about 7 minutes in, tossing some litter as Robert
Donat and Lucie Manheim run from the music hall.
# About Last Night...
- The original title of this film was "Sexual Perversity in Chicago" (taken
from the play it is based on). The title was changed after many newspapers
and TV stations refused to run ads for a film with such a title.
# Abyss, The
- DIRTRADE(James Cameron): [nice cut]: at the beginning of the movie: The
blue "Y" from the opening credits extends and then fades to the underwater
scenery with the submarine.
- DIRTRADE(James Cameron): [close-up]: when the soldiers arrive at the supply
ship and jump out of the helicopters, one can see only their feet
(see also _Aliens_).
# Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The
- CAMEO(Sting): soldier who was executed for being too brave.
- CAMEO(Robin Williams): the King of the Moon.
# Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, The
- Jamie Lee Curtis played Buckaroo's mother in a flashback, but this scene was
cut.
- Supposedly this movie was inspired a great deal from Thomas Pynchon's book
"The Crying of Lot 49".
# After Hours
- DIRCAMEO(Martin Scorsese): shining a spotlight from a platform in the club.
# Aladdin (1992)
- The genie portrays the following people: Jack Nicholson, Arsenio Hall,
William F. Buckley Jr, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rodney Dangerfield, Ed
Sullivan, and Robert De Niro.
- The stack that Jasmine's father plays with is sitting on a toy of the
Beast from _Beauty and the Beast (1991)_, another Disney animated movie.
Sebastian from _The Little Mermaid_ and _Pinocchio_ can also be spotted.
- The two men in the crowd the genie pushes through are caricatures of a
couple of the animators; the original plan was to use film critics Gene
Siskel and Roger Ebert, but they couldn't get permission.
# Alien (1979)
- The alien's habit of laying eggs in the stomach (which then burst out) is
similar to the life-cycle of the tsetse fly.
- The images that the computers display during the Nostromo's separation from
the Mother ship are re-used in _Blade Runner_ (also directed by Ridley Scott)
- Much of the dialog was ad-libbed.
- In the scene where Dallas, Kane and Lambert are leaving the ship, the actual
actors walking past the Nostromo's landing struts are 3 children (two of
whom were Scott's children) dressed in scaled down spacesuits. This has the
effect of making the ship look bigger.
- A sex scene between Dallas and Ripley was in the script, however was not
filmed.
- The front (face) part of the alien costume's head is made from a real human
skull.
- Only John Hurt and the crew knew exactly what was going to happen during the
stomach-bursting scene, so reactions are totally genuine. Veronica
Cartwright gets hit in the face by some "blood" (visible in the movie), and
is quite shaken. When Scott called "cut" at the end of the scene, the
cameraman turned around and vomited. There is a persistent rumour that the
script originally had Cartwright's character the hero of the story, but after
this incident, Sigourney Weaver's Ripley became the hero.
- Apparently, in the final scene with Ripley and the Alien, the sounds of
people having sex can be heard. [can anyone confirm this?]
- Extra scenes where Ripley finds Brett and Parker cocooned were cut due to
pacing problems. These extra scenes were not restored to the extended
version, probably for this reason, but possibly because it would conflict
with the subsequently released _Aliens_' view of the alien's life-cycle.
[More trivia on recent FOX CAV LD. ANYONE?]
# Alien 3
- Multiple proposed scripts caused misleading advertising which inferred that
the movie would be set on Earth.
# Aliens
- A draft of the script had Gorman being paralized by a stinger on the tail
of an alien, rather than being clobbered by falling equipment.
- Laserdisc verions includes extra scenes: Newt's parents discovering abandoned
alien ship on LV-426, scenes of Ripley discussing her daughter, Hudson
bragging about his weaponry, robot sentry guns repelling first alien raid,
Hicks and Ripley exchaning first names.
- The mechanism used to make the facehuggers thrash about in the stasis tubes
in the science lab came from one of the "flying piranahs" in one of director
James Cameron's earlier movies _Piranah II - The Spawning_. It took 9 people
to make the face hugger work, one person for each leg and someone for the
tail.
- Hicks was originally played by actor James Remar, but Michael Biehn
replaced him a few days after principal photography began, due to "artistic
differences" between Remar and Cameron.
- "She thought they said 'illegal aliens' and signed up..." - Hudson
This quote (directed towards Vasquez) was in "inside joke" to the actors
of the movie. (quoted without permission from an interview with Jeanette
Goldstein [Vasquez] that appeared in STARLOG magazine)
''...she answered an ad for a film role in the local trades. It
read simply, "Genuine American actors, British Equity, for
feature film, ALIENS, 20th Century Fox," she relates, over lunch
near the old homestead in Beverly Hills.
"I had seen ALIEN, but I had NO idea this was a sequel.
It had been so long ago, it didn't even occur to me.
"I thought it was about actual aliens, you know,
immigrants to a country. I was wondering why they wanted
Americans. I figured the movie was about lots of different
immigrants to England."
Since she didn't have an agent at the time, she answered
the ad on her own, with rather surprising results. "I actually
came in wearing high heels and lots of makeup, and I had
waist-length hair," she says.
Other auditioners, who had advance notice from THEIR
agents, were decked out in military fatigues --- Goldstein's
first inkling she would be reading for the role of a marine...''
- The laserdisc version includes the sound of a face-hugger scurrying from left
to right as the final credits fade.
- DIRTRADE(James Cameron): [nice cut]: a few minutes into the movie, we see
Ripley lying in the cryo-tube, and then the scene fades to the picture of
the earth; the earth directly fits into the silhoutte of Ripley's face.
- DIRTRADE(James Cameron): [close-up]: When the soldiers arrive on LV426 and
jump out of the armoured vehicle, you can only see their feet (see also
The _Abyss_).
# Alive
- Director Frank Marshall was discussing the film on his carphone, when he was
cut off my a truck with a bumper sticker that read "Rugby Players Eat Their
Dead". Marshall decided to make the film, saying "You have to go with those
kinds of things."
- CAMEO(John Malkovich): The narrator.
# All the Right Moves
- Tom Cruise and Lea Thompson had body doubles for the sex scene.
# Altered States
- Author Paddy Chayefsky disowned this movie.
- The book was partially based on dolphin researcher John Lilly, who invented
the isolation tank, and first started taking drugs while "tanking".
- DIRTRADE(Ken Russell): [snake]: the dream sequence
# Always (1989)
- When [?] returns home in the plane, she is dressed like Ripley from _Aliens_,
and similarly, she has a cat named "Jones".
# Amazon Women on the Moon
- Subtle crossovers between sketches [...]
- The name "Don 'No Soul' Simmons" keeps popping up.
- The "release date" for the movie keeps changing: "We now return to our
feature film, the 1957 [19XX] classic, Amazon Women on the Moon...".
[Lots of cameos]
# American Graffiti
- License plate on John Milner's (Paul LeMat) car is "THX-138" _THX-1138_ is a
film also directed by George Lucas.
- There is a rumour that while George Lucas and a co-worker were editing the
film, the co-worker asked Lucas for "Reel Two, Drum Two", which abbreviated
to "R2D2", a name which surfaced in Lucas' later film _Star Wars_.
# American Werewolf in London, An
- All the songs in this film have "moon" in the title.
- DIRTRADE(John Landis): [SYNW]: the porno film showing when David meets Jack
and his zombie friends. A poster for the film appears in the London
Underground when the man is killed.
# Annie Hall
- Originally titled "Anhedonia" (the inability to feel pleasure).
# Apocalypse Now
- Francis Ford Coppola proposed this film ten years before he was given funds
to do it. The studio didn't think he could handle such a large production,
so he went and made _The Godfather_ and _The Godfather Part II_, becoming
extremely famous, rich, and respected.
- Originally scheduled to be shot over six weeks, ended up taking 16 months.
- Martin Sheen's scenes in his hotel room were intentionally perfomed drunk,
and were entirely ad-libbed. Sheen did not mean to smash the mirror with his
hand; this was a result of his drunken stupor.
- Harvey Keitel originally cast as Captain Willard. Two weeks into shooting,
Coppola replaced him with Martin Sheen, claming he was "too assertive".
- A cyclone destroyed sets, causing a delay of several months.
- Filmed in the Philippines, where the Ferdinand Marcos agreed to supply the
helicopters and pilots. Helicopters were withdrawn to fight a civil war.
- Marlon Brando paid $1 million in advance. Threatened to quit and keep the
advance. Director Coppola told his agent that he didn't care, and if they
couldn't get Brando, they would try Jack Nicholson, Robert Redford, and then
Al Pacino. Brando eventually turned up late, drunk, 40kg overweight, and
admitted he hadn't read the script or even "Heart of Darkness", the book it
was based on. Read Coppola's script, and refused to do it. Argued for days
over single lines of dialog. They eventually agreed on an ad-lib style
script, and this was shot.
- Martin Sheen had a heart attack during the filming; some shots of Willard's
back are actually of someone else.
- Sam Bottoms ("Lance") was on "speed" during the shooting of parts of the
movie.
- Denis Hopper was originally going to play Willard's predecessor, but he was
too affected by drugs to play a military type, so Coppola wrote him a part as
a crazy photo-journalist. Hopper and Coppola argued over whether it was
possible to forget your lines when you didn't learn them in the first place.
- Scenes of animal slaughter were inserted after Coppola saw the extras
performing this as a part of a religious ceremony.
- Coppola invested several million dollars of his personal wealth after the
film went severely over budget.
- Coppola threatened suicide several times during the making of the film.
- There are three different treatments of the ending and credits. In the 35mm
version, the credits roll over surrealistic explosions and burning jungle
as the air strike occurs. The 70mm version has none of this, no credits,
nothing but a one-line copyright notice at the end. The home video version
has credits on a plain background.
- There are also no opening credits or titles. The title of the movie
appears as graffiti late in the film.
- Entire set of scenes cut, where Willard and company find a river-side French
colony. Made the "journey back through time" symbolism more apparent:
Vietnam War --> French Colony --> Jungle Culture.
- Carmine Coppola (director's father) wrote the score for this film.
- Harrison Ford's character wears a name badge which reads "G. Lucas". George
Lucas directed Ford in _American Graffiti_ and _Star Wars_, two films which
man Ford famous.
- DIRCAMEO(Francis Ford Coppola): filming a war documentary.
- Coppola's wife Eleanore filmed and recorded the making of this film, and has
been released as a feature film called "Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's
Apocalypse".
# Army of Darkness
- CAMEO(Bridget Fonda): Linda
- The magic words Ash must use to claim the Book of the Dead are "Klaatu,
Barada, Nikto", the same words used to command the robot Gort in _The Day
the Earth Stood Still_.
- DIRTRADE(Sam Raimi): [fake-shemp]:
- DIRTRADE(Sam Raimi): [3-stooges]: The skeletons do a classic routine.
# Around the World in 80 Days
- Origin of the term "cameo", meaning in this case a small part by a famous
person.
- The following famous people appear in small parts in the film, and are
credited: Red Buttons, A.E. Matthews, Alan Mowbray, Andy Devine, Basil
Sydney, Beatrice Lillie, Buster Keaton, Cesar Romero, Charles Boyer, Charles
Coburn, Col Tim McCoy, Edmund Lowe, Edward R. Murrow, Evelyn Keyes,
Fernandel, Finlay Currie, Frank Sinatra, George Raft, Gilbert Roland, Glynis
Johns, Harcourt Williams, Hermione Gingold, Jack Oakie, Joe E. Brown, John
Carradine, John Mills, Jose Greco, Luis Miguel Dominguin, Marine Carol,
Marlene Dietrich, Melville Cooper, Mike Mazurki, Noel Coward, Peter Lorre,
Red Skelton, Reginald Denny, Richard Wattis, Robert Morley, Ronald Colman,
Ronald Squire, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Sir John Gielgud, Trevor Howard, Victor
McLaglen.
# Assault on Precinct 13
- The editor is credited as James T. Chance, which was the name of the John
Wayne character in _Rio Bravo_, on which this film was based, but the actual
editor was John Carpenter.
# Awakenings
- Robin Williams accidentally broke Robert De Niro's nose during a rehersal of
the scene where Dr Sayer tries to get Leonard to go back on the drug.
# Back to School
- CAMEO(Kurt Vonnegut): himself
# Back to the Future
- Eric Stoltz originally cast as Marty McFly, but changed becuase he didn't act
enough like a teenager.
- 88mph and an "oscillation overthruster" in a futuristic car were also
featured in _The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension_.
- The device in Doc Brown's lab that Marty plugs his guitar into is labeled
"CRM-114", which was the name of the message decoder on the B-52 in _Dr
Strangelove_.
- Doc Brown's dog is named Einstein. This may be a vague reference to _Chitty
Chitty Bang Bang_, where the inventor of a miracle car owned a dog named
Edison.
- The mall where Marty McFly meets Dr. Brown for their time travel experiment
is called "Twin Pines Mall". Dr. Brown comments that ol' farmer Peabody
used to own all of the land, and he grew pines there. When Marty goes back
in time, he runs over and knocks down a pine tree. When he comes back to the
mall at the end of the film, the sign at the mall now identifies the mall as
"Lone Pine Mall".
- There is a rumour that when Marty is running from the terrorists, you can
see another Marty running to witness the shooting of Doc Brown.
- Farmer Peabody's son is named Sherman. Sherman was the name of the little boy
time traveler in one segment of Jay Ward's cartoon show, "The Rocky &
Bullwinkle Show." The dog who owned his time machine was named Mr. Peabody.
- The radio in Marty's room plays "Back in Time", by Huey Lewis and the News,
who wrote and performed some songs for the film.
- CAMEO(Huey Lewis): the high-school band judge.
# Back to the Future Part II
- Filmed at the same time as _Back to the Future Part III_. In the five years
since the original was made, Michael J Fox had forgotten how to ride a
skateboard.
- Needles is played by Flea, the bassist of the _Red Hot Chili Peppers_
- Crispin Glover played George McFly in the original, but was replaced by [?]
in Part II and Part III.
# Back to the Future Part III
- Filmed at the same time as _Back to the Future Part II_. In the five years
since the original was made, Michael J Fox had forgotten how to ride a
skateboard.
- Needles is played by Flea, the basist of the _Red Hot Chili Peppers_
- Crispin Glover played George McFly in the original, but was replaced by [?]
in Part II and Part III.
- DIRTRADE (Robert Zemeckis): [citation]: When Marty walks along the railroad
tracks and finally reaches the town, he comes to the railway station.
Then he walks into the town, while the camera slowly rises up above the
station and finally shows Marty at a large distance walking into the town.
This scene is shot exactly in the same way as the scene in _Once Upon A Time
In The West_, when Claudia Cardinale arrives at the station.
# Bad and the Beautiful, The
- Lana Turner plays an actress whose career started as a movie extra. Lana
Turner started her own career as an extra in _A Star is Born_.
- Director Vincente Minelli and star Kirk Douglas also teamed up in another
movie about Hollywood, _Two Weeks in Another Town_.
- James Lee (Dick Powell) won the Pulitzer Prize for his book "A Woman of
Taste", about his late wife Rosemary (Gloria Grahame).
# Bagdad Cafe
- The shadow of the camera crew is visible while the credits for the
cinematographer are on the screen.
# Bambi
- Some scenes of woodland creatures and the forest fire are unused footage from
Pinocchio.
# Barfly
- CAMEO(Charles Bukowski): in the bar where Henry and Wanda meet for the first
time.
# Barry Lyndon
- Stanley Kubrick did not use any artificial lighting when he shot this film.
# Basic Instinct
- Kim Basinger was originally cast as Catherine Tremain.
- Michael Douglas' character watches _Brain_.
# Batman (1989)
- Adam West (the star of the TV series) wanted to play Batman, but Michael
Keaton was given the role after getting the nod from Bob Kane, the creator of
the original Batman comic strip.
- Heavy security surrounded The Joker's makeup.
- Sean Young originally cast as Vicki Vale, dropped after arguments with the
producers. Rumors that she sent co-stars dead animals.
- Most shots of Batman in costume are a stunt double.
- Spanish subtitles convert "6 foot" and "108 (lbs)" to metres and kilograms.
- Bob Kane was scheduled to make a cameo appearance, but he couldn't make the
shoot. The drawing that the newspaper report holds up of the "Bat-Man" was
drawn by Kane.
- CAMEO(Prince): rumour unconfirmed as of yet.
# Batman Returns
- Danny DeVito forbidden to describe The Penguin's makeup to anyone, including
his family.
- The bad guy's name is Max Schreck. Max Schreck played the vampire in the
_Nosferatu (1922)_.
- The film was been branded 'anti-semetic' in an opinion piece in the New York
Times because of the Jewish references in The Penguin's character:
- He has a big nose
- He likes to eat herrings
- He is discovered floating down the underground river in a basket, much
like Moses
- He plans to kill the first born of all the elite citizens of Gotham,
reminiscent of the passover story
- Sean Young very much wanted the role of The Catwoman. During pre-production
she arrived at the studio in a catwoman costume to confront the makers of the
movie. She used other people scouting the studio grounds, using walkie-
talkies to communicate, to track down the producers.
# Beauty and the Beast (1991)
- "Be Our Guest" was originally animated with Maurice (not Belle) as "the
guest", but they decided not to waste such a wonderful song on a secondary
character.
- "Chip" originally had only one line, but the producers liked the voice so
much that they had extra lines written.
- The Tiny Toon Adventure script writer Sheri Stoner was used as the model for
Belle. See also _The Little Mermaid_.
# Beetlejuice
- Title role originally written for Sammy Davis Jr.
# Ben-Hur (1959)
- The rumor that the Stephen Boyd's double was killed during the chariot race
is false.
- The chariot race segment was directed by legendary stunt-man, Yakima Canutt.
One of Canutt's sons doubled for Charlton Heston. During one of the crashes,
in which Judah Ben-Hur's horses jump over a crashed chariot, the younger
Canutt was thrown from his chariot onto the tongue of his chariot. He
managed to climb back into his chariot and bring it back under control (his
only injury was a cut on the chin). The sequence looked so good that it was
included in the film, with a close-up of Heston climbing back into the
chariot. The cut on Canutt Jr's chin was the only injury in the incredibly
dangerous sequence. Canutt Sr won a lifetime achievement Oscar for this work
- the only stunt man ever to win an Oscar.
# Beverly Hills Cop
- Axel Foley originally going to be played by Sylvester Stallone.
# Big Chill, The
- Flashback scenes with Kevin Costner as Alex filmed, but cut.
# Big Steal, The
- A TV can be heard to be showing _Malcolm_, which has the same producers.
# Big Trouble in Little China
- Some of the lightning forms a chinese symbol as it disappates. The symbol
translates as "carpenter". This film was directed by John Carpenter.
# Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey
- The original title of this film was "Bill and Ted go to Hell" but was changed
for obvious reasons.
- Bill's grandmother, "Gramma S. Preston, esquire" is played by the same
actor who plays Bill (Alex Winter).
- William Sadler ("Death"), also plays a bit role as an Englishman when we
see varoius spots around the world when the Battle of the Bands is shown.
- William Sadler wrote the "Reaper Rap".
# Birds, The
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): at the start of the film walking two dogs past
the pet shop (the dogs were actually his own).
- Hitchcock tried to hire Joseph Stefano (writer of Psycho) to write the
script, but he wasn't interested in the story.
- Hitchcock spotted Tippi Hedren in a diet drink commercial.
- The scene where Tippi Hedren is ravaged by birds near the end of the movie
took a week to shoot. The birds were attached to Tippi's clothes by long
nylon threads so they could not get away.
- The film does not finish with the usual "THE END" title because Hitchcock
wanted to give the impression of unending terror.
- An intended final shot with the Golden Gate bridge covered in birds was
not filmed because of cost.
- The poster for the movie said: "THE BIRDS IS COMING!" irritating English
teachers nationwide.
# Blackmail (1929)
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): being bothered by a small boy on the subway.
- The film was Hitchcock's and England's first talking picture.
- Anny Ondra's voice was dubbed by Joan Barry because she had a thick German
accent. Barry had to stand just off the set and read Ondra's lines into a
microphone as the film was shot.
# Blade Runner
- LOTS of stuff: check out the Blade Runner FAQ in rec.arts.movies,
alt.cult-movies, news.answers, etc. Available by anonymous FTP as
rtfm.mit.edu:/pub/usenet/news.answers/movies/bladerunner-faq.
# Blazing Saddles
- Mel Brooks plays a character called "LePetomaine" [sp?], which is the name
of a popular French performer at the beginning of the 20th century. His
specialty was telling stories punctuated with flatulence.
- The "stinkin' badges" line is from _The Treasure of the Sierra Madre_.
- The TV release has two extra scenes that weren't in the theatrical release.
When Sheriff Bart is trying to capture Mongo, after he delivers the
'candygram for mongo', it then shows a 'draw on the dummy sheriff' game
that fires a cannon at Mongo, and then a scene Bart convinces Mongo to
go diving down a well for Spanish Doubloons and Bart stops pumping air
to the diving suit because it's time for his lunch break.
- Everyone in the town of Rockridge's last name is 'Johnson'.
- CAMEO(Count Bassie and band): the jazz band in the desert.
# Blind Date (1987)
- Madonna and Sean Penn were approached to star together in this movie, but
producers wanted to cast Bruce Willis in the male lead, so Madonna backed out.
# Bloodsport (1987)
- Jean-Claude Van Damme was European Kickboxing champion, but an unknown in
Hollywood. He spotted producer Menahem Golan coming out of a restuarant
and getting into his car. He introduced himself, and then did a 360 degree
spinning kick, narrowly missing Golan's head. Golan signed him immediately
for _Bloodsport_.
# Blues Brothers, The
- Has many famous people in the cast:
Frank Oz: prison officer
Cab Calloway: friend of the curch
James Brown: minister
Irene Cara: church soloist [Chaka Khan?]
John Lee Hooker: street performer
Aretha Franklin: proprietor of the "Soul Food Cafe"
Ray Charles: proprietor of "Ray's Music Exchange"
Paul Reubens (Pee Wee Herman): wine waiter
Twiggy: blonde in sports car
Stephen Spielberg: Cook County Assessor
Joe Walsh (lead guitarist of Eagles): first prisoner to jump up and start
dancing
- The "Blues Brothers Band" consists of already well-respected musicians, who
have recorded and written with the likes of Eric Clapton and Otis Redding.
- John Belushi was extremely disappointed at the film's reception, and it is
rumoured that this contributed to his "accidental" (?) death from cocaine.
The film went on to become a definitive "cult" movie, still drawing crowds
years later. Recently, the authentic "Blues Brothers Band" has been
touring the world, playing gigs after running the film.
- DIRTRADE(John Landis): [ipanema]: the music in the elevator.
- DIRTRADE(John Landis): [SYNW]: the message on the billboard that the cops
were hiding behind.
# Bodyguard, The (1992)
- This film was originally proposed in the mid-70's, starring Diana Ross and
Steve McQueen, but was rejected as "too controversial".
- Rachel's mansion is the same mansion as the "horse's head in the bed"
mansion in _The Godfather_.
# Bonfire of the Vanities, The
- Alan Arkin (Judge Myron Kovitzky) was replaced late in preproduction by
Morgan Freeman and the character renamed; mostly because of scheduling
problems, this decision cost over $2 million.
- The production is extensively documented in "The Devil's Candy" by Julie
Salamon (ISBN 0-385-30824-8)
# Boomerang (1992)
- DIRCAMEO(Reginald Hudlin): hustler
- CAMEO(Washington Hudlin [producer]): hustler
# Born on the Fourth of July
- CAMEO(Abbie Hoffman): a war/draft protestor.
- CAMEO(Ron Kovic): WWII veteran in the parade at the beginning.
- DIRCAMEO(Oliver Stone): a TV reporter.
# Boys in Company C, The
- Drill Instructor played by R Lee Ermey, a former US Marines Drill Instructor.
# Boyz N the Hood
- DIRCAMEO(John Singleton): the mailman.
# Brainstorm (1983)
- Natalie Wood died before filming was complete, thus the ending had to be
changed.
# Brazil (1985)
- Jack's daughter Holly played by director Terry Gilliam's daughter.
- lots of significant names:
- Mr Kurtzman (German for "short man"): small in stature and success. Named
after the editor of "Help" (Harvey Kurtzman), a magazine that Gilliam
worked for in the mid-60s. It was at a photo shoot for this magazine that
Gilliam met John Cleese, who would later invite him to join the Monty
Python team.
- Mr Helpman: "helped" Sam
- Mr Warren: works in a rabbit-warren style place: a maze of corridors
- US television release is reworked, removing many of the fantasy scenes, and
with a "happy Hollywood" ending: no cut back to Sam in the interrogation
room.
# Bringing Up Baby
- Katherine Hepburn's character pretends that she and Cary Grant's characters
are gangsters. The underworld nickname she gives police for Grant's
character is "Jerry the Nipper": a nickname that Grant had in _The Awful
Truth_.
# Bugsy Malone
- Jodie Foster's singing was dubbed. Director Alan Parker regrets this later,
when Foster goes on to be a major star.
# Cape Fear (1991)
- Robert De Niro paid a dentist $5,000 to make his teeth look suitably bad for
the role of Max Cady. After filming, he paid $20,000 to have them fixed.
- De Niro was tattooed with vegetable dyes, which fade after a few months.
- Gregory Peck, who starred in the 1962 version, appears as Cady's lawyer.
- Robert Mitchum, who played Max Cady in the 1962 version, appears as a
policeman.
- Martin Basalm appears in both versions.
- Scene in highschool auditorium totally ad-libbed by De Niro and Juliette
Lewis, and done on the first take.
# Casablanca
- Humphrey Bogart never says "Play it again, Sam." He says: "You played it
for her, you can play it for me. Play it!". Ingrid Bergman says "Play it,
Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By'".
- Hal Wallis nearly made the character "Sam" a female. Hazel Scott, Lena
Horne, and Ella Fitzgerald were tested for the role.
- Dooley Wilson (who played Sam) was a professional drummer who faked playing
the piano. Because the music was recorded at the same time as the film,
the piano playing was actually performed by Elliot Carpenter.
- Bergman complained that she didn't know who her character was supposed to be
in love with.
- Two contradicting endings were scheduled to be filmed, but the first one
worked so well that they used it.
- The budget was so small they couldn't use a real plane in the back ground at
the airport. Instead, it is a small cardboard cutout. To give the illusion
that the plane was full-sized, they used midgets to portray the crew
preparing the plane for take-off.
- This film was rewritten daily during filming, made on a shoestring budget,
hastily released, and expected to bomb.
- The timely real-life invasion of Casablanca was used to promote this film.
- Based on a play called "Everybody Comes To Rick's".
# CB4
- References to: _Wayne's World_, _The Silence of the Lambs_, Boyz N the Hood_,
_Colors_ [more?]
# Charley Varrick
- DIRCAMEO(Don Siegel): a table tennis player.
# Cheyenne Autumn
- Director John Ford deliberately only allowed one take, so that actors would
remain nervous.
# Chinatown
- DIRCAMEO(Roman Pollanski): the hood who slits Jake's nose.
# City Slickers
- Billy Crystal co-wrote the story, but is not given on-screen credit.
- Some trailers feature a scene where someone's spurs are caught on a rail, but
this scene is not in the movie.
- "Pregnant" check-out girl that appears at the party is played by Yeardley
Smith, better known as the voice of Lisa Simpson.
- The cow-giving-birth scene was real, and Billy Crystal actually assisted
in the birth. The calf also actually "bonded" to Billy. [I believe he
did in reality keep the calf... anyone?]
# Cliffhanger
- 31 climbers were signed up, including Ron Kauk and the late Wolfgang Gullich.
Gullich performed many of the film's stunts.
- Kauk was Sylvester Stallone's stunt double and really had to bulk up. He ate
5 carbohydrate-heavy meals a day and pumped a lot of iron. The trainer wanted
to have him eat a sixth meal in the middle of the night. Kauk also doubled
for Leon, a 6'3" black actor, and Janine Turner, the female lead.
- An avid golfer, Stallone found that climbing roughed up his hands and
consequently messed up his game. He had a net on the set for practice. The
models he was dating complained about his rough hands.
- Electrical storms hit during filming, knocking down 5 crew members. Climber
Earl Wiggins was hit 3 times, but was only slightly injured. During a later
storm, crew members had fun taking pictures of each other with their hair
standing on end while the climbers pointed out the wisdom of evacuating.
- The background for many of the scenes was generated by an IBM Power
Visualization System.
- Sneak-preview audiences saw a scene where a rabbit gets killed by gunfire.
Their reaction was strong enough for Sylvester Stallone to invest $100000 of
his own money to have the scene re-shot so that the rabbit escaped.
# Clockwork Orange, A
- Alex appears to toast the audience at the beginning with his moloko plus.
- _2001: A Space Odyssey_ (also directed by Stanley Kubrick) soundtrack highly
visible in record store. One of the girls that Alkex talks to mentions the
group "The Heaven 17". This was the inspiration for the early 80's group
"Heaven 17"'s name.
- The photo-montage when Alex clobbers the old lady are mostly the paintings
the old lady has hanging in her room, but also include graphic shots of
female genitals.
- Patrick Magee's bodyguard was played by professional bodybuilder David
Prowse. Even so, he was near exhaustion after the repeated takes of him
carrying MacGee and his wheelchair down the stairs.
- Many phallic symbols: snake crawling between the legs of the woman in the
poster.
# Close Encounters of the Third Kind
- Barry is shown to be surprised by the extraterrestrials. Director Stephen
Spielberg dressed up in a gorilla suit and was off camera while actor Carey
Guffey's surprise reaction was filmed.
- In the original version, there is a long scene of Roy Neary tears up his and
a neighbor's back yard for materials with which to build a model of Devil's
Tower. This scene is not in "The Special Edition" but was replaced by a
scene (the night before) in which his wife discovers him crying, fully
clothed, under a running hot shower. A family fight ensues, but this entire
scene was not seen in the original version. Also, additional footage was
shot for 'The Special Edition' that shows Roy Neary inside the alien
mothership at the end of the movie.
- SFX man Douglas Trumbull created the cloud effects by injecting white paint
into tanks of salt and fresh water.
- In the scene where the mothership does a close flyby over Devil's Mountain,
it is possible to see an upside down R2-D2 (from _Star Wars_, etc) in part
of the craft. The SFX people needed more detail, and so supposedly there are
many more such jokes.
# Coal Miner's Daughter
- Beverly D'Angelo and Sissy Spacek did all their own singing.
# Coming Home
- Jane Fonda had a body double for her sex scene with Jon Voight.
# Coming to America
- airport scenes in _Into The Night_ and _Coming To America_ have a call over
the PA system for a "Mr Frank Ozkerwitz" to pick up the white courtesy phone.
This is Frank Oz's real name.
- The bums that pickup the money that the Prince (played by Eddie Murphy) drops
are the "Duke Brothers" from _Trading Places_ (also directed by John Landis).
In _Trading Places_, Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy) was responsible for
them losing their fortune.
- The predatory woman in the bar was played by Arsenio Hall.
- All characters in the barber shop (including the caucasians) are played by
Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall, and another black comedian.
- DIRTRADE(John Landis): [SYNW]: on a movie poster in the subway station (the
movie claims to star Jamie Lee Curtis, who appeared in Landis' _Trading
Places_).
# Commando (1985)
- ACTTRADE(Arnold Schwarzenegger): "I'll be back, Bennet!"
# Commitments, The
- DIRCAMEO(Alan Parker): the record producer in the studio near the end of the
film. A cardboard cut-out of him can also be seen in the background in a
video shop, and cassettes of his films are on the shelves.
# Conan the Barbarian
- Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sandahl Bergman did their own stunts, as they
couldn't find suitable body doubles.
- Director John Milius is an avid surfer. Sandahl Bergman and Gerry Lopez are
professional surfers.
- Schwarzenegger had to tone down his workout, as his arm/chest muscles were
so big that he couldn't wield a sword properly.
- The man who played Conan's sword master trained the actors in the art of
swordplay.
- The fake blood used in the film came in the form of a concentrate which had
to be mixed with water prior to use. Due to the cold weather, it was mixed
with vodka (as an anti-freeze) instead. In the scenes in which the actors
were supposed to spit the blood, they would swallow it instead, then go back
to the special effects man for more.
- The Mattel Toy Company started to make some Conan action figures, but after
viewing the film, the executives realized that they couldn't afford to be
associated with a film with such graphic sex and violence. They gave their
doll blonde hair, called him "He-man", and thus created the "Masters of the
Universe".
# Coogan's Bluff
- DIRCAMEO(Don Siegel): man in an elevator.
# Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, The
- Costumes change as characters walk from room to room.
- Animal symbolism is rampant: Albert Spica (the thief) drives a Jaguar, the
big sign above the restuarant says "P&A" (panda).
# Creepshow
- CAMEO(Stephen King): Jordy Verril (man covered in moss).
- CAMEO: (Joe King [son of Stephen]): The boy at the beginning (avid collector
of Creepshow magazine and voodoo dolls).
# Creepshow 2
- CAMEO(Stephen King): truck driver in "The Hitcher".
# Crimewave (1985)
- DIRTRADE(Sam Raimi): [3stooges]: many, including the bowling balls rolling
off the shelf onto the man's head.
# Crow, The
- Brandon Lee died during a mishap on the set. Lee was carrying a bag of
groceries which contained explosives used as SFX. A stage hand fired a
pistol supposedly containing a blank round at Lee. A .44 cartridge was
actually in the barrel of the pistol, and killed Lee. Brandon Lee is the
son of martial arts legend Bruce Lee, who died during the making of _Game of
Death_.
# Curse, The
- Wil and Amy Wheaten, real-life brother and sister, played on-screen brother
and sister.
- Wil Wheaten once said that the only good thing about the movie was that his
sister got a job on it.
# Cyborg
- All the major characters are named after guitar brand names.
# Dark Star
- John Carpenter directed, edited, and wrote the music for the film, but he
uses pseudonyms in the credits for editing and the music.
# Darkman
- DIRTRADE(Sam Raimi): [fake-shemp] [possibly] Bruce Campbell, who was the hero
in _The Evil Dead_ and _Evil Dead II_, both also directed by Sam Raimi.
# Dave
- Author Gary Ross appears as Policeman #2.
- Many U.S. Congressmen and political commentators appear in this film as
themselves.
- CAMEO: (Arnold Schwarzzenegger): himself
- CAMEO: (Larry King): himself
- CAMEO: (Oliver Stone): himself
# Dawn of the Dead
- DIRCAMEO(George Romero): the director in the television studio.
- CAMEO(? Romero [wife of George]): director's assistant in the television
studio.
# Dead Again
- CAMEO(Robin Williams): the struck-off psychiatrist.
# Death Becomes Her
- Goldie Hawn went on an eating binge and a crash diet to make her weight
fluctuate during this film.
- In the scene where Goldie Hawn's character sits down onto a shovel handle,
she didn't sit in the way she was expected to do, so the SFX people had to
morph the image to make it look like the shovel handle was pushing up into
her chest.
- DIRTRADE (Robert Zemeckis): [citation]: The shots in the psychiatric clinic
where Goldie Hawn is brought look exactly like those in _One Flew Over the
Cuckoo's Nest_.
# Devil and Daniel Webster, The
- Shortly after filming had begun, Thomas Mitchell (playing the title role)
managed to break a leg, and was replaced by Edward Arnold. Not many scenes
had been shot, none were reshot, so Mitchell is still visible in some scenes.
# Dial M for Murder (1954)
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): about 13 minutes into the film, on the left side
of the reunion photograph.
- The movie was shot in 3-D although it was never released that way until
after Hitchcock's death.
- Hitchcock arranged to have Grace Kelly dressed in bright colours at the
start of the film and made them progressively darker as time goes on.
# Dick Tracy (1990)
- The only colors in the film are the six that the original comic strip
appeared in.
# Dirty Harry
- The title role was originally intended for Frank Sinatra.
- After Harry has foiled the bank robbery at the beginning of the film, he
strides over to the one surviving robber. In doing so, he walks in front of
a theatre which is showing _Play Misty For Me_, which Clint Eastwood directed
and starred in.
- DIRCAMEO(Don Siegel): man running down the street.
- ACTTRADE(Clint Eastwood): "Go ahead. Make my Day" (first)
# Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
- An entire day was spent shooting the trailer, which does not appear in the
film. The trailer shows Caine and Martin walking along the boardwalk,
politely moving out of the way of other people, etc, with a voice saying
something like "There are numerous distinguised gentlemen in the world...
refined, cultured gentlemen.... <etc> nice men.... <etc>... but nice men
finish last". As these last few lines are spoken, Martin pushes an old lady
into the water, and Caine shoves an kid's face into his ice cream.
# Doors, The
- Prior to the audition, Val Kilmer memorised the lyrics to all songs written
by Jim Morrison.
- Val Kilmer wore special contact lenses which made his pupils seem dilated
in the scenes where Morrison was stoned
- Closeup shots use Kilmer's voice, long distance shots use Morrison's.
- Patricia Kennealy Morrison played the High Priestess in the handfasting scene
- John Densmore (The Doors drummer) was the recording engineer
- Bonnie Bramlett (of 60's group Delaney and Bonnie) played the bartender
- DIRCAMEO(Oliver Stone): Morrison's film professor.
# Down and Out in Beverly Hills
- Nick Nolte spent five weeks as a homeless person in preparation for his role.
# Dr. No
- Sean Connery morbidly afraid of spiders. Shot of spider in his bed was
originally done with a sheet of glass between him and the spider, but when
this didn't look realistic enough, the scene was re-shot with stuntman
Bob Simmons.
- The rights to the famous theme song were bought from Monty Norman for a
ridiculously low sum of money, and subsequently appeared in many later Bond
films.
# Duellists, The
- The swords were hooked up to batteries to produce the sparks, and Harvey
Keitel said he was heavily shocked more than once.
# Dune
- There are rumours of a 6-hour long director's cut, but there has never been
any concrete proof of it being released. A book by Frank Herbert himself
claims that 12 hours of footage was filmed. They cut it to 6, considered
releasing it as a mini-series, but decided to cut it down to 2 and released
it theatrically.
- After this film was released, Sting said that he would never again play a
character who used violence to achieve his objectives.
- There is a television cut of this film, which director David Lynch disowned.
He would not allow his name to appear as director, and so the director is
given as "Alan Smithee", the standard name used in situations such as this.
The writer [?] also refused to have his name appear in the credits, using
the standard pseudonym "Judas Booth" (derived from "Judas" and "John Wilkes
Booth".
- DIRCAMEO(David Lynch): A radio operator on the mining ship that Paul and
Duke Leto Atreides rescue from a sandworm.
# E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
- ET's face was modeled after poet Carl Sandburg and Albert Einstein.
- Harrison Ford played the school principal, but his scenes were cut. There
is a rumor that you can still see his back.
- The M&M's people refused to allow their product appear in the film, so the
producers got "Reese's Pieces" instead. Sales for "Reese's Pieces"
skyrocketed after the movie's release.
- The extraterrestrial's plant collection includes a triffid (from _The Day
of the Triffids_).
- ET's voice was performed by Debra Winger.
- This movie has earned a total of $965 million by 1989.
# Easy Rider
- CAMEO(Phil Spector): the cocaine dealer.
# Easy Virtue
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): walking past a tennis court carrying a walking
stick.
# Edge of Eternity
- DIRCAMEO(Don Siegel): man at a hotel pool
# Electric Dreams
- CAMEO(Georgio Moroder): radio station executive at the very end.
# Elephant Walk
- Vivian Leigh was originally cast. Her mental illness begun affecting things
during filming, and so she was replaced by by Elizabeth Taylor. Many long
shots and shots from behind are still of Leigh.
# Empire Strikes Back, The
- Lighting for SFX was so strong that several models melted.
- The AT-AT's were based on ship loading structure in an Oakland, California
shipyard. Walking patterns of elephants were studied to make the movements
seem as realistic as possible.
- Further scenes with the Wampa Ice Creatures were shot, and later cut. R2-D2
encountered one within the Rebel base, where it was killed by troopers.
Later, the beasts were lured into a prison within the complex. In the
completed film, a medical droid is seen examining the wounds of a Tauntaun
killed by a Wampa, and Princess Leia mentions the "creatures" while
discussing the Imperial Probe Droid.
- There is a rumour that one of the asteriods is actually a potato.
- Wedge Antilles (Rebel pilot who trips an AT-AT walker) is played by Dennis
(two "n"s) Lawson. See also _Star Wars_ and _Return of the Jedi_
- Security surrounding this movie was so intense that George Lucas had regular
reports about "leaks" from actors. Lucas was so determined that the ending
be kept secret that he had actor David Prowse (Darth Vader) say "Obi Wan
Kenobi is your father", and dubbed it later to be "I am your father".
- Captain (later Admiral) Piett is left in command of the Imperial fleet by
the end of the film, and is still in charge during _Return of the Jedi_.
- The designers at ILM wanted a radical design for Boba Fett's ship. They
ended up using the end of a lamp post from the street outside the ILM
building.
# Evil Dead II
- one of the books on the can that traps Ash's possessed hand is called
"A Farewell to Arms".
- A glove belonging to _A Nightmare on Elm Street_'s Freddy Krueger can be
seen hanging near the steps in one of the cellar scenes. This was in
response to the use of _The Evil Dead_ on a television screen in _A
Nightmare on Elm Street_.
# Evil Dead, The
- total budget for this film was $50,000. Investors were initially annoyed
when the film appeared to be a comedy although they were told it would be a
horror story. As of 1988, the investors have had a 150% return.
# Ewok Adventure, The (TV)
- One of the matte paintings includes Winnie the Pooh sitting in a tree.
# Exorcist III, The
- CAMEO(C Everett Coop [Surgeon General]): in the restuarant
- CAMEO(Larry King): in the restuarant
# Exorcist, The
- There are semi-subliminal single-frame shots in this film: when the priest
is dreaming of his mother coming up out of the subway, there is a single
frame shot of a face, painted black and white, grimacing.
# Explorers
- The "city lights" model includes a suburb that looks suspiciously like a
circuit diagram, complete with logic gates and an integrated circuit.
- A newspaper headline is "Kingston Falls Mystery Still Unsolved". Kingston
Falls was the town in _Gremlins_, which Joe Dante also directed.
# Fabulous Baker Boys, The
- Madonna was originally approached for the role which was picked up by
Michelle Pfieffer. Madonna turned it down because the plot was 'too mushy'.
# Fail-Safe
- The film shows many US Air Force bombers, but they are all actually all shots
of the same plane, taken from a stock piece of film after the Department of
Defense declined to cooperate with the filmmakers.
# Family Plot
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): in silhouette 45 minutes into the film behind the
door at the registrar of births and deaths.
- Roy Thinnes was originally hired to play William Devane's character, but
Hitchcock was dissatisfied with his performance and fired him one month
into the filming.
# Fatal Attraction (1987)
- Original ending had Alex committing suicide, and Michael Douglas' character
being arrested for her murder. Changed when preview audiences felt that
justice was not served onto Alex. This ending still appears in the Japanese
release.
- Alex starts the film wearing white, but gradually switches to be wearing
black at the end.
# Few Good Men, A
- Two "Misery" novels can be seen beside Danny's typewriter while he watches
a ballgame. _Misery_ was also directed by Rob Reiner.
# Fisher King, The
- A poster for "Brazil" (also directed by Terry Gilliam) appears in the first
video store scene.
- CAMEO(Tom Waits): the crippled beggar in the wheelchair in the train
station.
# Fitzcarraldo
- Mick Jagger and Jason Robards were replaced by Klaus Kinski.
- The production is documented by the film "Burden of Dreams" by Les Blank.
# Fly, The (1986)
- DIRCAMEO(David Cronenberg): obsetrician who delivers the maggot baby.
# Fog, The
- There is a rumor that most of the characters were named after cast and crew
members in director John Carpenter's previous film _Halloween_.
# Forbidden Planet
- Borrowed its plot from Shakespeare's "The Tempest".
- First appearance of "Robbie the Robot".
# Foreign Correspondent
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): early in the movie walking past Joel McCrea's
hotel reading a newspaper.
- Albert Basserman who played the Dutch diplomat Van Meer couldn't speak a
word of English and learnt all his lines phonetically.
# Frankenhooker
- Single shot of the Doctor running out of his house and down the street has
parked cars which change positions.
# Frankenstein (1931)
- In one scene, the monster (Boris Karloff) walks through a forest and
comes upon a little girl, Maria, who is throwing flowers into a pond. The
monster joins her in the activity but soon runs out of flowers. At a loss
for something to throw into the water, he looks at Maria and moves toward
her. In all American prints of the movie, the scene ends here. But as
originally filmed, the action continues to show the monster grabbing
Maria, hurling her into the lake, then departing in confusion when Maria
fails to float as the flowers did. This bit was deleted because Karloff -
objecting to the director's interpretation of the scene - felt that the
monster should have gently put Maria into the lake. Though Karloff's
intentions were good, the scenes omission suggests a crueler death for
Maria, since a subsequent scene shows her bloddied corpse being carried
through the village by her father.
# Frankie and Johnny (1991)
- One scene called for actor Al Pacino to be surprised after opening a door.
_Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country_ was filming in a nearby studio, so
the director arranged for Kirk and Spock be on the other side of the door
that Pacino opened.
# Frenzy (1972)
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): in the first moments of the film in the crowd -
he is the only one not applauding the speaker.
- Elsie Randolph who plays a worker at the hotel last appeared in a Hitchcock
film 40 years earlier as the old maid in 1932's Rich and Strange.
- This was the first film Hitchcock shot in England since 1950's _Stage
Fright_.
# Freshman, The (1990)
- Marlon Brando's first role in many years, playing a man who they supposedly
modeled Don Corleone from _The Godfather_ after.
- During post-production, Brando claimed this film would be the biggest turkey
of all time, but subsequently changed his mind, saying it would be
"reasonable".
# Full Metal Jacket
- Drill Instructor played by R Lee Ermey. A former US Marines Drill Instructor,
Ermey was supposed to be a consultant on how to drill USMC style, but he
lobbied director Stanley Kubrick for the part.
- Ermey was involved in a jeep accident during the making of the movie. He got
away with a broken arm, and in many scenes he doesn't move his injured arm
at all.
- In the scene in the blasted city ruins where the sergeant is dying from
gunshot wounds, there is a rock in the background that looks very much like
the monolith from Kubrick's _2001_. Kubrick says it wasn't intentional, but
was noticed later, after filming, while watching the "rushes".
# Game of Death (1979)
- Bruce Lee died during the making of this film. The official verdict was a
brain edema, but many people believe there is more to the story than this.
One persistent rumor is that he was killed by Ninja masters for revealing too
many of their secrets.
# Ghostbusters
- The eggs which fry themselves are sitting next to a package of "Stay-Puft"
marshmallows.
- Had two trailers, one of which ended with a slime monster rushing at the
camera.
# Godfather, Part III, The
- Sofia Coppola (daughter of director Francis Ford Coppola) plays Michael
Corleone's daughter, a role she played as a baby in _The Godfather_.
Winona Ryder was originally cast, but she withdrew due to exhaustion.
# Godfather, The
- There is a rumour that Burt Reynolds was originally cast as Michael Corleone,
but Marlon Brando wouldn't act with him, considering him more a TV star.
- Lawrence Olivier was considered for the role of Vito Corleone.
- Frank Sinatra was considered for the role of Johnny, but this role went to
Al Martino when it became apparent that there were too many similarities
between Johnny and Sinatra himself.
- Marlon Brando wanted to make Don Corleone look "like a bulldog", so he
stuffed his cheeks with cotton wool for the screen test. For actual filming,
he wore an appliance made by a dentist. Al Pacino also wore a dental
appliance. This was to hold his jaw out of alignment, to appear as though it
had been broken by McCluskey and not reset. Brando's mouthpiece is on
display at the prop and costume museum at Universal Studios.
- Author Mario Puzo and director Francis Ford Coppola deliberately removed all
instances of the word "Mafia" from their screenplay.
- Scene of Don Corleone's death in the tomato garden was ad-libbed.
- Sofia Coppola (daughter of director) appears as Michael Corleone's baby
daughter in the christening scenes.
# Gone with the Wind
- First scene to be shot was the fires in Atlanta. If there was a major
mistake during the filming, the entire film might have been scrapped. What
they actually burned were a whole lot of old sets on the studio backlot,
including the "Great Gate" from _King Kong_.
- The last scene to be shot was Scarlett on the porch of Tara: the first scene
in the movie.
- When filming began, the part of Scarlett O'Hara had not yet been cast.
Vivien Leigh was introduced to producer David O. Selznik by his brother,
Myron Selznik, during filming. (The actress in the long shots during the
burning of Atlanta is a double.)
- The public demanded Bette Davis for the part of Scarlett, she was film tested
for the part, and the footage of her as Scarlett still exists.
- Female costumes were made complete with petticoats, although they wouldn't
have been missed had they not been there.
- Went through several changes of director, finally finished by Victor
Fleming, who had just finished _The Wizard of Oz_.
- George Reeves is credited as playing the part of Brent Tarleton, and Fred
Crane is billed as Stuart Tarleton. This is incorrect: Crane played Brent,
and Reeves played Stuart.
- The scene where Scarlett digs up a turnip then retches and gives her "As God
is my witness" line, the vomiting sounds were actually made by Olivia de
Havilland since Vivien Leigh could not produce a convincing enough retch.
# Good Earth, The
- The only film with on-screen credit given to MGM executive Irving Thalberg.
# Goodbye, Columbus
- The wedding scene, as filmed, included a magnificent 10-minute speech by
Monroe Arnold as Uncle Leo -- a real tour de force. But it didn't fit the
mood of the rest of the picture, and was cut to 45 seconds. It was a bitter
blow to Arnold, and helped him decide to retire from acting not longer
afterward.
# GoodFellas
- Director Martin Scorsese's mother plays Tommy's mother.
# Gothic
- DIRTRADE(Ken Russell): [snake]
# Grand Canyon (1991)
- DIRCAMEO(Lawrence Kasdan): tries to interest Steve Martin's
character in a film.
# Great Escape, The
- Actor Donald Plesance was actually a POW during WWII.
# Great Mouse Detective, The
- When this film was originally released it's title was "The Great Mouse
Detective." When Disney re-released it years later they gave it the title
of "The Adventures of the Great Mouse Detective." When the film was
released on video a few months later, the title on the box was back to "The
Great Mouse Detective" but the title on the film itself read "The Adventures
of the Great Mouse Detective."
# Gremlins
- The theater marquee is showing a double bill: "A Boy's Life" (the working
title for Spielberg's _E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial_), and "Watch the Skies"
(the working title for Spielberg's _Close Encounters of the Third Kind_).
- Billy crosses the street and calls "Hello" to the town's doctor -- Doctor
Moreau, from the H.G. Wells story of the same name.
- Robbie the Robot is in a couple scenes. In one, he's talking on a phone in
a phone booth wearing a hat. His lines are his end of the conversation with
the cook of the C57-D in _Forbidden Planet_ where Cookie is trying to get him
to produce booze.
- While the father is talking on the phone from the inventor's convention, the
machine from _The Time Machine_ can be seen in the background winding up to
full power. The scene cuts to the house, and when we cut back again, the
machine has gone, leaving only a wisp of coloured smoke.
- The old lady in the bank is a homage to the Wicket Witch of the East from
_The Wizard of Oz_.
- CAMEO(Stephen Spielberg): man in the time machine.
- rumoured CAMEO(George Lucas): in the same scene, riding a bicycle.
- CAMEO(Chuck Jones): The man who looks at Billy's cartoon in the bar. There
is a Warner Brothers cartoon playing on the TV.
# Gremlins II: The New Batch
- Two different version of this film: one for the theatre, one for video. The
difference is that in the theatrical version, it appears that the film begins
to burn, however, in the video version, this segment is replaced by a segment
which simulates a broken VCR machine.
# Groundhog Day
- Punxsutawney, PA is actually Woodstock, Illinois, even though there is a
Punxsutawney, PA which has a Groundhog Day festival.
- In one scene, Phil Connors (Bill Murray) throws himself from the bell tower
of a high building. This building is actually an opera house in Woodstock,
Illinois. Local legend has it that a young girl once committed suicide by
throwing herself from the same bell tower. Her ghost is supposed to haunt
the opera house.
- Bill Murray was bitten by the groundhog twice during the filming of this
movie.
- Two of Bill Murray's brothers have small parts in this film.
# Guilty as Sin
- Filmed at the $300 million IBM Canada headquarters in Toronto, Canada
# Hairspray
- DIRCAMEO(John Walters): the psychiatrist.
# Halloween
- Director John Carpenter was raised in Bowling Green, Kentucky. In one scene,
the subtitle on the screen depicts the location as "Smiths Grove, Illinois."
Smiths Grove, Kentucky is a small town of about 600 people 15 miles from
Bowling Green. In another scene, a man mentions going to Russellville, which
is another town near Bowling Green.
- Due to its shoestring budget, the prop department had to use the cheapest
mask that they could find in the costume store: a William Shatner mask.
They later spray-painted the face white, and teased out the hair.
- The kids watch the opening of _The Thing (?)_ on TV. Carpenter would later
re-make this film himself in 1982.
# Head (1968)
- CAMEO(Jack Nicholson): after Peter Tork punches a guy in drag.
# Helpmates
- Stan Laurel gives his real phone number (OXford-0614).
# Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
- There is a very gruesome scene, shot on videotape, where Henry and Otis kill
a family in their home. After filming the scene, the actress who plays the
mother went into shock.
# High Anxiety
- Tribute to Alfred Hitchcock. References to: _Spellbound_, _Vertigo_,
_Psycho_, _The Birds_, _North by Northwest_ [others?]
# Highlander
- Christopher Lambert spent time with a dialog coach, developing an accent
which sounded unspecifically foreign.
- MacLeod says "It's a kind of magic", which is the name of the Queen album
which contains songs from the film. The Vietnam vet who tries to machine-gun
Kurgan has the Queen song _Hammer to Fall_ playing in his car.
- The castle where Connor MacLeod lived was also used in _Monty Python and the
Holy Grail_.
- Non-American versions of this film include a WWII flashback sequence showing
MacLeod meeting Rachael.
# Hiroshima, Mon Amour
- This film pioneered the use of jump cutting to and from a flashback, and of
very brief flashbacks to suggest obtrusive memories.
# His Girl Friday
- [Cary Grant] (played by Cary Grant) refers to some horrible fate suffered by
the last person who crossed him: Archie Leech. Grant's real name is Archie
Leach.
- [Grant] tries to describe a character played by Ralph Bellamy. He ends up
saying that he "looks like that film actor, Ralph Bellamy".
# History of the World - Part 1
- Richard Pryor was originally cast in the part eventually taken by Gregory
Hines. Just before filming was to begin, Pryor had is now famous drug-
related accident, catching fire and getting severely burnt.
# Hook (1991)
- Bob Hoskins (Smee) bought beer for 300+ extras after a lengthy and
complicated scene was cut.
- The young Peter Pan is played by Dustin Hoffman's son.
- When the Tootles floats out the window at the end, he says "Seize the Day",
which has significance for Robin Williams, who starred in _Seize the Day_,
and _Dead Poet's Society_ (for which this was a catch-cry).
- Smee says "Goooooooood morning Neverland!", a reference to Williams in _Good
Morning Vietnam_.
- [reference to Awakenings, anyone?]
- There were frequent good-natured "battle of the wits" exchanges between Robin
Williams and Dustin Hoffman. In one incident, Hoffman was not happy with his
performance and asked the scene to be re-shot. Williams' quipped "Try
acting": a reference to the Hoffman/Olivier exchange on the set of _ Marathon
Man_.
- CAMEO(Phil Collins): Police Inspector.
- CAMEO(David Crosby): pirate
- CAMEO(Glenn Close): (male!) pirate locked in the chest with the scorpions.
# Hot Shots! (1991)
- Some previews contains this scene, which was not in the movie:
[Valeria Golino] asks [Cary Elwes] if there's a cue ball in his pocket, or
is he just glad to see her, and [Elwes] produces a cue ball.
- References to: _Top Gun_, _Nine 1/2 Weeks_, _Gone with the Wind_, _Superman_,
_Dances With Wolves_.
# Hot Shots! Part Deux
- Charlie Sheen worked out for eight hours a day to build up his body, as he
decided that he would have felt embarressed at the film's premiere if he had
to sit amongst people laughing at his physique.
- Richard Crenna plays Denton Walters. In the TV series "Our Miss Brooks",
Crenna played a character called "Walter Denton".
- References to: _Rambo: First Blood Part II_, _Rambo III_, _Kickboxer_, _Basic
Instinct_, _No Way Out_, _The Godfather_, _Lady and the Tramp_, _Apocalypse
Now_, _Missing in Action_, _Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves_, _Star Wars_,
_Terminator 2: Judgment Day_, _The Wizard of Oz_.
# House Party
- DIRCAMEO(Reginald Hudlin): thief chased by the doberman.
- CAMEO(Washington Hudlin [producer]): thief chased by the doberman.
# Howling, The
- All the characters have the names of "wolfman-movie" directors.
# Hudson Hawk
- The tones that the telephones make are the same as the ones used in _Our Man
Flint_ and _In Like Flint_. James Coburn appears in all three movies.
# Hunt for Red October, The
- Kevin Costner originally cast as Jack Ryan.
- Klaus-Maria Brandauer originally cast as Marko Ramius.
- $20,000 spent on Sean Connery's hairpiece.
# I Confess
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): crossing the top of a staircase during the
opening credits.
- Anne Baxter was one of the actresses tested by Hitchcock for the leading
role in Rebecca (she was 16 at the time).
# Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
- Begins with a shot of a rock in Utah which is reminiscent of the Paramount
Pictures logo. See also (_Raiders of the Lost Ark_, and _Indiana Jones and
the Temple of Doom_)
- Shows origin of Jones' fear of snakes in _Raiders of the Lost Ark_.
- Harrison Ford cut his chin in a car accident in Northern California when he
was about 20. In the movie, this cut is explained by young Indiana Jones
cutting his chin with a whip. See also: _Working Girl_.
- The dog barking when young Indy passes with the cross in his hand is an
Alaskan malmute, the same type of dog the Lucas's owned in the late 1970s.
- Walter Donovan was played by Julian Glover, and Donovan's wife was played by
Glover's wife.
# Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
- Begins with a shot of a mountain on a gong which is reminiscent of the
Paramount Pictures logo. See also (_Raiders of the Lost Ark_, and _Indiana
Jones and the Last Crusade_)
- The club at the beginning is called "Club Obi Wan", a reference to a _Star
Wars_ character.
- Shots of mining-car roller-coaster ride done with models and a 35mm camera
modified to hold extra film.
- Suspension bridge only shown from one side, to avoid showing the Grand Coulee
Dam.
- Rehash of the "shooting the swordsman" joke from _Raiders of the Lost Ark_.
- CAMEO(Dan Aykroyd): meets Indiana at the airport at the beginning.
- CAMEO(Frank Marshall [producer]): a tourist in the background in the
airport scene at the beginning.
- DIRCAMEO(Steven Spielberg): a tourist in the background in the airport scene
at the beginning.
# Innerspace
- Repeated rabbit motif: Tuck's apartment, etc [more!]
- The computers in the lab display Apple ][ assembly language listing from the
ROM monitor.
# Innocent Blood
- Renamed "A French Vampire in America" in some countries, after a bad
reception in the US (and to cash in on Landis' _An American Werewolf in
London_). [Australia, and which other countries?]
- One scene shows a TV set that is showing Alfred Hitchcock's cameo in _The
Paradine Case_.
- CAMEO(Dario Argento [art director]): the nurse in the ambulance. [credited?]
- DIRTRADE(John Landis): [SYNW]: advertised on the marquee across the street
from the Melody Lounge exotic dance bar. The "car crash at the Shadyside
gas station" scene was filmed in Squirrel Hill, and the nearby multiplex
cinema changed its marquee to be "See You Next Wednesday" every night after
closing. The movie itself featured no footage of that theatre (or the
street on which it resides), although it is possible that it was edited out.
# Into the Night
- airport scenes in _Into the Night_ and _Coming To America_ have a call over
the PA system for a "Mr Frank Ozkerwitz" to pick up the white courtesy phone.
This is Frank Oz's real name.
- DIRTRADE(John Landis): [ipanema]: the music during the strip scene.
- DIRTRADE(John Landis): [SYNW]: appears on two posters in the office where
[Goldblum and Pfeiffer] make the phone call.
- DIRCAMEO(John Landis): the leader of the terrorists.
- CAMEO(David Cronenberg): a terrorist
- CAMEO(Johnathan Demme): a terrorist
- CAMEO(Lawrence Kasdan): a terrorist
- CAMEO(Jonathan Lynn): a terrorist
- CAMEO(David Bowie): British hitman who puts a gun in Jeff Goldblum's
character's mouth.
- CAMEO(Don Siegel):
- CAMEO(Jack Arnold): the guy in the elevator whose dog gets shot. [credited?]
- CAMEO(Waldo Salt): the scriptwriter blacklisted for his socialist views.
- CAMEO(Roger Vadim):
- CAMEO(Amy Hecklerling): waitress at the Ship's Restuarant.
# It Happened at the World's Fair
- Kurt Russell (in his screen debut) kicks Elvis' shins. Goldie Hawn was also
in this film, and they became a de faco couple much later.
# It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World
- CAMEO(Jimmy Durante): the man who "kicks the bucket".
- CAMEO(The Three Stooges): firemen
- CAMEO(Jerry Lewis):
- CAMEO(Joe E Brown):
- CAMEO(Jack Benny):
- CAMEO(Buster Keaton):
- CAMEO(Sid Caesar):
- CAMEO(Buddy Hackett):
- CAMEO(Jim Backus):
[more!]
# Jacob's Ladder
- All SFX were filmed live, with no post-production.
# Jaws
- Sterling Hayden was the original choice for the role of Quint. Hayden,
however, was in trouble with the Internal Revenue Service for back taxes.
All Hayden's income from acting was subject to a levy by the IRS, so there
was an attempt to circumvent that: Hayden was also a writer, so one idea
was to pay him union scale for his acting, and buy a story from him (his
literary income wasn't subject to levy) for a large sum. It was concluded
that the IRS would see through this scheme, so Robert Shaw was cast instead.
- The live shark footage was shot at Seal Rocks, Australia. A real white
pointer was cut up and "extended" for the close-up shots.
- CAMEO(Peter Benchley): reporter on the beach.
- A midget in a miniature cage and a real shark were used to get some shots
correct.
- Apparently, technicians lost control of one of the mechanical sharks, and it
was lost at sea.
- In many scenes, actors Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, and Shaw had to look
in amazement at the shark, when it was not there are all.
# JFK
- The real Jim Garrison plays Earl Warren.
- In _Bull Durham_, Kevin Costner's character states "...I believe Lee Harvey
Oswald acted alone..."
# Joe Versus the Volcano
- The company logo appears frequently: the path leading up to the factory, the
bolt of lightning which sinks the ship, and the lava flow down the side of
the volcano, the crack in Joe's apartment, a constellation.
- The mask worn by the Waponi who is representing the evil spirit resembles
the factory where Joe used to work.
# Jurassic Park
- The park software is written in Pascal; a program is clearly visible in one
of the monitor closeups on the UNIX system.
# Kentucky Fried Movie, The
- In the "Feel-a-rama" movie theatre, there is a poster advertising _Schlock_,
also directed by John Landis.
- DIRTRADE(John Landis): [SYNW]: the title of the "Feel-a-Rama" movie.
# Killers, The (1964)
- DIRCAMEO(Don Siegel): a cook at a diner
# Kindergarten Cop
- John Kimball swears in German as he carries his collegue into the house ("Das
macht mich stinksauer! Jetzt bin ich sauer!", which means "I'm pissed as
hell! Now I am pissed!")
# King and I, The
- Deborah Kerr's singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon.
# King Kong (1933)
- The original King Kong was released four times between 1933 and 1952,
and each release saw the cutting of additional scenes. Though many of the
outtakes - including the censored sequence in which Kong peels off Fay
Wray's clothes - were restored in 1971, one cut scene has never been
found. It is the clip in which Kong shakes four sailors off a log bridge,
causing them to fall into a ravine where they are eaten alive by giant
spiders. When the movie - with spider sequence intact - was previewed in
San Bernardino, Calif., in late January, 1933, members of the audience
screamed and either left the theatre or talked about the grisly sequence
throughout the remainder of the film. Said the film's producer, Merian C.
Cooper, "It stopped the picture cold, so the next day back at the studio,
I took it out myself".
- The model of King Kong only came up to Fay Wray's Navel.
# L.A. Story
- Harris (Steve Martin) quotes poems that Martin previously quoted in
_The Man with Two Brains_.
- CAMEO(Woody Harrelson): Harris' boss at the TV station
- CAMEO(Rick Moranis): the gravedigger
- CAMEO(Chevy Chase): important guest (Christopher ???) at L'Idiot.
# Lady Vanishes, The (1938)
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): near the end of the movie at Victoria Station
wearing a black coat and smoking a cigarette.
- The movie was remade in 1979.
# Lair of the White Worm, The
- DIRTRADE(Ken Russell): [snake]
# Last Action Hero, The
- References to: _Commando_, _Terminator 2: Judgment Day_, _Basic Instinct_.
- ACTTRADE(Arnold Schwarzenegger): "I'll be back!"
# Last Boy Scout, The
- The movie that Darian is watching on TV is _Lethal Weapon_, which was also
written by Shane Black.
- Damon Wayan's character's comment about travelling back in time if the BMW
keeps up its speed is a reference to _Back to the Future_.
# Last Starfighter, The
- All shots of spacecraft, space, etc generated on a CRAY computer. Some
objects had over 300 000 polygons, but the entire movie took only eight hours
to generate.
# League of Their Own, A
- John Lovitz had a more substantial role, but it was cut.
- Tom Hanks gained much weight in preparation for his role.
- The old Dottie and Kit are played by other actresses, but their voices
are dubbed over by Geena Davis and Lori Petty.
- The characters at the hall of fame and seen playing after the game are
real players from the league portrayed in the film.
# Life of Brian
- Numerous title changes: "Monty Python's Life of Brian", etc.
- More footage of the Judean People's Front crack suicide squad was filmed but
not included. Also edited out was a section during the kidnapping of
Pilate's wife where she thumps Brian on the head.
- CAMEO(George Harrison): Mr Papadopolous, owner of "The Mount", who shakes
hands with Brian and gives a very Liverpudlian "'ullo".
# Lifeboat
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): in "before" and "after" pictures in a newspaper
advert for Reduco the Obesity slayer. The pictures were genuine, as he had
just been on a crash diet (although not with the fictional Reduco).
# Limelight
- Charlie Chaplin's film about a vaudeville comic on the decline features
a scene in which Chaplin, as the elderly Calvero, makes his comeback in a
music hall sketch. The routine, which originally ran 10 minutes, has
Calvero performing onstage with an old colleague, played by Buster Keaton.
It has been said that while Chaplin was good, Keaton was sensational.
Consequently, Chaplin allowed only a small portion of the scene to remain
in release prints.
# Little Mermaid, The (1989)
- Some versions of the videotape had the likeness of a penis on the cover.
- The Tiny Toon Adventure script writer Sheri Stoner was used as the model for
Ariel. See also _Beauty and the Beast (1991)_. [or was it Alyssa Milano?]
# Little Shop of Horrors (1986)
- CAMEO(Bill Murray): the masochistic patient of the sadistic dentist
- CAMEO(Jim Belushi):
- CAMEO(John Candy): all the voices on the radio.
- CAMEO(Christopher Guest):
- DIRCAMEO(John Waters):
# Live and Let Die
- The power-boat jump over the causeway broke the world record for distance.
The second boat was not scripted to collide with the police car, but after
the stunt the script was changed to accommodate this.
# Lodger, The (1926)
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): a desk in the newsroom early in the film. Some
people claim he also appears later in the crowd lynch scene.
- Hitchcock wanted an ambiguous ending to the film, but the studio wouldn't
allow it to be implied that Ivor Novello might actually be the murderer.
# Made in Heaven
- CAMEO(Debra Winger): Emmert, the apparently male entity who "runs things" in
heaven.
# Maltese Falcon, The (1941)
- George Raft was originally cast as Sam Spade.
# Man Who Fell to Earth, The (1976)
- The power-boat jump in this movie broke the world record for distance,
previously set during the making of _Live and Let Die_.
# Man Who Knew Too Much, The (1956)
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): in the Moroccan marketplace watching the acrobats
with his back to the camera just before the murder.
- Bernard Herrmann (the composer of the score) can be seen conducting the
orchestra during the Albert Hall sequence.
- The plot calls for a man to be discovered as "not Moroccan" becuase he was
wearing black makeup. The makeup artists couldn't find a black substance
that would come off easily, and so they painted the fingers of the other man
white, so that he would leave pale streaks on the other man's skin.
- The Albert Hall sequence lasts 12 minutes without a single word of dialogue
and consists of 124 shots.
# Man with the Golden Gun, The
- J W Pepper (Clifton James) is a sherrif from Lousiana that James Bond met
in _Live and Let Die_. While chasing Scaramanga, Bond teams up with Pepper,
who is on holidays in Thailand.
- The stunt where Bond and Pepper do a barrel role in a car was included after
a group of university students came up with the idea and used a computer to
calculate the necessary environment. Although the bridge halves look
dilapidated, they were constructed to exacting specifications. The stunt car
had to approach the ramp at right-angles, do a sharp turn, and then hit the
ramp at a predetermined speed. The car had modified suspension, and a special
fuel system so that it wouldn't stall as it rolled over.
- Alice Cooper's "Muscle of Love" album has a song "Man With the Golden Gun"
on it. The CD version includes notes claiming it was to be the theme
song of the movie, but the producers chickened out.
# Man With Two Brains, The
- The voice of the disembodied brain that Steve Martin falls in love
with was provided by an uncredited Sissy Spacek.
# Manchurian Candidate, The
- Angela Landsbury plays the lead character's mother, even though she is
actually younger than him.
# Manhunter (1986)
- This film is a prequel to _The Silence of the Lambs_. Although there are
several characters common to both films, there are only two actors who appear
in both movies. Ironically, they both play different characters in both films.
Frankie Faison plays Lt Fisk in _Manhunter_, and Barney in _The Silence of
the Lambs_, and Dan Butler plays an FBI fingerprint expert in _Manhunter_,
and an entymologist in _The Silence of the Lambs_.
# Marathon Man
- Dustin Hoffman (being a "method actor") stayed up all night to play a
character who has stayed up all night. Arriving on the set, Sir Laurence
Olivier asked him why he looked they way he did. Hoffman told him, to which
Olivier replied in jest: "Why not try acting? It's much easier."
# Marnie
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): 5 minutes into the film, in the hotel corridor as
Tippi Hedren walks by.
- The production company created for the film, "Geoffrey Stanley" was named
after Hitchcock's pet dogs.
- Hitchcock and Tippi Hedren had a major falling out during the filming and
by the end he directed her through intermediaries.
- Bruce Dern can be seen briefly as the sailor in Marnie's flashback.
- Hitchcock wanted Grace Kelly to make her screen comeback in the title role,
but the people of Monaco were not happy with the idea of their princess
playing a compulsive thief.
# Maximum Overdrive
- DIRCAMEO(Stephen King): man who the ATM swears at.
# Mean Streets
- DIRCAMEO(Martin Scorsese): the hitman who shoots Robert De Niro's character.
# Meatballs Part II
- Cheryl (Kim Richards) is asked if she comes from another planet (due to her
lack of experience with boys). Cheryl replies that she sort of is. Kim
Richards played a young alien girl, marooned on earth, in two Disney movies:
_Escape to Witch Mountain_, and _Return from Witch Mountain_.
# Metropolis
- Some versions of this silent film have been colorized, and feature a
soundtrack produced by Georgio Moroder, featuring (among others) Freddie
Mercury.
# Midnight Run
- Robert De Niro spent time with bounty hunters as part of his preparation for
this role.
# Miller's Crossing
- CAMEO(Sam Raimi): [rumour]
# Misery
- A video of _When Harry Met Sally_ (also directed by Rob Reiner) is visible
in the general store.
- DIRCAMEO(Rob Reiner): the helicopter pilot.
# Monty Python and the Holy Grail
- When Arthur rides into the village where the "witch" is about to be burnt,
Bedivere is holding a coconut slung between two swallows.
- Some major scenes scripted, but never filmed: [?]
- The gorilla hand turning the pages was director Terry Gilliam's.
- At the beginning of the "Bring out your dead" scene, two nuns with gigantic
mallots can be seen. The original script called for them to be pounding on a
man tied to a cart, but the scene was cut and that glimpse is all that
remains.
- Many shots were filmed in a city park beside one of London's busiest
intersections
- Many subtle instances of cat abuse: during the "bring out your dead" scene,
- Most of the castles were cardboard cutouts, and indeed the trailer shows
one of them falling over.
[more?].
# Moonwalker
- Bad guy's name is "Frank Lideo". One of the film's executive producers is
Frank Deleo, Michael Jackson's long-time manager.
# Mountain Eagle, The
- No prints of this film (Hitchcock's second) are known to have survived and
no one has seen it since the late 1920s.
# Mr. and Mrs. Smith
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): about half way through the movie passing Robert
Montgomery in front of his building.
- Hitchcock's only screwball comedy. He was talked into directing it by Carole
Lombard.
# Muppet Movie, The
- Jim Henson spent an entire day in a 50 gallon steel drum submerged in a
pond for the opening scene of Kermit in the swamp.
# Murder!
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): about an hour into the movie walking past the
house where the murder was committed.
- A German version called "Mary" was filmed at the same time using German
actors, but the same sets.
- The scene where Herbert Marshall thinks out loud in front of a mirror had to
be filmed with a recording of Marshall's lines and an orchestra hidden
behind the set as it was not possible to dub the soundtrack later.
# My Fair Lady
- Audrey Hepburn's singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon.
# National Lampoon's Animal House
- A character named Babs becomes a tour guide at Universal Studios. The
credits for this film (and other John Landis films) include an advertisement
for a tour at Universal Studios. The ad contains the words "Ask for Babs".
# Nice Dreams
- CAMEO(Paul Reubens):
- CAMEO(Timothy Leary):
# Night They Raided Minsky's, The
- The first cut of the film was considered disastrous by all involved. Film
editor Ralph Rosenblum worked for more than a year to save it, with director
William Friedkin long gone. The extensive use of period film clips was the
editor's idea. The technique of returning from these clips to the movie by
starting with a B&W version of a shot and changing to color was invented
accidentally when the editor's assistant couldn't find the color copy of a
piece of film fast enough.
# Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, A
- CAMEO(Dick Cavett):
- CAMEO(Zsa Zsa Gabor):
# Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, A
- CAMEO(Johnny Depp): in a TV commercial. Depp played a character in _A
Nightmare on Elm Street_ who was killed when he fell asleep watching TV.
# Nightmare on Elm Street, A
- Freddy Kruger bleeds green.
- Just before Johnny Depp's character is pulled into the bed, the television
station announces its name: "KRGR".
- Freddy Kruger's colors of red and green are contrasted throughout the movie.
- The movie Nancy watches to stay awake is _The Evil Dead_. See also _Evil
Dead II_.
# North by Northwest
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): missing a bus at the end of the opening credits.
- Jessie Royce Landis played Cary Grant's mother, yet he was 10 months
older than her.
- The shot of Cary Grant entering the UN building had to be filmed with a
hidden camera as Hitchcock wasn't able to get permission to shoot there.
- At one point the movie's title was to be "The Man in Lincoln's Nose",
referring to the final chase sequence on Mount Rushmore.
# Notorious (1946)
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): about an hour in, drinking champagne at the party
in Claude Rains' mansion.
- Hitchcock claimed that the FBI had him under surveillance for three months
because the film dealt with Uranium for the A-bomb.
- Producer David O. Selznick originally wanted Vivien Leigh for Ingrid
Bergman's role.
- The original story, "The Song of the Dragon" was first published in the
Saturday Evening Post in November 1921.
- It was remade in 1992 as a TV-movie.
# Octopussy
- Maude Adams (Octopussy) is the only female actress (besides the actress that
played Miss Moneypenny) to appear in more than one James Bond film (_The Man
With the Golden Gun_ was the other).
# Omen, The
- According to director Richard Donner, a number of parents went home after the
film and shaved their childrens' heads, looking for a "666" birthmark.
# One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
- Ken Kesey, who wrote the original novel, said he will never watch the movie
version.
- Many extras were authentic mental patients
- There is a rumour that Jack Nicholson underwent ECT therapy during the
scene were his character does.
# Pacific Heights
- DIRCAMEO(John Schlesinger): man in the hotel elevator.
- CAMEO(Beverly D'Angelo): Michael Keaton's character's girlfriend at the
beginning.
# Paradine Case, The
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): getting off a train at the Cumberland station
carrying a cello (see also his cameo in _Strangers on a Train_).
- An exact replica of the Old Bailey courtroom was constructed for
the court scenes.
# Patriot Games
- Alec Baldwin played Jack Ryan in _The Hunt for Red October_, but Harrison
Ford replaced him for this and future Tom Clancy films due to Baldwin's
"unprofessional behaviour" during the making of _The Hunt for Red October_.
- The novel on which it was based (by Tom Clancy) had the Prince and Princess
of Wales as the target of the attempted kidnapping.
# Pet Sematary
- CAMEO(Stephen King): minister at the funeral.
# Pink Floyd - The Wall
- The actress who played the groupie in Pink's caravan/apartment wasn't told
that Bob Geldof would be throwing that object at her, so he reaction of
ducking was totally spontaneous.
- Scene for the song "Hey You" was filmed. It showed British police in riot
gear facing off against a mob. Roger Waters asked this reel to be cut.
- The poetry that young Pink was caught with during "The Happiest Days of Our
Lives" is the second verse from "Money", off Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the
Moon". Far from being "absolute rubbish", this album stayed longer on the
Billboard chart than any other album: more than 700 weeks.
- Director Alan Parker walked out on this project many times, probably due to
and ego clash with Roger Waters. Waters was annoyed at Parker, who didn't
like the way that he wanted to make it a cult film. Pink Floyd's next
album _The Final Cut_ contains the following lyrics (written by Waters):
"Not now John, we've gotta get on with the film show:
Hollywood waits at the end of the rainbow.
Who cares what it's about, as long as the kids go?
So not now John I've gotta get on with the show."
Parker refers to this film as "the most expensive student film ever made."
- The lyrics sung by Pink as he huddled in the bathroom stall later
resurfaced in "Moment of Clarity" in Roger Waters' solo album: "The Pros and
Cons of Hitch-Hiking" [if anyone can translate the line before he switches to
"I wanna go home," etc, I'd appreciate it]. Waters originally presented the
band with the concepts for both "The Wall" and "Pros and Cons", and the band
decided to do "The Wall".
- The shot during Pink's destruction of his hotel room of him grabbing the
jagged glass in the window is real. Geldof also cut his hand while ripping
apart the closet doors.
- Real skinheads used in the neo-nazi segment.
- The scene in which Pink is calling his home from the United States and is
very depressed to hear a man's voice was made by actually placing a call to
England through a random, unsuspecting AT&T operator. The conversation
was recorded and played over the filmed sequence.
- During the crowd devotion scenes there was going to be a shot of members
of the audience's heads exploding as they wildly cheered, loving every
minute of it. Alas, Waters decided that it could not be accomplished
without making it comic.
- CAMEO(Roger Waters): Roger Waters is supposedly in the brief shot of Pink's
wedding during "Another Brick in the Wall Pt III"
- Song changes from album:
When the Tygers Broke Free - added
In the Flesh? - extended/re-recorded
The Thin Ice - extended/re-mixed
Another Brick in the Wall 1 - unchanged
The Happiest Days of Our Lives - re-mixed
Another Brick in the Wall 2 - re-mixed
Mother - re-recorded/lyrics changed
Goodbye Blue Sky - re-mixed
Empty Spaces - re-recorded/lyrics changed to
match the original album sleeve.
What Shall We Do Now? - added
Young Lust - unchanged
One of My Turns - unchanged
Don't Leave Me Now - changed
Another Brick in the Wall 3 - re-recorded
Goodbye Cruel World - unchanged
Hey You - not included
Nobody Home - unchanged
Is There Anybody Out There? - unchanged
Vera - unchanged
Bring the Boys Back Home - extended
Comfortably Numb - unchanged
The Show Must Go On - not included
In the Flesh - re-recorded
Run Like Hell - shortened
Waiting for the Worms - shortened
Stop - re-recorded
The Trial - unchanged
Outside the Wall - re-recorded.
# Pinocchio (1940)
- Cut scenes:
- Extended scene of Pleasure Island.
- Geppetto tells Pinocchio about his grandfather, an old pine tree.
- Scenes of the woodlands and the forest fire later used in _Bambi_.
# Piranha II: The Spawning
- Credit for directing this turkey, featuring mechanical flying piranhas, was
given to James Cameron (who later went on to make Terminator 1 and 2, Aliens,
and The Abyss). Most of the work was actually performed by Ovidio Assonitis,
the film's producer and prolific film-maker. Assonitis was dissatisfied with
Cameron's progress after the first week and took over - Cameron assisted and
the two shared in editing.
# Plan 9 from Outer Space
- Contrary to popular belief, Bela Lugosi did not die during the making of the
film. His brief scenes are actually stock footage left over from one of
director Ed Wood Jr.'s uncompleted projects. After Lugosi's death, Wood
wrote his _Plan 9_ screenplay to incorporate this footage.
- Lugosi's part was taken over by the director's wife's chiropractor, who was
significantly taller than Lugosi, and played the part with a cape covering
his face.
- Wood's original (and preferred) title for his masterpiece was _Grave Robbers
from Outer Space_.
- Internationally recognized as the worst movie ever made.
# Platoon
- DIRCAMEO(Oliver Stone): An officer at the bunker which gets destroyed by a
suicide runner.
# Play Misty for Me
- Don Siegel played the bartender, and directed Clint Eastwood (director of
this film) in _Dirty Harry_
# Player, The
- The opening tracking shot (6.5 minutes) includes people talking about famous
long tracking shots in old movies. The scene was rehearsed for a day, shot
for half a day. Fifteen takes were done, five were printed, and the third
one was used in the film. The writers pitching stories in that shot are
relating real stories.
- The following people appear as themselves: Steve Allen, Richard Anderson,
Rene Auberjonois, Harry Belafonte, Shari Belafonte, Karen Black, Michael
Bowen, Gary Busey, Robert Carradine, Charles Champlin, Cher, James Coburn,
Cathy Lee Crosby, John Cusack, Brad Davis, Paul Dooley, Thereza Ellis, Peter
Falk, Felicia Farr, Kasia Figura, Louise Fletcher, Dennis Franz, Teri Garr,
Leeza Gibbons, Scott Glenn, Jeff Goldblum, Elliot Gould, Joel Grey, David
Alan Grier, Buck Henry, Anjelica Huston, Kathy Ireland, Steve James, Maxine
John-James, Sally Kellerman, Sally Kirkland, Jack Lemmon, Marlee Matlin,
Andie MacDowell, Malcolm McDowell, Jayne Meadows, Martin Mull, Jennifer Nash,
Nick Nolte, Alexandra Powers, Bert Remsen, Guy Remsen, Patricia Resnick, Burt
Reynolds, Jack Riley, Julia Roberts, Mimi Rogers, Annie Ross, Alan Rudolph,
Jill St. John, Susan Sarandon, Adam Simon, Rod Steiger, Joan Tewkesbury,
Brian Tochi, Lily Tomlin, Robert Wagner, Ray Walston, Bruce Willis, Marvin
Youn. Scenes with Jeff Daniels playing golf in a surgeon's gown at a
hospital and Patrick Swayze showing off karate moves were filmed but cut.
- The rushes from the movie being filmed (with Scott Glen and Lily Tomlin) were
filmed while the actors were rehearsing the scene.
# Pleasure Garden, The
- Alfred Hitchcock's first film was almost doomed when Austrian customs
officials confiscated the film stock on the journey to do some location
shooting.
- Although shot a year before, the film wasn't actually released until
after "The Lodger" was a massive hit.
# Point Break
- "Warchild" (the surf nazi who shoots himself in the foot) is played by
Anthony Kiedis, lead singer of the _Red Hot Chili Peppers_.
- One of the places that Utah follows Bodie (Patrick Swayze) to is "Patrick's
Roadhouse". Patrick Swayze previously starred in _Roadhouse_.
# Poltergeist
- Movie on the TV in an early bedroom scene is the first version of "Heaven Can
Wait", possibly indicating the intermediate state of the film.
- The house which gets sucked into a black hole at the end was actually a
model about 4 feet across. The model took several weeks to complete. The
scene was shot as follows: camera placed directly above model, which was
mounted over an industrial strength vacuum generator (the front door was
facing directly up, straight at the camera). The model also had about 100
wires attached to various points of the structure. These wires went down
through the back of the house, and down through the vacuum collection sack.
The camera was turned on, and took 15 seconds to wind up to the required
300 frames per second. When ready, the cameraman gave the cue. The vacuum
was turned on, the wires were yanked suddenly, and several SFX guys blasted
the house with pump-action shotguns.
The entire scene was over in about two seconds, and they had to wait until
the film was developed before they knew if they would have to do it again.
When played back at 24 fps, would take approximately 12 seconds for the house
to collapse. Luckily, they got it right on the first go.
Finished scene was sent to Stephen Spielberg, who was on location shooting
_ET_. He gave it to a projectionist, who assumed it was just the "dailys"
from ET. Scene came on, projectionist said "Holy shit! What was that!".
Spielberg had the remains of the model encased in perspex, and it is now
sitting on his piano. The model itself was worth well over $25,000.
# Poltergeist III
- Heather O'Rourke (who played the little girl in all three movies) died
shortly before this film was released.
# Predator
- ACTTRADE(Arnold Schwarzenegger): "I'll be back!"
# Predator 2
- the skull of a creature that resembles the ones in _Alien_ and _Aliens_
is on the wall in the Predator's trophy room.
# President's Analyst, The
[Supposed to be lots in this movie]
# Pretty Woman
- The movie was originally titled "3000".
- Julia Roberts had a body double for the intimate shots.
- Julia Roberts' head was superimposed on her body double for the poster.
Richard Gere's hair is brown on the poster, but greying in the movie.
- CAMEO(Larry Miller): head salesman at a clothing store.
# Producers, The
- Mel Brooks' voice is dubbed in for a singer in "Springtime for Hitler"
# Psycho
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): about 4 minutes in wearing a cowboy hat outside
Janet Leigh's office.
- The film only cost $800,000 to make yet has earned more than $40 million.
Hitchcock used the crew from his TV series to save time and money. In
1962 exchanged the rights to the film and his TV-series for a huge block
of MCA's stock (he became their third largest stockholder).
- Robert Bloch's original novel was inspired by the notorious serial killer
Ed Gein, who was also one of the inspirations for the character of Hannibal
Lector (_The Silence of the Lambs_/_Manhunter_).
- Hitchcock bought the rights to the novel anonymously from Robert Bloch for
just $9,000. He then bought up as many copies of the novel as he could to
keep the ending a secret.
- The shower scene has over 90 splices in it, and was not directed by Alfred
Hitchcock. The production designer [?] had such a good idea for the scene
that Hitchcock let him direct it.
- During the shooting of the shower scene, Hitchcock arranged for the water to
suddenly go ice-cold when the attack started.
- Hitchcock originally envisioned the shower sequence as completely silent,
but Bernard Herrmann went ahead and scored it anyway and Hitch immediately
changed his mind.
- The blood in the shower scene is actually chocolate sauce.
- The closeup of Janet Leigh's dead body and the pullback scene is a still
frame. Hitchcock's wife saw the original version and told her husband "You
can see her breathing", so he changed it.
- The shot of Janet Leigh flushing the toilet is believed to be the first
such shot in American cinema history.
- Hitchcock tested the "fear factor" of mother's corpse by placing it in
Janet Leigh's dressing room and listening to how loud she screamed when
she discovered it.
- The skull superimposed over Norman's face at the film's conclusion is that
of "Mother."
- There is a rumor that the MPAA refused to pass this film because they
claimed to be able to see Janet Leigh's nipple during the shower scene.
Hitchcock didn't edit it out, but merely sent it back, (correctly, it seems)
assuming that they either wouldn't bother to watch it, or miss it the second
time.
- Hitchcock insisted that audiences should only be allowed to see the film
from the start. This was unheard of back then as people were used to just
coming in at any point during a movie. The reason for this was that the
film was advertised as starring Janet Leigh, but her character is killed in
the first half of the film.
- After the film's release Hitchcock received an angry letter from the
father of a girl who refused to have a bath after seeing Diabolique and now
refused to shower after seeing Psycho. Hitch sent a note back simply
saying "Send her to the dry cleaners".
- The last shot of Norman Bates' face has a still frame of a human skull
inserted in it.
# PT 109
- President Kennedy's person choice of actor to portray him was Warren Beatty.
# Purple Rose of Cairo, The
- Michael Keaton was originally cast in the lead role, and footage was shot.
Director Woody Allen decided it wasn't working, and replaced Keaton with
Jeff Daniels.
# Quo Vadis? (1951)
- CAMEO(Elizabeth Taylor): an extra
- CAMEO(Sophia Loren): an extra
# Raging Bull
- Sound effects for punches landing were made by squshing melons and tomatoes.
Sound effects for camera flashes going off were sounds of gunshots. The
original tapes were deliberately destroyed by the sound technicians, to
prevent then being used again.
- The scene by the chain link fence where Robert De Niro's and Rebecca
De Monray's characters meet was ad-libbed.
- De Niro accidentally broke Joe Pesci's rib in a sparring scene. This shot
appears in the film: De Niro hits Pesci in the side, Pesci groans, and there
is a quick cut to another angle.
- De Niro gained over 50 pounds to play the older LaMotta. It took many years
before he got back down to his original weight.
- DIRCAMEO(Martin Scorsese): asking Jack to go on stage.
# Raiders of the Lost Ark
- Begins with a shot of a peak in the jungle which is reminiscent of the
Paramount Pictures logo. See also (_Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom_,
and _Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade_)
- Tom Selleck originally cast as Indiana Jones.
- Frank Marshall (the film's producer) played the airline pilot. [?????]
- Fred Sorenson (Jock, the airline pilot) flew the producer of _Jurassic Park_
(directed by Stephen Spielberg) off Kauai just before the hurricane hit.
- Jock's airplane at the beginning has the registration number "OB-3PO",
refering to Obi-wan and C-3PO from _Star Wars_.
- Script originally included a long fight between a swordsman and Indiana with
his whip. Actor Harrison Ford was suffering diarrhea at the time, and asked
"Why don't I just shoot him?", so they did this instead.
- The truck that didn't have Marion in it was flipped over by firing a section
of a telephone pole through the floorboards.
- The hieroglyphics in the map room include engravings of R2-D2 and C-3PO (from
_Star Wars_, etc), however they do not appear on film.
# Rain Man
- The scene where Raymond explains that every major airline except Qantas
has had a crash is cut from the version shown on every major airline except
Qantas.
- DIRCAMEO(Barry Levinson): psychiatrist determining if Raymond should stay
with Charlie or not.
# Rambo: First Blood Part II
- The cript was written by James Cameron, who went on to direct _Aliens_.
# Rear Window
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): about an hour into the film, winding the clock in
the songwriter's apartment. The songwriter is real-life songwriter Ross
Bagdasariam.
- At the time the set was the largest indoor set built at Paramount Studios.
- The film was unavailable for many years owing to a dispute with Cornell
Woolrich's estate over the rights to the original story.
- Hitchcock supposedly hired Raymond Burr to play the villain because he
looked like his old producer David O. Selznick.
- Other than a couple of shots near the end and the discovery of the dead
dog all the shots in the movie originate from Stewart's apartment
# Rebecca
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): walking past a phone booth just after George
Sanders makes a call in the final part of the movie.
- The first film Hitchcock made in Hollywood and the only one that won a
best picture Oscar (and even that went to the film's producer).
- Just as in the original novel, Joan Fontaine's character has no first
name.
- Over 20 actors were tested for the role that eventually went to Joan
Fontaine. One of them was Vivien Leigh, who Laurence Olivier was pressing
for as they were a couple at the time.
# Red Heat (1988)
- First western film crew to be allowed to film in Moscow's Red Square.
# Repo Man
- All the main characters are named after beers: Bud, Lite, Miller, [more?]
[Is Otto/Leila a beer?]
- All purchaseable items are labelled generically: "Food", "Beer", etc. This
came about after the producers failed to attract any offers of payment for
product placement.
- All cars (plus the police motorcycle) have xmas-tree air fresheners.
- The Repo Man's code is a parody of Issac Asimov's "Laws of Robotics".
- The man who drives around with the dead aliens in his car looks like Asimov.
- William S Burroughs/Naked Lunch allusions: "Paging Dr Benway" in the hospital
and mentioning Bill Lee.
- Miller talks about the cosmic unconsciousness: "You'll be thinking about
a plate of shrimp, and all of a sudden someone will say plate, or shimp,
or plate of shrimp. ..." Later, the two Latinos who've stolen the "Asimov"
car park outside a diner which features a huge sign in one of its windows
reading: PLATE O' SHRIMP $2.95.
- Lite gives Otto a book called "Diuretics" to "help change your life"
- The movie was made by "edge city productions" - edge city is a recurring
theme in Tom Wolfe's "Electric Kool-Ade Acid Test". The destination placard
on the bus that Otto takes back to his folks' house reads "Edge City".
# Return of the Jedi
- SFX crew claim to have included a "sneaker" as one of the spaceships in a
complex dog-fight scene.
- Jabba's sail barge was filmed in Yuma, Arizona. The film crew had problems
avoiding the 35,000 dune buggy enthusiasts in the area. To preserve secrecy,
the producers claimed to be making a horror film called "Blue Harvest (Horror
beyond your imagination)", and even had caps and t-shirts made up for the
crew. A chain-link fence and a 24-hour security service could not prevent
die-hard fans from entering the set and sneaking some photographs.
- Experiments with a computer to generate a random but logical language for
some creatures produced a dialect of Greek.
- The dancer that Jabba drops into the Rancor pit loses her top as she falls
in.
- Carrie Fisher's birthmark (near the small of her back) is visible in the
desert scene where she turns her back to the camera to swing around a
mounted laser gun.
- Rumor has it that Nien Numb speaks a Kenyan dialect, and one of his lines
is "One thousand herds of elephants are standing on my foot".
- Lando Calrissian and The Millenium Falcon originally scripted to perish in
the Death Star explosion, but this was changed after a poor preview audience
reception. Note Han's line when Calrissian leaves in the Falcon: "...like
I'm not going to see her again..."
- It is rumoured that a different ending was shot, but discarded later
on. It featured the (long awaited) marriage between Leia Organa and
Han Solo. Dark Horse4s Comic "Dark Empire" is based on that fact and
presents Han and Leia as a married couple.
- Dennis (two "n"s) Lawson, who played Wedge Antilles in _Star Wars_ and
_The Empire Strikes Back_ was unavailable for this movie. A new actor was
hired in England, given the name Denis (one "n") Lawson, filmed on a secret
sound stage (all his lines are from within a fighter cockpit).
- Among the aliens in Jabba the Hutt's entourage are ones named "Klaatu,"
"Barada" and "Nikto," after the command given to the robot Gort in _The Day
the Earth Stood Still_. The aliens are not referred to by name in the film,
nor do they have any lines.
- The name "Ewok" is never used to refer to the teddy-bear creatures in the
film, though it does appear in the credits.
- The Endor shots were filmed near Crescent City, California. Forest work was
especially hard on the Ewok actors. Production Assistant Ian Bryce arrived
on the set one day to find a note from the Ewok actors saying that they had
all had enough and they were on their way to the airport. Bryce tried to
drive to the airport, but got a flat tire not far from the set. He found
another car and was about to leave when the Ewok's bus pulled up, and all
the Ewok actors got off wearing "Revenge of the Ewok" t-shirts.
- Darth Vader's body was played by David Prowse, his voice by James Earl Jones,
and his face by Ken Annakin [?].
- One of the songs that the Ewoks sing sounds like: "Det luktar flingor har",
which is Swedish for "It smeels of cereal here."
- The title "Revenge of the Jedi" was leaked early in production, so that
pirated merchandise could be easily spotted when the film was released. The
official reason for the change was that "...a Jedi would not take revenge".
- Portions of the partially completed Death Star model resemble the San
Francisco skyline.
# Right Stuff, The
- CAMEO(Chuck Yeager): the bartender.
# Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
- CAMEO(Sean Connery): King Richard. Connery got $250,000 for two days
work. He donated it to charity.
# Robocop
- The computer that Robocop looks up criminal records on is actually a Northern
Telecom telephone switch.
- The point-of-view shots from Robocop include references to MS-DOS.
# Robocop 2
- The point-of-view shots from Robocop include references to MS-DOS, while the
point-of-view shots from Robocop 2 feature a Apple MacIntosh-style interface,
with a skull instead of the Apple logo.
- Robocop's new directives are:
DIRECTIVE 233 Restrain hostile feelings
DIRECTIVE 234 Promote positive attitude
DIRECTIVE 235 Suppress aggressiveness
DIRECTIVE 236 Promote pro-social values
DIRECTIVE 246 Don't rush traffic lights (repeated below)
DIRECTIVE 254 Encourage awareness
DIRECTIVE 256 Discourage harsh language
DIRECTIVE 258 Commend sincere efforts
DIRECTIVE 261 Talk things out
DIRECTIVE 262 Avoid Orion meetings
DIRECTIVE 266 Smile
DIRECTIVE 267 Keep an open mind
DIRECTIVE 268 Encourage participation
DIRECTIVE 273 Avoid stereotyping
DIRECTIVE 278 Seek non-violent solutions
DIRECTIVE 238 Avoid destructive behavior
DIRECTIVE 239 Be accessible
DIRECTIVE 240 Participate in group activities
DIRECTIVE 241 Avoid interpersonal conflicts
DIRECTIVE 242 Avoid premature value judgements
DIRECTIVE 243 Pool opinions before expressing yourself
DIRECTIVE 244 Discourage feelings of negativity and hostility
DIRECTIVE 245 If you haven't got anything nice to say don't talk
DIRECTIVE 246 Don't rush traffic lights
DIRECTIVE 247 Don't run through puddles and splash pedestrians or other cars
DIRECTIVE 248 Don't say that you are always prompt when you are not
DIRECTIVE 249 Don't be oversensitive to the hostility and negativity of
others
DIRECTIVE 250 Don't walk across a ballroom foor swinging your arms
- In the scene where Robocop was being reprogrammed by Dr. Juilette Faxx,
the following hex numbers scroll quickly up the screen: "50 45 54 45 20 4B 55
52 41 4E 20 49 53 20 41 20 47 52 45 41 54 20 47 55 59". Converted to ASCII
text, it reads: "PETE KURAN IS A GREAT GUY". Peter Kuran was the special
effects photograper.
# Romancing the Stone
- DIRTRADE(Robert Zemeckis): [citation]: At the beginning of the movie, when
Joan Wilder has finished the book, she prepares "dinner" for her cat. This
scene remembles a well-known commercial for cat-food.
# Rope
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): on a neon sign in the view from the apartment
window.
- The film was shot in a series of 8 minute continuous takes (the maximum
amount of film that a camera could hold). At the end of each segment the
camera zooms in on a dark object, ready to zoom out for the start of the
next segment. Most of the props were on castors and the crew had to wheel
them out of the way as the camera moved around the set.
- The film lasts 80 minutes, and covers a time frame of 80 minutes.
- Hitchcock only managed to shoot roughly one segment per day. The last 4 or 5
segments had to be completely re-shot because Hitch wasn't happy with the
colour of the sunset.
# Rose, The
- Loosely based on the life of Janis Joplin.
# Roxanne
- This movie is a remake of _Cyrano de Bergerac_. Martin's character (C D
Bales), has the same initials.
- C D Bales is challenged to tell 20 nose jokes. After he tells 19, he asks
"How many's that?", to which he is told "Fourteen!". He goes on to tell
another six, making 25 in total.
# Running Man, The (1987)
- Game show host Damon Killian is played by Richard Dawson, long-time host of
the American game show "Family Feud".
- Author Richard Bachman is Stephen King.
- ACTTRADE(Arnold Schwarzenegger): "I'll be back!"
# Saboteur
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): about an hour in, standing in front of Cut Rate
Drugs in New York as the saboteur's car stops.
# Saturday Night Fever
- Originally rated R, edited re-released as PG.
# Scanners
- bullet impacts are normally simulated by explosives. The exploding head was
done by shooting a life-size gelatin model with a shotgun.
# Scenes from a Mall
- DIRCAMEO(Paul Mazursky): promoting Bette Midler's character's book on TV
# Scent of a Woman (1992)
- Al Pacino was helped by a school for the blind in his preparation for this
role.
- During the disciplinary meeting, the headmaster tells Slade "You are out of
order!", a famous line told to another of Pacino's characters in _...And
Justice for All_.
# Schlock
- DIRTRADE(John Landis): [SYNW]: promoted twice during the newscasts for the
"movie at 6 on 6", and on a poster in a theatre lobby.
# Scrooged
- At the end of the movie, when everybody is singing "Put a little love in
your heart", [Bill Murray] says (among many other things): "Feed me,
Seymour!". This is a reference to _Little Shop Of Horrors (1986)_, in which
Murray has a cameo appearance.
# Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): on the train to Santa Rosa playing cards. He has
the entire suit of spades in his hand, including the symbolic ace.
- It was remade as "Step Down to Terror" in 1958 and as a TV movie in 1991.
# Shakes the Clown
- CAMEO(Robin Williams): the mime instructor.
- CAMEO(Florence Henderson): Shake's one-night stand at the start.
# She's Having a Baby
- The BMW's license plate is "SHAB" which is an acronym of the title.
# Shining, The
- Stanley Kubrick had a large stack of books that he was looking through to
find a movie project. For a couple of hours, his secretary could hear
him pick up a book, read it for about a minute, and then hurl it into the
wall. She then noticed that this hadn't happened in a while, so she went
in to check on him, and found him reading Stephen King's "The Shining".
Stephen King says that this is really strange, because the start of that
book is very slow, and doesn't have much to do with the rest of the story.
- During the making of the movie, Kubrick would call King at 3am and ask him
questions like "Do you believe in God?".
- The Timberline lodge on Mt Hood in Oregon was used for the exteriors, but
all the interiors were specially built.
- The book that Jack was writing contained the one sentence ("All work and no
play makes Jack a dull boy") repeated over and over. Kubrick had each page
individually typed. For the Italian version of the film, Kubrick used the
phrase "Il mattino ha l' oro in bocca" ("He who wakes up early meets a golden
day").
- Kubrick decided that having the hedge animals come alive was unworkable, so
he opted for a hedge maze instead.
- Rumor has it that Jack Nicholson had to be physically restrained after
working himself into a frenzy during the scene where he axes the door.
- The axe used in some shots is made from rubber.
- Out-takes of scenery were used in the studio-imposed ending of _Blade
Runner_, which also starred Joe Turkel.
# Shock to the System, A
- Graham (Michael Caine) said his father was a London bus driver. Michael
Caine's real father was a London bus driver.
# Short Circuit
- at the beginning of the movie, you see a close-up of flowers on a green
field, and then the tanks roll over them. This resembles James Cameron's
style (see also _The Terminator_).
- the robots are designed very similar to the large fighting machines in the
future battle scenes in _The Terminator_.
# Sign of the Cross, The
- Third film in Cecil B DeMille's biblical trilogy, following _The Ten
Commandments_ and _The King of Kings_.
- Originally released as a 124 minute feature. After the Hays Code was
instituted, some of the more "sinful" scenes were cut for the film's
re-release in 1944.
# Silence of the Lambs, The
- This film is a sequel to _Manhunter_. Although there are several characters
common to both films, there are only two actors who appear in both movies.
Ironically, both actors play different characters in both movies. Frankie
Faison plays Lt Fisk in _Manhunter_, and Barney in _The Silence of the
Lambs_, and Dan Butler plays an FBI fingerprint expert in _Manhunter_, and an
entymologist in _The Silence of the Lambs_.
- Two of the "neighbors" from the U.S. public television children's series
_Mister Rogers' Neighborhood_ appear in the film. Don Brockett (aka "Chef
Brockett") is the "friendly psychopath" in the opening ward sequence.
Charles Aber (aka "Neighbor Aber") is an FBI medical examiner performing an
autopsy on one of the victims.
# Singin' in the Rain
- The script was written after the songs, and so it had to generate a plot
into which the songs would fit.
- Jean Hagen's voice can be heard through the overdubbed Debbie Reynolds.
- Francois Truffaut claims that Alfred Hitchcock's favourite scene in any movie
is the one where, after Debbie Reynolds, Donald O'Connor and Gene Kelly dance
the `Goodmorning, goodmorning' scene, they land on an overturned sofa. As
she falls, Reynolds' skirt lands a little too high up her thighs, and she
quickly flips it back over her knees.
# Sleepwalkers
- CAMEO(Stephen King): the cemetary keeper
- CAMEO(Tobe Hooper): technician
# Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
- Cut scenes:
- The queen holds the prince in the dungeon and uses her magic to make
skeletons dance for his amusement.
- Fantasy sequence accompanying "Some Day My Prince Will Come" in which
Snow White imagines herself dancing with her prince in the clouds beneath a
sea of stars
- Dwarves building Snow White a bed with help from woodland creatures.
- The song "Music in Your Soup" where the dwarves sing about the soup that
Snow White had just made them.
# Some Like It Hot (1959)
- Marilyn Monroe required more than 30 takes to get "Where is the bourbon?"
correct.
# Something Wild (1986)
- The two old ladies in the re-sale shop are the mothers of David Byrne and
director Jonathan Demme.
# Spaceballs
- The "chestbuster" scene in the interstellar diner features John Hurt, who
suffered the same fate in _Alien_. In an obscure joke, the creature emulates
the singing frog in the classic Warner Brothers cartoon _One Froggy
Evening_.
- One of the ships parked at the diner is the the Millenium Falcon from _Star
Wars_.
# Spartacus
- Of the 167 days it took Stanley Kubrick to shoot Spartacus, six weeks
were spent directing an elaborate battle sequence in which 8,500 extras
dramatised the clash between the Roman troops and Spartacus's slave army.
Several scenes in the battle drew the ire of the Legion of Decency and
were therefore cut. These include shots of men being dismembered (Dwarfs
with false torsos and an armless man with a phony "break-away" limb were
used to give authenticity.) Seven years later, when the Oscar winning film
was reissued, an additional 22 minutes were chopped out, including a scene
in which Varinia (Jean Simmons) watches Spartacus (Kirk Douglas) writhe in
agony on a cross. Her line "Oh, please die, my darling" was excised, and
the scene was cut to make it appear that Spartacus was already dead.
# Spellbound
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): about 40 minutes in, coming out of the elevator
at the Empire hotel carrying a violin.
- One of the first Hollywood films to deal with psychoanalysis.
- The dream sequence was designed by Salvador Dali, and was originally
supposed to run for 20 minutes. It included a scene with Ingrid Bergman
covered in ants. Only part of it was filmed, and even less of it ended up in
the release version.
- The shot where the audience sees the killer's view down a gun barrel
pointing at Ingrid Bergman was filmed using a giant hand holding a giant
gun to get the perspective correct.
# Spies Like Us
- CAMEO(BB King): CIA agent at the drive-in.
- CAMEO(Ray Harryhausen): a surgeon.
- CAMEO(Frank Oz): a surgeon.
- DIRTRADE(John Landis): [SYNW]: on the recruitment poster behind the desk of
the commander of the army training post.
[Many famous directors appear in this movie.... credited?]
# Spirit of 76, The
- Production team includes a number of relatives of famous movie people. One
of the executive producers is Roman Coppola (son of Francis Ford). Sofia
Coppola is credited for costume design. Produced/casting by Susan Landau
(daughter of Martin).
- CAMEO(Barbara Bain [wife of Martin Landau]):
- CAMEO(Carl Reiner [father of director]):
- CAMEO(Rob Reiner [brother of director]):
# Splendor in the Grass (1961)
- As filmed, Splendor in the Grass included a sequence in which Wilma Dean
Loomis (Natalie Wood) takes a bath while arguing with her mother (Audrey
Christie). The bickering finally becomes so intense that Wilma jumps out
of the tub and runs nude down a hallway to her bedroom, where the cammera
cuts to a close-up of her bare legs kicking hysterically on the mattress.
Both the Hollywood censors and the Catholic Legion Of Decency objected to
the hallway scene, finding Miss Wood's bare backside unsuitable for public
display. Consequently, director Elia Kazan dropped the piece, leaving an
abrupt jump from tub to bed.
# Stage Fright (1950)
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): turning to look at Jane Wyman in her disguise as
Marlene Dietrich's maid.
# Stagecoach (1939)
- Director John Ford deliberately only allowed one take, so that actors would
remain nervous.
- Ford refused to place the camera on a movable dolly, insisting that all shots
were pans from a stationary camera.
- The first "camera in a hole with a train going over" shot.
# Stakeout
- Richard Dreyfus starred in _Jaws_, but his character doesn't recognise the
quote from it during the trivia contest.
# Stand by Me
- The names of all the towns in the movie (set in Oregon) are real places in
both Oregon (where author Stephen King grew up) and Maine (where he lives).
- CAMEO(Richard Dreyfuss): in a framing device [?]
# Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
- There are several books in the container that shelters Khan's followers on
Ceti Alpha VI. Two of the titles are "Moby Dick" and "King Lear", and
a lot of Khan's lines are directly taken from those books.
In particular, the final mologue of Kahn is identical to the last words
of Captain Ahab from Melville's book.
# Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
- The punk on the bus is Kirk Thatcher (executive producer), who also wrote and
performed the song that is playing on his stereo at the time.
- CAMEO(Bob Sarlatte): waiter in the restuarant.
# Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
- The movie was originally to be an extension of an episode of the original
television series. In the movie, they would be searching for the villian.
During filming, they changed to the "Search for God".
# Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
- William Shatner was distressed when he saw how wide his butt was in
the scene where he walks across the bridge (away from the camera).
He had them airbrush the entire scene to make his butt look narrower.
# Star Trek: The Motion Picture
- When Spock travels through V'ger and sees all the incredible imagery,
Darth Vader and Miss Piggy can be seen. It comes right after his line
"Who or what are we dealing with?"
# Star Wars
- George Lucas had trouble getting funding for this movie, most studios
thinking that people wouldn't go to see it.
- Derived from (among other things) a Japanese movie called _Hidden Fortress_.
Obi Wan Kenobi was modelled after a Samurai warrior type, and C-3PO and R2-D2
are derived from a couple of petty crooks he conscripted to help rescue a
princess.
- A great deal of the film was shot by vintage 1930's VistaVision cameras,
because they were of higher quality than any others available. After the
film was released, the prices of these cameras skyrocketed.
- The episode number and subtitle "A New Hope" did not originally appear in
the film's opening crawl. These were added in a later re-release to be
consistent with those seen in _The Empire Strikes Back_.
- There is a rumour that while George Lucas and a co-worker were editing
_American Graffiti_, the co-worker asked Lucas for "Reel Two, Drum Two",
which abbreviated to "R2D2", a name which stuck in Lucas' mind.
- Scene of escape pod leaving Leia's ship was the first ever done by ILM.
- C-3PO originally scripted as a "used car salesman" type.
- The Tatooine scenes were filmed in Tunisia. There is a town in Tunisia
called "Tatahouine".
- A small pair of metal dice can be seen hanging in the cockpit of the
Millenium Falcon as Chewbacca makes preparations to depart from Mos Eisley.
They don't appear in subsequent scenes.
- Han and Luke "transfer" Chewbacca from cellblock 1138: George Lucas made a
film called _THX-1138_.
- Harrison Ford deliberately didn't learn his lines for the intercom
conversation in the cell block, so it would sound spontaneous.
- When the stormtroopers enter the room where C-3PO and R2-D2 are hiding, one
of them "accidentally" bumps his head on the door, complete with sound
effects. The lead stormtrooper then says: "See to him".
- Scenes featuring Luke and his Tatooine friend "Biggs" were cut from the
film. Biggs was a young pilot who left the Imperial Academy to join the
Rebellion. Luke mentions him to his "aunt" and "uncle" during the breakfast
scene, and the character later shows up as a Rebel pilot who accompanies Luke
down the final run on the Death Star trench (and is killed by Darth Vader).
- Cardboard cutouts are used for some of the background starfighters in the
Rebel hanger bay.
- Luke's other wingman on the trench run is named Wedge Antilles, and is
played by Dennis (two 'n's) Lawson. See also _The Empire Strikes Back_ and
_Return of the Jedi_
- Most of the crowd watching the heroes receive their medallions are cardboard
cutouts.
# Staying Alive
- DIRCAMEO(Sylvester Stallone): bumps into John Travolta's character on the
street.
# Strangers on a Train
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): early in the film boarding a train carrying a
double bass fiddle as Farley Granger gets off the train (see also his cameo
in _The Paradine Case_).
- Once again Hitchcock bought the rights to the original novel anonymously
to keep the price down, and got them for just $7,500
- Raymond Chandler is credited as the main author of the script, but it was
almost completely written by Czenzi Ormonde who was credited as second author.
- The movie was remade as _Once you Kiss a Stranger_ in 1969.
# Sunset Boulevard
- Billy Wilder's film classic about an aging Hollywood film queen and a
down-on-his-luck screenwriter originally incorporated a framing sequence
which opened and closed the story at the Los Angeles County Morgue. In a
scene described by Wilder as one of the best he'd ever shot, the body of
Joe Gillis (William Holden) is rolled into the Morgue to join three dozen
other corpses, some of whom - in voice-over - tell Gillis how they died.
Eventually Gillis tells his story, which takes us to a flashback of his
affair with Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson). The movie was previewed with
this opening, in Illinois and Long Island. Because both audiences
inappropriately found the morgue scene hilarious, the film's release was
delayed six months so that a new beginning could be shot in which police
find Gillis's corpse floating in Norma's pool while Gillis's voice
narrates the events leading to his death.
# Superman
- Marlon Brando received $4 million for his two minutes on screen.
- Credits sequence cost more than most films made up to that point.
- Christopher Reeve worked out so much during the making of the film that the
travelling matte shots taken of him at the beginning of the shoot did not
match the later shots, and had to be re-taken.
- CAMEO (Kirk Alyn [played Superman in the Saturday afternoon serials] and
Noel Neill [played Lois Lane in both the serials and the TV series]): the
young Lois Lane's parents on the train.
- CAMEO(Rex Reed): himself
- CAMEO(Larry Hagman):
# Suspicion (1941)
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): about 45 minutes in, mailing a letter at the
village post office.
- In the scene where Cary Grant brings a glass of milk up to Joan Fontaine,
Hitch had a light hidden in the glass to make it appear more sinister.
- Hitchcock originally wanted Grant to be guilty, but the studio insisted
that the public wouldn't accept him as a murderer.
- It was remade as a British TV movie in 1987.
# Tall Guy, The
- The name "Ron Anderson" is remarkably similar to the name of the actor who
plays him: Rowan Atkinson. One of the other contenders for the award that
Anderson won was Griff Rhys-Jones, the "Jones" half of the comedy duo "Alas
Smith and Jones". Mel Smith directed the film. Smith, Jones, and Atkinson
starred together in the TV series "Not the Nine O'Clock News".
- DIRCAMEO(Mel Smith): the backstage drunk who congratulates and then
collapses.
# Tarzan and His Mate
- Considered by many to be the best of the Tarzan films, Tarzan and His
Mate included a scene in which Tarzan (Johnny Weissmuller), standing on a
tree limb with Jane (Maureen O'Sullivan), pulls at Jane's scanty outfit
and persuades her to dive into a lake with him. The two swim for a while
and eventually surface. When Jane rises out of the water, one of her
breasts is fully exposed. Because various groups, including official
censors of the Hays Office, criticised the scene for being too erotic, it
was cut by MGM
# Taxi Driver
- The scene where Travis Bickle is talking to himself in the mirror was
completely ad-libbed by Robert De Niro.
- De Niro worked as a taxi driver as part of his preparation for this role.
- DIRCAMEO(Martin Scorsese): sitting down, behind Betty as she walks into
the Palantine campaign headquarters in slow-motion.
- DIRCAMEO(Martin Scorsese): man who tells Bickle about the .357 Magnum.
# Tempest (1982)
- DIRCAMEO(Paul Mazursky): First guest to be greeted by the architect at the
New Year's Eve party.
# Terminator 2: Judgment Day
- Sarah Connor was to have a dream where Reese appears and tells her that she
has to save him. He disappears, replaced with a T-800 who walks with her to
the door that leads to a playground where kids are killed by the nuclear
holocaust. This was cut because it's similar to her dream sequence at the
ranch. Scene with Reese was used in the previews.
- Scenes in the screenplay but not filmed:
-Extended Future War sequence where the resistance won and enter
a SkyNet lab where they find the time-portal and a storage
facilities of Arnolds. You also see Reese talking to John.
-Sarah's ECT where Sarah is fitted for electro-convulsive thearpy
and voltage is pumped into her.
-Missile dream sequence. Takes place before the dream at the
ranch. First she dreams of kids playing, then the ground
shakes, a lid raises from the ground, and missiles launch
while the bodies of kids explodes into bones and tissues
from the rocket engines.
-Salceda's death sequence. Sal's dog starts barking, Sal goes
out tries to shoot the T-1000 and fails. T-1000 uses the
pointed finger/sword trick to Sal's shoulder blades saying
"I know this hurts. Where is John Connor". Sal curses him
and his hands searchs around the ground near some crates
that held gernades. He kills himself and hopefully the T-1000
with one. No luck. T-1000 head falls off but like the little
piece in the asylum escape sequence, it oozes back into his
boots. Yolanda sees this and hugs the baby as T-1000 steps
closer. T-1000 picks up the baby and gets the info from
her as where John and others had gone.
-Gant Ranch. This section was a longer version of Sal's and
refers to Travis Gant, "crazy ex-Green Beret" that John
mentions his mother seeing before she was caught. Longer
and has romantic notions between the two. After Sarah, John
& the T-800 left, T-1000 kills Gant as he did like with John's
"Mom". Disguised as Gant's lover, he easily stepped up to him
and tortured him for answers before killing him.
-Dyson's Vision Sequence. Dyson, the creator of the new processor
had a dream sequence before he died and dropped the device on the
trigger. In it he saw a picture of his family before a nuclear
explosion turned it to ash. He sees his family running and then
a scene of the sun as it pulls back to reveal Dyson's dying eye
before he closes it and drops the book.
- A promotional trailer for the film included a scene not in the film: the
T800 being constructed.
- The T800's "point-of-view" scenes at the biker's bar identify a Harley
Davidson "Fatboy", and a carcinogen in the cigar smoke.
- The T800 carries a gun in a box of roses. Some of the soundtrack was written
by "Guns 'n Roses".
- After throwing the T800 through the shopping center window, the T1000 glances
at a mannequin that is entirely covered with chrome.
- The T800's bike jump into the stormwater drain was performed by a stuntman
Peter Kent. The motorbike was supported by 1-inch cables, so that when they
hit the ground, the bike and rider only weighted 180 pounds. The cables were
later digitally erased.
- More explicit shots of the arm cutting scene were removed.
- SFX crew had to incorporate Robert Patrick's football-injury limp in their
animation of the T1000.
- The morphing software and digital images requied 150 gigabytes of storage.
- For the truck scene, they modified a normal truck to hide the usual steering
wheel, and added a cosmetic steering wheel on the right side. In addition,
the truck had a mirror-image licence plate and other necessary stuff.
Next, they filmed the stuff with the T1000 pretending to be driving from
the right-hand steering wheel (wearing a mirror-image police uniform),
while the real driver was hidden under a black hood at the lowered real
steering wheel. For the final film, the scenes were flipped left-to-right
to make it all look right, and combined with footage shot with a normal
truck driving in the drain. This was done so that actor Robert Patrick could
concentrate on acting rather than driving. They accidentally caught a street
sign; after they mirror-imaged the scene, they digitally reversed the text on
the sign so it would appear correct.
- The T1000 tells the helicopter pilot to "Get out!". This is an interesting
parallel to _The Terminator_, in which the T800 gives the same command to
a truck driver under similar circumstances.
- The T1000 has at least three hands when it is flying the helicopter.
- Linda Hamilton's twin Leslie played the T1000 when it was imitating Sarah
Connor.
- Identical twins Don and Dan Stratton played the hospital security guard and
the T1000.
- The T-800 says "I need a vacation", which Arnold Schwarzenegger previously
said in _Kindergarten Cop_. This was not in the script, but ad-libbed.
- Schwarzenegger said during the making of this film that he would never play
another evil character again.
- A "T800" is a parallel CPU usually found running OCCAM.
- ACTTRADE(Arnold Schwarzenegger): "I'll be back!"
- DIRTRADE(James Cameron): [nice cut]: during the opening credits: the cut
from the playing children to the dark future.
- DIRTRADE(James Cameron): [stamp]: the terminator in the future crushes a
skull with its foot.
- DIRTRADE(James Cameron): [stamp]: When the T800 and the T1000 meet for the
first time, the T800 takes the gun out of the flower box and walks over
the roses.
- DIRTRADE(James Cameron): [stamp]: When Sarah, John and the T800 are chased
by the T1000 through the psychiatric clinic, the T1000 walks over the
sunglasses that the T800 was wearing before.
# Terminator, The
- Michael Biehn originally cast as the terminator, with Arnold Schwarzenegger
as the hero. Schwarzenegger read the script, and asked to play the
terminator instead.
- When Arnie walks into the disco where Sarah tries to hide, the cashier says
something like "Hey, Hercules forgot to pay!". _Hercules in New York_ was
Schwarzenegger's first film (he was billed as "Arnold Strong").
- Shots through the Terminator's vision show Apple ][+ assembly code, taken
from _Nibble_, a computing magazine. Other code visible is written in COBOL.
- Arnold Schwarzenegger has only 14 lines in the entire movie.
- ACTTRADE(Arnold Schwarzenegger): "I'll be back!" (first)
- DIRTRADE(James Cameron): [stamp]: when the terminator approaches
the house of his first victim: you see a toy truck in close-up and the
the terminator drives over it (see also _Short Circuit_).
- DIRTRADE(James Cameron): [stamp]: after the terminator kills Sarah's friend,
he walks over the headphones of her walkman.
# Tess
- Set in England but filmed in France, as director Roman Polanski was wanted
on sex-related charges in England.
# Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The
- The actress who was chased by Leatherface through the undergrowth actually
cut herself on the branches quite badly, so a lot of the blood on her body
and clothes is real.
- The actress whose character was hung up on a meathook was actually held up
by a nylon cord that went between her legs, causing a great deal of pain.
# This Is Spinal Tap
- Director Rob Reiner plays rockumentary maker Marti DiBergi.
- The actors are all compotent musicians, and the soundtrack is actually them
playing. They have subsequently toured and released an album.
# Three Men and a Trunk
- DIRCAMEO(Roman Polanski): the young brute that beats up someone.
# Throw Momma from the Train
- Loosely based on _Strangers on a Train_, a film mentioned by Owen.
- CAMEO(Rob Reiner): Billy Crystal's character's agent.
# To Be or Not to Be (1983)
- A street sign reads "Kubelski Avenue". _To Be or Not To Be (1942)_ starred
Jack Benny, whose real name is Benny Kubelski"
# To Catch a Thief
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): about 10 minutes in, sitting next to Cary Grant
on a bus.
- The road where Cary Grant and Grace Kelly are pursued by the police is
the same one where Kelly died in a car crash 27 years later.
# Tommy
- DIRTRADE(Ken Russell): [snake]: crawling out of the skeleton's pelvis.
# Tootsie
- CAMEO(Bill Murray): Michael Dorsey's roomate.
- DIRCAMEO(Sydney Pollack): Michael/Dorothy's agent, George Fields
# Top Secret! (1984)
- The "German" Val Kilmer learns in the train is not a language at all. Words
like "Vlichtmitten", "Blitzen" or "Flachmatuche" are great fun for German
listeners, but have no proper meaning. In the German-dubbed version, Val
Kilmer learns a German dialect mainly spoken in the former GDR.
# Topaz
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): about 30 minutes in at the airport getting out of
a wheelchair.
- The film was Hitchcock's biggest flop, costing over $4 million to make, but
taking less than $1 million.
- Leon Uris wrote the first draft of the screenplay, but Hitch declared it
unshootable at the last minute and called in Samuel Taylor (writer of
Vertigo) to rewrite it from scratch. Some scenes were written just hours
before they were shot.
# Tora! Tora! Tora!
- Actor Jason Robards was actually present at the bombing of Pearl Harbor on
12-7-1941.
# Torch Song Trilogy
- DIRCAMEO(Charles Walters): auditions as John Crawford's caracter's dancing
partner.
# Torn Curtain
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): early in the film sitting in a hotel lobby with a
baby on his knee.
- The scene where agent Gromek is killed was written to show how difficult
it really can be to kill a man.
- Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall did extensive (uncredited) rewrites on the
script.
- Bernard Herrmann wrote the original score, but Universal executives convinced
Hitch that they needed a more upbeat score. Hitch and Herrmann had a major
disagreement, the score was dropped and they never worked together again.
# Trading Places
- DIRTRADE(John Landis): [SYNW]: on a poster in the apartment.
# Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The
- DIRCAMEO(John Huston): the man who Dobbs begs money from three times early
in the film.
- This is the origin of the "stinkin' badges" line, used in many other movies,
including _Blazing Saddles_.
# Tron
- The map of the "computer world" has a stationary, munching "pac-man" on the
left hand side.
# Trouble with Harry, The
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): about 20 minutes in, walking past the limousine
of a man looking at the paintings.
- Bernard Herrmann's score was the first of a long collaboration with
Hitchcock that lasted nearly nine years.
- Once again Hitchcock bought the rights to the original novel anonymously
for just $11,000.
# Twilight Zone - The Movie
- Mention is made of Seargeant Neidermeyer getting "fragged" by his own
troops. This was the fate given to Neidermeyer in the ending of _Animal
House_, also directed by John Landis.
- Actor Vic Morrow, plus two juvenile Asian actors were killed during an
accident on set. SFX caused a helicopter to crash, killing all three
instantly. Director John Landis and four others were found not guilty of
involuntary manslaughter.
# Twins
- When [Arnold Schwarzenegger] visits [Danny De Vito] in prison, [De Vito]
calls him "Mr Universe", a title that Schwarzenegger held for several years.
- ACTTRADE(Arnold Schwarzenegger): "I'll be back!"
# Under Capricorn
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): about five minutes into the movie in the town
square wearing a coat and a brown hat. Ten minutes later he is one of three
men on the steps of government house.
# Unforgiven (1992)
- The script floated around Hollywood for nearly 20 years, during which time
Gene Hackman read and rejected it, only to be later convinced by Clint
Eastwood to play a role.
# Unmarried Woman, An
- DIRCAMEO(Paul Mazursky): attempting to place an order in a restuarant.
# Vertigo
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): about 11 minutes in wearing a gray suit walking
past Gavin Elster's shipyard.
- The film is based upon the novel "D'Entre les Morts" which was written
specifically for Hitchcock after the authors heard that he tried to
buy the rights to their previous novel "Diabolique".
- San Juan Batista, the Spanish mission which features in key scenes in the
movie doesn't actually have a bell tower - it was added with trick
photography. The mission originally had a steeple but it was demolished
following a fire.
- The screenplay is credited to Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor, but Coppel
didn't write a word of the final draft. He is credited for contractual
reasons only. Taylor read neither Coppel's script nor the original novel,
he worked solely from Hitchcock's outline of the story.
- Hitchcock reportedly spent a week filming a brief scene where Kim Novak
stares at a portrait in the Palace of the Legion of Honor just to get the
lighting right.
- Hitchcock invented the famous combination of forward zoom and reverse
tracking shot to convey the sense of vertigo to the audience. The view
down the mission stair well cost $19,000 for just a couple of seconds of
screen time.
- Hitchcock originally wanted Vera Miles to play Madeleine, but she got
pregnant and was therefore unavailable.
# Viva Max!
- Refers indirectly to the John Wayne film _The Alamo_ by showing a painting of
John Wayne as Davy Crockett defending the Alamo. Normally there is a
disclaimer which states "all characters depicted in this motion picture are
ficticious and any similarity......", etc. In this film, the disclaimer
reads "all characters depicted in this motion picture except John Wayne are
ficticious and any similarity to actual persons....."
# Wall Street
- DIRCAMEO(Oliver Stone): in a telephone booth during the montage of deals
being made.
# War of the Roses, The
- Oliver Rose (Michael Douglas) cuts the heels off his wife's (Kathleen Turner)
shoes. In _Romancing the Stone_, Jack Coulton (Douglas) cut the heels off
Joan Wilder's (Turner) shoes.
# WarGames
- Kevin Costner turned down the lead role for a part in _The Big Chill_ which
was eventually cut.
- The "TRS-80 Model I" used to break into NORAD was programmed to make the
correct words appear on the screen, no matter which keys were pressed.
- When David comes home the day after the NORAD computer break-in, the
newscaster on the television is talking about a condom recycling center.
- The exteriors were all filmed in western Washington state. The NORAD HQ
set was built in the Cascades, the "Oregon" airport was really Boeing Field,
"Goose Island" is really Anderson Island, WA (in the southern part of Puget
Sound). The last ferry off the island really is at 6:30, and you really are
stuck there if you miss it.
# Warlock (1989)
- Scene in the theatrical previews indicating that the Warlock was the satanic
Messiah was cut some time before video distribution.
# Warriors, The (1979)
- Loosely based on Xenophon's "Anabasis".
# Wayne's World
- Robert Patrick appears as the T1000 from _Terminator 2: Judgment Day_.
- The "Stairway to Heaven" guitar riff was changed for the international,
cable, and videotape releases to a generic lick because of disputes in
obtaining rights to the five notes played in the debut release.
# West Side Story
- Borrowed its plot from Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet".
- Natalie Wood's singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon.
# When Harry Met Sally...
- The woman who says "I'll have what she's having" after Sally's faked orgasm
is director Rob Reiner's mother.
# Who Framed Roger Rabbit
- Some versions have an extra scene: Eddie Valiant had gone into Toontown,
ambushed by the weseals and had a pig's head "tooned" onto his. He went home
and took a shower during which Jessica walks into his apartment.
- A scene where Jessica pulls or pulls off her stocking as she was sitting
cross-legged was cut.
- Bob Hoskins watched his young daughter to learn how to act with imaginary
characters. He later had problems with hallucinations.
- Some scenes of Eddie Valiant in the taxi are actually drawings of Eddie
Valliant instead of the actor Bob Hoskins.
- Jessica Rabbit's speaking voice was performed by Kathleen Turner, and her
singing voice was performed by Amy Irving.
# Wild Orchid
- Mickey Rourke and Carrie Otis were a "couple" at the time this film was made,
and there is a persistent rumour that the sex scenes were not faked.
# Wizard of Oz, The
- The title role was written with W C Fields in mind. Producer LeRoy wanted
Ed Wynn, who turned it down. Composer Harburg and studio executive Freed
wanted Fields, and offered him $75,000. Fields supposedly wanted $100,000.
According to a letter from Fields' agent (and supposedly written by Fields)
Fields turned down to role to devote his time to writing the script for "You
Can't Cheat an Honest Man"
- Frank Morgan has five roles: the traveling salesman, the gatekeeper of the
Emerald city, the Wizard's guard, the Wizard, and [?].
- Terry (Toto) was stepped on by one of the witch's guards, and had a double
for two weeks. A second double was obtained, becuase it resembled Toto more
closely.
- The Cowardly Lion's facial makeup included a brown paper bag. Actor Lahr
couldn't eat without ruining his makeup. Tired of eating soup and
milkshakes, he decided to eat lunch and have his makeup redone.
- Buddy Ebsen was the original choice for the Scarecrow. Ray Bolger was
originally brought in as the Tin Woodsman. Bolger wanted to play the
Scarecrow (his childhood idle was Fred Stone who had played the original
Scarecrow in the 1902 Baum play "The Wizard of Oz". Bolger had seen him
in "Jack O Lantern" in 1919 or 1920.) He was insistant and was eventually
given the Scarecrow role. Ebsen was given the Tin man. Ebsen got sick from
the makeup, but that was not the sole cause: his symptoms were not consistent
with aluminum powder poisoning, but were an alergic reaction to either
the aluminum or the other chemicals in the makeup. (he probably would have
gotten sick anyway, but this speeded the process). The makeup method was
changed when Jack Haley took over (the aluminum was originaly put on as a
powder, they switched to mixing the aluminum in a paste), so Haley did not
inhale the aluminum as much. Haley did not find out what had happened to
Ebsen until after the movie. He assumed that Ebsen had been fired.
- "Over the Rainbow" was nearly cut.
- The Wizard of Oz originally contained an elaborate production number
called "The Jitter Bug", which cost $80,000 and took five weeks to shoot.
In the scene, Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Cowardly lion, and the Tin
Woodsman are on their way to the Witch's castle when they are attacked by
"jitter bugs" - furry pink and blue mosquitolike "rascals" that give one
"the jitters" as they buzz about in the air. When, after its first
preview, the movie was judged too long, MGM officials decided to sacrifice
the "Jitter Bug" scene. They reasoned that it added little to the plot
and, because a dance by the same name had just become popular, they feared
it might date the picture. The Witch still refers to the bug in the final
film, just before telling the Monkeys to "Fly!" Only home movies of the
filming of "The Jitterbug" survive, though the song is on current versions
of both the soundtrack CD and the recent anniversary edition videotape. The
sequence was also incorporated into a recent stage version of the musical.
- When filming first started, Judy Garland wore a blond wig and heavy,
"baby-doll" makeup; when George Cukor assumed the role of intermediate
director (after the producer took the original director off the picture, and
before they found a replacement), he got rid of the wig and most of the
makeup and told her to just be herself.
- The "tornado" was a thirty-five foot long muslin stocking, photographed with
miniatures of a Kansas farm and fields.
- The Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton) was off the film for more
than a month after being severaly burned during her disappearance from
Munchkinland. Her stand-in was also injured when a broom exploded during a
stunt shot.
- Frank Morgan's Professor Marvel coat was taken from a rack of second-hand
clothing purchased by the studio wardrobe department; he was astounded when,
just by chance, he turned out the coat's pocket and found the name L. Frank
Baum (the Oz books' author) sewn into the lining. Baum's widow and the
tailor who made the coat confirmed that the coat had, indeed, been his.
- The horses in Emerald City palace were colored with jelly crystals. The
relevant scenes had to be shot quickly, before the horses started to lick
it off.
- The actress who played Aunt Em committed suicide by suffocation.
- Rumors of the Munchkin actors' wild drunken orgies and other escapades are
greatly exagerated.
- There is a rumour that a man committed suicide on the set, and that his body
can be seen hanging from a tree in the background in the scene where Dorothy
and the Scarecrow meet.
# Working Girl
- Harrison Ford cut his chin in a car accident in Northern California when he
was about 20. In the movie, his character says that he was piercing his ear
as a teen, and fainted and hit his chin on the toilet. See also: _Indiana
Jones and the Last Crusade_.
- When Catherine Parker (Sigourney Weaver) comes back to New York and gets
out off the helicopter, she carries a big stuffed-toy gorilla. Weaver played
the role of Dian Fossey in _Gorillas In The Mist_ just a few months before.
# Wrong Man, The
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): narrating the film's prologue. The only time he
actually spoke in any of his films.
- Although based on a true story, Hitchcock deliberately left out some of the
information that pointed to Manny's innocence to heighten the tension.
- The "right" man (the real culprit) can be seen several times during the
film: outside the Stork Club, in the Victor Moore arcade and near one of
the liquor stores where the police take Manny.
# Young and Innocent
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): outside the courthouse holding a camera as
Derrick de Marney escapes.
# Young Guns (1988)
- Tom Cruise was disguised with a beard and mustache and has a cameo as
a bad guy that walks out of a door and is shot. He was added because he
was visiting the set and said he had never been in a film gunfight.
# Young Guns II
- CAMEO(Jon Bon Jovi):
# Young Sherlock Holmes
- The "stained glass knight" was the first computer animation to appear in any
theatrical movie.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CRAZY CREDITS
This section lists funny credits, or scenes which are shown during or after
the credits. [Discontinued... expressions of interest are welcome]
# Adventures In Babysitting
- Shot of the thug who chased the little girl outside of skyscraper whimpering
about being stuck out there.
# Airplane!
- Gripology ................................. Pete Papanickolas
- Generally in charge of a lot of things .... Mike Finnell
- Author of A Tale of Two Cities ............ Charles Dickens
- This motion picture is protected under the laws of the
United States and other countries. Unauthorized duplica-
tion, distribution, or exhibition may result in civil
liability or criminal prosecution. So there.
- Man (Howard Jarvis) in taxi abandoned by Robert Hays looking at his
watch: "Well, I'll give him another twenty minutes, but that's it!"
# Airplane II: The Sequel
- Gaffer (What's a Gaffer?) ... Larry Gilhooly
- Best Boy (Electric) ......... Frank McKane
- Worst Boy ................... Adolf Hitler
# Aliens
- The laserdisc version includes the sound of a face-hugger scurrying from
left to right as the final credits fade.
# American Werewolf in London, An
- ...any similarity to persons living, dead, or undead, is purely coincidental"
# Being There
- Peter Sellers repeating a line in the hospital-bed scene, but laughing
uncontrollably each time. This line does not appear in the movie, and some
versions of the film don't include these outtakes.
# Better Off Dead
- David Ogden Stiers fixing the garage door
- the successful launch of Badger's space shuttle, made from
household items.
- "the film's over... you can go home now."
# Big Business
- Seen about two-thirds of the way through the credits: "Don't Go, It's Almost
Over"
# Bird on a Wire
- Credits scroll down instead of up
# Blues Brothers, The
- Woman on the Cutting Room Floor
# Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- TV interviews with people who were at the dance attacked by vampires.
- Amilyn (Paul Reubens) revives to go through some more death throes.
# Chopping Mall (aka Killbots)
- Robot rolls up to camera and says: "Thank you. Have a nice day."
(Movie's plot is that security robots run amuck at a shopping mall and
that's what they said after they'd killed somebody).
# Double Exposure (aka Terminal Exposure)
- Beverly Hills Unit:
Psychiatric Consultant .. Dr. Edmond Nutz
Chiropractic Consultant . James Rolf
Tanning Consultant ...... U.V. Red
Palimony Consultant .... Marvin Rippolfson
Silicone Consultant ..... B.G. Brest
Japanese Gardening ...... Kurosawa Klippers
Spago Liaison ........... Tom Kaplan
Executive in Charge of Croissants .. Georges Bide
Executive in Charge of Pool Cleaning .. Gary Sweep
- The makers of this motion picture consumed mass quantities
of pizza, orange juice and water during the production. They
never used drugs and have no intention of doing so in the future.
Say "no" to drugs and have a long and happy life. Unless,
of course, you are run over by an RTD driver, in which case
you will have a short but happy life.
- Any similarity between asses portrayed in this motion picture
and real asses, living or dead, are purely coincidental.
- The Producers would like to assure that no animals were injured
in the making of this motion picture. Unfortunately, the same
cannot be said of some of our actors.
- But seriously, folks...
Any unauthorized duplication, distribution and exploitation
of this motion picture will result in criminal prosecution
and for all you video pirates out there, that means get your
hands off our movie or we'll come after you with a loaded gun.
- When in California, visit the Omega Studios. The tour lasts
only 30 seconds and is cheap, especially for blondes over
5 ft. 8 in. with blue eyes, who may win an intimate dinner
for two with the producer of this motion picture.
# Fatal Skies
- The doddering old sheriff draws his guns and aims that at the audience:
"Halt! Don't make a move! You can avoid me, but you can never escape!"
# Ferris Bueller's Day Off
- Ferris comes out of bathroom: "You're still here? It's over. Go home."
# Field Of Dreams
- The Voice ................ Himself
# F/X 2
- Shot of helicopter flying and exclamations of non-pilot crook trying to keep
it in the air.
# Gate II, The
- At the end of the movie the hero is raised from the dead at his funeral, and
then two others who were also killed climb out of the coffin. After the
credits a hamster that was sacrificed earlier in the movie crawls out of the
coffin as well.
# Glitch!
- Bra Wrangler ............. Woops Mygod
- Zit Remover .............. Lucienne Pimpel
- Orange Juice Squeezer .... Big Hand Luke
- Palm Reader .............. Madame Ortega III
- Negative Cutting ......... Supercuts (Ha! Ha!)
- (No, Seriously...) ....... Mary Duerstein
- Look for the soundtrack album in your neighborhood
record store and if you cannot find it, write to your
senator or bring a tape recorder to the theater
the next time you see this movie.
- The producers wish to thank all those who didn't smoke
on the set and to express their sympathy to those
who did smoke and were fired thereafter.
(Heart and Lung Association, eat your heart out!)
- Our gratitude must be extended to all those who did
not do drugs on the set. The list is too long to mention.
Those who did do drugs are listed separately in police
and morgue files.
- We appreciate the participation of Coca-Cola, Pepsi Cola,
Dr. Pepper, Seven-Up, Shasta, Miller Beer, etc., etc.,
in making this picture cooler.
- WARNING
This picture is protected by all kinds of stuff. Tamper with it,
go to jail. Before you make a copy to send to your aunt in
Podunk, look out the window. The Feds are gonna get you.
And for all those foreign !@#$%$ who hate movies,
remember Mr. Dubois? He's working for the producers now.
- The characters, names, cars, homes, bikinis, limos, goons, and
Mafia families in this motion picture are absolutely fictitious.
Any similarity with characters, names, cars, homes, bikinis,
limos, goons, and Mafia families, dead, alive, or anywhere
in between is strictly coincidental.
# Gone with the Wind
- George Reeves is credited as playing the part of Brent Tarleton, and Fred
Crane is billed as Stuart Tarleton. This is incorrect: Crane played Brent,
and Reeves played Stuart.
# Great Muppet Caper, The
- Gonzo takes a picture of the whole audience
# Guyver, The
- No Zoonoids were injured in the making of this movie.
# Great Outdoors, The
- Subtitled conversation between two raccoons --
Raccoon #1: "Why's Jody sitting in the lake?"
Raccoon #2: "You didn't hear? She got shot in the ass!"
Raccoon #1: "Oh no! Don't tell me..."
Raccoon #2: "Yup... She's bald on both ends now!"
# Highway 61
- Assistant Sound Editor ... Velcrow Ripper
ADR Recordist ... Velcrow Ripper
# Hot Shots! Part Deux
- Interesting Fact: Actor Richard Crena invented tartar sauce.
- Interesting Fact: Darryl Strawberry spends his winters thinking up
new excuses.
- Secret of The Crying Game...............SHE'S A MAN
- A voice at the end of the credits says "Hot Shots Part Deux was filmed
in Hollywood before a live studio audience."
# I'm Gonna Git You Sucka
- Kung Fu Joe (Steve James) crawls up to a cop at the scene of the film's final
confrontation: "Slade. I must find Slade." [rips off his shirt]
"Kung Fu Joe is here!"
Cop: "Sorry buddy. They've already gone." [walks away]
Kung Fu Joe: [calls after him] "Yo brother, do you got a bandaid?"
# Innocent Blood
- The story, all names, characters and incidents portrayed in this production
are fictitious. No identification with actual persons, vampires, places,
buildings and products is intended or should be inferred.
# League of Their Own, A
- Shots of the real AAGABL old-timers playing baseball.
# Lethal Weapon 3
- During the credits you can hear that another bomb has been discovered. When
Martin and Roger show up in their car, they have this discussion again
whether or not to go in. Just as they stop at the building, the whole
building explodes and you can hear Martin saying, while backing up the car,
"I hope nobody saw us".
# Linguini Incident, The
- Rabbits ................ Hugh & Heff
- Special Effects Bras by Bart Trickel
# Look Who's Talking
- James brings Mikey to see his new sister:
Mollie: "Hi honey."
James: "Mikey, this is your sister Julie."
Mollie: "Hi Julie."
Mikey: "Hi Julie."
Julie (voice of Joan Rivers): "Don't start with me kid. I've had a day you
wouldn't believe. Can we talk?"
# Look Who's Talking Too
- Sperm Wrangler ......... Blair Clark
- Mikey's little sister Julie falls down. Roseanne Barr's voice: "Oh, my tush
hurts."
# Married To The Mob
- Michelle Pfeiffer and Matthew Modine dancing on the steps outside a building.
# Masters of the Universe
- Skeltor says "I'll be back!".
# Monty Python and the Holy Grail
- M0nti Pyth0n lk den H0lie Grailen
- R0tern nik Akten Di
- Wik
- Als0 wik
- Wi n0t trei a h0liday in Sweden this yer?
- See the l0veli lakes
- The wonderful teleph0ne system
- And mani interesting furry animals
- The Producers would like to thank The Forestry Commission
Doune Admissions Ltd, Keir and Cowdor Estates, Stirling
University, and the people of Doune for their help in the
making of this film.
The Characters and incidents portrayed and the names used
are fictitious and any similarity to the names, characters,
or history of any person is entirely accidental and
unintentional.
Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
- Including the majestic m00se
- A M00se once bit my sister ...
- No realli! She was Karving her initials on the m00se
with the sharpened end of an interspace t00thbrush given
her by Svenge - her brother-in-law - an Oslo dentist and
star of many Norwegian m0vies: "The H0t Hands of an Oslo
Dentist", "Fillings of Passion", "The Huge M0lars of Horst
Nordfink".
- We apologise for the fault in the
subtitles. Those responsible have been
sacked.
- Mynd you, m0se bites Kan be pretty nasti...
- We apologise again for the fault in the subtitles. Those
responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked
have been sacked.
- M00se trained by TUTTE HERMSGERV0RDENBR0TB0RDA
- Special M00se Effects OLAF PROT
M00se Costumes SIGGI CHURCHILL
M00se Choreographed by HORST PROT III
Miss Taylor's M00ses by HENGST DOUGLAS-HOME
M00se trained to mix
concrete and sign com-
plicated insurance
forms by JURGEN WIGG
M00ses' noses wiped by BJORN IRKESTOM-SLATER WALKER
- Large m00se on the left
half side of the screen
in the third scene from
the end, given a thorough
grounding in Latin,
French and "O" Level
Geography by BO BENN
- Suggestive poses for the
M00se suggested by VIC ROTTER
Antler-care by LIV THATCHER
- The directors of the firm hired to
continue the credits after the other
people had been sacked, wish it to
be known that they have just been
sacked.
- The credits have been completed
in an entirely different style at
great expense and at the last
minute.
- Executive Producer
JOHN GOLDSTONE & "RALPH" The Wonder Llama
Assisted by
EARL J. LLAMA
MIKE Q. LLAMA III
SY LLAMA
MERLE Z. LLAMA IX
Directed By
40 SPECIALLY TRAINED
ECUADORIAN MOUNTAIN LLAMAS
6 VENEZUELAN RED LLAMAS
142 MEXICAN WHOOPING LLAMAS
14 NORTH CHILEAN GUANACOS
(CLOSELY RELATED TO THE LLAMA)
REG LLAMA OF BRIXTON
76000 BATTERY LLAMAS
FROM "LLAMA-FRESH" FARMS NEARE PARAGUAY
and
TERRY GILLIAM AND TERRY JONES
# Muppet Movie, The
- Close-up of Animal shouting "Movie over! Go Home! Go Home!"
# Mutant On The Bounty
- Outtake of actors cracking up over scene where dead alien splatters all over
their spaceship cabin.
# Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell Of Fear, The
- Sound Mixer ................ Richard Bryce Goodman
Mr. Goodman's Hearing Aid .. Beverly Hills Ear Boutique
- Hairdressers ........
Set Dressers ........
Cross Dressers ...... George LoCash
...... Vance Collins
- Film Loader ......... Steven Robert Lund
Loaded Filmer ....... Phil Elberg
- Secretary to Mr. Weiss ..... Mimi Wolan
Wardrobe for Mr. Weiss ..... Beverly Hills High, Wide and Handsome
- Worst Boy: Adolf Hitler
- In Case of Tornado: South-west corner of cellar
- Crane Grip .................. Lloyd Barcroft
Dolly Grip .................. Jon Falkengren
Poli-Grip ................... Martha Raye
What the Hell is a Grip? .... Person responsible for maintenance and
adjustment to equipment on the set
- General Foreman ...... John Hoskins
General Schwarzkopf .. Welcome Home
Foremen .............. Guy A. MacLaury
.............. Joseph Santre
.............. Bernard McPherson
.............. Michael Bunch
George Formen ........ 6'4" 250 lbs. Age: 42 Won: 60 Lost: 3 KO's:65
- Production Painters ..... Nick Bridwell
..... Donnie R. Puga
Impressionist Painters .. Vincent Van Gogh
.. Edgar "Skip" Degas
- Driver Captain ....... Ray McLaughlin
Co-Captain ........... Dan Brooks
Navigator ............ Rabbi Brian Thau
Bombardier ........... Alan Ladwig
- Deep Sea Drivers ..... Steve Brodsky
..... Jimmy Ferrara
..... Wayne Campbell
..... Gina August
- Stock Librarian ...... Suzy Lafer
Stock Answer ......... "I'll have it ready in the morning"
- Stunts:
Phil "Kamikaze" Adams
"Crazy" Bruce Barbour
"Reckless" Dwayne McGee
David "Headlong Plunge" Powledge
Jeff "Thud" Ramsey
Don "Headfirst" Pulford
"Dangling" Kaye Wade
Charlie "White Knuckles" Brewer
Eugene "Splat" Collier
Mickey "This Guy's Really Nuts!" White
Jimmy "Tailspin" Jue
Eric "Aaarrrgggghhhh" Norris
Lobster Stunt Breast ........ Miss V
Mr. Griffith's Stunt Butt ... Chuck Le Fever
- Voice of George Bush (John Roarke): "All right, let's see if I've got this
straight now. Energy efficiency - good. Drilling in arctic national wildlife
refuge - bad."
[A knock]
Voice: "Uh, Mr. President, is everything okay in there?"
President: "Yeah, I'm fine, thanks." [sound of toilet flushing]
# Netherworld
- Two well-dressed corpses sitting at a table. One sips a drink and asks "What
is this tafia shit anyway?" (referring to the drink). The other one says, "I
don't know."
# Oscar
- Face on the Cutting Room Floor ........ Joe Dante
# Planes, Trains & Automobiles
- Advertising exec William Windom examining a bunch of pictures.
# Promised Land
- Best Dog ... Cheetah
# Rain Man
- Throughout the movie, Raymond is taking pictures. The pictures that he takes
are shown as the background for the credits.
# Raising Arizona
- Baby Wrangler
# Repo Man
- Credits scroll down instead of up
# Roadkill
- Hardly any animals were killed during the filming of this movie
# Running Man, The
- Announcer's voiceover: "The Running Man has been brought to you by: Breakaway
Paramilitary Uniforms, Orville Pure Procreation Pills, and Cadre Cola - it
hits the spot.
Promotional considerations paid for by Elton Flame Throwers,
Wainright Electrical Launchers, and Hammand & Gates Chain Saws.
Damon Gillian's wardrobe by Chez Antoine, 19th century
craftsmanship for the 21st century man.
Cadre trooper and studio guard's sidearms provided by Colt
Chester, the pistol of patriots.
Remember, tickets for the ICS studio tour are always available
for class A citizens in good standing.
If you'd like to be a contestant on The Running Man, send a
self-addressed, stamped envelope to ICS Talent Hunt, care of your local
affiliate, and then go out and do something really despicable!
I'm Bill Hilgen. Good night and take care!"
# Scanners
- Assistant to Mr Heroux ... Kim Obrist
Kim Obrist is the name of the lead female character.
# She's Having A Baby
- Various stars suggesting baby names -
Kirstie Alley, Harry Anderson, Jay and Michael Astin, Dan Aykroyd, Matthew
Broderick, John Candy, Dyan Cannon, Belinda Carlisle, Ted Danson, Judi Evans,
Woody Harrelson, Robert Hays, "Magic" Johnson, Michael Keaton, Joanna Kerns,
Penny Marshall, Bill Murray, Roy Orbison, Cindy Pickett, Annie Potts,
John Ratzenberger, Ally Sheedy, Lyman Ward, Wil Wheaton.
# Singles
- Outtakes after credits on video version
- Steve (Campbell Scott) goes to a house looking for Linda (Kyra Sedgwick), but
a woman at the house (Debbie Mazar) tells him that she's moved out to live
with some guy.
- Steve walks down the street past the mime (Eric Stoltz) to the magazine stand
where the magazines on the rack start talking to him, giving him advice. He
goes home to his apartment.
- David (Jim True) walks down a street. His voiceover says that Steve's search
for the perfect girl is a trap, and that he lives his own life like a French
movie where everyone is cool and no attachments are made. He enters a
beatnik club where a woman (Lara Harris) recites a poem in French. She sits
down with him for a brief conversation in French and they leave together.
# Sister Act
- Newspaper and magazine clipping of the nun choir.
# Smokey And The Bandit II
- Outtakes during the credits.
# Splash
- Tom Hanks and Daryl Hannah swimming and coming to an underwater city.
# Strange Brew
- Bob and Doug talk about their movie.
# Stuff, The
- Brooke Adams holding a container of Stuff as in a commercial: "Enough is
never enough."
# Summer Job
- Court Jester ........... Kim Kennedy
# THX-1138
- Credits roll up instead of down, and are at the beginning of the movie.
# Top Secret
- Focus Puller Tony Strachan
Clapper Loader John Fletcher
Focus Loader Jack Williams
Clapper Puller Tom Brown
Puller Clapper Joe Taylor
Clapper Clapper Edward Davis
Flipper Flapper Jane Thomas
- Hey Diddle Diddle The Cat And The Fiddle
- Foreez A Jolly Good Fellow
- This Space For Rent [ this is in the middle of an otherwise blank screen ]
# Uncle Buck
- John Candy's voice shouts, "Wake up!"
# Viva Max!
- "all characters depicted in this motion picture except John Wayne are
ficticious and any similarity to actual persons....."
# Wayne's World
- Wayne: "Right, excellent movie. All right!"
Garth: "Good one!"
[Fade in to Wayne and Garth on their basement couch]
Wayne: "All right. Well that's all the time we have for our movie.
We hope you found it entertaining, whimsical and yet relevant, with an
underlined revisionist conceit that belie the film's emotional attachments
to the subject matter."
Garth: "I just hope you didn't think it sucked!"
Wayne: "Okay, so thank you for coming. Good night and party on!"
Garth: "Party on, Wayne!"
Wayne: "Party on, Garth!"
[Fade to black]
- [Fade in to Wayne and Garth on their couch looking at magazines]
Garth: "You know, I don't think anyone's going to tell us when to
leave."
Wayne: "Yeah, good call Garth. Uh, I bet we're just going to sit
here and when they're finished they'll fade to black."
[Fade to black]
Garth: "I can't believe they did that."
Wayne: "I told ya."
# Young Sherlock Holmes
- Old lady: "Can I help you?"
Man: "I'd like a room please."
Old lady presents register: "You sign here."
Man signs the name "Moriarty".
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTES
Please send trivia to:
It will be much easier for me if you mail me entries in the following format:
# Movie Name, The
- blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
- blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS:
Unanswered question: in a James Bond spoof, the name of which escapes
me, the JB-clone infiltrates the baddie's fortress by scuba-diving
into it. He surfaces in a large bath area, filled with the obligatory
beautiful females, who apparently don't notice him.
He makes his way to a changing cubicle, unzips his wetsuit, and
withdraws an envelope. A moment later, he emerges from the cubicle
in evening dress, all of which was presumably in the envelope. He
then proceeds to a large black tie party being held in the fortress.
The actor might have been one of the guys from Mission Impossible,
but I'm not sure. So, who was he, and what was the movie?
THANKS TO:
Col Needham (c...@otter.hpl.hp.com)
Kevin Arvin (ar...@cup.portal.com)
Phineas (ph...@west.darkside.com)
Detlef Beckmann (ub...@ibm3090.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de)
Scott Simpson (sim...@bnr.ca)
-- Murray Chapman Zheenl Punczna --
-- muz...@cs.uq.oz.au zhm...@pf.hd.bm.nh --
-- University of Queensland Havirefvgl bs Dhrrafynaq --
-- Brisbane, Australia Oevfonar, Nhfgenyvn --
Wayne Tyler
What year was it released/
Who were the male and female leads?
B
B
Please reply e-mail.
Murray Chapman
Version: 1.7 (September 1993)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MOVIE TRIVIA
Frequently Asked Questions
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
INTRODUCTION
------------
rtfm.mit.edu:/pub/usenet/news.answers/movies/trivia-faq
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
anonymous ftp from refuge.colorado.edu in the directory pub/tv+movies/lists.
The latest version of the database package (v2.5) is in
pub/tv+movies/lists/tools.
Information from these files is also availble via the movie mail-server. Send
a message with the subject HELP to <mo...@ibmpcug.co.uk> for details.
The following table gives further details of the other lists:
----------------|-----------|--------------------------------------|----------
Cinematographers| 04/28/93 | Michel Hafner <haf...@ifi.unizh.ch> | June
Actresses | 06/29/93 | Andy Krieg <kr...@titan.med.ge.com> | UNKNOWN
Writers | 07/02/93 | Jon Reeves <ree...@zk3.dec.com> | September
Trivia | 07/12/93 | Murray Chapman <muz...@cs.uq.oz.au> | September
Directors | 07/13/93 | Col Needham <c...@hplb.hpl.hp.com> | September
Movies | 07/28/93 | Michel Hafner <haf...@ifi.unizh.ch> | FTP only
Alt. Titles | 07/28/93 | Michel Hafner <haf...@ifi.unizh.ch> | FTP only
Dead | 08/03/93 | Col Needham <c...@hplb.hpl.hp.com> | September
Composers | 08/03/93 | Michel Hafner <haf...@ifi.unizh.ch> | October
Character Names | 08/12/93 | Steve Hammond <sham...@indirect.com>| FTP only
Actors | 08/31/93 | Col Needham <c...@hplb.hpl.hp.com> | October
Plot Summaries | 09/03/93 | Colin Tinto <col...@spider.co.uk> | October
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
--------
1. Director's Trademarks
2. Film Trivia
- DIRCAMEO: Directors appearing in their own films
- DIRTRADE: Director's trademark [with tag]
- ACTTRADE: Actor's trademark
- CAMEOS: cameos roles
- SMITHEE: see below
- BOOTH: see below
The "Crazy Credits" section has been removed. It is now being looked after by
Mark Harding (cc...@gdr.bath.ac.uk).
A NOTE ABOUT CAMEOS:
A "cameo" is a small, unbilled role. If their name appears in the credits,
it's NOT a cameo. A cameo is NOT defined a famous person with a small role,
despite the fact that this may be interesting. If they are billed, then
please don't send it in as a "cameo", but decide if it's siginifcant enough
to be included in the trivia secion.
A NOTE ABOUT "SMITHEE".
The DGA contracts that directors operate under require that a name be given for
the director of a film. If the actual director of the film wishes to disown
the film, he or she typically uses the name "Alan Smithee" (An anagram for
"The alias men").
A NOTE ABOUT "BOOTH"
Writers who refuse to have their name appear in the credits typically use the
the standard pseudonym "Judas Booth" (derived from "Judas" and "John Wilkes
Booth").
A NOTE ABOUT "GOOFS"
There is a seperate list for technical and plot errors in movies. It is kept
by Michael Gaines (meg...@hertz.njit.edu). Please send goofs to him.
THIS FILE CONTAINS SPOILERS
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DIRECTOR'S TRADEMARKS
Woody Allen
- often makes films about a director making films, casts himself in lead role.
- frequently plays a neurotic New Yorker.
- frequently casts Diane Keaton and Mia Farrow.
- often talks to the camera directly.
Dario Argento
- all the killers' hands shown in murder scenes in his films are his own
- all narration in his films is his own voice
Kenneth Branagh
- frequently casts his wife Emma Thompson.
Mel Brooks
- frequently casts himself, Gene Wilder, Harvey Korman, and Madeline Kahn.
Tim Burton
- his films often have a Gothic feel to them.
John Carpenter
- often casts Kurt Russell.
- often casts his wife, Adrianne Barbeau.
- Likes to name characters after real life people: directors, etc [names]
James Cameron
- strong female characters.
- frequently casts Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, and Jeanette
Goldstein.
- his films frequently feature scenes filmed in deep blues.
- likes to make nice/effective cuts [nice cut]
- likes to show close-up shots of feet or wheels, often trampling things [feet]
David Cronenberg
- films often include explicit carnage.
- frequent references to "the flesh" [flesh]
Joe Dante
- always casts Dick Miller in a cameo or supporting role. His films are
therefore good for playing the "spotting Dick Miller" game.
- frequently has films/TV shows with themes similar to the movie in various
scenes.
Jonathan Demme
- frequently casts Charles Napier.
- frequently casts Chris Isaak.
- frequently casts Buzz Killman in a cameo role.
- frequently uses Tak Fujimoto as his director of photography.
Brian DePalma
- many Hitchcock homages, using similar locations and camera techniques.
- frequently casts wife Nancy Allen.
Clint Eastwood
- frequently casts one-time partner Sondre Locke.
Renny Harlin
- includes references to Finland, his country of birth [finland]
Alfred Hitchcock
- has a cameo in most of his films.
Ron Howard
- frequently casts brother Clint in small roles.
John Huston
- frequently gives his father (Walter Huston) a small role [father]
Stanley Kubrick
- his films have a common theme of dehumanization.
- symmetric image composition and long "zooming out" and/or "zooming in"
sequences [zoom].
- constructs three-way conflicts [three-way]
John Landis
- the phrase "See You Next Wednesday". Supposedly, the phrase is the title
of a film that Landis had an idea for at the age of 15. He describes the
film as the kind of movie that a 15 year old adolescent boy would have made.
He sometimes uses ideas from this movie, and when he does he puts the phrase
in as a "homage". It is not in all of his movies [SYNW].
- airport scenes in _Into The Night_ and _Coming To America_ have a call over
the PA system for a "Mr Frank Ozkerwitz" to pick up the white courtesy phone.
This is Frank Oz's real name. Landis has a fetish for Oz and The Muppet
Show.
- Music: "The Girl from Ipanema". [ipanema]
Spike Lee
- all his films examine black people and their lives.
- has appeared in every single one of his films, usually as a weak character,
contrasting the strong lead character.
David Lynch
- frequently casts: Kyle MacLachlan, Laura Dern, Jack Nance, Everett McGill.
- Finds small-town USA fascinating.
- has a predelection for low/middle frequency noise, dark and rotting envi-
ronments, distorted characters, a polarised world (angels vs demons,
madonnas vs whores.), and debilitating damage to the skull or brain.
- frequently casts Isabella Rosselini.
John Milius
- frequently casts Gerry Lopez.
George Miller
- subliminals, often of eyeballs bulging.
Jerry Paris
- frequently appears in a small (often one scene) role.
Sam Raimi
- Raimi is a huge fan of The Three Stooges. He made many super-8 films that
blatantly ripped-off classic Stooge shorts. He uses Stooge-like sequences
in many of his movies. [3-stooges]
- Often credits a character called a "Shemp", a homage to the Three Stooges.
Most frequently it is a "Fake Shemp", a reference to the Three Stooges shorts
where a stunt man was used in place of Shemp Howard. [shemp]
Harold Ramis
- frequently casts himself in bit parts.
- frequently casts fellow SCTV alumni: Bill Murray, John Candy, Dan Aykroyd,
Mary Gross, Eugene Levy, etc.
Rob Reiner
- His production company is called "Castle Rock Productions", named after
"Castle Rock", a fictitious town where many Stephen King stories are set.
(Reiner's _Misery_ was based on the book by King, Reiner's _Stand By Me_ wasw
based on "The Body" by King, and featured a place called "Castle Rock").
Ken Russell
- frequent snake imagery [snake].
Martin Scorsese
- frequently casts Robert De Niro, a student of his from film school in New
York.
- his mother appears in most of his films.
Stephen Spielberg
- frequently uses music by John Williams [music]
Henry Yaglom
- usually makes films about himself, sometimes about himself making films.
Robert Zemeckis
- generally finds a role for Wendie Jo Sperber and/or Marc McClure.
- likes to cite/imitate famous movies/commercial spots [citation].
David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahms.
- films usually feature puns, slapstick, and visual gags.
- frequently cast Leslie Nielsen and Lloyd Bridges.
- David and Jerry's mother is frequently cast in a small role.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
FILM TRIVIA
# 'Crocodile' Dundee
- The wild and ferocious buffalo that Mick Dundee pacified was drugged.
- The "quotes" around "Crocodile" in the title were added for the American
release to ensure people didn't think that Dundee was a crocodile.
# 1492: Conquest of Paradise
- Columbus is an Italian, living in Spain, played by a French actor speaking
English.
# 1900
- Original uncut version is 5.5 hours long, and features pornographic sequences
with Robert De Niro, Gerard Depardieu, and Stefania Casini.
# 2001: A Space Odyssey
- This film was made before man walked on the moon.
- Director Stanley Kubrick originally planned narration for the prehistoric
scenes.
- Kubrick planned to have Alex North (who wrote the score for Kubrick's
_Spartacus_) write a musical score especially for the film. During filming,
Kubrick played classical music on the set to create the right mood.
Delighted with the effect, he decided to use classical music in the finished
product.
- Universally panned by critics when first released. Kubrick subsequently cut
20 minutes for its public release, but still failed to win over the film
critics. Public reaction however, was completely different.
- Incrementing each letter of "HAL" gives you "IBM". Arthur C Clarke
co-screenwriter) claimed this was unintentional, and if he had noticed it
before it was too late, he would have changed it.
- Kubrick had several tons of sand imported, washed, and painted for the moon
surface scenes.
- Multiple references to birthdays: Dr Floyd's daughter, Frank Poole, HAL.
- DIRTRADE(Stanley Kubrick): [zoom]: retrieving Frank Poole's body.
- DIRTRADE(Stanley Kubrick): [three-way]: man vs HAL vs aliens
# 2010
- One of the characters is "Kirbuck", which is an anagram of "Kubrick".
Stanley Kubrick directed _2001: A Space Odyssey_.
- CAMEO(Arthur C Clarke): sitting on a park bench in front of the White House,
feeding the pigeons.
# 3 Men and a Baby
- When Jack's mother comes to visit Mary, you can see in the background what
appears to be a little boy standing in a doorway. There is a rumour that
this is the ghost of a little boy who died in the apartment in which the
film was shot. This rumour is false, as the interiors were all shot on a
sound stage in a movie studio. The "ghost" is actually a cardboard cut-out
of Jack wearing a tuxedo. This prop appears later in the film, when Mary's
mother comes to collect her.
# 39 Steps, The (1935)
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): about 7 minutes in, tossing some litter as Robert
Donat and Lucie Manheim run from the music hall.
# About Last Night...
- The original title of this film was "Sexual Perversity in Chicago" (taken
from the play it is based on). The title was changed after many newspapers
and TV stations refused to run ads for a film with such a title.
# Abyss, The
- A "special edition" is available on videotape, featuring an extra 28 minutes
of footage, which includes a subplot about a tidal wave which threatens the
coast of the USA.
- DIRTRADE(James Cameron): [nice cut]: at the beginning of the movie, the
blue "Y" from the opening credits extends and then fades to the underwater
scenery with the submarine.
- DIRTRADE(James Cameron): [feet]: when the soldiers arrive at the supply
ship and jump out of the helicopters. See also _Aliens_.
# Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The
- CAMEO(Sting): soldier who was executed for being too brave.
- CAMEO(Robin Williams): the King of the Moon. The credits list "Ray
Ditutto". This is the English transliteration of the Italian phrase "Re di
Tutto", which means "King of Everything", which was how the King of the Moon
introduces himself to the Baron.
# Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, The
- Jamie Lee Curtis played Buckaroo's mother in a flashback, but this scene was
cut.
- Supposedly this movie was inspired a great deal from Thomas Pynchon's book
"The Crying of Lot 49".
# After Hours
- DIRCAMEO(Martin Scorsese): shining a spotlight from a platform in the club.
# Aladdin (1992)
- The genie portrays the following people: Jack Nicholson, Arsenio Hall,
William F. Buckley Jr, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rodney Dangerfield, Ed
Sullivan, and Robert De Niro.
- The stack that Jasmine's father plays with is sitting on a toy of the
Beast from _Beauty and the Beast (1991)_, another Disney animated movie.
Sebastian from _The Little Mermaid_ and _Pinocchio_ can also be spotted.
- The two men in the crowd the genie pushes through are caricatures of a
couple of the animators; the original plan was to use film critics Gene
Siskel and Roger Ebert, but they couldn't get permission.
# Alice (198?)
- CAMEO(Judith Ivey):
- Ridley Scott described the film thus: "There's a dreadful alien lose on the
spaceship, excuse me while I go in this dark room, on my own, for a moment."
[More trivia on recent FOX CAV LD. ANYONE?]
# Alien 3
- Multiple proposed scripts caused misleading advertising which inferred that
the movie would be set on Earth. William Gibson (who wrote "Neuromancer")
drafted a script in which Ripley spent most of the film in a coma.
# Aliens
- A draft of the script had Gorman being paralized by a stinger on the tail
of an alien, rather than being clobbered by falling equipment.
- The "special edition" includes extra scenes: Newt's parents discovering
- DIRTRADE(James Cameron): [feet]: When the soldiers arrive on LV426 and
jump out of the armoured vehicle. See also The _Abyss_.
- DIRTRADE(James Cameron): [feet]: When Ripley drives the APC, she crushes an
alien's head under one of the wheels.
- DIRTRADE(James Cameron): [feet]: close-ups of the power-lifter's feet.
# Alive
- Director Frank Marshall was discussing the film on his carphone, when he was
cut off my a truck with a bumper sticker that read "Rugby Players Eat Their
Dead". Marshall decided to make the film, saying "You have to go with those
kinds of things."
- CAMEO(John Malkovich): The narrator.
# All the Right Moves
- Tom Cruise and Lea Thompson had body doubles for the sex scene.
# Altered States
- Author Paddy Chayefsky disowned this movie.
- The book was partially based on dolphin researcher John Lilly, who invented
the isolation tank, and first started taking drugs while "tanking".
- DIRTRADE(Ken Russell): [snake]: the dream sequence
# Always (1989)
- When Dorinda returns home in the plane, she is dressed like Ripley from
_Aliens_, and similarly, she has a cat named "Jones".
- DIRTRADE(Stephen Spielberg): [music]
# Amazon Women on the Moon
- Subtle crossovers between sketches [...]
- The name "Don 'No Soul' Simmons" keeps popping up.
- The "release date" for the movie keeps changing: "We now return to our
feature film, the 1957 [19XX] classic, Amazon Women on the Moon...".
[Lots of cameos]
# American Graffiti
- License plate on John Milner's (Paul LeMat) car is "THX-138" _THX 1138_ is a
film also directed by George Lucas.
- There is a rumour that while George Lucas and a co-worker were editing the
film, the co-worker asked Lucas for "Reel Two, Dialog Two", which abbreviated
to "R2D2", a name which surfaced in Lucas' later film _Star Wars_.
# American Werewolf in London, An
- All the songs in this film have "moon" in the title.
- DIRTRADE(John Landis): [SYNW]: the porno film showing when David meets Jack
and his zombie friends. A poster for the film appears in the London
Underground when the man is killed.
# Annie Hall
- The working title was "Anhedonia" (the inability to feel pleasure).
# Another Stakeout
- Richard Dreyfuss won an Oscar for his role in _The Goodbye Girl_. One of his
lines in that movie was "And I don't like the panties hanging on the rod".
In _Another Stakeout_, Dreyfuss' character repeats this line, while standing
in front of a line of drying panties.
# Apocalypse Now
- Francis Ford Coppola proposed this film ten years before he was given funds
to do it. The studio didn't think he could handle such a large production,
so he went and made _The Godfather_ and _The Godfather Part II_, becoming
extremely famous, rich, and respected.
- Originally scheduled to be shot over six weeks, ended up taking 16 months.
- Martin Sheen's scenes in his hotel room were intentionally perfomed drunk,
and were entirely ad-libbed. Sheen did not mean to smash the mirror with his
hand; this was a result of his drunken stupor.
- Harvey Keitel originally cast as Captain Willard. Two weeks into shooting,
Coppola replaced him with Martin Sheen, claming Keitel was "too assertive".
- There are no opening credits or titles. The title of the movie appears as
graffiti late in the film.
- Entire set of scenes cut, where Willard and company find a river-side French
colony. Made the "journey back through time" symbolism more apparent:
Vietnam War --> French Colony --> Jungle Culture.
- Carmine Coppola (director's father) wrote the score for this film.
- Harrison Ford's character wears a name badge which reads "G. Lucas". George
Lucas directed Ford in _American Graffiti_ and _Star Wars_, two films which
made Ford famous.
- DIRCAMEO(Francis Ford Coppola): filming a war documentary.
- Coppola's wife Eleanore filmed and recorded the making of this film, and has
been released as a feature film called "Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's
Apocalypse".
# Army of Darkness
- CAMEO(Bridget Fonda): Linda
- The magic words Ash must use to claim the Book of the Dead are "Klaatu,
Barada, Nikto", the same words used to command the robot Gort in _The Day
the Earth Stood Still_.
- DIRTRADE(Sam Raimi): [shemp]:
- DIRTRADE(Sam Raimi): [3-stooges]: The skeletons do a classic routine.
# Around the World in 80 Days
- Origin of the term "cameo", meaning in this case a small part by a famous
person.
- The following famous people appear in small parts in the film, and are
credited: Red Buttons, A.E. Matthews, Alan Mowbray, Andy Devine, Basil
Sydney, Beatrice Lillie, Buster Keaton, Cesar Romero, Charles Boyer, Charles
Coburn, Col Tim McCoy, Edmund Lowe, Edward R. Murrow, Evelyn Keyes,
Fernandel, Finlay Currie, Frank Sinatra, George Raft, Gilbert Roland, Glynis
Johns, Harcourt Williams, Hermione Gingold, Jack Oakie, Joe E. Brown, John
Carradine, John Mills, Jose Greco, Luis Miguel Dominguin, Marine Carol,
Marlene Dietrich, Melville Cooper, Mike Mazurki, Noel Coward, Peter Lorre,
Red Skelton, Reginald Denny, Richard Wattis, Robert Morley, Ronald Colman,
Ronald Squire, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Sir John Gielgud, Trevor Howard, Victor
McLaglen.
# Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
- In the scene where Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant) is sitting on a tombstone
in the graveyard outside his Aunt's home, one of the headstones behind him
says "Archie Leech". Grant's real name is Archie Leach. See also _His Girl
Friday_.
# Assault on Precinct 13
- The editor is credited as James T. Chance, which was the name of the John
Wayne character in _Rio Bravo_, on which this film was based, but the actual
editor was John Carpenter.
# Awakenings
- Robin Williams accidentally broke Robert De Niro's nose during a rehersal of
the scene where Dr Sayer tries to get Leonard to go back on the drug.
# Back to School
- CAMEO(Kurt Vonnegut): himself
# Back to the Future
- Eric Stoltz originally cast as Marty McFly, but changed becuase he didn't act
enough like a teenager.
- Time travel inevitably creates paradoxes.
- The device in Doc Brown's lab that Marty plugs his guitar into is labeled
"CRM-114", which was the name of the message decoder on the B-52 in _Dr
Strangelove_.
- Doc Brown's dog is named Einstein. This may be a vague reference to _Chitty
Chitty Bang Bang_, where the inventor of a miracle car owned a dog named
Edison.
- The mall where Marty McFly meets Dr. Brown for their time travel experiment
is called "Twin Pines Mall". Dr. Brown comments that ol' farmer Peabody
used to own all of the land, and he grew pines there. When Marty goes back
in time, he runs over and knocks down a pine tree on the Peabody's property.
When he comes back to the mall at the end of the film, the sign at the mall
identifies the mall as "Lone Pine Mall".
- There is a rumour that when Marty is running from the terrorists, you can
see another Marty running to witness the shooting of Doc Brown.
- Farmer Peabody's son is named Sherman. Sherman was the name of the little boy
time traveler in one segment of Jay Ward's cartoon show, "The Rocky &
Bullwinkle Show." The dog who owned his time machine was named Mr. Peabody.
- The radio in Marty's room plays "Back in Time", by Huey Lewis and the News,
who wrote and performed some songs for the film.
- The "Mr Fusion Home Energy Converter", which is sitting on the DeLorean when
Doc returns from the future, is made from (among other things) a Krups coffee
grinder.
- CAMEO(Huey Lewis): the high-school band judge.
- CAMEO(Stephen Spielberg): [rumour] The driver of the pickup truck that gives
Marty a lift to school.
# Back to the Future Part II
- Filmed at the same time as _Back to the Future Part III_. In the five years
since the original was made, Michael J Fox had forgotten how to ride a
skateboard.
- Needles is played by Flea, the bassist of the _Red Hot Chili Peppers_
- Crispin Glover played George McFly in the original, but was replaced by
Jeffrey Weissman in Part II and Part III.
- When Marty arrives in 2015, he looks in the window of an antique store, where
there is a Roger Rabbit doll. _Who Framed Roger Rabbit_ was also directed by
Robert Zemekis. The old man who wishes he had bet on the Cubbies is played
by Charles Fleischer, who did Roger Rabbit's voice.
# Back to the Future Part III
- Filmed at the same time as _Back to the Future Part II_. In the five years
since the original was made, Michael J Fox had forgotten how to ride a
skateboard.
- Needles is played by Flea, the basist of the _Red Hot Chili Peppers_
- Crispin Glover played George McFly in the original, but was replaced by
Jeffrey Weissman in Part II and Part III.
- References to _Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang_: the train sprouts fins similar to
the Professor's car.
- DIRTRADE (Robert Zemeckis): [citation]: When Marty walks along the railroad
tracks and finally reaches the town, he comes to the railway station.
Then he walks into the town, while the camera slowly rises up above the
station and finally shows Marty at a large distance walking into the town.
This scene is shot exactly in the same way as the scene in _Once Upon A Time
In The West_, when Claudia Cardinale arrives at the station.
# Bad and the Beautiful, The
- Lana Turner plays an actress whose career started as a movie extra. Lana
Turner started her own career as an extra in _A Star is Born_.
- Director Vincente Minelli and star Kirk Douglas also teamed up in another
movie about Hollywood, _Two Weeks in Another Town_.
- James Lee (Dick Powell) won the Pulitzer Prize for his book "A Woman of
Taste", about his late wife Rosemary (Gloria Grahame).
# Bagdad Cafe
- The shadow of the camera crew is visible while the credits for the
cinematographer are on the screen.
# Bambi
- Some scenes of woodland creatures and the forest fire are unused footage from
Pinocchio.
# Barfly
- CAMEO(Charles Bukowski): in the bar where Henry and Wanda meet for the first
time.
# Barton Fink
- John Turturro plays the title role. In _Miller's Crossing_ (also directed
by Joel Coen), Turturro played a character who met a man at a pub called
"The Barton Arms".
# Barry Lyndon
- Stanley Kubrick did not use any artificial lighting when he shot this film.
# Basic Instinct
- Kim Basinger was originally cast as Catherine Tramell.
- Michael Douglas' character watches [_Hellraser_ or _Brain_?].
# Battle Beyond the Stars
- Plot borrowed from _The Magnificent Seven_, which borrowed the plot from
_The Seven Samurai_.
- The spaceship looks like a horse's head.
# Beaches
- CAMEO(Hector Elizondo): Justice of the Peace
# Beauty and the Beast (1991)
- "Be Our Guest" was originally animated with Maurice (not Belle) as "the
guest", but they decided not to waste such a wonderful song on a secondary
character.
- "Chip" originally had only one line, but the producers liked the voice so
much that they had extra lines written.
- The Tiny Toon Adventure script writer Sheri Stoner was used as the model for
Belle. See also _The Little Mermaid_.
# Bed and Bread
- CAMEO(Jacques Tati): Monsieur Hulot [note: M. Hulot is the main character of
many classic Tati's movies].
# Beetlejuice
- Title role originally written for Sammy Davis Jr.
# Ben-Hur (1959)
- The rumour that the Stephen Boyd's double was killed during the chariot race
is false.
- The chariot race segment was directed by legendary stunt-man, Yakima Canutt.
One of Canutt's sons doubled for Charlton Heston. During one of the crashes,
in which Judah Ben-Hur's horses jump over a crashed chariot, the younger
Canutt was thrown from his chariot onto the tongue of his chariot. He
managed to climb back into his chariot and bring it back under control (his
only injury was a cut on the chin). The sequence looked so good that it was
included in the film, with a close-up of Heston climbing back into the
chariot. The cut on Canutt Jr's chin was the only injury in the incredibly
dangerous sequence. Canutt Sr won a lifetime achievement Oscar for this work
- the only stunt man ever to win an Oscar.
# Beverly Hills Cop
- Axel Foley originally going to be played by Sylvester Stallone.
# Big Chill, The
- Flashback scenes with Kevin Costner as Alex filmed, but cut.
# Big Picture, The
- CAMEO(Martin Short): agent
# Big Steal, The
- A TV can be heard to be showing _Malcolm_, which has the same producers.
# Big Trouble in Little China
- Some of the lightning forms a chinese symbol as it disappates. The symbol
translates as "carpenter". This film was directed by John Carpenter.
# Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey
- The original title of this film was "Bill and Ted go to Hell" but was changed
for obvious reasons.
- Bill's grandmother, "Gramma S. Preston, esquire" is played by the same
actor who plays Bill (Alex Winter).
- William Sadler ("Death"), also plays a bit role as an Englishman when we
see varoius spots around the world when the Battle of the Bands is shown.
- William Sadler wrote the "Reaper Rap".
# Billion Dollar Brain
- Michael Caine performed most of his own stunts. During the final ice flow
scene, he almost slipped and fell into the water which is at 30C below zero.
- Caine had originally signed a five picture deal, but when Caine was
reluctant to return to the role, producer Harry Saltzman let him out of the
contract.
# Birds, The
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): at the start of the film walking two dogs past
the pet shop (the dogs were actually his own).
- Hitchcock tried to hire Joseph Stefano (writer of Psycho) to write the
script, but he wasn't interested in the story. The final screenplay (from
a Daphne Du Maurier story) was written by Evan hunter, best known to
detective story fans under his pen name "Ed McBain".
- Hitchcock spotted Tippi Hedren in a diet drink commercial.
- The scene where Tippi Hedren is ravaged by birds near the end of the movie
took a week to shoot. The birds were attached to Tippi's clothes by long
nylon threads so they could not get away.
- The film does not finish with the usual "THE END" title because Hitchcock
wanted to give the impression of unending terror.
- An intended final shot with the Golden Gate bridge covered in birds was
not filmed because of cost.
- The poster for the movie said: "THE BIRDS IS COMING!" irritating English
teachers nationwide.
- Star Tippi Hendren's daughter Melanie Griffith claims she was given a present
by Hitchcock during the filming. It was a doll of her mother in a coffin,
which Hitchcock intended as a joke.
# Black Widow (1986)
- CAMEO(David Mamet): playing poker with Debra Winger
# Blackmail (1929)
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): being bothered by a small boy on the subway.
- The film was Hitchcock's and England's first talking picture.
- Anny Ondra's voice was dubbed by Joan Barry because she had a thick German
accent. Barry had to stand just off the set and read Ondra's lines into a
microphone as the film was shot.
# Blade Runner
- LOTS of stuff: check out the Blade Runner FAQ in rec.arts.movies,
alt.cult-movies, news.answers, etc. Available by anonymous FTP as
rtfm.mit.edu:/pub/usenet/news.answers/movies/bladerunner-faq.
# Blazing Saddles
- Scriptwriter Andrew Bergman originally named the lead character "Tex X".
- Mel Brooks plays a character called "Le Petomane", which is the name
of a popular French performer at the beginning of the 20th century. His
specialty was telling stories punctuated with flatulence.
- The "stinkin' badges" line is from _The Treasure of the Sierra Madre_.
- The TV release has two extra scenes that weren't in the theatrical release.
When Sheriff Bart is trying to capture Mongo, after he delivers the
'candygram for mongo', it then shows a 'draw on the dummy sheriff' game
that fires a cannon at Mongo, and then a scene Bart convinces Mongo to
go diving down a well for Spanish Doubloons and Bart stops pumping air
to the diving suit because it's time for his lunch break.
- Everyone in the town of Rockridge's last name is 'Johnson'.
- CAMEO(Count Bassie and band): the jazz band in the desert.
# Blind Date (1984)
- Madonna and Sean Penn were approached to star together in this movie, but
producers wanted to cast Bruce Willis in the male lead, so Madonna backed
out.
# Bloodsport (1987)
- Jean-Claude Van Damme was European Kickboxing champion, but an unknown in
Hollywood. He spotted producer Menahem Golan coming out of a restuarant
and getting into his car. He introduced himself, and then did a 360 degree
spinning kick, narrowly missing Golan's head. Golan signed him immediately
for _Bloodsport_.
# Blue Iguana, The
- CAMEO(Dean Stockwell):
# Blues Brothers, The
- Has many famous people in the cast:
Frank Oz: prison officer
Cab Calloway: Curtis
James Brown: minister
Irene Cara: church soloist [Chaka Khan?]
Paul Reubens (Pee Wee Herman): wine waiter
John Lee Hooker: musician on Maxwell Street
Aretha Franklin: proprietor of the "Soul Food Cafe"
Ray Charles: Ray from "Ray's Music Exchange"
Twiggy: blonde in sports car
Stephen Spielberg: Cook County Assessor
Joe Walsh (lead guitarist of Eagles): first prisoner to jump up and start
dancing
- The "Blues Brothers Band" consists of already well-respected musicians, who
have recorded and written with the likes of Eric Clapton and Otis Redding.
- John Belushi was extremely disappointed at the film's reception, and it is
rumoured that this contributed to his "accidental" (?) death from cocaine.
The film went on to become a definitive "cult" movie, still drawing crowds
years later. Recently, the authentic "Blues Brothers Band" has been
touring the world, playing gigs after showing the film.
- Every time we see the window in Elwood's apartment, a train is going past.
- "Murph and the Magictones" have a pink Cadillac with the name of the band
painted on the side. After they re-join the Blues Brothers, the car has
"The Blues Brothers" crudely spray-painted on it.
- Elwood never takes off his sunglasses, and Jake never takes off his hat.
- This film holds the world record for the number of cars crashed.
- DIRTRADE(John Landis): [ipanema]: the music in the elevator.
- DIRTRADE(John Landis): [SYNW]: the message on the billboard that the cops
were hiding behind.
# Bodyguard, The (1992)
- This film was originally proposed in the mid-70's, starring Diana Ross and
Steve McQueen, but was rejected as "too controversial".
- Rachel's mansion is the same mansion as the "horse's head in the bed"
mansion in _The Godfather_.
# Bonfire of the Vanities, The
- Alan Arkin (Judge Myron Kovitzky) was replaced late in preproduction by
Morgan Freeman and the character renamed; mostly because of scheduling
problems, this decision cost over $2 million.
- CAMEO(F. Murray Abraham): Bronx D.A.
- The production is extensively documented in "The Devil's Candy" by Julie
Salamon (ISBN 0-385-30824-8)
# Boomerang (1992)
- DIRCAMEO(Reginald Hudlin): hustler
- CAMEO(Washington Hudlin [producer]): hustler
# Born on the Fourth of July
- CAMEO(Abbie Hoffman): a war/draft protestor.
- CAMEO(Ron Kovic): WWII veteran in the parade at the beginning.
- DIRCAMEO(Oliver Stone): a TV reporter.
# Boy and His Dog, A
- Screenplay started by Harlan Ellison, who wrote the novella on which it is
based. Ellison encountered writer's block, and so producer Alvy Moore and
L.Q. Jones took over and wrote the script. Ellison saw nothing of the film
until the premier, at which he was sitting next to Moore. Ellison praised
the film, to the relief of Moore, but there are rumours that Ellison later
condemned the film.
# Boy Friend, The
- CAMEO(Glenda Jackson):
# Boys in Company C, The
- Drill Instructor played by R Lee Ermey, a former US Marines Drill Instructor.
# Boyz N the Hood
- DIRCAMEO(John Singleton): the mailman.
# Brain Eaters, The
- CAMEO(Leonard Nimoy):
# Brainstorm (1983)
- Natalie Wood died before filming was complete, thus the ending had to be
constructed from scenes shot earlier.
# Brazil (1985)
- Jack's daughter Holly played by director Terry Gilliam's daughter.
- lots of significant names:
- Mr Kurtzman (German for "short man"): small in stature and success. Named
after the editor of "Help" (Harvey Kurtzman), a magazine that Gilliam
worked for in the mid-60s. It was at a photo shoot for this magazine that
Gilliam met John Cleese, who would later invite him to join the Monty
Python team.
- Mr Helpman: "helped" Sam
- Mr Warren: works in a rabbit-warren style place: a maze of corridors
- Gilliam had trouble with studio producers over the black ending he wanted on
the film. The producers wanted a "happy Hollywood" film which eliminated
(among other things) the final transition and a critical line of dialog which
reveals the fate of Jill. These changes were made, and this "butchered"
version was shown on US television at least once. Gilliam threatened to
disown the film, and consequently the cinematic release and all videotape
versions show the film essentially as he intended it to be seen (although
the US cinematic release still omitted the line about Jill).
- The book "The Battle of Brazil" details the production of this movie.
# Bringing Up Baby
- Katherine Hepburn's character pretends that she and Cary Grant's characters
are gangsters. The underworld nickname she gives police for Grant's
character is "Jerry the Nipper": a nickname that Grant's character had in
_The Awful Truth_.
# Broadcast News
- CAMEO(Jack Nicholson): TV Anchorman [billed or not???]
# Broadminded
- CAMEO(Bela Lugosi): man whose hot dog was stolen.
# Bugsy Malone
- Jodie Foster's singing was dubbed. Director Alan Parker regrets this later,
when Foster goes on to be a major star.
# Cadillac Man
- CAMEO(Elaine Stritch): widow.
# Cape Fear (1991)
- Robert De Niro paid a dentist $5,000 to make his teeth look suitably bad for
the role of Max Cady. After filming, he paid $20,000 to have them fixed.
- De Niro was tattooed with vegetable dyes, which fade after a few months.
- Gregory Peck, who starred in the 1962 version, appears as Cady's lawyer.
- Robert Mitchum, who played Max Cady in the 1962 version, appears as a
policeman.
- Martin Basalm appears in both versions.
- Scene in highschool auditorium totally ad-libbed by De Niro and Juliette
Lewis, and done on the first take.
- The film credits list "Producer: Barbara De Fina". This is the pseudonym of
executive producer Steven Spielberg, who was afraid that his name could lead
people to believe "Cape Fear" was one of his typical fantasy/youth oriented
picture.
# Career Opportunities
- CAMEO(John Candy):
# Casablanca
- Humphrey Bogart never says "Play it again, Sam." He says: "You played it
for her, you can play it for me. Play it!". Ingrid Bergman says "Play it,
Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By'".
- Hal Wallis nearly made the character "Sam" a female. Hazel Scott, Lena
Horne, and Ella Fitzgerald were tested for the role.
- Ronald Reagan and George Raft was on the shortlist for the role of Rick.
- Dooley Wilson (who played Sam) was a professional drummer who faked playing
the piano. Because the music was recorded at the same time as the film,
the piano playing was actually performed by Elliot Carpenter.
- Bergman complained that she didn't know who her character was supposed to be
in love with.
- Two contradicting endings were scheduled to be filmed, but the first one
worked so well that they used it.
- The budget was so small they couldn't use a real plane in the back ground at
the airport. Instead, it is a small cardboard cutout. To give the illusion
that the plane was full-sized, they used midgets to portray the crew
preparing the plane for take-off.
- This film was rewritten daily during filming, made on a shoestring budget,
hastily released, and expected to bomb.
- The timely real-life invasion of Casablanca was used to promote this film,
and undoubtedly contributed to its success.
- Based on a play called "Everybody Comes To Rick's".
# CB4
- References to: _Wayne's World_, _The Silence of the Lambs_, Boyz N the Hood_,
_Colors_ [more?]
# Charley Varrick
- DIRCAMEO(Don Siegel): a table tennis player.
# Cheyenne Autumn
- Director John Ford deliberately only allowed one take, so that actors would
remain nervous.
# Chinatown
- DIRCAMEO(Roman Polanski): the hood who slits Jake's nose.
# Chopping Mall
- CAMEO(Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov): they appear briefly as the same
characters they played in _Eating Raoul_, another Roger Corman production.
# City Slickers
- Billy Crystal co-wrote the story, but is not given on-screen credit.
- Some trailers feature a scene where someone's spurs are caught on a rail, but
this scene is not in the movie.
- The cow-giving-birth scene was real, and Billy Crystal actually assisted
in the birth. The calf also actually "bonded" to Billy. [I believe he
did in reality keep the calf... anyone?]
# Cliffhanger
- 31 climbers were signed up, including Ron Kauk and the late Wolfgang Gullich.
Gullich performed many of the film's stunts.
- Kauk was Sylvester Stallone's stunt double and really had to bulk up. He ate
5 carbohydrate-heavy meals a day and pumped a lot of iron. The trainer wanted
to have him eat a sixth meal in the middle of the night. Kauk also doubled
for Leon, a 6'3" black actor, and Janine Turner, the female lead.
- To demonstrate his faith in the safety equipment, director Renny Harlin
put on a harness and flung himself out on a cable.
- An avid golfer, Stallone found that climbing roughed up his hands and
consequently messed up his game. He had a net on the set for practice. The
models he was dating complained about his rough hands.
- Electrical storms hit during filming, knocking down 5 crew members. Climber
Earl Wiggins was hit 3 times, but was only slightly injured. During a later
storm, crew members had fun taking pictures of each other with their hair
standing on end while the climbers pointed out the wisdom of evacuating.
- The background for many of the scenes was generated by an IBM Power
Visualization System.
- Sneak-preview audiences saw a scene where a rabbit gets killed by gunfire.
Their reaction was strong enough for Sylvester Stallone to invest $100000 of
his own money to have the scene re-shot so that the rabbit escaped.
- The credits include a message which explains that the Black Diamond harness
used in the opening scene was specially modified so that it would fail.
- The stuntman who did the air-to-air transfer (Simon Crane) actually couldn't
get inside the second plane, but good editing gives the appearance that he
does.
- One of the buckles on the horse's bridle is a piece of climbing equipment.
- DIRTRADE(Renny Harlin): [finland]: one of the parachutes looks like the
Finnish flag.
# Clockwork Orange, A
- _2001: A Space Odyssey_ (also directed by Stanley Kubrick) soundtrack highly
visible in record store. One of the girls that Alkex talks to mentions the
group "The Heaven 17". This was the inspiration for the early 80's group
"Heaven 17"'s name.
- The photo-montage when Alex clobbers the old lady are mostly the paintings
the old lady has hanging in her room, but also include graphic shots of
female genitals.
- Patrick Magee's bodyguard was played by professional bodybuilder David
Prowse. Even so, he was near exhaustion after the repeated takes of him
carrying MacGee and his wheelchair down the stairs.
- Many phallic symbols: snake crawling between the legs of the woman in the
poster.
- DIRTRADE(Stanley Kubrick): [three-way]: Alex vs Government vs Subversives.
# Close Encounters of the Third Kind
- The working title was "Watch the Skies"; the closing words from _The Thing
From Another World_.
- Barry is shown to be surprised by the extraterrestrials. Director Stephen
Spielberg dressed up in a gorilla suit and was off camera while actor Carey
Guffey's surprise reaction was filmed.
- In the original version, there is a long scene of Roy Neary tears up his and
a neighbor's back yard for materials with which to build a model of Devil's
Tower. This scene is not in "The Special Edition" but was replaced by a
scene (the night before) in which his wife discovers him crying, fully
clothed, under a running hot shower. A family fight ensues, but this entire
scene was not seen in the original version. Also, additional footage was
shot for 'The Special Edition' that shows Roy Neary inside the alien
mothership at the end of the movie.
- SFX man Douglas Trumbull created the cloud effects by injecting white paint
into tanks of salt and fresh water.
- It is possible to see an upside down R2-D2 (from _Star Wars_, etc) in part
of the large spacecraft that flys over Devil's Mountain. The SFX people
needed more detail, and so supposedly there are many more such items, such as
a shark from _Jaws_ (Also directed by Spielberg), etc. R2-D2 is visible as
Barry's mother first sees the mothership up close from her hiding place in
the rocks.
- The watch that Roy Neary wears only shows the time when he presses a button
on it. During filming the watch remains blank. This is to avoid continuity
errors.
- DIRTRADE(Stephen Spielberg): [music]
# Coal Miner's Daughter
- Beverly D'Angelo and Sissy Spacek did all their own singing.
# Cold Feet (1989)
- CAMEO(Jeff Bridges): bartender
# Comfort and Joy
- Mark Knopfler, lead singer of Dire Straits, wrote the soundtrack for this
film. Lyrics from a previous Dire Straits album "Love Over Gold" are used as
dialog in the film: "I hear the terrible twins came to call on you" is
similar to: "I hear the seven deadly sins came to call on you", and "The
bigger they are, baby, the harder they fall on you" are both lyrics from the
song "It Never Rains".
# Conversation, The
- CAMEO(Robert Duvall): man who hires Harry Caul
# Coogan's Bluff
- DIRCAMEO(Don Siegel): man in an elevator.
# Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, The
- Costumes change as characters walk from room to room.
- Animal symbolism is rampant: Albert Spica (the thief) drives a Jaguar, the
big sign above the restuarant says "P&A" (panda).
# Creepshow
- CAMEO(Stephen King): Jordy Verril (man covered in moss).
- CAMEO: (Joe King [son of Stephen]): The boy at the beginning (avid collector
of Creepshow magazine and voodoo dolls).
# Creepshow 2
- CAMEO(Stephen King): truck driver in "The Hitcher".
# Crimes and Misdemeanors
- CAMEO(Daryl Hannah):
# Crimewave (1985)
- DIRTRADE(Sam Raimi): [3-stooges]: many, including the bowling balls rolling
off the shelf onto the man's head.
# Cross Creek
- CAMEO(Malcom Mc Dowell): Maxwell Perkins
# Crow, The
- Brandon Lee died during a mishap on the set. Lee was carrying a bag of
groceries which contained explosives used as SFX. A stage hand fired a
pistol supposedly containing a blank round at Lee. A .44 cartridge was
actually in the barrel of the pistol, and killed Lee. Brandon Lee is the
son of martial arts legend Bruce Lee, who died during the making of _Game of
Death_.
# Curse, The
- Wil and Amy Wheaten, real-life brother and sister, played on-screen brother
and sister.
- Wil Wheaten once said that the only good thing about the movie was that his
sister got a job on it.
# Cyborg
- All the major characters are named after guitar brand names.
# Dark Half, The
- In the prologue of this Stephen King adaptation, Thad Beaumont wants tou
become a writer and is shown writing stories. The title of his first
typewritten story is "Here There Be Tygers", which is also the real title of
the first short story Stephen King wrote in his career. The story can be
found in King's "Skeleton Crew" anthology.
# Dark Star
- John Carpenter directed, edited, and wrote the music for the film, but he
uses pseudonyms in the credits for editing and the music.
# Darkman
- Director Sam Raimi wanted high-school friend Bruch Campbell to play the lead
role, but the producers didn't think that Campbell could handle it. Campbell
played Ash in _The Evil Dead_ and _Evil Dead II_, both also directed by
Raimi.
- CAMEO(Jenny Agutter):
- DIRTRADE(Sam Raimi): [shemp]: Last shemp: Bruce Campbell.
# Dave
- Author Gary Ross appears as Policeman #2.
- Many U.S. Congressmen and political commentators appear in this film as
themselves.
- CAMEO: (Larry King): himself
- CAMEO: (Oliver Stone): himself
# Dawn of the Dead
- DIRCAMEO(George Romero): the director in the television studio.
- CAMEO(? Romero [wife of George]): director's assistant in the television
studio.
# Dead Zone, The
- Director David Cronemberg had to reshoot the scene in which John Smith
has his first premonition. It showed a little girl's room burning and a small
E.T. doll could be seen on one of the shelves. The scene had to be reshot
when Universal Pictures threatened to sue.
# Death Becomes Her
- In the scene where Goldie Hawn's character sits down onto a shovel handle,
she didn't sit in the way she was expected to do, so the SFX people had to
morph the image to make it look like the shovel handle was pushing up into
her chest.
- DIRTRADE (Robert Zemeckis): [citation]: The shots in the psychiatric clinic
where Goldie Hawn is brought look exactly like those in _One Flew Over the
Cuckoo's Nest_.
# Devil and Daniel Webster, The
- Shortly after filming had begun, Thomas Mitchell managed to break a leg, and
was replaced by Edward Arnold. Not many scenes had been shot, none were
reshot, so Mitchell is still visible in some scenes.
# Dial M for Murder (1954)
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): about 13 minutes into the film, on the left side
of the reunion photograph.
- The movie was shot in 3-D although it was never released that way until
after Hitchcock's death.
- Hitchcock arranged to have Grace Kelly dressed in bright colours at the
start of the film and made them progressively darker as time goes on.
# Diamonds Are Forever
- After the failure of _On Her Majesty's Secret Service_, EON was desperate to
get Connery back to save the series. When he refused, the producers
considered Roger Moore then Timothy Dalton before unexpectedly signing an
unknown American actor John Galvin. UA chief, David Picker, was not not
impressed with the choice of Galvin and the order went out to get Connery at
any price. Connery was finally lured back with an unprecedented deal making
him the highest paid actor to date. The final contract involved Connery
getting $1.25 million up front, 12.5% of the gross and a commitment from UA
to finance two non-Bond films of Connery's choice. Connery later donated his
fee to the Scottish International Trust.
- Actresses considered for the role of Tiffany Case included: Rachel Welch,
Jane Fonda and Faye Dunaway. Jill St. John had originally been offered the
part of Plenty O'Toole but landed the female lead after impressing the
director Guy Hamilton during screen tests.
- The original plot had Gert Frobe returning as Auric _Goldfinger_'s twin
and seeking revenge for the death of his brother.
- The death of Bond's wife Tracy was originally planned for the opening
sequence of _Diamonds are Forever_, but was later added to the end of
_On Her Majesty's Secret Service_ to "tidy up lose ends".
- Upon release, it breaks Hollywood's three day gross record.
- Willard Whyte is obviously based on Howard Hughes. Hughes, however, played
a more substantial role behind the scenes allowing EON to film inside
his casinos and at his other properties. His fee was reputed to be one
16mm print of the film.
- Connery turned down, the then astronomic sum, of $5.5 million to return
in the next Bond film _Live And Let Die_.
# Dick Tracy (1990)
- The only colors in the film are the six that the original comic strip
appeared in.
- CAMEO(Dustin Hoffman): Mumbles
- CAMEO(Paul Sorvino): Lips Manlis
- CAMEO(Alan Garfield): a reporter
- CAMEO(James Caan):
# Die Hard 2
- The General is from "Valverde", the fictitious Latin-American country used
in _Commando (1985)_.
- DIRTRADE(Renny Harlin): [finland]: "Finlandia Hymn" by Jean Sibelius is used
in some scenes.
# Diplomatic Courier
- CAMEO(Lee Marvin):
- CAMEO(Charles Bronson):
# Dirty Harry
- The title role was originally intended for Frank Sinatra.
- After Harry has foiled the bank robbery at the beginning of the film, he
strides over to the one surviving robber. In doing so, he walks in front of
a theatre which is showing _Play Misty For Me_, which Clint Eastwood directed
and starred in.
- Andrew Robinson (Scorpio) had to get an unlisted phone number, and has
received a death threat.
- DIRCAMEO(Don Siegel): man running down the street.
- ACTTRADE(Clint Eastwood): "Go ahead. Make my Day" (first)
# Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
- An entire day was spent shooting the trailer, which does not appear in the
film. The trailer shows Caine and Martin walking along the boardwalk,
politely moving out of the way of other people, etc, with a voice saying
something like "There are numerous distinguised gentlemen in the world...
refined, cultured gentlemen.... <etc> nice men.... <etc>... but nice men
finish last". As these last few lines are spoken, Martin pushes an old lady
into the water, and Caine shoves an kid's face into his ice cream.
# Doors, The
- Prior to the audition, Val Kilmer memorised the lyrics to all songs written
by Jim Morrison.
- Val Kilmer wore special contact lenses which made his pupils seem dilated
in the scenes where Morrison was stoned
- Closeup shots use Kilmer's voice, long distance shots use Morrison's.
- Patricia Kennealy Morrison played the High Priestess in the handfasting
scene.
- John Densmore (The Doors drummer) was the recording engineer.
- Bonnie Bramlett (of 60's group Delaney and Bonnie) played the bartender.
- DIRCAMEO(Oliver Stone): Morrison's film professor.
# Down and Out in Beverly Hills
- Nick Nolte spent five weeks as a homeless person in preparation for his role.
# Dr. No
- Thunderball was originally going to be the first 007 movie, but legal
wrangles with its co-author lead to _Dr. No_ being chosen instead.
- Author Ian Fleming wanted his cousin Chrisopher Lee to play Dr. No. See also
_The Man With the Golden Gun_.
- The budget was only $1,000,000 but when costs over run by $100,000
United Artists wanted to pull the plug fearing they would never recoup
its outlay.
- Author Ian Fleming originally asked Noel Coward to play the part of Dr No,
Coward replied in a telegram "Dr No? No! No! No!".
- Actors considered for the lead role included: Cary Grant, David Niven,
Trevor Howard, Rex Harrison, and Roger Moore.
- Connery was chosen for the part of 007 after Cubby Broccoli's wife saw him
in Disney's Darby O'Gill and the Little People.
- After the film's release in Italy, the Vatican issued a special communique
expressing its disapproval at the film's moral standpoint.
- The voice of Honey Rider is not that of Ursula Andress.
- Sean Connery morbidly afraid of spiders. Shot of spider in his bed was
originally done with a sheet of glass between him and the spider, but when
this didn't look realistic enough, the scene was re-shot with stuntman
Bob Simmons.
- The rights to the famous theme song were bought from Monty Norman for a
ridiculously low sum of money, and subsequently appeared in many later Bond
films.
# Drop Dead Fred
- CAMEO(Bridget Fonda): [rumour] Annabella.
# Duellists, The
- The swords were hooked up to batteries to produce the sparks, and Harvey
Keitel said he was heavily shocked more than once.
# Dune
- There are rumours of a 6-hour long director's cut, but there has never been
any concrete proof of it being released. A book by Frank Herbert himself
claims that 12 hours of footage was filmed. They cut it to 6, considered
releasing it as a mini-series, but decided to cut it down to 2 and released
it theatrically.
- After this film was released, Sting said that he would never again play a
character who used violence to achieve his objectives.
- SMITHEE(David Lynch): disowned the television cut.
- BOOTH(???): disowned the television cut.
- DIRCAMEO(David Lynch): A radio operator on the mining ship that Paul and
Duke Leto Atreides rescue from a sandworm.
# E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
- ET's face was modeled after poet Carl Sandburg and Albert Einstein.
- Harrison Ford played the school principal, but his scenes were cut. There
is a rumour that you can still see his back.
- The M&M's people refused to allow their product appear in the film, so the
producers got "Reese's Pieces" instead. Sales for "Reese's Pieces"
skyrocketed after the movie's release.
- The extraterrestrial's plant collection includes a triffid (from _The Day
of the Triffids_).
- ET's voice was performed by Debra Winger.
- This movie has earned a total of $965 million by 1989. As a token of their
appreciation for the movie's success, Universal Studios gave Spielberg some
studios in California, which are now occupied by Amblin (Spielberg's
production company).
- DIRTRADE(Stephen Spielberg): [music]
# Easy Rider
- CAMEO(Phil Spector): the cocaine dealer.
# Easy Virtue
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): walking past a tennis court carrying a walking
stick.
# Edge of Eternity
- DIRCAMEO(Don Siegel): man at a hotel pool
# El Mariachi
- This film cost $7000. Director Robert Rodriguez raised $3,000 of the $7,000
by volunteering to be a human "laboratory rat". He was used to test a
cholesterol reducing drug. Paid $100 a day for 30 days, he wrote most of the
script while locked in the lab. A fellow "rat" was cast in the lead role.
Most of the $7,000 was spent on film for the camera.
- Rodriguez claims the other actors were "innocent" passers by. He gave them
lines as and when they were needed.
- For the moving camera shots, Rodriguez sat in a broken hospital wheelchair
and was pushed around.
- The movie was intended to go 'straight to video'.
- Sound was recorded with an ordinary cassette recorder and mike.
- Rodriguez says he made the movie to "practise".
- Rodriguez was producer, director, writer, special-effect man, ...
the only job he didn't do was act... there was no one else to operate
the camera.
# Electric Dreams
- CAMEO(Georgio Moroder): radio station executive at the very end.
# Elephant Walk
- Vivian Leigh was originally cast. Her mental illness begun affecting things
during filming, and so she was replaced by by Elizabeth Taylor. Many long
shots and shots from behind are still of Leigh.
# Empire of the Sun
- DIRTRADE(Stephen Spielberg): [music]
# Empire Strikes Back, The
- Lighting for SFX was so strong that several models melted.
- The AT-AT's were based on ship loading structure in an Oakland, California
shipyard. Walking patterns of elephants were studied to make the movements
seem as realistic as possible.
- Before this film was made, Mark Hamill (Luke) was driving his BMW along a
highway. Realizing was missing his turn, he swung sharply, but ended up
rolling his car and suffering facial scarring. Despite the efforts of
plastic surgeons, his appearance was noticably different. For this reason,
the scene where Luke receives facial scars from a Wampa was written.
- Further scenes with the Wampa Ice Creatures were shot, and later cut. R2-D2
encountered one within the Rebel base, where it was killed by troopers.
Later, the beasts were lured into a prison within the complex. In the
completed film, a medical droid is seen examining the wounds of a Tauntaun
killed by a Wampa, and Princess Leia mentions the "creatures" while
discussing the Imperial Probe Droid.
- Luke cuts off the Wampa's hand. C-3PO loses an arm when blasted by the
Stormtroppers. Darth Vader cuts off Luke's hand. See also _Star Wars_ and
_Return of the Jedi_.
- There is a rumour that one of the asteriods is actually a potato.
- The following characters "have a bad feeling about this": Leia. See
also: _Star Wars_ and _Return of the Jedi_.
- Wedge Antilles (Rebel pilot who trips an AT-AT walker) is played by Dennis
(two "n"s) Lawson. See also _Star Wars_ and _Return of the Jedi_ [rumour]
- Security surrounding this movie was so intense that George Lucas had regular
reports about "leaks" from actors. Lucas was so determined that the ending
be kept secret that he had actor David Prowse (Darth Vader) say "Obi Wan
Kenobi is your father", and dubbed it later to be "I am your father".
- Captain (later Admiral) Piett is left in command of the Imperial fleet by
the end of the film, and is still in charge during _Return of the Jedi_.
- The designers at ILM wanted a radical design for Boba Fett's ship. They
ended up using the end of a lamp post from the street outside the ILM
building.
- This is Carrie Fisher's favourite movie of the trillogy.
- FTP site wpi.wpi.edu is the official rec.arts.sf.starwars archive.
# Enter the Dragon
- In the underground fight scene, one of Han's bodyguards gets his neck
broken by Lee. This bodyguard was played by none other than 17 year-old
Jackie Chan, who was cast as a stuntman at the time and later starred in
his own martial arts films.
# Escape from New York
- DIRTRADE(John Carpenter): [names]: Cronenberg, Romero.
# Evil Dead II
- one of the books on the can that traps Ash's possessed hand is "A Farewell
to Arms".
- A glove belonging to _A Nightmare on Elm Street_'s Freddy Krueger can be
seen hanging near the steps in one of the cellar scenes. This was in
response to the use of _The Evil Dead_ on a television screen in _A
Nightmare on Elm Street_.
# Evil Dead, The
- Director Sam Raimi and star Bruce Campbell were friends from high-school,
where they made many super-8 films together. They would often collaborate
with Sam's brother Ted. Campbell became the "actor" of the group, as "he
was the one that girls wanted to look at".
- Filmed in a real-life abandoned cabin.
- Total budget for this film was $50,000. Investors were initially annoyed
when the film appeared to be a comedy although they were told it would be a
horror story. As of 1988, the investors have had a 150% return.
- DIRTRADE(Sam Raimi): [3-stooges]:
# Ewok Adventure, The (TV)
- One of the matte paintings includes Winnie the Pooh sitting in a tree.
# Exorcist III, The
- Totally ignores _Exorcist II: The Heretic_, starting off right at the end of
_The Exorcist_.
- CAMEO(C Everett Coop [Surgeon General]): in the restuarant
- CAMEO(Larry King): in the restuarant
# Exorcist, The
- There are semi-subliminal single-frame shots in this film: when the priest
is dreaming of his mother coming up out of the subway, there is a single
frame shot of a face, painted black and white, grimacing.
- CAMEO(William Peter Blatty [screenwriter]): producer of the film that [Ellen
Burstyn] is acting in; he's seen talking to Jack McGowran.
# Explorers
- The "city lights" model includes a suburb that looks suspiciously like a
circuit diagram, complete with logic gates and an integrated circuit.
- A newspaper headline is "Kingston Falls Mystery Still Unsolved". Kingston
Falls was the town in _Gremlins_, which Joe Dante also directed.
# Fabulous Baker Boys, The
- Madonna was originally approached for the role which was picked up by
Michelle Pfieffer. Madonna turned it down because the plot was 'too mushy'.
# Fail-Safe
- The film shows many US Air Force bombers, but they are all actually all shots
of the same plane, taken from a stock piece of film after the Department of
Defense declined to cooperate with the filmmakers.
# Family Plot
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): in silhouette 45 minutes into the film behind the
door at the registrar of births and deaths.
- Roy Thinnes was originally hired to play William Devane's character, but
Hitchcock was dissatisfied with his performance and fired him one month
into the filming.
# Far and Away
- Director Ron Howard wasn't happy with Nicole Kidman's facial reaction during
the shooting of the scene where her character lifts the bowl covering [Tom
Cruise]'s crotch. Without telling Kidman, he asked Cruise to remove the his
underwear. Howard got the reaction he wanted, and it appears in the film.
# Far Out Man
- CAMEO(Cheech Marin): ???. Marin was director Thomas Chong's former partner
in comedy duo Cheech & Chong.
# Fatal Attraction (1987)
- Original ending had Alex committing suicide, and Michael Douglas' character
being arrested for her murder. Changed when preview audiences felt that
justice was not served onto Alex. This ending still appears in the Japanese
release.
- Alex starts the film wearing white, but gradually switches to be wearing
black at the end.
# Few Good Men, A
- Two "Misery" novels can be seen beside Danny's typewriter while he watches
a ballgame. _Misery_ was also directed by Rob Reiner.
# Firm, The
- CAMEO(Paul Sorvino):
# First Men in the Moon
- CAMEO(Peter Finch):
# Fisher King, The
- A poster for "Brazil" (also directed by Terry Gilliam) appears in the first
video store scene.
- CAMEO(Tom Waits): the beggar in the wheelchair at the train station.
# Fitzcarraldo
- Mick Jagger and Jason Robards were replaced by Klaus Kinski.
- The production is documented by the film "Burden of Dreams" by Les Blank.
# Flight of the Navigator
- Reference to _E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial_: David gets out of the spaceship
at the gas station to "phone home".
# Fly, The (1986)
- DIRCAMEO(David Cronenberg): obsetrician who delivers the maggot baby.
# Fog, The
- DIRTRADE(John Carpenter): [names]: characters named after cast and crew of
Carpenter's previous film _Halloween_.
# Forbidden Planet
- Borrowed its plot from Shakespeare's "The Tempest".
- First appearance of "Robbie the Robot".
# Foreign Correspondent
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): early in the movie walking past Joel McCrea's
hotel reading a newspaper.
- Albert Basserman who played the Dutch diplomat Van Meer couldn't speak a
word of English and learnt all his lines phonetically.
# Fortress (1993)
- Filmed on the same set as _Highlander II: The Quickening_
- Filmed at the Warner Brothers Studios at the Gold Coast, Australia. No
reference is made of this in the credits, probably because the producers
feared it would not be taken seriously if it became known that it was filmed
outside of Hollywood.
# Frankenstein (1931)
- In one scene, the monster (Boris Karloff) walks through a forest and
comes upon a little girl, Maria, who is throwing flowers into a pond. The
monster joins her in the activity but soon runs out of flowers. At a loss
for something to throw into the water, he looks at Maria and moves toward
her. In all American prints of the movie, the scene ends here. But as
originally filmed, the action continues to show the monster grabbing
Maria, hurling her into the lake, then departing in confusion when Maria
fails to float as the flowers did. This bit was deleted because Karloff -
objecting to the director's interpretation of the scene - felt that the
monster should have gently put Maria into the lake. Though Karloff's
intentions were good, the scenes omission suggests a crueler death for
Maria, since a subsequent scene shows her bloddied corpse being carried
through the village by her father. This scene is restored in theu
videocassette reissue.
# Frankie and Johnny (1991)
- One scene called for actor Al Pacino to be surprised after opening a door.
_Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country_ was filming in a nearby studio, so
the director arranged for Kirk and Spock be on the other side of the door
that Pacino opened.
# Freebie and the Bean
- CAMEO(Valerie Harper): [Alan Arkin]'s wife.
# Frenzy (1972)
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): in the first moments of the film in the crowd -
he is the only one not applauding the speaker.
- Elsie Randolph who plays a worker at the hotel last appeared in a Hitchcock
film 40 years earlier as the old maid in 1932's Rich and Strange.
- This was the first film Hitchcock shot in England since 1950's _Stage
Fright_.
# Freshman, The (1990)
- Marlon Brando's first role in many years, playing a man who they supposedly
modeled Don Corleone from _The Godfather_ after. Bruno Kirby (who plays
Brando's nephew) played the young Clemenza in _The Godfather Part II_.
- During post-production, Brando claimed this film would be the biggest turkey
of all time, but subsequently changed his mind, saying it would be
"reasonable".
# From Russia with Love
- The budget was $2,000,000 (double that of Dr No).
- Chosen as the second 007 film after President Kennedy listed the book in his
top ten favourite novels of all time.
- Daniela Blanchi was 1960's Miss Universe, but being Italian her voice
was dubbed.
- "Q" played by Desmond Llewelyn appears for the first time.
- Pedro Armendariz was terminally ill during filming. Towards the end of
shooting Terence Young had to double for the actor. Shortly after the
film wrapped Armendariz committed suicide.
- During the helicopter sequence towards the end of the film, the inexperienced
pilot flew too close to Sean Connery, almost killing him.
- The title of the film is "Hearty Kisses From Russia" in France and
"Agent 007 Sees Red" in Sweden.
# Full Metal Jacket
- Drill Instructor played by R Lee Ermey. A former US Marines Drill Instructor,
Ermey was supposed to be a consultant on how to drill USMC style, but he
lobbied director Stanley Kubrick for the part.
- Ermey was involved in a jeep accident during the making of the movie. He got
away with a broken arm, and in many scenes he doesn't move his injured arm
at all.
- In the scene in the blasted city ruins where the sergeant is dying from
gunshot wounds, there is a rock in the background that looks very much like
the monolith from Kubrick's _2001_. Kubrick says it wasn't intentional, but
was noticed later, after filming, while watching the "rushes".
# Fugitive, The (1993)
- Harrison Ford has never seen a single episode of the TV series upon which
the film was based.
# Game of Death (1979)
- Bruce Lee died during the making of this film. The official verdict was a
brain edema, but many people believe there is more to the story than this.
One persistent rumour is that he was killed by Ninja masters for revealing too
many of their secrets.
# Ghostbusters
- The eggs which fry themselves are sitting next to a package of "Stay-Puft"
marshmallows. There is also a large advertisment for "Stay-Puft"
marshmallows (complete with the marshmallow man) visible on the side of
a building.
- Had two trailers, one of which ended with a slime monster rushing at the
camera.
# Ghostbusters II
- CAMEO(Chloe Webb): cable TV show guest interviewed by Bill Murray
# Ghosts Can't Do It (V)
- CAMEO(Donald Trump): himself
# Glory (1989)
- CAMEO(Jane Alexander): [Matthew Broderick]'s mother.
# Godfather, Part III, The
- Sofia Coppola (daughter of director Francis Ford Coppola) plays Michael
Corleone's daughter, a role she played as a baby in _The Godfather_.
Winona Ryder was originally cast, but she withdrew due to exhaustion.
# Godfather, The
- There is a rumour that Burt Reynolds was originally cast as Michael Corleone,
but Marlon Brando wouldn't act with him, considering him more a TV star.
- Lawrence Olivier was considered for the role of Vito Corleone.
- Frank Sinatra was considered for the role of Johnny, but this role went to
Al Martino when it became apparent that there were too many similarities
between Johnny and Sinatra himself.
- Marlon Brando wanted to make Don Corleone look "like a bulldog", so he
stuffed his cheeks with cotton wool for the screen test. For actual filming,
he wore an appliance made by a dentist. Al Pacino also wore a dental
appliance. This was to hold his jaw out of alignment, to appear as though it
had been broken by McCluskey and not reset. Brando's mouthpiece is on
display at the prop and costume museum at Universal Studios.
- Author Mario Puzo and director Francis Ford Coppola deliberately removed all
instances of the word "Mafia" from their screenplay.
- Scene of Don Corleone's death in the tomato garden was ad-libbed.
- Sofia Coppola (daughter of director) appears as Michael Corleone's baby
daughter in the christening scenes.
# Goldfinger
- The budget was $4,000,000 (it eventually grossed $40,000,000).
- Recent surveys have indicated that over 80% of the movie going public
has seen Goldfinger.
- Honor Blackman had previously appeared as female agent Cathy Gale in British
TV's "The Avengers".
- Connery hurt his back during the fight sequence with Odd Job in Fort Knox.
The incident delayed filming and some say that Connery used the injury
to get a better deal out of the producers for the next 007 film.
- The image of Jill Masterson's body coated in gold paint became an icon
of the sixties when it appeared on the cover of Life magazine.
- Connery has only seen the film twice: once at its premiere and again
when his granddaughter insisted he watch his favourite Bond film with her.
- John Barry's title theme got to #20 in the UK and #8 in the US, making an
international star of Welsh born singer Shirley Bassey.
# Great Muppet Caper, The
- Re-released on video in 1993, with changes to the soundtrack.
- CAMEO(Jim Henson): the man that Gonzo takes a photo of in the restuarant.
- CAMEO(Richard Hunt): Cab driver.
- CAMEO(Jerry Nelson): man with daughter in the park.
# Greatest Show on Earth, The
- CAMEO(Bob Hope): circus spectator
- CAMEO(Bing Crosby): circus spectator
# Greed
- Twenty-three grips and two assistant directors lost their lives during the
filming of a particularly elaborate tracking shot involving a cable car, two
delivery trucks and a dentist's office. This scene was edited out of the
final version of the film by Irving Thalberg, and has never been seen.
# Hairspray
- DIRCAMEO(John Walters): the psychiatrist.
# Halloween
- Director John Carpenter was raised in Bowling Green, Kentucky. In one scene,
the subtitle on the screen depicts the location as "Smiths Grove, Illinois."
Smiths Grove, Kentucky is a small town of about 600 people 15 miles from
Bowling Green. In another scene, a man mentions going to Russellville, which
is another town near Bowling Green.
- Due to its shoestring budget, the prop department had to use the cheapest
mask that they could find in the costume store: a William Shatner mask.
They later spray-painted the face white, and teased out the hair.
- The kids watch the opening of _The Thing (?)_ on TV. Carpenter would later
re-make this film himself in 1982.
# Handmaid's Tale, The
- CAMEO(David Dukes): a doctor
# Hannah and Her Sisters
- CAMEO(Tony Roberts):
- CAMEO(Sam Waterston):
# Happy New Year (1987)
- CAMEO(Claude Chabrol): ???. Claude Chabrol is the director of _Happy New
Year (1973)_, the French comedy on which this John Avildsen remake is based.
# Hard Day's Night, A
- DIRCAMEO(Richard Lester): seen briefly at the back of the stage while
the Beatles perform "Tell Me Why".
# Hard, Fast and Beautiful
- CAMEO(Robert Ryan):
- DIRCAMEO(Ida Lupino):
# Havana
- CAMEO(Raul Julia): Lena Olin's husband.
# Head (1968)
- CAMEO(Jack Nicholson): after Peter Tork punches a guy in drag.
# Helpmates
- Stan Laurel gives his real phone number (OXford-0614).
# Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
- There is a very gruesome scene, shot on videotape, where Henry and Otis kill
a family in their home. After filming the scene, the actress who plays the
mother went into shock.
# High Anxiety
- Tribute to Alfred Hitchcock. References to: _Spellbound_, _Vertigo_,
_Psycho_, _The Birds_, _North by Northwest_, _Suspicion_ [others?]
# Highlander
- Christopher Lambert spent time with a dialog coach, developing an accent
which sounded unspecifically foreign.
- MacLeod says "It's a kind of magic", which is the name of the Queen album
which contains songs from the film. The Vietnam vet who tries to machine-gun
Kurgan has the Queen song _Hammer to Fall_ playing in his car.
- The castle where Connor MacLeod lived was also used in _Monty Python and the
Holy Grail_.
- Non-American versions of this film include a WWII flashback sequence showing
MacLeod meeting Rachael, where he tells her "It's a kind of magic".
# Highlander II: The Quickening
- Grossly contradicts _Highlander_, its prequel.
# Hiroshima, Mon Amour
- This film pioneered the use of jump cutting to and from a flashback, and of
very brief flashbacks to suggest obtrusive memories.
# His Girl Friday
- Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant) refers to some horrible fate suffered by
the last person who crossed him: Archie Leech. Grant's real name is Archie
Leach. See also _Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)_
- Brewster tries to describe a character played by Ralph Bellamy. He ends up
saying that he "looks like that film actor, Ralph Bellamy".
# History of the World - Part 1
- Richard Pryor was originally cast in the part eventually taken by Gregory
Hines. Just before filming was to begin, Pryor had is now famous drug-
related accident, catching fire and getting severely burnt.
# Hook (1991)
- Bob Hoskins (Smee) bought beer for 300+ extras after a lengthy and
complicated scene was cut.
- The young Peter Pan is played by Dustin Hoffman's son.
- When the Tootles floats out the window at the end, he says "Seize the Day",
which has significance for Robin Williams, who starred in _Seize the Day_,
and _Dead Poet's Society_ (for which this was a catch-cry).
- Smee says "Goooooooood morning Neverland!", a reference to Williams in _Good
Morning Vietnam_.
- [reference to Awakenings, anyone?]
- There were frequent good-natured "battle of the wits" exchanges between Robin
Williams and Dustin Hoffman. In one incident, Hoffman was not happy with his
performance and asked the scene to be re-shot. Williams' quipped "Try
acting": a reference to the Hoffman/Olivier exchange on the set of _ Marathon
Man_.
- CAMEO(Phil Collins): Police Inspector.
- CAMEO(David Crosby): pirate
- CAMEO(Glenn Close): (male!) pirate locked in the chest with the scorpions.
- DIRTRADE(Stephen Spielberg): [music]
# Hot Shots! (1991)
- Some previews contains this scene, which was not in the movie:
[Valeria Golino] asks [Cary Elwes] if there's a cue ball in his pocket, or
is he just glad to see her, and [Elwes] produces a cue ball.
- References to: _Top Gun_, _Nine 1/2 Weeks_, _Gone with the Wind_, _Superman_,
_Dances With Wolves_.
# Hot Shots! Part Deux
- Charlie Sheen worked out for eight hours a day to build up his body, as he
decided that he would have felt embarressed at the film's premiere if he had
to sit amongst people laughing while looking at him on screen in a singlet.
- Richard Crenna plays Denton Walters. In the TV series "Our Miss Brooks",
Crenna played a character called "Walter Denton".
- References to: _Rambo: First Blood Part II_, _Rambo III_, _Kickboxer_, _Basic
Instinct_, _No Way Out_, _The Godfather_, _Lady and the Tramp_, _Apocalypse
Now_, _Missing in Action_, _Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves_, _Star Wars_,
_Terminator 2: Judgment Day_, _The Wizard of Oz_.
# House Party
- DIRCAMEO(Reginald Hudlin): thief chased by the doberman.
- CAMEO(Washington Hudlin [producer]): thief chased by the doberman.
# Howling, The
- All the characters have the names of "wolfman-movie" directors.
- CAMEO(John Sayles [screenwriter]): morgue attendant
# Hudson Hawk
- The tones that the telephones make are the same as the ones used in _Our Man
Flint_ and _In Like Flint_. James Coburn appears in all three movies.
# Hunt for Red October, The
- Kevin Costner originally cast as Jack Ryan.
- Klaus-Maria Brandauer originally cast as Marko Ramius.
- $20,000 spent on Sean Connery's hairpiece.
- The teddy bear that Jack Ryan carries with him on a plane at the very end of
the film is the same one that John McClane (Bruce Willis) is carrying with
him on the plane at the beginning of _Die Hard_, also directed by John
McTiernan. The end credits list him as "Stanley (as Himself)"
# I Confess
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): crossing the top of a staircase during the
opening credits.
- Anne Baxter was one of the actresses tested by Hitchcock for the leading
role in Rebecca (she was 16 at the time).
# I Love You to Death
- CAMEO(Phoebe Cates): one of [?]'s girlfriends. [?] is played by Kevin Kline,
who is married to Phoebe Cates.
# Ice Pirates, The
- CAMEO(Max Von Sydow):
# In This Our Life
- CAMEO(Walter Huston): bartender
- DIRTRADE(John Huston): [father]
# Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
- Begins with a shot of a rock in Utah which is reminiscent of the Paramount
Pictures logo. See also (_Raiders of the Lost Ark_, and _Indiana Jones and
the Temple of Doom_)
- Shows origin of Jones' fear of snakes in _Raiders of the Lost Ark_.
- Harrison Ford cut his chin in a car accident in Northern California when he
was about 20. In the movie, this cut is explained by young Indiana Jones
cutting his chin with a whip. See also: _Working Girl_.
- When making _Star Wars_, George Lucas owned a dog named "Indiana".
- The dog barking when young Indy passes with the cross in his hand is an
Alaskan malmute, the same type of dog the Lucas's owned in the late 1970s.
- Walter Donovan was played by Julian Glover, and Donovan's wife was played by
Glover's wife.
- DIRTRADE(Stephen Spielberg): [music]
# Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
- Begins with a shot of a mountain on a gong which is reminiscent of the
Paramount Pictures logo. See also (_Raiders of the Lost Ark_, and _Indiana
Jones and the Last Crusade_)
- The club at the beginning is called "Club Obi Wan", a reference to a _Star
Wars_ character.
- Shots of mining-car roller-coaster ride done with models and a 35mm camera
modified to hold extra film.
- Suspension bridge only shown from one side, to avoid showing the Grand Coulee
Dam.
- Rehash of the "shooting the swordsman" joke from _Raiders of the Lost Ark_.
- Kate Capshaw and Stephen Spielberg are married.
- CAMEO(Dan Aykroyd): meets Indiana at the airport at the beginning.
- CAMEO(Frank Marshall [producer]): a tourist in the background in the
airport scene at the beginning.
- DIRCAMEO(Steven Spielberg): a tourist in the background in the airport scene
at the beginning.
- DIRTRADE(Stephen Spielberg): [music]
# Innerspace
- Repeated rabbit motif: Tuck's apartment, etc [more!]
- The computers in the lab display Apple ][ assembly language listing from the
ROM monitor.
# Innocent Blood
- Renamed "A French Vampire in America" in some countries, after a bad
reception in the US (and to cash in on Landis' _An American Werewolf in
London_). [Australia, Italy, and which other countries?]
- One scene shows a TV set that is showing Alfred Hitchcock's cameo in _The
Paradine Case_.
- CAMEO(Dario Argento [art director]): the nurse in the ambulance. [credited?]
- DIRTRADE(John Landis): [SYNW]: advertised on the marquee across the street
from the Melody Lounge exotic dance bar. The "car crash at the Shadyside
gas station" scene was filmed in Squirrel Hill, and the nearby multiplex
cinema changed its marquee to be "See You Next Wednesday" every night after
closing. The movie itself featured no footage of that theatre (or the
street on which it resides), although it is possible that it was edited out.
# Into the Night
- airport scenes in _Into the Night_ and _Coming To America_ have a call over
the PA system for a "Mr Frank Ozkerwitz" to pick up the white courtesy phone.
This is Frank Oz's real name.
- DIRTRADE(John Landis): [ipanema]: the music during the strip scene.
- DIRTRADE(John Landis): [SYNW]: appears on two posters in the office where
[Goldblum and Pfeiffer] make the phone call.
- DIRCAMEO(John Landis): the leader of the terrorists.
- CAMEO(David Cronenberg): [Jeff Goldblum]'s boss.
- CAMEO(Johnathan Demme): FBI agent
- CAMEO(Lawrence Kasdan): FBI agent
- CAMEO(Jonathan Lynn): FBI agent
- CAMEO(David Bowie): British hitman who puts a gun in Jeff Goldblum's
character's mouth.
- CAMEO(Don Siegel):
- CAMEO(Jack Arnold): the guy in the elevator whose dog gets shot. [credited?]
- CAMEO(Waldo Salt): the scriptwriter blacklisted for his socialist views.
- CAMEO(Roger Vadim):
- CAMEO(Amy Hecklerling): waitress at the Ship's Restuarant.
# Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
- CAMEO(Don Siegel): taxi driver. Siegel directed the original film, of
which this film is a remake.
- CAMEO(Kevin McCarthy): man asking for help. McCarthy was the star of the
original film, of which this film is a remake.
- CAMEO(Robert Duvall):
# Ipcress File, The
- Christoper Plummer was orginally considered for the lead role, but dropped
out to star in _The Sound of Music_.
- In the Len Deighton novels the name of the lead character is never revealed.
Caine suggests "Harry" and the film's executives put forward "Palmer".
- Palmer is the first action hero to wear glasses (Caine is short sighted in
real life).
- IPCRESS is derived from "Induction of Psychoneuroses by Conditioned Reflex
under streSS".
# Irma la Douce
- CAMEO(James Caan):
# Ironweed
- Jack Nicholson's contract included a clause which allowed him to leave the
shooting location to attend all Los Angeles Lakers' basketball games.
# It Happened at the World's Fair
- Kurt Russell (in his screen debut) kicks Elvis' shins. Goldie Hawn was also
in this film, and they became a de faco couple much later.
# It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World
- CAMEO(Jimmy Durante): the man who "kicks the bucket".
- CAMEO(The Three Stooges): firemen
- CAMEO(Jerry Lewis):
- CAMEO(Joe E Brown):
- CAMEO(Jack Benny):
- CAMEO(Buster Keaton):
- CAMEO(Sid Caesar):
- CAMEO(Buddy Hackett):
- CAMEO(Jim Backus):
[more!]
# It's a Small World
- DIRCAMEO(William Castle): cop
# Jacob's Ladder
- All SFX were filmed live, with no post-production.
- CAMEO(Macaulay Culkin): dead son of Jacob Singer.
# Jaws
- Sterling Hayden was the original choice for the role of Quint. Hayden,
however, was in trouble with the Internal Revenue Service for unpaid tax.
All Hayden's income from acting was subject to a levy by the IRS, so there
was an attempt to circumvent that: Hayden was also a writer, so one idea
was to pay him union scale for his acting, and buy a story from him (his
literary income wasn't subject to levy) for a large sum. It was concluded
that the IRS would see through this scheme, so Robert Shaw was cast instead.
- The live shark footage was shot at Seal Rocks, Australia. A real white
pointer was cut up and "extended" for the close-up shots.
- The helicopter used for flying patrol is an Enstrom "Tigershark".
- CAMEO(Peter Benchley): reporter on the beach.
- A midget in a miniature cage and a real shark were used to get some shots
correct.
- Apparently, technicians lost control of one of the mechanical sharks, and it
was lost at sea.
- In many scenes, actors Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, and Shaw had to look
in amazement at the shark, when it was not there are all.
- Preview audiences screamed when the head of a shark victim appears in the
hole in the bottom of the boat. Spielberg re-shot the scene in his swimming
pool becuase he wanted them to "scream louder".
- Spielberg says that Dreyfuss is his alter ego.
- DIRTRADE(Stephen Spielberg): [music]
# JFK
- The real Jim Garrison plays Earl Warren.
- In _Bull Durham_, Kevin Costner's character states "...I believe Lee Harvey
Oswald acted alone..."
# Jigsaw (1949)
- CAMEO(Marlene Dietrich):
- CAMEO(Henry Fonda):
- CAMEO(John Garfield):
- CAMEO(Burgess Meredith):
# Joe Versus the Volcano
- The company logo appears frequently: the path leading up to the factory, the
bolt of lightning which sinks the ship, and the lava flow down the side of
the volcano, the crack in Joe's apartment, a constellation.
- The mask worn by the Waponi who is representing the evil spirit resembles
the factory where Joe used to work.
# Judgment at Nuremberg
- CAMEO(Judy Garland): Nazi victim [credited?]
# Judgment in Berlin
- CAMEO(Sean Penn): witness at trial. Sean Penn is the son of Arthur Penn,
who directed this film.
# Jurassic Park
- The park software is written in Pascal; a program is clearly visible in one
of the monitor closeups on the UNIX system. The graphical interface
recognized as a UNIX system is Silicon Graphics' "3D File System Navigator".
- Director Stephen Spielberg was worried that "computer graphics" meant
"Nintendo" type cartoon quality. He originally only wanted the heard of
gallimimus dinosaurs to be computer generated, but upon seeing ILM's
T-rex animation, he decided to shoot nearly all the dinosaur scenes using
this method.
- Spielberg wanted the Velociraptors to be about 10 feet tall, which was taller
than they were known to be. During filming, scientists discovered 10 feet
tall Velociraptors.
- A scene of Ellie pulling the leaf off an extinct plant appeared in the
film trailers but not the film itself.
- Spielberg was so confident with this film that he started making his next
film (_Schindler's List_), placing post-production in the hands of George
Lucas.
- DIRTRADE(Stephen Spielberg): [music]
# Kentucky Fried Movie, The
- In the "Feel-a-rama" movie theatre, there is a poster advertising _Schlock_,
also directed by John Landis.
- DIRTRADE(John Landis): [SYNW]: the title of the "Feel-a-Rama" movie.
# Kelly's Heroes
- The film's working title was "The Warriors".
- Director Brian G. Hutton (who had previously worked with Clint Eastwood on
_Where Eagles Dare_) was forced to make a number of cuts to suit the then
MGM boss James Aubrey.
# Killers, The (1964)
- DIRCAMEO(Don Siegel): a cook at a diner
# Kindergarten Cop
- John Kimball swears in German as he carries his collegue into the house ("Das
macht mich stinksauer! Jetzt bin ich sauer!", which means "I'm pissed as
hell! Now I am pissed!")
# King and I, The
- Deborah Kerr's singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon.
# King Kong (1933)
- The original King Kong was released four times between 1933 and 1952,
and each release saw the cutting of additional scenes. Though many of the
outtakes - including the censored sequence in which Kong peels off Fay
Wray's clothes - were restored in 1971, one cut scene has never been
found. It is the clip in which Kong shakes four sailors off a log bridge,
causing them to fall into a ravine where they are eaten alive by giant
spiders. When the movie - with spider sequence intact - was previewed in
San Bernardino, Calif., in late January, 1933, members of the audience
screamed and either left the theatre or talked about the grisly sequence
throughout the remainder of the film. Said the film's producer, Merian C.
Cooper, "It stopped the picture cold, so the next day back at the studio,
I took it out myself".
- The model of King Kong only came up to Fay Wray's Navel.
# Knightriders
- CAMEO(Stephen King):
- CAMEO(Tabitha King):
# L.A. Story
- Harris (Steve Martin) quotes poems that Martin previously quoted in
_The Man with Two Brains_.
- CAMEO(Woody Harrelson): Harris' boss at the TV station
- CAMEO(Rick Moranis): the gravedigger
- CAMEO(Chevy Chase): important guest (Christopher ???) at L'Idiot.
- CAMEO(Terry Jones): Sara's mother (voice only)
# Lady in Red, The
- CAMEO(Robert Forster):
# Lady L
- DIRCAMEO(Peter Ustinov):
# Lady Vanishes, The (1938)
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): near the end of the movie at Victoria Station
wearing a black coat and smoking a cigarette.
- The movie was remade in 1979.
# Lair of the White Worm, The
- DIRTRADE(Ken Russell): [snake]
# Last Action Hero
- References to: _Commando_, _Terminator 2: Judgment Day_, _Basic Instinct_,
_E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial_, _Amadeus_.
- Contains dozens of intentional continuity errors.
- A poster in a video store advertises _Terminator 2: Judgment Day_, which
starred Arnold Schwarzenegger. The poster identifies the star as
Schwarzenegger's friend Sylvester Stallone.
- The words "Jack Slater, and Franco Columbu film" appear in big letters on
the screen at the beginning of the Jack Slater film. Columbu is a legendary
bodybuilder friend of Schwarzenegger's.
- ACTTRADE(Arnold Schwarzenegger): "I'll be back!"
# Last Boy Scout, The
- The movie that Darian is watching on TV is _Lethal Weapon_, which was also
written by Shane Black.
- Damon Wayan's character's comment about travelling back in time if the BMW
keeps up its speed is a reference to _Back to the Future_.
# Last Starfighter, The
- All shots of spacecraft, space, etc generated on a CRAY computer. Some
objects had over 300 000 polygons, but the entire movie took only eight hours
to generate.
# League of Their Own, A
- John Lovitz had a more substantial role, but it was cut.
- Debra Winger was originally going to appear in the film, but backed out when
Madonna was signed.
- Tom Hanks gained much weight in preparation for his role.
- The old Dottie and Kit are played by other actresses, but their voices
are dubbed over by Geena Davis and Lori Petty.
- The characters at the hall of fame and seen playing after the game are
real players from the league portrayed in the film.
# Let's Make Love
- CAMEO(Gene Kelly):
- CAMEO(Bing Crosby):
- CAMEO(Milton Berle):
# Licence to Kill
- The film's working title was "License Revoked" but was later changed when
it was found to confuse test audiences in America. Titled "The Cancelled
License" in Japan.
- The film was originally to be set in China but production difficulties
became insurmountable.
- CAMEO(Pedro Armendariz Jr.): Kerim Bay's son. Pedro Armendariz Sr. played
Kerim Bay in _From Russia with Love.
- David Henderson returns as Felix Leiter [sp?], a role he first played in
_Live and Let Die_.
- At the end of the film, the credits say "James Bond will return".
# Life of Brian
- Numerous title changes: "Monty Python's Life of Brian", etc.
- More footage of the Judean People's Front crack suicide squad was filmed but
not included. Also edited out was a section during the kidnapping of
Pilate's wife where she thumps Brian on the head.
- CAMEO(George Harrison): Mr Papadopolous, owner of "The Mount", who shakes
hands with Brian and gives a very Liverpudlian "'ullo".
# Lifeboat
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): in "before" and "after" pictures in a newspaper
advert for Reduco the Obesity slayer. The pictures were genuine, as he had
just been on a crash diet (although not with the fictional Reduco).
# Light Sleeper
- In one scene, John Letour (Willem Dafoe) is shown sitting on his bed
watching old photographs and listening to some CDs. One of the CDs is the
soundtrack from Walter Hill's _Streets of Fire_, which was Willem Dafoe's
first starring role.
- The film briefly shown on TV in Susan Sarandon's home at the beginning is
Kenneth Anger's cult movie _Scorpio Rising_.
# Limelight
- Charlie Chaplin's film about a vaudeville comic on the decline features
a scene in which Chaplin, as the elderly Calvero, makes his comeback in a
music hall sketch. The routine, which originally ran 10 minutes, has
Calvero performing onstage with an old colleague, played by Buster Keaton.
It has been said that while Chaplin was good, Keaton was sensational.
Consequently, Chaplin allowed only a small portion of the scene to remain
in release prints.
# Limit Up
- CAMEO(Sally Kellerman): night club singer
# Little Mermaid, The (1989)
- Some versions of the videotape had the likeness of a penis on the cover.
It's the highest tower in the middle of the castle in the background.
- The Tiny Toon Adventure script writer Sheri Stoner was used as the model for
Ariel. See also _Beauty and the Beast (1991)_. [or was it Alyssa Milano?]
# Little Shop of Horrors (1986)
- CAMEO(Bill Murray): the masochistic patient of the sadistic dentist
- CAMEO(Jim Belushi): man who tries to buy the rights to sell Audrey 2 plants.
- CAMEO(John Candy): the voice impersonator.
- CAMEO(Christopher Guest): buys roses in the first "big sale".
- DIRCAMEO(John Waters): tries to make [Rick Moranis] sign a contract.
# Live and Let Die
- Roger Moore's first appearance as James Bond.
- UA wanted an American to play Bond: Burt Reynolds, Paul Newman and Robert
Redford were all considered. Producer Cubby Broccoli, however, insisted that
the part should be played by a Briton and puts forward the name of Roger
Moore. Sean Connery had previously turned down $5.5 million to play the
role.
- Moore should not have been available for the part since he was currently
committed to Sir Lew Grade's "The Persuaders" with Tony Curtis, but when
The show flopped in the US he was prematurely released from his contract.
- All of Roger Moore's contracts include an unlimited supply of hand rolled
Monte Cristo cigars (in one 007 movie the final bill comes to #3176.50).
- Live and Let Die is the first 007 score not to involve John Barry, former
Beatles producer George Martin does the job instead.
- The main title theme earns Paul and Lynda McCartney an Oscar nomination and
gets to #9 in the UK and #2 in the US charts.
- Unlike the previous four Bond movies, Live and Let Die is not filmed in
Panavision.
- The film is titled "The Dead Slave" in Japan.
- The power-boat jump over the causeway set the world record for distance:
110 feet. The second boat was not scripted to collide with the police car,
but after this happened while shooting the stunt, the script was changed to
accommodate it.
# Living Daylights, The
- Timothy Dalton's first appearance as James Bond. Pierce Brosnan was the hot
favourite to replace Roger Moore but was ruled out because of his
contractual obligations to the US TV series "Remington Steele". Other actors
considered included Sam Neill and Finlay Light.
- Maryam d'Abo gets a lead role after screen tests with Pierce Brosnan.
- The film's title becomes "The Skin of a Corpse" in Germany.
# Lodger, The (1926)
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): a desk in the newsroom early in the film. Some
people claim he also appears later in the crowd lynch scene.
- Hitchcock wanted an ambiguous ending to the film, but the studio wouldn't
allow it to be implied that Ivor Novello might actually be the murderer.
# Lords of the Deep
- CAMEO(Roger Corman [producer]):
# Love Is Better Than Ever
- CAMEO(Gene Kelly):
# Made in Heaven
- CAMEO(Debra Winger): Emmert, the apparently male entity who "runs things" in
heaven.
# Magnificent Seven, The
- Borrowed its plot from _The Seven Samurai_.
# Maltese Falcon, The (1941)
- George Raft was originally cast as Sam Spade.
- CAMEO(Walter Huston): Captain Jacobi
- DIRTRADE(John Huston): [father]
# Man Who Fell to Earth, The (1976)
- The power-boat jump in this movie broke the world record for distance,
previously set during the making of _Live and Let Die_.
# Man Who Knew Too Much, The (1956)
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): in the Moroccan marketplace watching the acrobats
with his back to the camera just before the murder.
- Bernard Herrmann (the composer of the score) can be seen conducting the
orchestra during the Albert Hall sequence.
- The plot calls for a man to be discovered as "not Moroccan" becuase he was
wearing black makeup. The makeup artists couldn't find a black substance
that would come off easily, and so they painted the fingers of the other man
white, so that he would leave pale streaks on the other man's skin.
- The Albert Hall sequence lasts 12 minutes without a single word of dialogue
and consists of 124 shots.
- The film was unavailable for decades because its rights (together with four
other pictures of the same periods') were bought back by Hitchcock and left
as part of his eredity to his daughter. They've been known for long as the
infamous "5 lost Hitchcocks" amongst film buffs, and were re-released in
theathers around 1984 after a 30-years absence. They are _Rear Window_, _The
Trouble with Harry_, _Rope_, _Vertigo_ and _The Man Who Knew Too Much
(1953)_.
# Man with the Golden Gun, The
- Title role originally offered to Jack Palance, but was eventually played by
Christopher Lee. Lee is author Ian Fleming's cousin. See also _Dr. No_.
- Britt Ekland auditioned for the role of Scaramanga's mistress, but director
Guy Hamilton offered her the role of Mary Goodnight after seeing her in a
bikini.
- J W Pepper (Clifton James) is a sherrif from Lousiana that James Bond met
in _Live and Let Die_. While chasing Scaramanga, Bond teams up with Pepper,
who is on holidays in Thailand.
- The stunt where Bond and Pepper do a barrel role in a car was included after
a group of university students came up with the idea and used a computer to
calculate the necessary environment. Although the bridge halves look
dilapidated, they were constructed to exacting specifications. The stunt car
had to approach the ramp at right-angles, do a sharp turn, and then hit the
ramp at a predetermined speed. The car had modified suspension, and a special
fuel system so that it wouldn't stall as it rolled over.
- Alice Cooper's "Muscle of Love" album has a song "Man With the Golden Gun"
on it. The CD version includes notes claiming it was to be the theme
song of the movie, but the producers chickened out.
- First 007 movie to be shown at the Kremlin.
- The last 007 movie co-produced by Harry Saltzman. Following many creative
differences, he sold his 50% sharin the Bond franchise to United Artists.
# Man With Two Brains, The
- The voice of the disembodied brain that Steve Martin falls in love
with was provided by an uncredited Sissy Spacek.
# Manchurian Candidate, The
- Angela Landsbury plays the lead character's mother, even though she is
actually younger than him.
# Manhattan Murder Mystery
- Lead role written for Mia Farrow, but Dianne Keaton got the role following
Farrow's breakup with the film's director Woody Allen.
# Manhunter (1986)
- This film is a prequel to _The Silence of the Lambs_. Although there are
several characters common to both films, there are only two actors who appear
in both movies. Ironically, they both play different characters in both films.
Frankie Faison plays Lt Fisk in _Manhunter_, and Barney in _The Silence of
the Lambs_, and Dan Butler plays an FBI fingerprint expert in _Manhunter_,
and an entymologist in _The Silence of the Lambs_.
# Marathon Man
- Dustin Hoffman (being a "method actor") stayed up all night to play a
character who has stayed up all night. Arriving on the set, Sir Laurence
Olivier asked him why he looked they way he did. Hoffman told him, to which
Olivier replied in jest: "Why not try acting? It's much easier."
# Marnie
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): 5 minutes into the film, in the hotel corridor as
Tippi Hedren walks by.
- The production company created for the film, "Geoffrey Stanley" was named
after Hitchcock's pet dogs.
- Hitchcock and Tippi Hedren had a major falling out during the filming and
by the end he directed her through intermediaries.
- Bruce Dern can be seen briefly as the sailor in Marnie's flashback.
- Hitchcock wanted Grace Kelly to make her screen comeback in the title role,
but the people of Monaco were not happy with the idea of their princess
playing a compulsive thief.
# Maurice
- CAMEO(Helena Bonham Carter): ???. Carter stared in director James Ivory's
previous film, _A Room With a View_.
# Maximum Overdrive
- DIRCAMEO(Stephen King): man who the ATM swears at.
# Mean Streets
- DIRCAMEO(Martin Scorsese): the hitman who shoots Robert De Niro's character.
# Meatballs Part II
- Cheryl (Kim Richards) is asked if she comes from another planet (due to her
lack of experience with boys). Cheryl replies that she sort of is. Kim
Richards played a young alien girl, marooned on earth, in two Disney movies:
_Escape to Witch Mountain_, and _Return from Witch Mountain_.
# Metropolis
- Some versions of this silent film feature a soundtrack produced by Georgio
Moroder, featuring (among others) Freddie Mercury. Some versions show on TV
also are colorized.
# Midnight Cowboy
- CAMEO(M. Emmet Walsh):
# Midnight Run
- Robert De Niro spent time with bounty hunters as part of his preparation for
this role.
# Miller's Crossing
- CAMEO(Frances McDormand): the mayor's secretary
# Misery
- A video of _When Harry Met Sally_ (also directed by Rob Reiner) is visible
in the general store.
- CAMEO(J.T. Walsh): park ranger
- DIRCAMEO(Rob Reiner): the helicopter pilot.
# Mo' Better Blues
- Joi Lee is director Spike Lee's sister. At the wedding, her character is
given away a character played by their real-life father, Bill Lee.
# Monty Python and the Holy Grail
- When Arthur rides into the village where the "witch" is about to be burnt,
Bedivere is holding a coconut slung between two swallows.
- Some major scenes scripted, but never filmed: [?]
- The gorilla hand turning the pages was director Terry Gilliam's.
- At the beginning of the "Bring out your dead" scene, two nuns with gigantic
mallots can be seen. The original script called for them to be pounding on a
man tied to a cart, but the scene was cut and that glimpse is all that
remains.
- Many shots were filmed in a city park beside one of London's busiest
intersections
- Many subtle instances of cat abuse: during the "bring out your dead" scene,
the old woman they say "Ni!" at, etc.
- Most of the castles were cardboard cutouts, and indeed the trailer shows
one of them falling over.
[more?].
# Moon Over Parador
- DIRCAMEO(Paul Mazursky): in drag
# Moonraker (1979)
- Drax' Venice laboratory has an electronic lock on it. The sequence which
unlocks the door is the hailing tune from _Close Encounters of the Third
Kind_.
- Despite the previous 007 film telling us that James Bond will return in
_For Your Eyes Only_, Broccoli choose _Moonraker_ as the next installment
after the success of _Star Wars_.
- The role of Drax was originally offered to James Mason.
- Lois Chiles had originally been offered the role of Anya in _The Spy Who
Loved Me_, but turned down the part when she decided to take temporary
retirement. She got the role of Mary Goodhead by chance when she was given
the seat next to Lewis Gilbert on a flight.
- Richard Kiel returns as Jaws, a role he first played in _The Spy Who
Loved Me_, his only line is "Here's looking at you kid", a reference to
_Casablanca_.
# Moonwalker
- Bad guy's name is "Frank Lideo". One of the film's executive producers is
Frank Deleo, Michael Jackson's long-time manager.
# Mountain Eagle, The
- No prints of this film (Hitchcock's second) are known to have survived and
no one has seen it since the late 1920s.
# Mr. and Mrs. Smith
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): about half way through the movie passing Robert
Montgomery in front of his building.
- Hitchcock's only screwball comedy. He was talked into directing it by Carole
Lombard.
# Much Ado About Nothing (1993)
- Patrick Doyle (who played Balthasar) composed the music for this film.
- Much of the singing was not re-recorded.
# Muppet Movie, The
- Jim Henson spent an entire day in a 50 gallon steel drum submerged in a
pond for the opening scene of Kermit in the swamp.
# Murder!
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): about an hour into the movie walking past the
house where the murder was committed.
- A German version called "Mary" was filmed at the same time using German
actors, but the same sets.
- The scene where Herbert Marshall thinks out loud in front of a mirror had to
be filmed with a recording of Marshall's lines and an orchestra hidden
behind the set as it was not possible to dub the soundtrack later.
# My Brilliant Career
- DIRCAMEO(Gilliam Armstrong): cabaret backup singer
# My Fair Lady
- Audrey Hepburn's singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon.
# Nashville
- CAMEO(Elliot Gould):
- CAMEO(Julie Christie):
# National Lampoon's Animal House
- A character named Babs becomes a tour guide at Universal Studios. The
credits for this film (and other John Landis films) include an advertisement
for a tour at Universal Studios. The ad contains the words "Ask for Babs".
# Natural, The
- Loosely based on the story of Sir Percival from the Arthurian myths:
- The broken bat = the broken sword
- Pop Fisher = The Fisher King
- The team called "The Knights"
# Never Say Never Again
- The film's title was originally "Warhead" but was changed and become an in
joke on Connery's refusal to play 007 ever again. He was eventually paid
$5 million, which made him the highest paid British actor to date.
- Orson Wells was originally going to play Blofeld, and Trevor Howard was to
appear as "M".
- Author Kevin McClory (co-writer of _Thunderball_) had won the legal right to
make his own 007 film as long as production started after 1975 and the story
was based on _Thunderball_.
- McClory enlisted the help of Len Deighton and Connery when writing the
script, prior to Connery agreeing to return as Bond.
- An early plot had SPECTRE attacking Wall Street from the sewers of New York
in giant mechanical sharks.
- There is a rumour that Timothy Dalton is visible in the casino. Dalton would
later play James Bond.
- The title refers to the fact that the characters travel "Northwest Air
Lines". The working title was "The Man in Lincoln's Nose".
- The shot of Cary Grant entering the UN building had to be filmed with a
hidden camera as Hitchcock wasn't able to get permission to shoot there.
- At one point the movie's title was to be "The Man in Lincoln's Nose",
referring to the final chase sequence on Mount Rushmore.
# Notorious (1946)
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): about an hour in, drinking champagne at the party
in Claude Rains' mansion.
- Hitchcock claimed that the FBI had him under surveillance for three months
because the film dealt with Uranium for the A-bomb.
- Producer David O. Selznick originally wanted Vivien Leigh for Ingrid
Bergman's role.
- The original story, "The Song of the Dragon" was first published in the
Saturday Evening Post in November 1921.
- It was remade in 1992 as a TV-movie.
# Octopussy
- Maude Adams (Octopussy) is the only female actress (besides the actress that
played Miss Moneypenny) to appear in more than one 007 film (_The Man With
the Golden Gun_ was the other). Faye Dunaway and Sybil Danning were
considered for the role.
- Vijay Amritraj is a professional tennis player in real life.
- The "company" taxi used to pick up 007 was specially constructed at Pinewood
Studios, and capable of speeds in excess of 70mph.
- Robert Brown appears as "M" for the first time.
# Omen, The
- According to director Richard Donner, a number of parents went home after the
film and shaved their childrens' heads, looking for a "666" birthmark.
# On Her Majesty's Secret Service
- At 140 minutes OHMSS in the longest 007 movie.
- George Lazenby appears for the first and last time as James Bond.
- Originally intended to follow _Goldfinger_ then _Thunderball_.
- Lazenby was previously a car salesman with a part time job as a male model.
- The search for a new Bond was compared with the search for Scarlett O'Hara.
Lazenby was determined to get the role, he spent most of what money he had
on a Saville Row suit and a Rolex watch, then while having a Bond type
haircut. Cubby Broccoli walked into the same salon, made the connection and
later offered him the part.
- Blofeld's headquarters was a partially completed restaurant on top of Mount
Schilthorn. The owners allowed filming on condition EON paid $125,000 to
refit the interior and construct a helicopter pad. When the restaurant opened
it was given the name Piz Gloria used in the film.
- Actors condsidered for the part of Tracy Draco included Bridget Bardot and
Catherine Deneuve. Diana Rigg was finally chosen partly because of her
appearance as Emma Peel in British TV's spy series "The Avengers".
- Lazenby and Rigg were rumoured to have had a bad relationship on set. One
of the more ridiculous suggestions was that Rigg ate garlic before filming
the love scenes.
- Peter Hunt had previously edited many 007 movies, the job of editor (and
second unit directing) went to John Glenn.
- Lyrics were originally intended for John Barry's main theme, but were later
rejected in favour of Louis Armstrong's memorable rendition of "We Have All
The Time In The World".
- Lazenby was originally offered a three picture deal, but when this film
performed badly at the box office he rejected the contract believing that
being associated with a series which he thought had no commercial future
would harm his career.
# One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
- Ken Kesey, who wrote the original novel, said he will never watch the movie
version.
- Many extras were authentic mental patients
- There is a rumour that Jack Nicholson underwent ECT therapy during the
scene were his character does.
# Outsiders, The (1983)
- CAMEO(S.E. Hinton [author]): nurse.
# Overboard (1987)
- CAMEO(Garry Marshall [producer]):
- CAMEO(Hector Elizondo [producer]): skipper
# Pacific Heights
- DIRCAMEO(John Schlesinger): man in the hotel elevator.
- CAMEO(Beverly D'Angelo): Michael Keaton's character's girlfriend at the
beginning.
# Paradine Case, The
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): getting off a train at the Cumberland station
carrying a cello (see also his cameo in _Strangers on a Train_).
- An exact replica of the Old Bailey courtroom was constructed for
the court scenes.
# Patriot Games
- Alec Baldwin played Jack Ryan in _The Hunt for Red October_, but Harrison
Ford replaced him for this and future Tom Clancy films due to either
Baldwin's "unprofessional behaviour" during the making of _The Hunt for Red
October_, or the rumour that he wanted $4 million.
- The novel on which it was based (by Tom Clancy) had the Prince and Princess
of Wales as the target of the attempted kidnapping.
- The line "There's never been a terrorist attack on American soil" was
included in trailers for movie, but was left out of theatrical release
because it sounded too much like an invitation or dare.
# Pet Sematary
- CAMEO(Stephen King): minister at the funeral.
# Pink Floyd - The Wall
- The actress who played the groupie in Pink's caravan/apartment wasn't told
that Bob Geldof would be throwing that object at her, so he reaction of
ducking was totally spontaneous.
- Scene for the song "Hey You" was filmed. It showed British police in riot
gear facing off against a mob. Roger Waters asked this reel to be cut.
- The poetry that young Pink was caught with during "The Happiest Days of Our
Lives" is the second verse from "Money", off Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the
Moon". Far from being "absolute rubbish", this album stayed longer on the
Billboard chart than any other album: more than 700 weeks.
- Director Alan Parker walked out on this project many times, probably due to
and ego clash with Roger Waters. Waters was annoyed at Parker, who didn't
like the way that he wanted to make it a cult film. Pink Floyd's next
album _The Final Cut_ contains the following lyrics (written by Waters):
"Not now John, we've gotta get on with the film show:
Hollywood waits at the end of the rainbow.
Who cares what it's about, as long as the kids go?
So not now John I've gotta get on with the show."
Parker refers to this film as "the most expensive student film ever made."
- The lyrics sung by Pink as he huddled in the bathroom stall later
resurfaced in "Moment of Clarity" in Roger Waters' solo album: "The Pros and
Cons of Hitch-Hiking" [if anyone can translate the line before he switches to
"I wanna go home," etc, I'd appreciate it]. He also uses some lines which
surfaced in Pink Floyd's next album, "The Final Cut". Waters originally
# Pink Panther, The
- The role of Inspector Clouseau was originally offered to Peter Ustinov.
Despite being relatively unknown internationally, Peter Sellers was offered
the part, and was paid #90000.
- Sellers models the character of Clouseau on the trademark of a box
of matches which includes an image of Captain Matthew Webb, who in 1875
became the first person to swim the channel (his heroic moustache and
proud stance are both mimicked). To lose weight, Sellers took dieting pills
for a year.
- In the bath scene with Capucine and Robert Wagner, an industrial strength
foaming agent is used which burns both of the stars' skin. Wagner, who is
completely immersed at one point, becomes blind for four weeks.
- The "sequel", _A Shot in the Dark_ actually premiered before
_The Pink Panther_.
- Every contract of Peter Sellers includes a clause which stipulates that his
accommodation must allow his bed to face East-West.
# Pretty Woman
- The working title was "3000". A early version of the script had [Julia
Roberts] additcted to cocaine; part of the deal was that she had to stay off
it for a week. She needed to money to go to Disneyland. [Richard Gere]
eventually throws her out of his car and drives off. The movie was scripted
to end with [Roberts] and her prostitute friend on the bus to Disneyland.
- Julia Roberts had a body double for the intimate shots.
- Julia Roberts' head was superimposed on her body double for the poster.
Richard Gere's hair is brown on the poster, but greying in the movie.
- CAMEO(Larry Miller): head salesman at a clothing store.
# Prince of Darkness
- The credits list "Martin Quartermass" as the screenwriter, but it was
actually John Carpenter. The pseudonym is a homage to Nigel Kneale's
character "Professor Quartermass".
# Producers, The
- Mel Brooks' voice is dubbed in for a singer in "Springtime for Hitler"
# Psycho
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): about 4 minutes in wearing a cowboy hat outside
Janet Leigh's office.
- The film only cost $800,000 to make yet has earned more than $40 million.
Hitchcock used the crew from his TV series to save time and money. In
1962 exchanged the rights to the film and his TV-series for a huge block
of MCA's stock (he became their third largest stockholder).
- Robert Bloch's original novel was inspired by the notorious serial killer
Ed Gein, who was also one of the inspirations for the character of Hannibal
Lector (_The Silence of the Lambs_/_Manhunter_).
- Hitchcock bought the rights to the novel anonymously from Robert Bloch for
just $9,000. He then bought up as many copies of the novel as he could to
keep the ending a secret.
- The shower scene has over 90 splices in it.
- During the shooting of the shower scene, Hitchcock arranged for the water to
suddenly go ice-cold when the attack started.
- Hitchcock originally envisioned the shower sequence as completely silent,
but Bernard Herrmann went ahead and scored it anyway and Hitch immediately
changed his mind.
- The blood in the shower scene is actually chocolate sauce.
- The closeup of Janet Leigh's dead body and the pullback scene is a still
frame. Hitchcock's wife saw the original version and told her husband "You
can see her breathing", so he changed it.
- The shot of Janet Leigh flushing the toilet is believed to be the first
such shot in American cinema history.
- Hitchcock tested the "fear factor" of mother's corpse by placing it in
Janet Leigh's dressing room and listening to how loud she screamed when
she discovered it.
- The skull superimposed over Norman's face at the film's conclusion is that
of "Mother."
- There is a rumour that the MPAA refused to pass this film because they
- The scene by the chain link fence where Jack meets his girlfriend was
ad-libbed.
- De Niro accidentally broke Joe Pesci's rib in a sparring scene. This shot
appears in the film: De Niro hits Pesci in the side, Pesci groans, and there
is a quick cut to another angle.
- De Niro gained over 50 pounds to play the older LaMotta. It took many years
before he got back down to his original weight.
- DIRCAMEO(Martin Scorsese): asking Jack to go on stage.
# Raiders of the Lost Ark
- Begins with a shot of a peak in the jungle which is reminiscent of the
Paramount Pictures logo. See also (_Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom_,
and _Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade_)
- Tom Selleck originally cast as Indiana Jones.
- Frank Marshall (the film's producer) played the airline pilot. [?????]
- Fred Sorenson (Jock, the airline pilot) flew the producer of _Jurassic Park_
(directed by Stephen Spielberg) off Kauai just before the hurricane hit.
- Jock's airplane at the beginning has the registration number "OB-3PO",
refering to Obi-wan and C-3PO from _Star Wars_.
- Script originally included a long fight between a swordsman and Indiana with
his whip. Actor Harrison Ford was suffering diarrhea at the time, and asked
"Why don't I just shoot him?", so they did this instead.
- The truck that didn't have Marion in it was flipped over by firing a section
of a telephone pole through the floorboards.
- The hieroglyphics in the map room include engravings of R2-D2 and C-3PO (from
_Star Wars_, etc), however they do not appear on film.
- DIRTRADE(Stephen Spielberg): [music]
# Rain Man
- The scene where Raymond explains that every major airline except Qantas
has had a crash is cut from the version shown on every major airline except
Qantas.
- DIRCAMEO(Barry Levinson): psychiatrist determining if Raymond should stay
with Charlie or not.
# Raising Arizona
- [supposedly full of in-jokes and movie references]
# Rambo: First Blood Part II
- The cript was written by James Cameron, who went on to direct _Aliens_.
# Rear Window
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): about an hour into the film, winding the clock in
the songwriter's apartment. The songwriter is real-life songwriter Ross
Bagdasariam.
- At the time the set was the largest indoor set built at Paramount Studios.
- The film was unavailable for decades because its rights (together with four
other pictures of the same periods') were bought back by Hitchcock and left
as part of his eredity to his daughter. They've been known for long as the
infamous "5 lost Hitchcocks" amongst film buffs, and were re-released in
theathers around 1984 after a 30-years absence. They are _Rear Window_, _The
Trouble with Harry_, _Rope_, _Vertigo_ and _The Man Who Knew Too Much
(1953)_.
- Lite gives Otto a book called "Diuretics" to "help change your life". This
is a reference to L. Ron Hubbard's "Dianetics".
- The movie was made by "edge city productions" - edge city is a recurring
theme in Tom Wolfe's "Electric Kool-Ade Acid Test". The destination placard
on the bus that Otto takes back to his folks' house reads "Edge City".
# Repulsion
- DIRCAMEO(Roman Polanski): spoons player
# Return of the Jedi
- SFX crew claim to have included a "sneaker" as one of the spaceships in a
complex dog-fight scene.
- Jabba's sail barge was filmed in Yuma, Arizona. The film crew had problems
avoiding the 35,000 dune buggy enthusiasts in the area. To preserve secrecy,
the producers claimed to be making a horror film called "Blue Harvest (Horror
beyond your imagination)", and even had caps and t-shirts made up for the
crew. A chain-link fence and a 24-hour security service could not prevent
die-hard fans from entering the set and sneaking some photographs.
- Experiments with a computer to generate a random but logical language for
some creatures produced a dialect of Greek.
- Luke's hand gets shot. Leia gets shot in the shoulder. Luke cuts off Darth
Vader's hand. See also _Star Wars_ and _The Empire Stries Back_.
- The dancer that Jabba drops into the Rancor pit loses her top as she falls
in.
- Carrie Fisher's birthmark (near the small of her back) is visible in the
desert scene where she turns her back to the camera to swing around a
mounted laser gun.
- Rumor has it that Nien Numb speaks a Kenyan dialect, and one of his lines
is "One thousand herds of elephants are standing on my foot".
- Lando Calrissian and The Millenium Falcon originally scripted to perish in
the Death Star explosion, but this was changed after a poor preview audience
reception. Note Han's line when Calrissian leaves in the Falcon: "...like
I'm not going to see her again..."
- It is rumoured that a different ending was shot, but discarded later
on. It featured the (long awaited) marriage between Leia Organa and
Han Solo. Dark Horse4s Comic "Dark Empire" is based on that fact and
presents Han and Leia as a married couple.
- Dennis (two "n"s) Lawson, who played Wedge Antilles in _Star Wars_ and
_The Empire Strikes Back_ was unavailable for this movie. A new actor was
hired in England, given the name Denis (one "n") Lawson, filmed on a secret
sound stage (all his lines are from within a fighter cockpit). [rumour]
- Among the aliens in Jabba the Hutt's entourage are ones named "Klaatu,"
"Barada" and "Nikto," after the command given to the robot Gort in _The Day
the Earth Stood Still_. The aliens are not referred to by name in the film,
nor do they have any lines. Klaatu is the character who tries to push Luke
into Sarlacc.
- The name "Ewok" is never used to refer to the teddy-bear creatures in the
film, though it does appear in the credits.
- The following characters "have a bad feeling about this": C-3PO, Han, and
Lando.
- The Endor shots were filmed near Crescent City, California. Forest work was
especially hard on the Ewok actors. Production Assistant Ian Bryce arrived
on the set one day to find a note from the Ewok actors saying that they had
all had enough and they were on their way to the airport. Bryce tried to
drive to the airport, but got a flat tire not far from the set. He found
another car and was about to leave when the Ewok's bus pulled up, and all
the Ewok actors got off wearing "Revenge of the Ewok" t-shirts.
- Darth Vader's body was played by David Prowse, his voice by James Earl Jones,
and his face by Sebastian Shaw.
- One of the songs that the Ewoks sing sounds like: "Det luktar flingor har",
which is Swedish for "It smeels of cereal here."
- The title "Revenge of the Jedi" was leaked early in production, so that
pirated merchandise could be easily spotted when the film was released. The
official reason for the change was that "...a Jedi would not take revenge".
Some authentic pre-release movie posters actually had "Revenge", and are
worth a lot of money today.
- Portions of the partially completed Death Star model resemble the San
Francisco skyline.
- FTP site wpi.wpi.edu is the official rec.arts.sf.starwars archive.
# Reversal of Fortune
- CAMEO(Julie Hagerty):
# Right Stuff, The
- CAMEO(Chuck Yeager): the bartender.
# Robin Hood: Men in Tights
- The hangman in this film is played by the same man (?) who played the hangman
in _Blazing Saddles_, also directed by Mel Brooks.
- There is a rumour that the idea for this film came when a studio executive
turned to his son and jokingly demanded "Give me an idea for a sure-fire hit,
or else!". The boy replied "That's easy. Do a parody of Robin Hood."
DIRECTIVE 250 Don't walk across a ballroom floor swinging your arms
- In the scene where Robocop was being reprogrammed by Dr. Juilette Faxx,
the following hex numbers scroll quickly up the screen: "50 45 54 45 20 4B 55
52 41 4E 20 49 53 20 41 20 47 52 45 41 54 20 47 55 59". Converted to ASCII
text, it reads: "PETE KURAN IS A GREAT GUY". Peter Kuran was the special
effects photograper.
# Romancing the Stone
- DIRTRADE(Robert Zemeckis): [citation]: At the beginning of the movie, when
Joan Wilder has finished the book, she prepares "dinner" for her cat. This
scene remembles a well-known commercial for cat-food.
# Rope
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): on a neon sign in the view from the apartment
window.
- The film was shot in a series of 8 minute continuous takes (the maximum
amount of film that a camera could hold). At the end of each segment the
camera zooms in on a dark object, ready to zoom out for the start of the
next segment. Most of the props were on castors and the crew had to wheel
them out of the way as the camera moved around the set.
- The film lasts 80 minutes, and covers a time frame of 80 minutes.
- Hitchcock only managed to shoot roughly one segment per day. The last 4 or 5
segments had to be completely re-shot because Hitch wasn't happy with the
colour of the sunset.
- The film was unavailable for decades because its rights (together with four
other pictures of the same periods') were bought back by Hitchcock and left
as part of his eredity to his daughter. They've been known for long as the
infamous "5 lost Hitchcocks" amongst film buffs, and were re-released in
theathers around 1984 after a 30-years absence. They are _Rear Window_, _The
Trouble with Harry_, _Rope_, _Vertigo_ and _The Man Who Knew Too Much
(1953)_.
# Rose, The
- Loosely based on the life of Janis Joplin.
# Rosemary's Baby
- CAMEO(producer William Castle): man near phone booth.
# Roxanne
- This movie is a remake of _Cyrano de Bergerac_. Martin's character (C D
Bales), has the same initials.
- C D Bales is challenged to tell 20 nose jokes. After he tells 19, he asks
"How many's that?", to which he is told "Fourteen!". He goes on to tell
another six, making 25 in total.
# Running Man, The (1987)
- Game show host Damon Killian is played by Richard Dawson, long-time host of
the American game show "Family Feud".
- Author Richard Bachman is Stephen King.
- CAMEO(Franco Columbu):
- ACTTRADE(Arnold Schwarzenegger): "I'll be back!"
# Saboteur
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): about an hour in, standing in front of Cut Rate
Drugs in New York as the saboteur's car stops.
# Saturday Night Fever
- Originally rated R, edited and re-released as PG.
# Say Anything...
- CAMEO(Lois Chiles):
# Scanners
- bullet impacts are normally simulated by explosives. The exploding head was
done by shooting a life-size gelatin model with a shotgun.
# Scenes from a Mall
- DIRCAMEO(Paul Mazursky): promoting Bette Midler's character's book on TV
# Scent of a Woman (1992)
- Al Pacino was helped by a school for the blind in his preparation for this
role.
- During the disciplinary meeting, the headmaster tells Slade "You are out of
order!", a famous line told to another of Pacino's characters in _...And
Justice for All_.
- SMITHEE(Martin Brest): disowned the version shown on airlines.
# Singles
- CAMEO(Tim Burton): video director
- CAMEO(Eric Stoltz): mime
# Sleepless in Seattle
- Obvious references to _An Affair to Remember_, Anna is nearly hit by a taxi.
- This film's director (Nora Ephron) wrote _When Harry Met Sally..._, which
also starred Meg Ryan, and was directed by Rob Reiner, who appears in
_Sleepless in Seattle_
# Sleepwalkers
- CAMEO(Mark Hamill): one of the police officers who enters the house at the
beginning.
- CAMEO(Stephen King): the cemetary keeper
- CAMEO(Tobe Hooper): technician
# Sneakers
- Dan Aykroyd's character wants a Winnebago. Aykroyd co-wrote and starred as
Elwood Blues in _The Blues Brothers_. That film featured "The Good Ole Boys",
a country and western band which drive around in a large Winnebago that
Elwood was responsible for the destruction of.
- There is a character called "Officer Festrunk". Dan Aykroyd and Steve Martin
used to play two "wild and crazy Czechoslovakian" guys in "Saturday Night
Live" named the Festrunk brothers.
# Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
- Cut scenes:
- The queen holds the prince in the dungeon and uses her magic to make
skeletons dance for his amusement.
- Fantasy sequence accompanying "Some Day My Prince Will Come" in which
Snow White imagines herself dancing with her prince in the clouds beneath a
sea of stars
- Dwarves building Snow White a bed with help from woodland creatures.
- The song "Music in Your Soup" where the dwarves sing about the soup that
Snow White had just made them.
# Some Like It Hot (1959)
- Marilyn Monroe required more than 30 takes to get "Where is the bourbon?"
correct.
# Something Wild (1986)
- The two old ladies in the re-sale shop are the mothers of David Byrne and
director Jonathan Demme.
# Spaceballs
- The "chestbuster" scene in the interstellar diner features John Hurt, who
suffered the same fate in _Alien_. In an obscure joke, the creature emulates
the singing frog in the classic Warner Brothers cartoon "One Froggy Evening".
- One of the ships parked at the diner is the the Millenium Falcon from _Star
Wars_.
# Spartacus
- Of the 167 days it took Stanley Kubrick to shoot Spartacus, six weeks
were spent directing an elaborate battle sequence in which 8,500 extras
dramatised the clash between the Roman troops and Spartacus's slave army.
Several scenes in the battle drew the ire of the Legion of Decency and
were therefore cut. These include shots of men being dismembered (Dwarfs
with false torsos and an armless man with a phony "break-away" limb were
used to give authenticity.) Seven years later, when the Oscar winning film
was reissued, an additional 22 minutes were chopped out, including a scene
in which Varinia (Jean Simmons) watches Spartacus (Kirk Douglas) writhe in
agony on a cross. Her line "Oh, please die, my darling" was excised, and
the scene was cut to make it appear that Spartacus was already dead.
[Question: are the scenes mentioned as "edited out" of the other two releases
of Spartacus restored in the DC? I'm sure the ending features Douglas on the
cross, with Simmonds showing him their baby. What about the graphic battle
scene?]
# Spellbound
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): about 40 minutes in, coming out of the elevator
at the Empire hotel carrying a violin.
- One of the first Hollywood films to deal with psychoanalysis.
- The dream sequence was designed by Salvador Dali, and was originally
supposed to run for 20 minutes. It included a scene with Ingrid Bergman
covered in ants. Only part of it was filmed, and even less of it ended up in
the release version.
- The shot where the audience sees the killer's view down a gun barrel
pointing at Ingrid Bergman was filmed using a giant hand holding a giant
gun to get the perspective correct.
# Spies Like Us
- CAMEO(BB King): CIA agent at the drive-in.
- CAMEO(Ray Harryhausen): a surgeon.
- CAMEO(Frank Oz): test monitor.
- DIRTRADE(John Landis): [SYNW]: on the recruitment poster behind the desk of
the commander of the army training post.
- CAMEO(Terry Gilliam): a surgeon.
- CAMEO(Michael Apted):
- CAMEO(Costa-Gavras):
- CAMEO(Joel Coen):
- CAMEO(Martin Brest):
- CAMEO(Bob Swaim):
[Many famous directors appear in this movie.... credited?]
# Spirit of 76, The
- Production team includes a number of relatives of famous movie people. One
of the executive producers is Roman Coppola (son of Francis Ford). Sofia
Coppola is credited for costume design. Produced/casting by Susan Landau
(daughter of Martin).
- CAMEO(Barbara Bain [wife of Martin Landau]):
- CAMEO(Carl Reiner [father of director]):
- CAMEO(Rob Reiner [brother of director]):
# Splendor in the Grass (1961)
- As filmed, Splendor in the Grass included a sequence in which Wilma Dean
Loomis (Natalie Wood) takes a bath while arguing with her mother (Audrey
Christie). The bickering finally becomes so intense that Wilma jumps out
of the tub and runs nude down a hallway to her bedroom, where the cammera
cuts to a close-up of her bare legs kicking hysterically on the mattress.
Both the Hollywood censors and the Catholic Legion Of Decency objected to
the hallway scene, finding Miss Wood's bare backside unsuitable for public
display. Consequently, director Elia Kazan dropped the piece, leaving an
abrupt jump from tub to bed.
# Spy Who Loved Me, The
- The first 007 movie in which the theme song focuses on Bond, rather than
the villian.
- First 007 movie to be filmed in Dolby stereo.
- $1 million of the $13.5 million budget was spent by production designer Ken
Adam on building the largest sound stage in the world: 336'x139'x44'. The
set was used for the interior shots of Stromberg's supertanker. The tank
had a capacity of 1.2 million gallons .
- Fleming was so displeased with his novel that his contract with EON only
allows the title to be used. One storyline had Blofeld returning, but Kevin
McClory (who co-wrote _Thunderball_) threatened legal action, claiming that
he had exclusive use of the SPECTRE concept. At the same time, McClory
begins work on his rival Bond movie "Warhead" (renamed _Never Say Never
Again_).
- Rick Sylvester was paid $30000 for the skiing stunt in the opening sequence.
- Jaws was played by Richard Kiel, who played an almost identical part a year
earlier in _Silver Streak_.
- After the film's release, demand for white Lotus Esprits surges to the point
that new customers had to be placed on a three year waiting list.
# Stage Fright (1950)
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): turning to look at Jane Wyman in her disguise as
Marlene Dietrich's maid.
# Stagecoach (1939)
- Director John Ford deliberately only allowed one take, so that actors would
remain nervous.
- Ford refused to place the camera on a movable dolly, insisting that all shots
were pans from a stationary camera.
- The first "camera in a hole with a train going over" shot.
# Stakeout
- Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez were having a movie trivia contest on
the set one day. Estevez asked Dreyfuss to identify the movie that the line
"This is no boating accident" was from. Dreyfus didn't recognize the quote,
despite the fact that he was the actor who said it in _Jaws_. Deciding that
this was too good to pass up, this incident was re-enacted for the film.
# Stand by Me
- The names of all the towns in the movie (set in Oregon) are real places in
Maine (where author Stephen King grew up and lives).
- CAMEO(Richard Dreyfuss): in a framing device [?]
# Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
- There are several books in the container that shelters Khan's followers on
Ceti Alpha VI. Two of the titles are "Moby Dick" and "King Lear", and
a lot of Khan's lines are directly taken from those books.
In particular, the final monologue of Khan is identical to the last words
of Captain Ahab from Melville's book.
# Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
- The punk on the bus is Kirk Thatcher (executive producer), who also wrote and
performed the song that is playing on his stereo at the time.
- CAMEO(Bob Sarlatte): waiter in the restuarant.
# Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
- The movie was originally to be an extension of an episode of the original
television series. In the movie, they would be searching for the villian.
During filming, they changed to the "Search for God".
# Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
- William Shatner was distressed when he saw how wide his butt was in
the scene where he walks across the bridge (away from the camera).
He had them airbrush the entire scene to make his butt look narrower.
# Star Trek: The Motion Picture
- When Spock travels through V'ger and sees all the incredible imagery,
Darth Vader and Miss Piggy can be seen. It comes right after his line
"Who or what are we dealing with?". Occurs 94 minutes into the film.
# Star Wars
- Director George Lucas had trouble getting funding for this movie, most
studios thinking that people wouldn't go to see it.
- Derived from (among other things) a Japanese movie called _Hidden Fortress_.
Obi Wan Kenobi was modelled after a Samurai warrior type, and C-3PO and R2-D2
are derived from a couple of petty crooks he conscripted to help rescue a
princess.
- The word "Jedi" is derived from the Japanese words "Jidai Geki" which
translate as "period drama." A period drama is a Japanese TV soap opera
program set in the samurai days. Lucas mentioned in an interview that he
saw a "Jidai Geki" program on TV while in Japan a year or so before the
movie was made and liked the word.
- Jodie Foster was Lucas' second option for Princess Leia, Christopher Walken
was second in line for Han Solo. Lucas also considered Nick Nolte for the
role of Solo.
- A great deal of the film was shot by vintage 1950's VistaVision cameras,
because they were of higher quality than any others available. After the
film was released, the prices of these cameras skyrocketed.
- The episode number and subtitle "A New Hope" did not originally appear in
the film's opening crawl. These were added in a later re-release to be
consistent with those seen in _The Empire Strikes Back_.
- There is a rumour that while George Lucas and a co-worker were editing
_American Graffiti_, the co-worker asked Lucas for "Reel Two, Dialog Two",
which abbreviated to "R2D2", a name which stuck in Lucas' mind.
- Scene of escape pod leaving Leia's ship was the first ever done by ILM.
- C-3PO originally scripted as a "used car salesman" type, and designed after
the robot from _Metropolis_.
- The Tatooine scenes were filmed in Tunisia. There is a town in Tunisia
called "Tatahouine".
- The sounds of the lasers were made by striking one of the guy wires of a
power pylon.
- Chewbacca was modeled after Lucas' dog, Indiana. See also _Indiana Jones and
the Last Crusade_.
- C-3PO loses an arm when attacked by the Sandpeople. Ben cuts off a
creature's hand in the Cantina. See also _The Empire Strikes Back_ and
_Return of the Jedi_.
- The following characters "have a bad feeling about this": Luke and Han. See
also _The Empire Strikes Back_, and _Return of the Jedi_.
- A small pair of metal dice can be seen hanging in the cockpit of the
Millenium Falcon as Chewbacca makes preparations to depart from Mos Eisley.
They don't appear in subsequent scenes.
- Han and Luke "transfer" Chewbacca from cellblock 1138: George Lucas made a
film called _THX 1138_.
- Harrison Ford deliberately didn't learn his lines for the intercom
conversation in the cell block, so it would sound spontaneous.
- When the stormtroopers enter the room where C-3PO and R2-D2 are hiding, one
of them "accidentally" bumps his head on the door, complete with sound
effects. The lead stormtrooper then says: "See to him".
- Scenes featuring Luke and his Tatooine friend "Biggs" were cut from the
film. Biggs was a young pilot who left the Imperial Academy to join the
Rebellion. Luke mentions him to his "aunt" and "uncle" during the breakfast
scene, and the character later shows up as a Rebel pilot who accompanies Luke
down the final run on the Death Star trench (and is killed by Darth Vader).
- Cardboard cutouts are used for some of the background starfighters in the
Rebel hanger bay.
- Mark Hamill held his breath for so long during the trash compactor scene that
he broke a blood vessel in his face. Subsequent shots are from one side
only.
- Luke's other wingman on the trench run is named Wedge Antilles, and is
played by Dennis (two 'n's) Lawson. See also _The Empire Strikes Back_ and
_Return of the Jedi_. [rumour]
- When Luke returns to the Rebel base after destroying the Death Star, he
gets out of his X-Wing and greets Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) who is
running towards him. He says "Carrie!".
- Most of the crowd watching the heroes receive their medallions are cardboard
cutouts.
- George Lucas' owns property in California called "Skywalker Ranch".
- FTP site wpi.wpi.edu is the official rec.arts.sf.starwars archive.
- A big latticed window casts a spider's web-like shadow across the actors.
- It was remade as a British TV movie in 1987.
# Tall Guy, The
- The name "Ron Anderson" is remarkably similar to the name of the actor who
plays him: Rowan Atkinson. One of the other contenders for the award that
Anderson won was Griff Rhys-Jones, the "Jones" half of the comedy duo "Alas
Smith and Jones". Mel Smith directed the film. Smith, Jones, and Atkinson
starred together in the TV series "Not the Nine O'Clock News".
Also "Ron Anderson" refers to his side-kick (Jeff Goldblum) on stage as
"Perkins". When performing live, Rowan Atkinson frequently uses Angus Deayton
as his sidekick who is always called "Perkins". Angus Deayton makes a small
appearch in the film as an actor looking at several excellent roles whilst
[Jeff Goldblum] gets offered a single role as a tall american.
- The car that [Jeff Goldblum] races to the Hospital in at the end of the film
(a blue Aston Martin registration 'COMIC') belonged to Rowan Atkinson.
[Goldblum] is pulled over by the police for speeding just as Rowan Atkinson
was in real life in the very same car. Atkinson received a driving ban as a
result of the incident.
- The choreographer for the musical "Elephant" is really a very reknowned
choreographer, and has appeared in the BBC series "Red Drawf" after helping
to choreograph a dance routine for one of the episodes. [name?]
- The T800's bike jump into the stormwater drain was performed by a stuntman
Peter Kent. The motorbike was supported by 1-inch cables, so that when they
hit the ground, the bike and rider only weighted 180 pounds. The cables were
later digitally erased.
- More explicit shots of the arm cutting scene were removed.
- SFX crew had to incorporate Robert Patrick's football-injury limp in their
animation of the T1000.
- The morphing software and digital images requied 150 gigabytes of storage.
- For the truck scene, they modified a normal truck to hide the usual steering
wheel, and added a cosmetic steering wheel on the right side. In addition,
the truck had a mirror-image licence plate and other necessary stuff.
Next, they filmed the stuff with the T1000 pretending to be driving from
the right-hand steering wheel (wearing a mirror-image police uniform),
while the real driver was hidden under a black hood at the lowered real
steering wheel. For the final film, the scenes were flipped left-to-right
to make it all look right, and combined with footage shot with a normal
truck driving in the drain. This was done so that actor Robert Patrick could
concentrate on acting rather than driving. They accidentally caught a street
sign; after they mirror-imaged the scene, they digitally reversed the text on
the sign so it would appear correct.
- After throwing the T800 through the shopping center window, the T1000 glances
at a mannequin that is entirely covered with chrome. Reminiscent of Reese
shooting the T800 in the Tech Noir bar in _The Terminator_.
- The T1000 tells the helicopter pilot to "Get out!". This is an interesting
parallel to _The Terminator_, in which the T800 gives the same command to
a truck driver under similar circumstances.
- John and Sarah's surname was "Connor" in _The Terminator_, but "Conner" in
this film.
- The T800 loses its left arm, and hauls itself forward with its right. The
same thing happened to the T800 in _The Terminator_.
- The T1000 has at least three hands when it is flying the helicopter.
- Linda Hamilton's twin Leslie played the T1000 when it was imitating Sarah
Connor.
- Identical twins Don and Dan Stratton played the hospital security guard and
the T1000.
- The T-800 says "I need a vacation", which Arnold Schwarzenegger previously
said in _Kindergarten Cop_. This was not in the script, but ad-libbed.
- Schwarzenegger said during the making of this film that he would never play
another evil character again.
- A "T800" is a parallel CPU usually found running OCCAM.
- ACTTRADE(Arnold Schwarzenegger): "I'll be back!"
- DIRTRADE(James Cameron): [nice cut]: during the opening credits: the cut
from the playing children to the dark future.
- DIRTRADE(James Cameron): [feet]: the terminator in the future crushes a
skull with its foot.
- DIRTRADE(James Cameron): [feet]: When the T800 and the T1000 meet for the
first time, the T800 takes the gun out of the flower box and walks over
the roses.
- DIRTRADE(James Cameron): [feet]: When Sarah, John and the T800 are chased
by the T1000 through the psychiatric clinic, the T1000 walks over the
sunglasses that the T800 was wearing before.
# Terminator, The
- Lance Henriksen originally cast as the terminator, with Arnold Schwarzenegger
as the hero. Schwarzenegger read the script, and asked to play the
terminator instead.
- Shots through the Terminator's vision show Apple ][+ assembly code, taken
from _Nibble_, a computing magazine. Other code visible is written in COBOL.
- Arnold Schwarzenegger has only 14 lines in the entire movie.
- Science Fiction author Harlan Ellison filed a lawsuit against director James
Cameron, claiming that Cameron plagairized several of his short stories,
namely "Soldier" and "Demon With a Glass Hand". The concept of "Skynet"
could also have been borrowed from an Ellison short story called "I Have No
Mouth and I Must Scream". Newer prints of the film acknowledge Ellison.
- ACTTRADE(Arnold Schwarzenegger): "I'll be back!" (first)
- DIRTRADE(James Cameron): [feet]: in the future sequence, there is a close-up
of tank treads rolling over human skulls.
- DIRTRADE(James Cameron): [feet]: when the T800 approaches the house of the
first "Sarah Conner", it crushes a small toy truck. (see also _Short
Circuit_).
- DIRTRADE(James Cameron): [feet]: after the terminator kills Sarah's friend,
he walks over her walkman headphones.
# Tess
- Set in England but filmed in France, as director Roman Polanski was wanted
on sex-related charges in England.
# Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The
- The actress who was chased by Leatherface through the undergrowth actually
cut herself on the branches quite badly, so a lot of the blood on her body
and clothes is real.
- The actress whose character was hung up on a meathook was actually held up
by a nylon cord that went between her legs, causing a great deal of pain.
# This Is Spinal Tap
- Director Rob Reiner plays rockumentary maker Marti DiBergi.
- The actors are all compotent musicians, and the soundtrack is actually them
playing. They have subsequently toured and released an album.
# Three Men and a Trunk
- DIRCAMEO(Roman Polanski): the young brute that beats up someone.
# Throw Momma from the Train
- Loosely based on _Strangers on a Train_, a film mentioned by Owen.
- CAMEO(Rob Reiner): Billy Crystal's character's agent.
# Thunderball
- The budget was $5,500,000 ($500,000 of which was spent on Largo's
yacht the Disco Volante).
- Stuntman Bill Cumming was paid a $450 bonus to jump into Largo's shark
infested pool.
- Intended to be the first 007 movie, but legal wrangles with its co-author
lead to _Dr. No_ being chosen instead.
- The many underwater scenes stem from McClory's interest in watersports.
- Thunderball was the top grossing film in both UK and US during 1966.
- Sean Connery was the top grossing actor in both 1965 and 1966.
- Claudine Auger was a former Miss France, but being French her voice
was dubbed. See also _From Russia with Love_.
- Thunderball was remade 18 years later, again with Sean Connery, as
_Never Say Never Again_.
# THX 1138
- The letters THX are now used as the name of LucasFilms' cinema sound
accreditation program.
# To Be or Not to Be (1983)
- A street sign reads "Kubelski Avenue". _To Be or Not To Be (1942)_ starred
Jack Benny, whose real name is Benny Kubelski"
# To Catch a Thief
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): about 10 minutes in, sitting next to [Cary Grant]
on a bus.
- There are subliminal shots of a black cat the first few times that [Grant]
appears. [Grant]'s nickname is "the cat" becuase of his stealth ability.
- The road where Cary Grant and Grace Kelly are pursued by the police is
the same one where Kelly died in a car crash 27 years later.
# Tommy
- DIRTRADE(Ken Russell): [snake]: crawling out of the skeleton's pelvis.
# Tootsie
- DIRCAMEO(Sydney Pollack): Michael/Dorothy's agent, George Fields
# Top Secret! (1984)
- The "German" Val Kilmer learns in the train is not a language at all. Words
like "Vlichtmitten", "Blitzen" or "Flachmatuche" are great fun for German
listeners, but have no proper meaning. In the German-dubbed version, Val
Kilmer learns a German dialect mainly spoken in the former GDR.
# Topaz
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): about 30 minutes in at the airport getting out of
a wheelchair.
- The film was Hitchcock's biggest flop, costing over $4 million to make, but
taking less than $1 million.
- Leon Uris wrote the first draft of the screenplay, but Hitch declared it
unshootable at the last minute and called in Samuel Taylor (writer of
_Vertigo_) to rewrite it from scratch. Some scenes were written just hours
before they were shot.
- Hitchcock shot two versions with completely different endings. Both of them
are included in the Laserdisc reissue.
# Tora! Tora! Tora!
- Actor Jason Robards was actually present at the bombing of Pearl Harbor on
12-7-1941.
# Torch Song Trilogy
- DIRCAMEO(Charles Walters): auditions as John Crawford's caracter's dancing
partner.
# Torn Curtain
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): early in the film sitting in a hotel lobby with a
baby on his knee.
- The scene where agent Gromek is killed was written to show how difficult
it really can be to kill a man.
- Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall did extensive (uncredited) rewrites on the
script.
- Bernard Herrmann wrote the original score, but Universal executives convinced
Hitch that they needed a more upbeat score. Hitch and Herrmann had a major
disagreement, the score was dropped and they never worked together again.
# Touch of Evil
- CAMEO(Joseph Cotten):
- CAMEO(Mercedes McCambridge):
# Toy Soldiers (1991)
- CAMEO(Jerry Orbach):
# Toys
- The words used by the General in an attempt to stop the rampaging sea
creature are "Klaatu, Barada, Nikto", the same words used to command the
robot Gort in _The Day the Earth Stood Still_.
# Trading Places
- DIRTRADE(John Landis): [SYNW]: on a poster in the apartment.
# Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The
- DIRCAMEO(John Huston): the man who Dobbs begs money from three times early
in the film.
- This is the origin of the "stinkin' badges" line, used in many other movies,
including _Blazing Saddles_.
# Trick or Treat
- DIRCAMEO(Charles Martin Smith): highschool teacher
# Tron
- All the computer-generated images were rendered in black and white on a VAX,
and colored later.
# Trouble with Harry, The
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): about 20 minutes in, walking past the limousine
of a man looking at the paintings.
- Bernard Herrmann's score was the first of a long collaboration with
Hitchcock that lasted nearly nine years.
- The film was unavailable for decades because its rights (together with four
other pictures of the same periods') were bought back by Hitchcock and left
as part of his eredity to his daughter. They've been known for long as the
infamous "5 lost Hitchcocks" amongst film buffs, and were re-released in
theathers around 1984 after a 30-years absence. They are _Rear Window_, _The
Trouble with Harry_, _Rope_, _Vertigo_ and _The Man Who Knew Too Much
(1953)_.
- Once again Hitchcock bought the rights to the original novel anonymously
for just $11,000.
# Tucker
- George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg each own one of the only 50 Tucker cars
ever made.
- CAMEO(Lloyd Bridges)
- CAMEO(Dean Stockwell)
# Turtle Diary
- CAMEO(Harold Pinter): bookstore customer
# Twilight Zone - The Movie
- Mention is made of Seargeant Neidermeyer getting "fragged" by his own
troops. This was the fate given to Neidermeyer in the ending of _Animal
House_, also directed by John Landis.
- Actor Vic Morrow, plus two juvenile Asian actors were killed during an
accident on set. SFX caused a helicopter to crash, killing all three
instantly. Director John Landis and four others were found not guilty of
involuntary manslaughter.
# Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
- Dale Cooper was allegedly named after the man who hijacked an aircraft over
Washington state, bailed out with a parachute, and has never been seen again.
# Twins
- When [Arnold Schwarzenegger] visits [Danny De Vito] in prison, [De Vito]
calls him "Mr Universe", a title that Schwarzenegger held for several years,
25 years previously.
- ACTTRADE(Arnold Schwarzenegger): "I'll be back!"
# Two Jakes, The
- CAMEO(Tom Waits): policeman
# Under Capricorn
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): about five minutes into the movie in the town
square wearing a coat and a brown hat. Ten minutes later he is one of three
men on the steps of government house.
# Under the Cherry Moon
- Filmed in color, released in black and white.
- The film was unavailable for decades because its rights (together with four
other pictures of the same periods') were bought back by Hitchcock and left
as part of his eredity to his daughter. They've been known for long as the
infamous "5 lost Hitchcocks" amongst film buffs, and were re-released in
theathers around 1984 after a 30-years absence. They are _Rear Window_, _The
Trouble with Harry_, _Rope_, _Vertigo_ and _The Man Who Knew Too Much
(1953)_.
# Videodrome
- DIRTRADE(David Cronenberg): [flesh]: "Long live the new flesh!".
# View to a Kill, A
- Roger Moore's final appearance as 007.
- Lois Maxwell's final appearance as Moneypenny.
- Filming was delayed when the "007" stage at Pinewood Studios burns down. It
was totally rebuilt in less than four months, and renamed "The Albert R.
Broccoli 007 Stage".
- Tanya Roberts got the role after Broccoli saw her in _The Beastmaster_.
- During filming, Grace Jones' boyfriend was a little-known actor named Dolph
Lundgren. Lundgren has a small part in the film as a KGB heavy.
- For the first time, a piece of music not specially composed or performed for
a Bond film appears in the soundtrack. It is 39 seconds of The Beach Boys'
"Californina Girls".
# Viva Max!
- Refers indirectly to the John Wayne film _The Alamo_ by showing a painting of
John Wayne as Davy Crockett defending the Alamo. Normally there is a
disclaimer which states "all characters depicted in this motion picture are
ficticious and any similarity......", etc. In this film, the disclaimer
reads "all characters depicted in this motion picture except John Wayne are
ficticious and any similarity to actual persons....."
# Wall Street
- DIRCAMEO(Oliver Stone): on the phone during the montage of deals being made.
# War of the Roses, The
- Oliver Rose (Michael Douglas) cuts the heels off his wife's (Kathleen Turner)
shoes. In _Romancing the Stone_, Jack Coulton (Douglas) cut the heels off
Joan Wilder's (Turner) shoes.
# WarGames
- Kevin Costner turned down the lead role for a part in _The Big Chill_ which
was eventually cut.
- The "TRS-80 Model I" used to break into NORAD was programmed to make the
correct words appear on the screen, no matter which keys were pressed.
- When David comes home the day after the NORAD computer break-in, the
newscaster on the television is talking about a prophylactic recycling
center.
- The exteriors were all filmed in western Washington state. The NORAD HQ
set was built in the Cascades, the "Oregon" airport was really Boeing Field,
"Goose Island" is really Anderson Island, WA (in the southern part of Puget
Sound). The last ferry off the island really is at 6:30, and you really are
stuck there if you miss it.
# Warlock (1989)
- Scene in the theatrical previews indicating that the Warlock was the satanic
Messiah was cut some time before video distribution.
# Warriors, The (1979)
- Loosely based on Xenophon's "Anabasis".
# Way We Were, The
- CAMEO(Marvin Hamlisch [composer]):
# Wayne's World
- Robert Patrick appears as the T1000 from _Terminator 2: Judgment Day_.
- The "Stairway to Heaven" guitar riff was changed for the international,
cable, and videotape releases to a generic riff because of disputes in
obtaining rights to the first five notes of the song, which appear only in
the US theatrical release.
# Weird Science
- Lisa is named after the computer on which she was designed, an Apple Lisa.
# West Side Story
- Borrowed its plot from Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet".
- Natalie Wood's singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon.
# When Harry Met Sally...
- The woman who says "I'll have what she's having" after Sally's faked orgasm
is director Rob Reiner's mother.
# Where Eagles Dare
- The driving force behind the film was Richard Burton's son, who wanted to
see his father in a good old fashioned adventure movie. Burton approached
producer Ellion Kastner for ideas, who asks Alastair MacLean. At that time,
most of MacLean's novels have either been made into films, or were in the
process of being filmed. Kastner pursuaded MacLean to write a new story.
Six weeks later, MacLean delivered the script.
- Clint Eastwood was reluctant to receive second billing to Burton, but agreed
after being paid $800,000.
- The "Schloss Adler" is actually the "Schloss Hohenwerfen" in Austria. At the
time of filming, the castle was being used as a police training camp.
- An accident during one of the action scenes left Kastner and director Brian
G. Hutton badly burnt.
- Despite Eastwood's reputation for violence in other films, his character
kills more people in this film than any other Eastwood character.
# Whereabouts of Jenny, The (TV)
- CAMEO(Tony Danza [producer]): drunk
# White Dog
- DIRCAMEO(Samuel Fuller):
# Who Framed Roger Rabbit
- Some versions have an extra scene: Eddie Valiant had gone into Toontown,
ambushed by the weseals and had a pig's head "tooned" onto his. He went home
and took a shower during which Jessica walks into his apartment.
- A scene where Jessica pulls or pulls off her stocking as she was sitting
cross-legged was cut.
- Bob Hoskins watched his young daughter to learn how to act with imaginary
characters. He later had problems with hallucinations.
- Some scenes of Eddie Valiant in the taxi are actually drawings of Eddie
Valliant instead of the actor Bob Hoskins.
- Jessica Rabbit's speaking voice was performed by Kathleen Turner, and her
singing voice was performed by Amy Irving, both uncredited.
# World According to Garp, The
- CAMEO(John Irving [author]): wrestling match referee
- DIRCAMEO(George Roy Hill): pilot that crashes into the house
# Wrong Man, The (1957)
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): narrating the film's prologue. The only time he
actually spoke in any of his films.
- Although based on a true story, Hitchcock deliberately left out some of the
information that pointed to Manny's innocence to heighten the tension.
- The "right" man (the real culprit) can be seen several times during the
film: outside the Stork Club, in the Victor Moore arcade and near one of
the liquor stores where the police take Manny.
# You Only Live Twice
- The budget was, the then, astronomic sum of $9,500,000 ($1,000,000 of
of which was spent by Ken Adam in his crater set).
- For the first time the story of a 007 film bears little resemblance to
the novel it is based on.
- The face of Ernst Blofeld is revealed for the first time (in the guise
of Donald Pleasence).
- The female leads Mie Hama and Akiko Wakabayashi both appeared in _King
Kong versus Godzilla_.
- Whilst in Japan, Connery and his wife are hounded by the international
press. During news conferences the press corp insist of referring to
Connery as James Bond. The last straw comes when local newsmen attempt
to photograph him in a rest room. To ease the tension the producers
remove his contractual obligation to do one more 007 movie.
- Despite being offered an unprecedented $1,000,000 to return as James Bond,
Sean Connery announces this will be his last appearance as 007 due to the
unacceptable media pressure of the role.
- The book title comes from a 17 century poem by Japanese poet Basho, it reads
You only live twice / Once when you are born / And once when you look death
in the face.
# Young and Innocent
- DIRCAMEO(Alfred Hitchcock): outside the courthouse holding a camera as
Derrick de Marney escapes.
# Young Frankenstein
- DIRCAMEO(Mel Brooks): the sound of the off-screen cat screaming when hit by a
dart.
# Young Guns (1988)
- Tom Cruise was disguised with a beard and mustache and has a cameo as
a bad guy that walks out of a door and is shot. He was added because he
was visiting the set and said he had never been in a film gunfight.
# Young Guns II
- CAMEO(Jon Bon Jovi): scruffy man who gets shot in the chest and blown
backwards, after [sutherland] and [Phillips] get out of the pit jail.
# Young Sherlock Holmes
- The "cycling across the moon" shot is a reference to _E.T. The
Extra-Terrestrial_, directed by producer Stephen Spielberg.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTES
PLEASE SEND TRIVIA TO:
Please send "Crazy Credits" to:
Please send movie goofs to:
It will be much easier for me if you mail me entries in the following format:
# Movie Name, The
- blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
- CAMEO(Name Name): blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
- DIRTRADE(Name Name): blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
- DIRTRADE(Name Name): [tag]: blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
- DIRCAMEO(Name Name): blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
THANKS TO:
Col Needham (c...@otter.hpl.hp.com)
Kevin Arvin (ar...@cup.portal.com)
Phineas (ph...@west.darkside.com)
Detlef Beckmann (ub...@ibm3090.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de)
Scott Simpson (sim...@bnr.ca)
Giancarlo Cairella (ver...@bbs2000.sublink.org)
Teddy (di9...@pt.hk-r.se)
Eric Wang
>Archive-Name: movies/trivia-faq
>Version: 1.7 (September 1993)
># Alien (1979)
>- The alien's habit of laying eggs in the stomach (which then burst
> out) is similar to the life-cycle of the tsetse fly.
The female tsetse fly lays a single massive pupa into the _ground_
at a time, rather than thousands of eggs. The pupa crawls into the
ground, slowly metamorphoses into a fly, breaks out of its cocoon
and digs out, and, well, flies away. I don't see much similarity to
the alien chestburster concept.
>- Only John Hurt and the crew knew exactly what was going to happen
> during the stomach-bursting scene, so reactions are totally genuine.
> Veronica Cartwright gets hit in the face by some "blood" (visible in
> the movie), and is quite shaken. When Scott called "cut" at the end
> of the scene, the cameraman turned around and vomited.
In fact, Cartwright is so shaken that she backpedals into an end
table that catches her right in the knees, and unceremoniously
back-flips over it. Consequently, she disappears from the remainder
of the scene.
But this trick of withholding information to get "genuine" reactions
could have backfired massively. Figure: they know they're actors in
an SF horror movie, they know they're filming the "mystery shot that
we don't Need To Know about", they see the chestburster, they break
out into incredulous grins and say, "COOOOL!!"
># Back to the Future
>- There is a rumour that when Marty is running from the terrorists, you can
> see another Marty running to witness the shooting of Doc Brown.
This rumor is false. We (a group of about ten of us) specifically
looked for this in frame-by-frame slow motion because we thought it
would have been neat. During the entire terrorists-chasing-Marty
scene, the camera never turns in the direction necessary for a
second Marty to have been seen.
># Patriot Games
>- The line "There's never been a terrorist attack on American soil" was
> included in trailers for movie, but was left out of theatrical release
> because it sounded too much like an invitation or dare.
Obviously, they can't put it back in now. (WTC :-( )
># Star Wars
>- When Luke returns to the Rebel base after destroying the Death Star,
> he gets out of his X-Wing and greets Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher)
> who is running towards him. He says "Carrie!".
AFAIK, current consensus among Star Wars junkies is that Hamill
says "Hey!", not "Carrie!". IMHO, it's too indistinct a noise for
any definitive answer, but "Hey" is closer to the truth.
Eric Wang
wa...@sml0.ge.uiuc.edu
Kjetil Valstadsve
>John Landis
>- the phrase "See You Next Wednesday". Supposedly, the phrase is the title
> of a film that Landis had an idea for at the age of 15. He describes the
> film as the kind of movie that a 15 year old adolescent boy would have made.
> He sometimes uses ideas from this movie, and when he does he puts the phrase
> in as a "homage". It is not in all of his movies [SYNW].
>2001
(lines deleted)
>- Multiple references to birthdays: Dr Floyd's daughter, Frank Poole, HAL.
As fans of the movie will know, Frank's parents end the happy birthday message
with the words "See you next Wednesday". I always thought that the Landis movies
used it as a hommage to 2001, but the list says different. What's the story,
Mother?
Kjetil Valstadsve (ed...@alkymi.unit.no) / ___ __ __ _ ___ \
"Your superior intelligence is no match / \\_ \\ \\\ \\\\\_ \
for our puny weapons." / \\__\\_|\\_|\\\\__ \
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~\______________________________/
Proclaimer: All opinions expressed in this letter are also the opinions of
\ the educational society of the Northern hemisphere, the Swiss government
\ and Jon Bon Jovi's long lost brother, now hiding in the Borneo jungles
\ Disclaimer: This is probably untrue.
\______________________"Kneel before my slingshot, puny Earthling"___/
Lawrence R. Dodd
>> # Patriot Games
>> - The line "There's never been a terrorist attack on American soil" was
>> included in trailers for movie, but was left out of theatrical release
>> because it sounded too much like an invitation or dare.
EW> Obviously, they can't put it back in now. (WTC :-( )
There were terrorist attacks in NYC in the 70's. WTC is definitely not the
first. You might even consider actions during the Civil War and even the
Revolutionary War as terrorism. Even The Boston Tea Party could be considered
as an agressive act (at least by tea drinkers and the English).
--
Larry
do...@roebling.poly.edu
Murray Chapman
>>John Landis
>>- the phrase "See You Next Wednesday". Supposedly, the phrase is the title
>> of a film that Landis had an idea for at the age of 15. He describes the
>> film as the kind of movie that a 15 year old adolescent boy would have made.
>> He sometimes uses ideas from this movie, and when he does he puts the phrase
>> in as a "homage". It is not in all of his movies [SYNW].
>>2001
>(lines deleted)
>>- Multiple references to birthdays: Dr Floyd's daughter, Frank Poole, HAL.
>As fans of the movie will know, Frank's parents end the happy birthday message
>with the words "See you next Wednesday". I always thought that the Landis
>movies used it as a hommage to 2001, but the list says different. What's the
>story, Mother?
There is no problem here.... The title of Landis' adolescent film could have
been inspired by the line from 2001.
>Kjetil Valstadsve (ed...@alkymi.unit.no) / ___ __ __ _ ___ \
Murray
--