I thought it would be interesting if we could share some of those little nuggets of movie trivia which with we have have all doubtless collected at various points throughout our lives. Hopefully, we shall end up with an interesting (and perhaps even definitive) list.
Here, I'll start:
1) John Woo's original cut of 'Mission: Impossible 2' was over three hours long. The bulk of the extra material is in the climactic fight between Tom Cruise and Dougray Scott's characters (Ethan Hunt and Sean Ambrose, respectively). Instead of the fisticuffs, knifesticuffs and gunticuffs that ensue in the theatrical cut, after crashing each other's bikes together in mid-air, Hunt observes that all this fighting is really starting to get silly, and that their differences are best resolved with a dance-a-thon. Ambrose accepts this challenge, and begins a two minute rendition of one of Michael Jackon's routines; this amuses Hunt greatly, who then counters with a ninety-minute extravaganza; a one-man broadway show with a plot, songs, flashing lights and everything. As is to be expected, Ambrose concedes defeat, and in accordance with the agreement the two made before the competition commenced, just sits still on the beach until he dies of malnutrition.
Studio bosses at Universal felt it would be irresponsible to include this ending in the finished film - wary as they were of the amount of innocent people who would die in their cinema seats, victims of awesomeness overload - and requested Woo to film the ending which currently exists.
2) Contrary to popular myth, the 'cuckoo clock' speech in The Third Man was not improvised by Orson Welles, but was in fact devised by writer Graham Greene, who just happened to be wearing Welles' skin at the time.
Feel free to help expand this list!
Only thing that springs to mind: Soylent Green was based upon a novel by Harry Harrison (Sci-Fi author, primarily parody) called Make Room! Make Room!.
I get the feeling that if he'd done the screenplay the movie would've contained at least 120% more awesome and would end up as a morbid comedy instead of a drama that is unintentionally comical and produced only one memorable line. [That line being of course, "Soylent Green is made from people." I loved that line and its use of the word 'from' instead of 'of.' It instantly changed the status of every walking water-sack to a mere ingredient.] Ah, this was trivia and not mini-rant time.. sorry.
John Woo is a moron.... IN MI:2 He mixed the Spanish Easter celebrations with the Valencian/Catalan "Fallas" (Where we burn some satyric theme, paper figures...), in Saint Vincent, or Saint John....
As a result of this mix, some sacred images were burned after the procession in his film.... heretic....
(IMO, it was funny, but just because I don't like religious exhibitions a lot...)
Okay, I know a tonne of movie trivia, so I'll be updating this post over and over again. :)
- The movie Critical Mass, starring Treat Williams saved alot of money in production by using stock footage... not regular footage however, but footage from such popular movies such as Terminator 2 and also Universal Soldier... the most infamous scene however is the raid of Cyberdyne, where Arnuld uses the minigun... though, in Critical Mass... it is only two guys with MP5 semi-automatic weapons that do all the damage. :P
On the runway at the end of Casablanca, look in the background. Apparently, the studio was too small for a full size aeroplane, so they built a half-size replica. The people loading the plane are midgets.
Animators get bored easily. In one frame of 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit?' when Jessica is thrown from a car ...
*tries to find tasteful way of putting this*
... You can see up her skirt, and ...
*blushes and runs away*
Apperantly, there is a scene in Kill Bill which is an original Tarantino creation.
I may be wrong, but I think you may well have just skimmed my original post, and are all *completely missing the point*.
But never mind.
Yes... Somehow I think Shattered Sponge was making up trivia.
Like.. Titanic was originally supposed to be a comedy.
In Jurassic Park, director Steven Spielberg looked into using actual dinosaurs. However, they decided instead, to break digital ground with mind blowing special effects for two reasons; 1) the dinoasaurs were a pain in the butt to train and follow his direction and 2) the damn T-Rex ate Spielberg's pet chiuaua Fifi. They did, however, sedate the real dinos to get accurate 3D scans, and used their actual roars/grunts/etc for sound effects.
Having read the first post carefully:
Trivia number 4:
To help the actor playing the Death in The Seventh Seal get into character, he was actually killed by Ingmar Bergman and later resurrected, having spent a month in the netherworld shadowing the Grim Reaper and doing vocal excercises.
Film trivia, eh?
http://www.plif.com/archive/wc102.gif
In Jaws, playing the scene in which Quint gets taken by the shark in reverse, if you listen carefully enough, it is possible to hear Robert Shaw say the date of his death... 28/8/78... forwards, it is one of Quints blood curdling screams.
Geniune piece of Trivia here:
I was watching the Powerpuff Girls movie frame by frame and pretending that Gennedy Tartatovsky was lecuring me on animation...naked. to get a feel for the animation process when I noticed something it the bottom right corner of the 'underwater' scene. Amongst all the floating debris is a pot of 'Dapper Dan' hair gel. Plus, when they're on that big floating rock listening to the screams from the planet earth their poses are the same as the three wise monkies. Y'see. 'Cos they represent anything against evil...and the villians are monkies! IT SO SMART! PLUS, when the giant Mojo rips the wall off the building then all the people inside are cartoon versions of staff from Cartoon Network PLUS, I've seen that movie far too many times...
...
Ahem, In the movie 'Terminator'. Arnie had to wear a big metal suit for the chase scene at the end. Unfortunately he had an eplileptic fit while wearing it. They used the footage anyway.
In the original script of Raiders of the Lost Ark, the famous scene where Indy shoots the Cairo swordsman was much longer, and didn't involve Indy's gun. There was instead a large fight where Indy ducked and dodged the swordsman's cutlas until he was able to at last kill him. Unfortuntately, the week before the scene was supposed to be shot, Harrison Ford discovered the swordsman in bed with his new wife. Furious, Ford refused to shoot the scene or act with the man again. Eventually Speilberg and Lucas convinced him to do an abbreviated version of the scene, becoming the classic Indy fans all know today. The swordsman never acted again, though because this was from disgrace or because he disappeared the day after the scene was shot and was never seen again, will never be known for sure.
I believe theres a scene in Braveheart where one of the leads is wearing a wrist watch.
In I know what you did last summer, the heroine shoots the bad guy 8 times... with a 6-cylinder gun.
In alladin there is a cloud that looks like a penis
Ahhhh! People are giving actual trivia!
Unlike this:
The film "White Men Can't Jump" was originally titled "White Men Can't Rob Trains." When the producers realized that they could not afford to film on location in a subway, however, they had writers rewrite the script for basketball. Years later, after "WMCJ" had made hundreds of millions of dollars across the world, the producers constructed a fake subway and filmed the original movie, now titled "Money Train." Both actors Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes returned to give Oscar worthy performances. Rosie Perez passed on the part and debut actress Jennifer Lopez was cast as the female lead.
In Donnie Darko, a jet engine was not the original object that was to fall into Donnie's room. Initially, in a very early draft, the object was still from a plane. But instead of an engine, it was those big blocks of human waste that are dumped that usually dissolve and evaporate before hitting the ground.
yea
and.. umm.. In Finding Nemo, the original ending portrayed Nemo's death. He was turned into sushi.. muahah.
(I suck at this)
I think both real and fake trivias are fun to read, but now they're mixed up in this thread, which is very confusing. Maybe a mod can split it into 2 separate threads, one for real trivias, the other for fake ones.
I think it's really easy to tell.. :-p but maybe that's just me.
Or maybe we could turn it into a game.. And see who can guess..
Like that "Fact or Fiction?" show
Amazingly, my Jaws one is real... or is it? ::)
After filming the sequel to "Point Break" they thought they had something really original so they renamed it "The fast and the furious"
fake trivia is enjoyable to read when it is something that COULD be believable, as opposed to:
The Little Mermaid was originally titled 'The Fat, Ass-Slapping Wonder Woman of the Water with jiant chest-jugs and no lower genitals'.
When it's like this, I read it and go, "well...actually....no."
Just to confuse matters more...
One of these trivial statements is a fact and the other is fiction:
The monkey sequence at the start of '2001: a Space Odyssey' was filmed in London using one-way mirrors.
HAL's name was intended as a clever joke based on IBM.
Can you work out which is which?
Don't know if this is true or not, but may I present to you....
Genitalia on Disney's "The Little Mermaid" Video Cover:
http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/mermaid.htm
Quote from: Evil on Mon 17/05/2004 22:40:02
I believe theres a scene in Braveheart where one of the leads is wearing a wrist watch.
Also, if you look very carefully in the opening scenes of Braveheart where they're showing the landscape of Scotland, you can see some backpackers climbing one of the mountains.
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/braveboyd.jpg)
Quote from: Ali on Tue 18/05/2004 13:44:58
The monkey sequence at the start of '2001: a Space Odyssey' was filmed in London using one-way mirrors.
HAL's name was intended as a clever joke based on IBM.
Can you work out which is which?
Must be the former, since the latter is almost certainly incorrect. (though many people do believe it to be true, mistakenly)
Yeah, I heard Kubrick only found out about the 'connection' to IBM later.
There is one thing that my brother noticed in Star Wars, was that when some storm troopers are walking into the control room. As the door opens, one of the st's knocks his head into the door.
The Japanese anime film "Ghost in the Shell" was based on a little-known unpublished Disney film called "Team Somebody." It's a well known fact that many of Japan's animators have gone back and forth between their homeland and more lucrative work in American films such as Mu Lan or Excell Saga. It was of course a lot lighter in content, but the overall sequences are almost indistinguishable. In fact there's a scene towards the middle of "Ghost" in which one of the cross-over animators purportedly left in a bit of Mickey Mouse's shadow in the top-left corner, either by accident or as an in-joke.
Almost all the cast of "The Matrix" died before or during the shooting of the Matrix 2 and 3 (Reloaded, Revolutions). The plot was going to be really awesome, involving a third level to the matrix, and a socialist-style uprising in the "real" world (thanks to Neo) before the deaths. The deaths basically convinced the creaters to "just toss any old anime-inspired crap" into the plot to end the thing, after days of failed re-writes for the fill-in actors.
"All the President's Men" originally starred a number of real CIA agents, as sort of a "tip-the-hat" to the office of the president, but they had to be cut out of the picture when the original lead, Gary Oldman, disappeared. No one really suspected the CIA guys for the disappearance, but Gary's family was furious and threatened to sue, so the CIA agents were cut out of the movie. The film had been aiming to get an official "gold star" approval from the Oval Office (something films like "Independence Day" and "Airforce One" had gotten before), but this incident cut them out of the ceremony.
Kill Bill originally featured a hilarious and highly political speech by Tarantino in disguise, calling for a repeal of the Patriot Act and related "bills" with Uma Thurman slashing through paperwork. It was cut because it just didn't seem to fit with the "serious, logical tone of the rest of the movie"
In his latest collection of memoirs, Spielburg admits that the original ET was just a chance to see a young Drew Berry Moore to stroke an enormous prosthetic penis, and to see teenagers chased by angry men with guns. The rest of the plot was "just kinda thrown together."
Quote from: Fuzzpilz on Tue 18/05/2004 15:22:05
Quote from: Ali on Tue 18/05/2004 13:44:58
The monkey sequence at the start of '2001: a Space Odyssey' was filmed in London using one-way mirrors.
HAL's name was intended as a clever joke based on IBM.
Can you work out which is which?
Must be the former, since the latter is almost certainly incorrect. (though many people do believe it to be true, mistakenly)
Yeah, HAL is Heuristic Algorithmic...
In Casablanca, due to budgetry constraints, the plane at the end was a miniature made of cardboard, requiring that the flight crew be played by midgits to remain in scale, and also requiring the advanced technique of covering everything in fog, later used by Dr Who.
Which Ali already mentioned. I don't think it was so much budgetary constraints that forced the use of midgets to play the flight crew rather than the director deciding the background felt empty with just the plane which was already built.
YakSpit, I thought the line was "Soylent Green is made out of people".
I knew I should have mentioned it when this thread was 3 posts long.
apparently at the end of Casablanca they didn't have enough money for a full sized plane so they had midgets build one for them. Since midgets are half men they were able to pay them half the wages and save money... One of the midgets went on to find fame in being the munchkin from Wizard of Oz that hanged himself [after being eaten by a very obvious bird]
In Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory they couldn't afford real midgits, so the oompa loompas were all normal men on enlarged sets.
In the Lord Of The Rings movies, Gimli, even though he was playing the dwarf, was ironically the only character to be completely computer animated.
In Casablanca, Humphry Bogart is actually a midget.
Fact: To research the role of Cap'n Jack Sparrow, actor Johnny Depp spent 7 months as an animatronic robot on the original 'Pirates Of The Carribean' ride.
Also, something to do with Casablanca and cardboard midgets.
Since this thread brought up the subject of both Casablanca and LotR I got reminded of this small gem: http://flyingmoose.org/tolksarc/movie.htm.
Right! Fact or fiction!
In the scene where Terminator enters the bar naked in T2, Ahnold was actually wearing a pair of loud boxer shorts that nearly cracked uo everybody on the set.
OR
Mark Hamill cries "CARRRRIEEEEE!" at the end of Star Wars.
Esseb: The link on that site won't work :(
that's ok, it's stupid
Ah. Right.. It looks like it's a bunch of movies tied together, juding from the credits.. Meh.. Oh well.
Quote from: Largo on Tue 18/05/2004 17:35:35
There is one thing that my brother noticed in Star Wars, was that when some storm troopers are walking into the control room. As the door opens, one of the st's knocks his head into the door.
In episode 2 when Fett escaped on the ship he knocks his head. They made it a trait of his to explain the trooper walking into the door.
And the Indy one. Ford had to go to the toilet so he did that instead of a large fight scene.
In the movie Aliens the young girl Newt says 'They mostly come out at night, mostly'. Most people think this is refering to the aliens but it does in actual fact refer to Captain Mostly who was stalking the young lass at the time.
Soory if these have been posted before, but I haven't had time to read all the posts :P Also... Some of these are mistakes.. but bloody funny ones.
In the original theatrical release of Fellowship of the Ring when Frodo and Sam are walking through the cornfield a car drives past in the background. This is a famous mistake and was clumsily edited in the DVD release and you can still kind of see where its been patched up.
In a pan over Edoras in one of the films its been reversed. Ok, but you can see the smoke going into the chimney and flags fluttering odly.
In X Men 1 Iceman is talking to rogue you can see his breath in the air. Fans thought this was a nice touch as it reflects his mutant powers. The director later admitted that this was actually just due to it being a cold day on set and not noticed till people started telling him about it.
JK Rowling was asked to play Harry Potter's mother.
Richard Gere would hardly have had a career if it wasn't for John Travolta turning down roles. He turned down the roles in (i think) 3 films were Richard Gere got the parts in his place. These roles made his career. The most recent of these was Chicago.
Quote from: EuL on Wed 19/05/2004 09:14:26
And the Indy one. Ford had to go to the toilet so he did that instead of a large fight scene.
LIAR! My explanation is the TRU7H! :P
In Minority Report, the statue of the precogs actually represents the alien genitals that were used to produce the precogs. And the Pre-Crime symbol reflects Steven Speilberg's belief in world peace through world government.
Similarly, all documents in AI and Saving Private Ryan are copies of The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion.
And the ring they give Oscar Schindler at the end of Schindler's List is actually the Ring of Power.
A log of wood was originally considered for the role of Kevin Lomax in the Devil's Advocate.
Jeff Bridges was originally considered for the role in Monster.
Everybody except the banits in Time Bandits were played by giants.
The time it took to film the stargate scene in 2001 was shorter than its screentime.
In the Dream Team, Micheal Keaton plays Jack Nicholson.
Quote from: Barcik on Thu 20/05/2004 09:08:36
A log of wood was originally considered for the role of Kevin Lomax in the Devil's Advocate.
Keanu reeves would hardly have had a career if it wasn't for that log of wood turning down roles.
In the future, everyone is black. Will Smith was the primary choice for the role of Neo by the W bros.
Quote from: Esseb on Wed 19/05/2004 00:37:14
YakSpit, I thought the line was "Soylent Green is made out of people".
Actually, I believe that line is in there as part of his longer speech (i.e. the tell everybody blah, blah part), another part has him simply saying Soylent Green is people, but when he's lost what's left of his annoyingly thick little mind he screams, "Soylent Green is made from people!" (http://datacore.sciflicks.com/soylent_green/sounds/soylent_green_from_people.wav)
In the film "Star Wars Episode II Attack of the Clones" the plot was created entirely with CGI.
The oracle in the Matrix films can't bake at all. All her cookies taste "like shit" according to the crew-members who got to taste them.
hey if its an oracle wouldnt she know that they are crap and not bother to make them in the first place?
When Morgan Freeman filmed his role in The Shawshank Redemption, he was in fact only seven years old. Fact!
All the creatures seen in the Aliens series were just really cleverly detailed sock puppets.
The producers of Finding Nemo urged children not to "set their fish free" by putting them down a sink drain like how Nemo escapes, because there are many different filters in pipes. So in reality the movie would be called Grinding Nemo.