Film trivia!

[Shattered Sponge]

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!

[TheYak]

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.

[Nacho]

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...)

[LordHart]

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.

[Ali]

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*

[Barcik]

Apperantly, there is a scene in Kill Bill which is an original Tarantino creation.

[Shattered Sponge]

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.

[LGM]

Yes... Somehow I think Shattered Sponge was making up trivia.

Like.. Titanic was originally supposed to be a comedy.

[Darth Mandarb]

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.

[Ali]

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.

[Ghormak]

Film trivia, eh?

http://www.plif.com/archive/wc102.gif

[LordHart]

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.

[Eggie]

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.

[Redwall]

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.

[Evil]

I believe theres a scene in Braveheart where one of the leads is wearing a wrist watch.

[Flippy_D]

In I know what you did last summer, the heroine shoots the bad guy 8 times... with a 6-cylinder gun.

[Moox]

In alladin there is a cloud that looks like a penis

[evenwolf]

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.

[LGM]

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)

[Gilbert]

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.