Movie Film Trivia

[emuboy]

In the 2003 movie Runaway Jury, a scene between Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman was quickly written up and added in while the rest of the movie had finished being filmed weeks prior after someone on the crew learned that Hackman and Hoffman, despite being close friends since 1956, had never acted in a film together with dialogue between each other.

There was a similar situation with the TV show 'The Wonder Years' which ran from 1988-1993.

Dan Lauria, who played Kevin's father Jack Arnold and Danica McKellar who played Kevin's love interest Winnie Cooper got along well on the set and are still good friends to this day. Yet in six seasons of the show, Jack Arnold and Winnie Cooper never exchanged one line of dialogue.

 

[Exe Gesis]

There was a similar situation with the TV show 'The Wonder Years' which ran from 1988-1993.

Dan Lauria, who played Kevin's father Jack Arnold and Danica McKellar who played Kevin's love interest Winnie Cooper got along well on the set and are still good friends to this day. Yet in six seasons of the show, Jack Arnold and Winnie Cooper never exchanged one line of dialogue.

Was it the same with Pacino and De Niro until the movie Heat?

 

[STFU Donnie]

Was it the same with Pacino and De Niro until the movie Heat?

They were only in the one film prior to Heat, and that was The Godfather, Part 2. In that film, De Niro played the younger Vito Corleone in the flashback sequences, so there was never any potential for them to be on screen together.

 

[rank and file]

Jim 'Jesus' Caviezel was struck by lightning while filming the Sermon on the Mount scene in The Passion of the Christ.

 

[rank and file]

One for you GG.exe
In the Big Lebowski,Dude writes a cheque at the supermarket dated September 11th 1991.
The T.V. in the background has George Bush snr
berating Saddam Hussein over the Kuwait invasion.

 

[Exe Gesis]

One for you GG.exe
In the Big Lebowski,Dude writes a cheque at the supermarket dated September 11th 1991.
The T.V. in the background has George Bush snr
berating Saddam Hussein over the Kuwait invasion.

Very

 

[STFU Donnie]

Spartacus is considered to be one of Stanley Kubrick's best films. Interestingly, he was brought in after shooting had begun, when Anthony Mann was fired by the studio. It was the only film of his career where he did not have final approval. Kubrick subsequently disowned the film even though it was a critical success and went on to be the biggest box office hit of 1960.

Anyway, by the time of the film's restoration and rerelease in 1991, star Laurence Olivier had passed away. This proved to be problematic because of an infamous deleted scene the studio wanted to put back in the film. In the scene Crassus (Olivier) is trying to seduce his slave Antoninus (Tony Curtis) using an analogy of eating either oysters or snails. The problem was the audio track for that scene was lost and would need to be rerecorded. Curtis redid his lines without problem. Olivier's widow (Joan Plowright) suggested the studio contact a certain actor whom she had heard doing a party piece impersonating Olivier. They did and he agreed to participate. His name was Anthony Hopkins and he had just recently won an Oscar for his portrayal of Hannibal Lecter.

 

[Exe Gesis]

Wouldnt call Spartacus one of Kubriks best, or even a good film per se. Ive watched it twice and its really bad.

 

[Exe Gesis]

Btw, that really does sound like Anthony Hopkins. Sounds more like Hopkins than Olivier.

 

[Exe Gesis]

Development and writing​

The film was based on an original script by Shane Black. He wrote the script after having taken a two-year break from writing, triggered in part by the end of a relationship. The Geffen Film Company outbid other companies, paying a record $1.75 million for the script, with over a $1 million guaranteed up front. Black later recalled:

I was busy mourning my life and, in many ways, the loss of my first real love. I didn’t feel much like doing anything except smoking cigarettes and reading paperbacks. All things come around. Time passed and eventually I sat down and transformed some of that bitterness into a character, the central focus of a private eye story which became The Last Boy Scout. Writing that script was a very cathartic experience, one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. I spent so much time alone working on that. Days which I wouldn’t speak. Three, four days where I maybe said a couple words. It was a wonderfully intense time where my focus was better than it’s ever been. And I was rewarded so handsomely ($1.75 million) for that script, it felt like a vindication and like I was back on track.

Roger Ebert, commenting on the script, said "The original screenplay for The Last Boy Scout set a record for its purchase price; that was probably because of the humor of the locker-room dialogue, since the plot itself could have been rewritten out of the Lethal Weapon movies by any film school grad."

Joel Silver was guaranteed $1 million to produce. Silver said in a Q&A for The Nice Guys (2016) that Shane Black's original title was Die Hard. Silver asked if he could take the title for a project he was working on at the time called Nothing Lasts Forever, which eventually became Die Hard (1988).

Shane Black and Tony Scott both said in later years how the original script was far better than the final film.

 

[emuboy]

The 2007 Australian black comedy film 'Razzle Dazzle' in which English actor Ben Miller plays a bumbling kids' dance teacher similar to his character Howard in the UK sitcom 'The Worst Week of My Life' reunites two Australian actresses who made their debuts together on the Henderson Kids back in 1985 - Nadine Garner and Jane Hall. In the show Nadine Garner played lead character Tamara 'Tam' Henderson while Jane Hall played her friend Regina. In the movie 22 years later, Garner played the mother of one of the more talented dance students, while Hall played an uptight and overly competitive rival dance teacher.

Also in 2007 Nadine Garner began on the police drama 'City Homicide' playing a detective and had a 20 year reunion with a fellow actor from The Henderson Kids II in 1987, and interestingly both storylines involved abduction. The actor was Ross Thompson, and in the Henderson Kids II he played the role of Harry, the kids' father's shady business partner who along with his crooked associates ends up abducting Tam when he fears she knows too much about his illegal activities. While Harry didn't care much for Tam Henderson, his character in City Homicide two decades later seemed to care even less for her character Jennifer. Thompson's role in this show was a wealthy businessman whose daughter - a model and sort of an early prototype of a social media influencer from the 2000s - had gone missing several weeks earlier and homicide became involved when suspicions arose that a serial killer might be responsible. While understandable that the father would be worried about his daughter, this guy was not a tolerant nor a patient man - he was somewhat like Mr. Johnson from The Big Steal or Alf Stewart from Home and Away - and something about Jennifer just seemed to rub him the wrong way. For example simply going over some witness statements led to him yelling 'I want your bloody number' before making a complaint to her superiors, ranting and raving and carrying on. The missing daughter was found alive - she had been abducted by a stalker in a Collector-type scenario rather than murdered by the serial killer - but the father sure didn't send any thank you cards to Jennifer or her colleagues.

 

[Exe Gesis]

in the 1970 movie MASH, director Robert Altman was paid $75,000 to direct. His fourteen year old son, who wrote the song "suicide is painless" for the movie, ended up making $2m from royalties (as of 2020), given the song was used in the TV series, and has kept being in syndication internationally to this day.

Also, MASH is the first major movie to have the word "f*ck" in it. Tho in some releases the word is edited out.

 

[STFU Donnie]

in the 1970 movie MASH, director Robert Altman was paid $75,000 to direct. His fourteen year old son, who wrote the song "suicide is painless" for the movie, ended up making $2m from royalties (as of 2020), given the song was used in the TV series, and has kept being in syndication internationally to this day.

Also, MASH is the first major movie to have the word "f*ck" in it. Tho in some releases the word is edited out.

I don't think you're right about the first use of f--k. There were two films, both studio releases from 1967 which make that claim: Ulysses and I'll Never Forget What's 'isname. The latter starred Orson Welles no less!

 

[STFU Donnie]

Paint Your Wagon (1969) is currently on TV. It's a fairly polarising picture, to say the least. A musical Western with Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin in singing roles - what could possibly go wrong? Well, nothing IMO. I loved this film when I first saw it thirty something years ago, and I'm enjoying it just as much now.

Now the trivia: Lee Marvin's rendition of Wand'rin' Star was a big hit in certain parts of the world. It reached No. 1 in the UK, and actually prevented The Beatles' Let It Be from reaching the top spot - it peaked at No. 2.

 

[STFU Donnie]

20 seconds! How do you do it?

 

[Exe Gesis]

20 seconds! How do you do it?

When I'm on I'm on

 

[STFU Donnie]

Don't be sad GG. It was an expression of wonderment and admiration.

 

[Exe Gesis]

Don't be sad GG. It was an expression of wonderment and admiration.

I love this topic, so I'm always looking out for bits of trivia. So much of it is amazing actually, like the Marvin vs Beatles one you just posted. And film trivia is endless one would think.

 

[torq]

Paint Your Wagon (1969) is currently on TV. It's a fairly polarising picture, to say the least. A musical Western with Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin in singing roles - what could possibly go wrong? Well, nothing IMO. I loved this film when I first saw it thirty something years ago, and I'm enjoying it just as much now.

Now the trivia: Lee Marvin's rendition of Wand'rin' Star was a big hit in certain parts of the world. It reached No. 1 in the UK, and actually prevented The Beatles' Let It Be from reaching the top spot - it peaked at No. 2.

Never seen it, probably never will. But I gotsa know - is it anything like The Simpsons version, or was that a piss-take?

 

[STFU Donnie]

Never seen it, probably never will. But I gotsa know - is it anything like The Simpsons version, or was that a piss-take?

Total piss take.

 

[emuboy]

In the 1992 movie 'A League of their Own' (one of my personal all time favorite films) the four teams that make up the first All American Girls' Baseball League season in 1943 - Rockford Peaches, Racine Belles, South Bend Blue Sox and Kenosha Comets - were the same as those in the real league, but all characters were fictional. The 1943 Racine Belles were the winners of the first World Series in this league as were their fictional counterparts, but while the Rockford Peaches (the team which the movie mostly focused on) were runners up in the film, this wasn't the case in real life. In fact the Kenosha Comets were runners up to the Belles in 1943, while Rockford finished last and South Bend third as they were in the movie. However, it wasn't all gloom and doom for the Peaches, who would go on to win the most World Series in this league with four, until the league finished after the 1954 season.

The Rockford Peaches obviously feature most in the movie, and the Racine Belles get plenty of screen time too as their main rivals. The Blue Socks appear throughout the movie, but the real runner up the Kenosha Comets are barely seen at all, just a passing shot of a couple of girls wearing their green and white uniforms, there are no games seen against them. The TV Tropes website lists this situation as 'Hufflepuff House', in reference to the Harry Potter series where the Hogwarts houses Gryfindor (Red) and Slitherin (Green) feature prominently, and Ravenclaw (Blue) appear from time to time, but Huffelpuff house (Yellow) are seldom seen and referenced. Of course though when the late Penny Marshall wrote and directed 'A League of their Own' this was six years before the first Harry Potter book was published, and JK Rowling was an unknown office worker from the UK.

Some other interesting trivia from A League of their Own:

Penny Marshall's brother Gary Marshall plays the league owner Walter Harvey. In Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley, Penny Marshall was the actress while Gary was the director. Tracy Reiner, who plays Betty in the movie is Penny Marshall's daughter, while two of Penny's Laverne & Shirley co-stars David Lander and Eddie Mekka also had roles in the film.

Lori Petty (Kit Kelller) genuinely could not stop laughing at the girls' deportment classes when they are being taught to cross their legs properly and the lady running the class says 'a lady reveals nothing'. This blooper worked so well it was left in the film.

A young Tea Leonie, then a relative unknown, has a role in the movie as the Racine Belles' captain.

The surname of the character Marla was Hooch, and it was the second time in three years that Tom Hanks (Jimmy Dugan) had had a role with a character with this name, the other of course being the dog Hooch in 'Turner and Hooch' in 1989.

All movies have cut and deleted scenes and A League of their Own is no exception, but this film contains a large portion cut out that puts everything in a new perspective when you see it. In the released movie, Betty gets the shattering news just before a game that her husband has been killed in action, and later that evening we see Dottie (Geena Davis) crying in her room, thinking about her friend's loss and her own husband serving overseas. Then Dottie's husband Bob (Bill Pullman) arrives, having been injured and This all makes sense, but originally there is a part of the movie after Betty's bad news that features a game between Rockford and Racine. There we see Marla, who earlier left after getting married, and now part of Racine, while Kit has also been traded to the Belles after some behavioral issues. Dottie and Evelyn talk to Marla, who advises Dottie that younger sister Kit isn't taking her transfer well, and also that she (Marla) is pregnant. The girls from both teams are careful around Marla, but in the heat of the game Dottie accidentally runs into Marla, injuring her (fortunately she and her baby are okay). The girls from Racine are furious at Dottie, not least Kit who verbally abuses her older sister, while Dottie also turns from star to pariah with her own team-mates at Rockford. Only Marla herself is understanding, while from Rockford only manager Jimmy Dugan and leading player Helen support Dottie. All of this does explain why Dottie is so much more upset in the hotel room, and why only Helen and Jimmy attempt to talk her out of leaving with Bill and going home to Oregon , the rest of the team don't interact with her at all. It also explains why we don't see Kit again until the final game of the World Series.

 

[emuboy]

The ending of the 1987 film 'La Bamba' - a biopic of Richie Valens - was never going to be a happy one, but I was shocked that the Valens family only found out about Richie's death in the plane crash by listening to the news on the radio. As it turned out the Valens family really did find out through the media, as did the families of Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper (JP Richardson) and the pilot. Buddy Holly's pregnant wife miscarried her baby from the shock of her husband's death and the way she found out.

It was this very tragedy in 1959 that caused a change in the law requiring the families of deceased persons to be notified by the police before their names could be released by the media.

 

[Exe Gesis]

Watching right now on TV "William Kelly's War". A true story. But this link details it better

Whitewashed, forgotten: the story of a Chinese-Australian war hero

This Anzac Day we remember William ‘Billy’ Edward Sing, Australia’s top World War I sniper, who shot dead over 200 enemies but slipped into obscurity for decades after the conflict, even being whitewashed in a popular 2014 film.

www.scmp.com

Basically, a director started making a tv mini-series about him, but getting backlash for not casting a half-caste Chinamen, but anglicized etc, he didnt release the mini-series trying to defend his decision of casting white people. Only to then go ahead and turn the story into the aforementioned movie, again everyone anglicized.

 

[STFU Donnie]

Valkyrie (2008) is a fine film covering the July 20 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. The plot literally came within inches of succeeding; Hitler was saved by, of all things, a table leg. The film was really quite faithful to the facts and didn't take liberties. Tom Cruise played Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, and he was very well cast. The picture below shows the actual von Stauffenberg (left) and Cruise (right).



An actor named Philipp von Schulthess (below) had a small part as an aide to General Henning von Tresckow, played by Kenneth Branagh.



Why am I telling you this? Well, von Schulthess is the real-life grandson of Claus von Stauffenberg.

 

[emuboy]

In 'Wedding Crashers' in 2005 Owen Wilson's character had feelings for a character played by Rachel McAdams and won her over in the end. Seven years later, Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams played an unhappily married couple in 2012's 'Midnight In Paris', a film about time travel.

In 2013 another time travel film was released called 'About Time' in which Domhnall Gleeson's character in the early part of the movie fell in love with Margot Robbie's character, but his crush went unrequited. He was however able to find love with another woman more suited to his personality - played by Rachel McAdams. And four years later, Domhnall Gleeson and Margot Robbie would play an unhappily married couple in the 2017 biopic 'Goodnight Christopher Robin'.