Movie Film Trivia

[emuboy]

Many proposed films end up in something called 'Development Hell'. Some go through numerous rewrites and recasts before finally getting made, some are stuck in development hell for years and eventually cancelled when partly complete, some are not released for years after they are made and some never go into production at all.

One such movie in the latter category was from England in the late 1990s, which was to have been a movie sequel to the enormously popular early 1980s sitcom 'The Young Ones'. The premise was that the 'Young Ones' - now middle-aged - had gone their separate ways before being reunited by chance events, and were now complete opposites of their personas in the show with one exception. Vivian (Adrian Edmonson) was a highly respected surgeon serious and conservative in nature; Mike (Christopher Ryan) was a loving husband and father and the vicar in an English village; Neil (Nigel Planer) was a ruthless, tyrannical billionaire business magnate who ran his global empire with a fist of iron; Alexei Sayle's Mr. Balowski was a world famous property investment guru; while Rick (the late Rik Mayall) was still the same as before, having stayed at university studying one degree after another despite being over 40 years old and sharing a house with some young boring university students he can't stand nor can they stand him.

The movie had it been made would have reunited the five main cast members of The Young Ones, because although the cast have often worked together since then, I don't think all five have ever appeared in the same movie or TV show after The Young Ones. As some examples, Adrian Edmonson, Nigel Planer and Alexei Sayle all appeared in the 1985 movie 'Super Grass', but not Rik Mayall nor Christopher Ryan. Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmonson and Nigel Planer worked together in 1987 on a sitcom called 'Filthy, Rich and Catflap' but the show only lasted one season and was soon forgotten and Alexei Sayle nor Christoper Ryan did not appear on the show. Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmonson, Nigel Planer and Alexei Sayle all appeared in 'The Comic Strip Presents' but never Christopher Ryan. The best known post 'Young Ones' show was 'Bottom' which ran from 1991 to 1994 and starred Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmonson in the lead roles, with Christopher Ryan making frequent appearances. However neither Nigel Planer nor Alexei Sayle ever appeared on Bottom.

 

[Hoos]

The best known post 'Young Ones' show was 'Bottom' which ran from 1991 to 1994 and starred Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmonson in the lead roles, with Christopher Ryan making frequent appearances. However neither Nigel Planer nor Alexei Sayle ever appeared on Bottom.

I really liked Bottom. I probably prefer it to The Young Ones if I'm honest.

 

[emuboy]

I really liked Bottom. I probably prefer it to The Young Ones if I'm honest.

I loved both The Young Ones and Bottom - and in fact Bottom did get its own spinoff movie. This was 'Guest House Paradiso' in 1999, where Eddie and Richie had won the lottery and invested their winnings in buying a seaside guest house - displaying very graphically why both of them were unsuited for careers in hospitality.

Some Young Ones episodes - and like Fawlty Towers only twelve were ever made - are highly memorable such as Oil, Boring, Interesting, Bomb and Sick, but others aren't so well remembered. Like an episode where they travel back in time to Medieval England and a group of peasants want to bash Neil up; or another where one morning there is inexplicably a very pretty girl in the house who had slept the night in Rick's bedroom, but as it turns out she is a serial killer on the run from the police.

 

[Frank Bunn]

Many proposed films end up in something called 'Development Hell'. Some go through numerous rewrites and recasts before finally getting made, some are stuck in development hell for years and eventually cancelled when partly complete, some are not released for years after they are made and some never go into production at all.

One such movie in the latter category was from England in the late 1990s, which was to have been a movie sequel to the enormously popular early 1980s sitcom 'The Young Ones'. The premise was that the 'Young Ones' - now middle-aged - had gone their separate ways before being reunited by chance events, and were now complete opposites of their personas in the show with one exception. Vivian (Adrian Edmonson) was a highly respected surgeon serious and conservative in nature; Mike (Christopher Ryan) was a loving husband and father and the vicar in an English village; Neil (Nigel Planer) was a ruthless, tyrannical billionaire business magnate who ran his global empire with a fist of iron; Alexei Sayle's Mr. Balowski was a world famous property investment guru; while Rick (the late Rik Mayall) was still the same as before, having stayed at university studying one degree after another despite being over 40 years old and sharing a house with some young boring university students he can't stand nor can they stand him.

The movie had it been made would have reunited the five main cast members of The Young Ones, because although the cast have often worked together since then, I don't think all five have ever appeared in the same movie or TV show after The Young Ones. As some examples, Adrian Edmonson, Nigel Planer and Alexei Sayle all appeared in the 1985 movie 'Super Grass', but not Rik Mayall nor Christopher Ryan. Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmonson and Nigel Planer worked together in 1987 on a sitcom called 'Filthy, Rich and Catflap' but the show only lasted one season and was soon forgotten and Alexei Sayle nor Christoper Ryan did not appear on the show. Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmonson, Nigel Planer and Alexei Sayle all appeared in 'The Comic Strip Presents' but never Christopher Ryan. The best known post 'Young Ones' show was 'Bottom' which ran from 1991 to 1994 and starred Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmonson in the lead roles, with Christopher Ryan making frequent appearances. However neither Nigel Planer nor Alexei Sayle ever appeared on Bottom.

On face value, the premise that the characters are now complete opposites of their personas in the show seems far fetched. But thinking back, I had a mate at Uni who was an absolute nutter. Now he's a business consultant who has a very respectable image. Another mate regularly got arrested for drunkenness and had a long list of bars he was banned from. But he became a star in the public service. He was expert in all the policy so kept getting promoted.

Trainspotting T2 did a great job of bringing the characters back together after 20 years. You can imagine how they have moved on with their lives (or not) in that time.

Another aspect is that the original audience for The Young Ones and Trainspotting have also aged and changed in the time from when they were released.

 

[emuboy]

On face value, the premise that the characters are now complete opposites of their personas in the show seems far fetched. But thinking back, I had a mate at Uni who was an absolute nutter. Now he's a business consultant who has a very respectable image. Another mate regularly got arrested for drunkenness and had a long list of bars he was banned from. But he became a star in the public service. He was expert in all the policy so kept getting promoted.

Trainspotting T2 did a great job of bringing the characters back together after 20 years. You can imagine how they have moved on with their lives (or not) in that time.

Another aspect is that the original audience for The Young Ones and Trainspotting have also aged and changed in the time from when they were released.

I think the premise of Vivian, Neil, Mike and Mr. Balowski being complete opposites of their personas 15 years late was to contrast greatly with Rick for comic effect, with Rick despite being middle-aged never having had a proper job and staying at university studying one pointless degree after another. But as the movie never ended up being made, we will never know if this would have worked.

Sometimes movie sequels or spinoffs fail because the characters haven't changed despite a fair amount of time passing. One of the best examples I could think of was the Wog Boy sequel from 2010, where Steve and Frank (who had recently been divorced although he didn't seem to care too much about it) were still living their lives as they were in the original movie from 1999, despite the passage of over a decade and that both men were now aged around 40. This came across as sad, and more than a bit creepy.

 

[sandeano]

In regards to sequels of sorts (and a nice bit of trivia), the 1949 R.K.O. crime-drama Strange Bargain is a decent enough and slightly noirish B-film starring Martha Hunt, Jeffrey Lynn and Harry Morgan. It passed by at the time with little notice.

38 years later the three leads returned as their characters in an episode of Murder She Wrote, where Jessica Fletcher sets about trying to prove the protagonist's innocence (the original film was used for flashbacks).

 

[sandeano]

Some of you may be old enough to remember Melbourne's Hoyts Esquire Theatre (formerly known as the Deluxe). It was a grand old cinema located on Bourke Street where Big W is now. After decades of successful releases of Long running hits, it was relegated to secondary status when Hoyts opened its swanky Cinema Centre 3-screen complex up the street. Things got worse for the Esquire when the company opened its Mid City twin just a few doors down the following year.

In 1975 Hoyts announced it was closing The Esquire for good, around the same time that they would be releasing The Who's film of Tommy at their Midcity Complex.

However, Tommy - if screened correctly, required the massive speakers that could deliver its quintaphonic sound. The problem was that the Midcity - being a multiplex - had its screens close together and separated only by a wall. On test screenings the ear-shattering sound bled through the wall and into the adjacent film being screened.

There was only one solution. Keep the Esquire open for Tommy. And so they did. And it played there for close to six months with audiences going wild. The Esquire gained a reprieve and finally closed in 1976.

 

[STFU Donnie]

Some of you may be old enough to remember Melbourne's Hoyts Esquire Theatre (formerly known as the Deluxe). It was a grand old cinema located on Bourke Street where Big W is now. After decades of successful releases of Long running hits, it was relegated to secondary status when Hoyts opened its swanky Cinema Centre 3-screen complex up the street. Things got worse for the Esquire when the company opened its Mid City twin just a few doors down the following year.

In 1975 Hoyts announced it was closing The Esquire for good, around the same time that they would be releasing The Who's film of Tommy at their Midcity Complex.

However, Tommy - if screened correctly, required the massive speakers that could deliver its quintaphonic sound. The problem was that the Midcity - being a multiplex - had its screens close together and separated only by a wall. On test screenings the ear-shattering sound bled through the wall and into the adjacent film being screened.

There was only one solution. Keep the Esquire open for Tommy. And so they did. And it played there for close to six months with audiences going wild. The Esquire gained a reprieve and finally closed in 1976.

View attachment 2097684

How many people remember Jack Nicholson being in Tommy?

 

[STFU Donnie]

Some of you may be old enough to remember Melbourne's Hoyts Esquire Theatre (formerly known as the Deluxe). It was a grand old cinema located on Bourke Street where Big W is now. After decades of successful releases of Long running hits, it was relegated to secondary status when Hoyts opened its swanky Cinema Centre 3-screen complex up the street. Things got worse for the Esquire when the company opened its Mid City twin just a few doors down the following year.

In 1975 Hoyts announced it was closing The Esquire for good, around the same time that they would be releasing The Who's film of Tommy at their Midcity Complex.

However, Tommy - if screened correctly, required the massive speakers that could deliver its quintaphonic sound. The problem was that the Midcity - being a multiplex - had its screens close together and separated only by a wall. On test screenings the ear-shattering sound bled through the wall and into the adjacent film being screened.

There was only one solution. Keep the Esquire open for Tommy. And so they did. And it played there for close to six months with audiences going wild. The Esquire gained a reprieve and finally closed in 1976.

View attachment 2097684

Nice post, by the way!

 

[sandeano]

Deep Throat (1972) was banned by the Australian censors until the early 80s due to its explicit H/C scenes. It is long forgotten but there was a sequel, Deep Throat Part 2 that was an awful s/c cash-in with barely any sexual content (more a very lame mystery drama).

Although the original had been banned, the Australian public certainly knew about it and even Norman Gunston interviewed its male star, Harry Reems, and asked him questions about it in his usual, flustered way.

Anyway, the horrible - utterly unsexy - 'sequel' was passed by the censor and Village picked it up for its East End 2 venue in Melbourne (close to the top of Bourke St) but look how little space they gave to the "Part 2" aspect of the title!

it did manage 5 weeks until audiences caught on that it was not the infamous original and it was then punted to oblivion. Replaced by a reissue of the 60s bikie actioneer Born Losers (an early Billy Jack entry which, incidentally, had 18 minutes cut by the censor on its initial release)

 

[STFU Donnie]

Deep Throat (1972) was banned by the Australian censors until the early 80s due to its explicit H/C scenes. It is long forgotten but there was a sequel, Deep Throat Part 2 that was an awful s/c cash-in with barely any sexual content (more a very lame mystery drama).

Although the original had been banned, the Australian public certainly knew about it and even Norman Gunston interviewed its male star, Harry Reems, and asked him questions about it in his usual, flustered way.

Anyway, the horrible - utterly unsexy - 'sequel' was passed by the censor and Village picked it up for its East End 2 venue in Melbourne (close to the top of Bourke St) but look how little space they gave to the "Part 2" aspect of the title!

it did manage 5 weeks until audiences caught on that it was not the infamous original and it was then punted to oblivion. Replaced by a reissue of the 60s bikie actioneer Born Losers (an early Billy Jack entry which, incidentally, had 18 minutes cut by the censor on its initial release)

View attachment 2097710

It's a bit like the title of this book. See if you can spot the word "If" in the title.

 

[Hoos]

How many people remember Jack Nicholson being in Tommy?

I'm still trying to forget his, how should I put this..."singing".

 

[emuboy]

It's far from uncommon for an actor to adjust their appearance for a role, but the movie Spiderman 3 in 2007 was an interesting case. In this film the redheaded character Mary Jane Watson was played by Kirsten Dunst who is blonde in real life, while the blonde character Gwen Stacey was played by Bryce Dallas Howard, who is a natural redhead.

 

[sandeano]

With the swashbuckling antics of Errol Flynn, Douglas Fairbanks and Burt Lancaster, the pirate genre had been a mainstay of Hollywood from the silent period into the 1950s. However it fell out of favour in the 1960s and few were produced. The 1970s saw a nostalgia for old Hollywood and in that decade and shortly after, there were a handful of comedy attempts to revive the genre. Ghost in the Noonday Sun (1974) featured Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan, Swashbuckler (1974) had Robert Shaw and James Earl Jones and Yellowbeard (1983) had an all-star comedy cast headed by Graham Chapman and Peter Cook.

All of these film were boxoffice duds and thrashed by the critics (if I recall, Leonard Maltin awarded each a BOMB rating). Oddly they all had something else in common - Peter Boyle (best known as Raymond's father in Everybody Loves... but also a standout in tough 70s films such as Joe, Taxi Driver and The Friends of Eddie Coyle - appeared in each of these films.

Although not a comedy (not intentionally, anyway) and set in modern times, Beyond The Poseidon Adventure (1980) had a quasi pirating theme. It too, was a flop and hated by critics.

Oh yeah, Peter Boyle was in that one too.

Such a pity he was not shanghaied into Roman Polanski's dud, Pirates (1986).

 

[Hoos]

With the swashbuckling antics of Errol Flynn, Douglas Fairbanks and Burt Lancaster, the pirate genre had been a mainstay of Hollywood from the silent period into the 1950s. However it fell out of favour in the 1960s and few were produced. The 1970s saw a nostalgia for old Hollywood and in that decade and shortly after, there were a handful of comedy attempts to revive the genre. Ghost in the Noonday Sun (1974) featured Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan, Swashbuckler (1974) had Robert Shaw and James Earl Jones and Yellowbeard (1983) had an all-star comedy cast headed by Graham Chapman and Peter Cook.

All of these film were boxoffice duds and thrashed by the critics (if I recall, Leonard Maltin awarded each a BOMB rating). Oddly they all had something else in common - Peter Boyle (best known as Raymond's father in Everybody Loves... but also a standout in tough 70s films such as Joe, Taxi Driver and The Friends of Eddie Coyle - appeared in each of these films.

Although not a comedy (not intentionally, anyway) and set in modern times, Beyond The Poseidon Adventure (1980) had a quasi pirating theme. It too, was a flop and hated by critics.

Oh yeah, Peter Boyle was in that one too.

Such a pity he was not shanghaied into Roman Polanski's dud, Pirates (1986).

Mel Brooks got lucky with Young Frankenstein then. Peter Boyle's in that and it's a classic.

Not a pirate film though.

 

[emuboy]

In regards to sequels of sorts (and a nice bit of trivia), the 1949 R.K.O. crime-drama Strange Bargain is a decent enough and slightly noirish B-film starring Martha Hunt, Jeffrey Lynn and Harry Morgan. It passed by at the time with little notice.

38 years later the three leads returned as their characters in an episode of Murder She Wrote, where Jessica Fletcher sets about trying to prove the protagonist's innocence (the original film was used for flashbacks).

I always liked the way the way 'Cold Case' used to do this in the 2000s, with different actors playing the same character in the present day and the younger version in the flashbacks.

One interesting example of this was in the 2005 episode Strange Fruit, where the contemporary, middle-aged version of a character named Charlotte was played by actress Dee Wallace, well-known as a 'Scream Queen' after appearing in many horror and science fiction movies in the 1970s and 1980s. The younger Charlotte as a child in the black and white flashbacks to the year 1963 was played by a then completely unknown 9-year-old actress named Lina Liberato. In nearly 20 years since then Lina Liberato has a very impressive acting resume, and with many of her credits in the horror genre she has become something of a modern-day 'Scream Queen', and in fact was in the most recent Scream movie to date.

 

[sandeano]

In 1990 came the film version of Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities. A much awaited film, based on the bestseller that had captured the zeitgeist of the time, the film was a stupendous flop - critically and financially. To me this was a case of horrible miscasting. Hanks is okay but the Willis role should have really gone to a Brit (chef's kiss for Jeremy Irons rather than Bruce Willis).

Anyway, in her book on the making of the film, "The Devil's Candy" Julie Salomon writes about the need for a second unit shot of a concorde landing at the airport for exposition purposes.

The director, Brian De Palma HATED these kind of shots inserted into his film. So he told his second unit crew it had to had to be something remarkable for the shot to be allowed. They waited for the sunset and this...



It does not stop the film from being a mess, but god, what a shot for all of three seconds.

 

[emuboy]

The number of child actors who have died young is tragically quite a long list, and in 2014 the name Skye McCole Bartusiak was added to the list. While not as big a star as the Fanning sisters Dakote and Elle, Abigail Breslin or Anna Sophia Robb in the same era she was in some well-known movies, but her film and TV roles fewer and more obscure when she died at age 21 from an accidental overdose of medication to control epilepsy.

In two of Skye's best-known films in which she had major roles - 'The Patriot' in 2000 and 'Don't Say A Word' in 2001 - she co-starred with two well-known young actors neither of whom would live to see the decade of the 2010s after premature and mysterious deaths in which prescription medication played a prominent role.

The Patriot saw Skye play the younger sister of Heath Ledger's character, and Ledger died at age 29 in early 2008 from an accidental overdose of prescription medication. In Don't Say A Word Skye's co-star was Brittany Murphy, who died at age 32 in December 2009, from pneumonia and anemia, a cocktail of prescription drugs not helping the situation. The case grew even stranger when Brittany's husband Simon Monjack died exactly the same way in the same house in May 2010, a house that was said to have an odd and un-nerving feeling about it, and which was beset by unexplained maintenance problems.

Adding to the unhappy situation with Skye's death was that her mother Helen also died prematurely less than a year later at age 58 in 2015, a fate shared by her older brother Stephen (also an actor but not as high a profile as his sister) when he died at age 37 in 2023.

 

[torq]

In 1990 came the film version of Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities. A much awaited film, based on the bestseller that had captured the zeitgeist of the time, the film was a stupendous flop - critically and financially. To me this was a case of horrible miscasting. Hanks is okay but the Willis role should have really gone to a Brit (chef's kiss for Jeremy Irons rather than Bruce Willis).

Anyway, in her book on the making of the film, "The Devil's Candy" Julie Salomon writes about the need for a second unit shot of a concorde landing at the airport for exposition purposes.

The director, Brian De Palma HATED these kind of shots inserted into his film. So he told his second unit crew it had to had to be something remarkable for the shot to be allowed. They waited for the sunset and this...



It does not stop the film from being a mess, but god, what a shot for all of three seconds.

Nowadays this shot would be created with digital fx but still wouldn't be as good.

There's a good podcast that includes several episodes on the production of Bonfire with Julie Salamon.

 

[emuboy]

In 1990 came the film version of Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities. A much awaited film, based on the bestseller that had captured the zeitgeist of the time, the film was a stupendous flop - critically and financially. To me this was a case of horrible miscasting. Hanks is okay but the Willis role should have really gone to a Brit (chef's kiss for Jeremy Irons rather than Bruce Willis).

Anyway, in her book on the making of the film, "The Devil's Candy" Julie Salomon writes about the need for a second unit shot of a concorde landing at the airport for exposition purposes.

The director, Brian De Palma HATED these kind of shots inserted into his film. So he told his second unit crew it had to had to be something remarkable for the shot to be allowed. They waited for the sunset and this...



It does not stop the film from being a mess, but god, what a shot for all of three seconds.

The Bonfire of the Vanities also contains one of my all time favorite pieces of movie trivia. In this 1990 movie Tom Hanks and Kirsten Dunst played the roles of father and daughter, then 11 years later in the 2001 teen comedy 'Get Over It' Colin Hanks and Kirsten Dunst played the roles of brother and sister.

 

[emuboy]

I really liked Bottom. I probably prefer it to The Young Ones if I'm honest.

I remember hearing an interesting fan theory about Bottom - that the characters are The Young Ones only they have been in witness protection and have had their identities changed. Richie (Rik Mayall) is obviously Rick and Eddie (Adrian Edmonson) is Vyvian, while of their two friends who are recurring characters one is Dave Hedgehog, the re-named version of Mike and also played by Christopher Ryan. The other friend is Spudgun, who is said to be Neil although played by Steve O'Donnell rather than Nigel Planer. While both are very tall and have long hair, apparently super-skinny, peace-loving, lentil consuming hippie Neil became so enamored with the new persona he was given - a loud, boorish, overweight, heavy-drinking and gluttonous football hooligan - that he completely morphed into his new identity, which is why he shows no signs of being like Neil, while the others show similarities to their Young Ones characters.

 

[emuboy]

TV Sitcoms and dramas featuring large families were popular back in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Both 'The Partridge Family' from the 1970s and the Huxtable family from 'The Cosby Show' from the 1980s to the early 1990s had five kids.

Some went for even larger casts - The Brady Bunch famously had 6 kids and added in a 7th - Cousin Oliver - later in the series run. More recently (late 90s to mid 2000s) the drama 7th Heaven had a religious family with 7 kids, but there were large age differences between the kids so the focus of the younger actors tended to change from episode to episode.

While The Brady Bunch and 7th Heaven were able to make a larger cast of young actors work in a long-running show, there seems to be a ceiling at 5 kids in these large family shows and in a number of cases where it was attempted to have a cast of 6 kids/teenagers one ended up being removed as follows:

Home and Away - When Home and Away debuted in 1988 the focus was Tom and Pippa Fletcher and their five foster kids - Frank, Carly, Steven, Lynn and Sally. When the family moves to Summer Bay, they take on a 6th foster kid - a rebellious local teenage girl Bobbi. However several months in the show runners felt that they had one foster kid too many in the family so Lynn, a girl aged in her mid teens, was let go from the show with her character written out as having returned to her biological family.

Step By Step - The blended family from this 1990s sitcom had 6 kids and the parents later had a baby girl, but from the show's earliest episodes one of the sons - Brendan - seemed superfluous. His appearances became fewer and further between, until the character was removed altogether in the mid-1990s, suffering the unusual fate of becoming an 'unseen' character from then onwards, seen by those on screen and referenced as being at school, upstairs or on the phone, but never visible or audible to the audience again until the show ended.

Rags to Riches - This forgotten late 1980s musical sitcom set in the early 1960s about a wealthy businessman adopting six girls from an orphanage. The tight-knit six orphan girls all vowed never to be separated no matter what, so it was a bit of a surprise when early on one of the group - Nina - was suddenly gone. Off-screen, it was felt that a sixth girl was just one too many for the show so Nina was cut from the cast, and the only explanation for her departure came several episodes later with a mention she had been reunited with her biological family.

 

[troybe]

We can go even larger with Eight is Enough and supersize again with Just the Ten of Us

 

[emuboy]

We can go even larger with Eight is Enough and supersize again with Just the Ten of Us

I'd heard of Eight Is Enough but I've never seen it, but had never heard of Just the Ten of Us until you posted it. I looked it up and saw it is a spin-off from Growing Pains, but it is set in California, and IIRC wasn't the better-known Growing Pains set in Chicago?

 

[spinynorman]

Louise Brooks, silent film star of the 1920s, retired from acting in the late 1930s and spent her final years in Rochester, New Jersey. She was eventually banned from the public library there because she would borrow film books and write annotations based on her own experiences in the margins of it. Particularly, she borrowed a book on Chaplin and added, in sections on his romantic life, about his having a small penis and being a dud root.