Please post the strangest movie trivia you’ve ever heard of, such as:
That obscene, low-budget, no-taste classic Ilsa, She-Wolf Of The SS was filmed secretly on the set of Hogan’s Heroes.
Please post the strangest movie trivia you’ve ever heard of, such as:
That obscene, low-budget, no-taste classic Ilsa, She-Wolf Of The SS was filmed secretly on the set of Hogan’s Heroes.
In Close Encounters of the Third Kind there is a small R2D2 stuck on the mother ship.
Also there is a line that Truffaut says to the translator guy that all this time I thought he was speaking French. I finally learned that what he actually said was ‘They belong here more than we’ but he said it with an outrageous French accent that I neve uderstood it.
Hitchcock had a thing for bathrooms. He’d frequently set scenes in them and/or include the letters “BM” (for ‘bowel movement’) somewhere in his movies.
In nearly every John Landis movie somewhere the phrase “See you next Wednesday” is either spoken or written in the background somewhere. For example, in Trading Places, the phrase is on a fake movie poster in Jamie Lee Curtis’s apartment. The phrase is Landis’ tribute to Stanley Kubrick…in 2001: A Space Odyssey when Heywood Floyd is talking on the phone to his daughter, he says this to her.
In Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Indy passes by a bar called “Club Obi Wan” on his way to getting on an airplane.
I mentioned this in another thread the other day, but the music to the annoyingly cute “Hampsterdance” website is a chipmunk-ized version of the theme music to Disney’s Robin Hood cartoon of the '70’s.
John Cazale (best known as Fredo Corleone) appeared in only five films (Godfather, Godfather II, Dog Day Afternoon, The Conversation, and The Deer Hunter). All five were nominated for Oscars. In addition, stock footage of him was used in Godfather III; it was nominated for an Oscar, too.
The coat worn by Frank Morgan in “The Wizard of Oz” was once owned by L. Frank Baum, who wrote the book. It was picked up in a second-hand shop; a card of Baum’s was found in one of the pockets later (assuming that this isn’t just made up for PR, that is).
Buster Keaton never threw a pie in a silent movie. Charley Chaplin was never hit by one. The first person to throw a pie in a film was Mabel Normand. Her target – Ben Turpin. Pies thrown in silent movies were blueberry, not cream – it showed up better.
Charlie Chaplin’s “Limelight” won an Oscar for best score 21 years after the film was released, the longest gap between release date and an Oscar win (not counting honorary Oscars). The film didn’t play in Los Angeles until 1973, making that its first year of eligibility.
Robert DiNiro and Marlon Brando won Oscars for playing the same character (Don Vito Corleone).
Lupe Velez, the Mexican Spitfire, died by drowning in her toilet.
(Okay, she didn’t. But if there’s ONE damnsure way to lure Eve back to the SDMB it’s to re-broadcast this old urban legend, which she enjoys debunking so much you can feel the waves of delight passing through her keyboard and onto our screens.)
In every Kevin Smith movie, there is a reference to the Star Wars Trilogy, Hockey, and Jaws.
And, in every movie, Kevin Smith’s character (Silent Bob)has only two lines (although in “Chasing Amy” the second line is a long speech, it is still only one line, as no one else speaks during the entire monologue.)
Karl Malden is a proud Serbian, and his real name is Mladen Sekulavich. He always resented having to take a more “American” sounding name when he entered show biz, sod ever since he became a star, he’s almost always found SOME way to say the name “Sekulavich” in virtually every movie he’s made.
Example: in one of the first scenes of “Patton,” Malden (playing General Omar Bradley) tells his aide “Hand me those field glasses, Sekulavich.”
Well, I’ve heard this to be true of Lupe. While she and Weissmuller were married, the make-up folks on the Tarzan films had to apply copious amounts of skin tone make-up to his back and neck to cover the deep claw marks and hickeys she left.
No wonder the man’s voice sounded like Michael Jackson’s.
Sir Rhosis (500)
In “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” the radar identfication for one of the airplanes that has a close encounter in one of the first scenes is “AE-31.” This is a veiled tribute to “2001 : A Space Odyssey” where the radio antenna which Hal mistakenly diagnoses is the AE-31 unit.
In “Grease” Jeff Conway had to walk stooped over all the time so he wouldn’t look taller than John Travolta.
In “The Exorcist” it was so cold on the set one day, that it began to snow (what with the air being oversaturated and all).
I thought this was common knowledge, but I recently saw a reference to it in a magazine which should have known this, but didn’t…
The woman in the restaurant who deadpans “I’ll have what she’s having” after Meg Ryan’s character fakes the orgasm? That’s Rob Reiner’s own mom.
During the horseback scenes in STAR TREK: GENERATIONS, William Shatner, an experienced equestrian, convinced Patrick Stewart to wear pantyhose under his costume pants to prevent chafing. Stewart says it worked, however it’s now hard for me to watch those scenes without wondering which brands they are wearing.
Sir Rhosis
In Rocky Horror Picture Show…
During the opening sequence, the lips are those of
Quinn, Patricia; the singing voice is 'OBrien, Richard’s.
Debra Winger was one of the two women who did the voice of E.T. in the movie of that name.
The exterior shots of the house in The Exorcist (with its stairway leading down to M Street) are of 3600 Prospect Street NW. William Peter Blatty lived there as an undergraduate at Georgetown University and set the action of his novel there and then got the filmmakers to use it for the exterior shots.
I think this is rather commonly known, but it’s all I can think of off the top of my head:
In Raiders of the Lost Ark, the scene where Indy shoots the swordfighter in the street was originally planned as a long fight scene between the swordfighter and Indy. However, Harrison Ford was ill, so the scene was shortened and they were able to wrap up the location filming three days sooner than planned.
Another Harrison Ford bit: He wanted the Han Solo character to die at the end of Return of the Jedi.
Beetlejuice was originally planned as a supernatural drama entitled The Maitlands, about a deceased couple dealing with the troubles of the afterlife. The scenes were scripted much more mordibly than they appear (most notably the waiting room scenes, which were supposed to be particulary ghoulish), and most of the characters were much darker. Only when Michael Keaton began filming his scenes and asked for creative filming did Tim Burton realize the potential of a dark comedy.
Malcolm McDowell suffered all sorts of mishaps during the filming of A Clockwork Orange. He got a scratched cornea during the Ludivico treatment scenes in the theatre, and he almost drowned during the pig trough scene. Not only that, but the snake, Bazil, wasn’t even planned until Kubrick found out that McDowell had a fear of reptiles.
40 to 30% of the script to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was written by an uncredited David Seltzer, who would go on to write the script for The Omen. The rest was by Dahl himself, who would later go on to say that he hated the movie.
I probably have lots more, but these are the ones that stick out for me.
Udo Kier, who plays F.W. Murnau’s producer in Shadow of the Vampire, played Count Dracula himself in the revolting Blood for Dracula (a.k.a. Andy Warhol’s Dracula). He has also played the roles of Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. Jeckyll, Jack the Ripper, and Adolf Hitler.
Stanley Kubrick often placed a reference to a previous film in his newest; unfortunately, I can only recall a few. That subject might be worthy of its own thread.
On a related subject, the non-Director’s Cut ending of Blade Runner featured unused footage from the opening sequence of The Shining.
In watching Night of the Hunter the other night, I think I may have seen a young Warren Beatty spit out a completely uncredited one-liner (he’s the cap-wearing teenager leaning against the wall in the alley shot). (I have been wrong, or at least haven’t yet been proven correct about other uncredited appearances of this sort, notably an appearance by Toshiro Mifune in Fistful of Dollars.)
In Star Wars, the only sound effect recorded live during an actual shoot was the sound of Han Solo hanging a pair of headphones on a hook. Every other single sound you heard in the movie was dubbed in.
The guy who made Alien made that movie just after almost going broke trying to make Dune. He got it about half-finished… god, I’d love to see the dailies for that…
Marcia Strassman, who played Gabe Kotter’s wife on Welcome Back, Kotter, was known as “Bullet” among the crew due to the fact that whenever they pointed a camera at her, her nipples pointed right back… they had to use gaffer’s tape to keep her in check.
What do you mean by “half-finished”? Did another producer or director take over half way through the filming??