Martin Cruz Smith’s novel Gorky Park was his first featuring the too-honest Soviet detective Arkady Renko, who was played by William Hurt in the film.
When opened in 1935, Moscow’s first Metro line (often referred to simply as the red line) ran from the Sokolniki district in the northeast of the city to Park Kultury (the Gorky Park station) on the southwest edge of the Garden Ring, a trip of about 20 minutes. In those days, this was close to the edge of the city.
Nikita Khrushchev and Lazar Kaganovitch led the building of the Metro in the 1930s.
The film Megamind takes place in Metro City, which is always mispronounced by the title character as “Metrocity”.
Tina Fey is in that movie.
She is from the Philadelphia area. She studied at the University of Virginia where in 1992 she got a degree in Drama. She started on Saturday Night Live in 1997 as a writer, saying, “I’d had my eye on the show forever, the way other kids have their eye on Derek Jeter.”
In Scottish folklore, a person who has the second sight is sometimes said to be “fey.”
Professional wrestler “Rowdy” Roddy Piper is touted as being from Scotland, but he’s really from Canada.
He starred in John Carpenter’s cult film They Live, an atypical alien invasion film that’s the source of the quote “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass… and I’m all out of bubblegum.”
(Incidentally, I watched it last night with my mother, who was seeing it for the first time. She thought it was weird, and thought the fight scene between Piper and his best friend took way too long.)
Bubblegum music was a genre created in the late 1960s for music that was simple, melodic, and often had childlike lyrics. The 1910 Fruitgum Company (“Simon Says”) and the Ohio Express (“Yummy Yummy Yummy”) were among the earliest groups to use the title, taking the name from producers Jerry Kasenetz and Jeff Katz of Buddah Records. Buddah was the home of most of the original bubblegum acts and, oddly, Captain Beefheart’s first album, Safe as Milk.
Two sets of ABBA Australian Bubblegum Trading Cards were released in Australia in 1976 by Scanlens. There were a pink and a blue set, with 72 cards in each set. They are among the rariest of ABBA collectibles.
ABBA made its first USA television appearance on The Mike Douglas Show, which was then based in Philadelphia after originating in Cleveland. Eventually, the program relocated to Los Angeles before ending its run.
ABBA won the 1974 Eurovision song contest with the song, Waterloo.
In “Waterloo,” ABBA sings, “At Waterloo Napoleon did surrender / Oh yeah!”
Oh, no. Napoleon fled the field and surrendered a month later to the captain of HMS Bellerophon.
Sergei Bondarchuk, who directed the Soviet film version of War and Peace, also directed the 1970 movie Waterloo, starring Rod Steiger as Napoleon Bonaparte and Christopher Plummer as the Duke of Wellington.
Christopher Plummer sang Edelweiss with Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music.
William Shatner, a/k/a Captain Kirk, began his acting career as Christopher Plummer’s understudy in Henry V, staged in Stratford, ON, Canada.
The first televised interracial kiss was between William Shatner’s Captain Kirk and Nichelle Nichols’ Lieutenant Uhura on Star Trek.
Michael Dunn, who played Alexander the Dwarf in that episode of STAR TREK (“Plato’s Stepchildren”), also had a recurring role on “The Wild, Wild West” as Dr. Miguelito Loveless, the nemisis of James West and Artemus Gordon.
Between his regular role on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, guest appearance in Star Trek VI and role as a main character in the last four films, Michael Dorn appeared in more combined episodes/films than any other actor. (He played as Lieutenant/Lieutenant Commander Worf in all but two of those appearances.)
In developing the format for ST: TNG, the character of Lt. Worf was visualized as “a Klingon Marine” on the bridge of the Enterprise to show that the Federation and Empire had at last reconciled their differences.
In ST:TNG, Denise Crosby was originally cast to play Counselor Troi and Marina Sirtis was originally cast to play a security officer.