Random Movie/TV trivia and shit

[ZepFloyd94]

I've got a few right here:

• Bongo (that Disney cartoon about a circus bear) started development as a semi-sequel to Dumbo.
• Among those who were considered for the title role in the original Superman movie were Bruce Jenner, Muhammad Ali, Clint Eastwood, and Al Pacino.
• The Nightmare Before Christmas was originally supposed to be part of the official Walt Disney Animated Classics canon. However at the last minute, Michael Eisner deemed that the movie would be too scary for the family friendly Walt Disney Pictures label and opted to release it through Touchstone Pictures. This explains why there was gap in the lineup for 1993.
• The rough cut of the Woodstock documentary lasted over a day long.
• There's a hidden Black Sabbath reference in Inside Out. When Riley is Skyping her hometown friend, one of her contacts is "RocknRollDoctor" A reference to a track from their 1976 album, Technical Ecstasy.

 

[Watcher]

Some Napoleon Dynamite trivia

• The actor who played Napoleon in the film, Jon Heder, actually drew all of the drawings his character doodles in his notebook
• The dance scene at the end of the film was actually shot three times, in 10 minutes. He shot him dancing awkwardly to three different tracks and then cut the best moments from each take into one segment done to one of the songs. It was the last scene of the film to be done and they actually ran out of film while shooting it.
• The scene where the farmer shoots the cow infront of the children in the school bus is actually based on a true story that happened during the director's childhood.
• It has one of the longest credited cast lists in movie history. All 181 student extras are listed in the closing credits.
• Both the actor who played Napoleon and the actor who played Pedro have identical twin brothers in real life. Both actors were 27 and 31 when the film was being made despite playing highschool students.
• Every dish shown during the opening credits is eaten by a character later in the movie.
• A Liger is an actual irl animal that is created when a male lion mates with a female tiger
• The film takes place in Idaho and is credited as helping promote Idaho's most famous export, potatoes because of how prominently tater tots feature in it.
• The epilogue scene featuring the wedding wasn't in the original cut of the film. It was filmed and added after the film became a huge success by Fox. The wedding scene is only 5 minutes long and cost the production half of what the total film's original budget was.

 

[Watcher]

1. In the movie Spaceballs. The antagonist Dark Helmet tells Lone Starr he is his "father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roomate" When Lone Starr asks, "What does that make us?" Helmet answers, "Absolutely nothing, which is what you are about to become!" However if you notice, Dark Helmet is actually admitting to being Lone Starr's former roommate. Since Lone Starr's father's brother's nephew's cousin could actually be Lone Starr.
2. The Pizza the Hutt costume used real cheese.
   
3. The scenes in Yogurt's temple were filmed on the same soundstage where, in the 1930s, MGM shot the scenes in The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy and her friends meet the Wizard of Oz. Some other parallels also exist:
   • A young woman trying to go home (Dorothy/Vespa), a simple man sworn to protect her (Scarecrow/Lone Starr), a person made out of metal (Tin Man/Dot), and a humanoid animal (Cowardly Lion/Barf) link arms and slowly walk down a corridor
   • The humanoid animal (Cowardly Lion/Barf) nearly chickens out and separates from the group
   • The main denizen of the heroes' current location (The Emerald City/Yogurt's cave), someone renowned for magic and wisdom (Oz/Yogurt), uses fire and a deep-voiced, larger-than-life representation of himself (Oz's giant fake head/Yogurt's giant statue) to catch their attention
   • Once the heroes meet the person (Oz/Yogurt) in his true form, he tries to act humble while still doing what he can to help the young woman (Dorothy/Vespa) get home

 

[Jewelsmakerguy]

1. In the movie Spaceballs. The antagonist Dark Helmet tells Lone Starr he is his "father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roomate" When Lone Starr asks, "What does that make us?" Helmet answers, "Absolutely nothing, which is what you are about to become!" However if you notice, Dark Helmet is actually admitting to being Lone Starr's former roommate. Since Lone Starr's father's brother's nephew's cousin could actually be Lone Starr.
2. The Pizza the Hutt costume used real cheese.
   
3. The scenes in Yogurt's temple were filmed on the same soundstage where, in the 1930s, MGM shot the scenes in The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy and her friends meet the Wizard of Oz. Some other parallels also exist:
   • A young woman trying to go home (Dorothy/Vespa), a simple man sworn to protect her (Scarecrow/Lone Starr), a person made out of metal (Tin Man/Dot), and a humanoid animal (Cowardly Lion/Barf) link arms and slowly walk down a corridor
   • The humanoid animal (Cowardly Lion/Barf) nearly chickens out and separates from the group
   • The main denizen of the heroes' current location (The Emerald City/Yogurt's cave), someone renowned for magic and wisdom (Oz/Yogurt), uses fire and a deep-voiced, larger-than-life representation of himself (Oz's giant fake head/Yogurt's giant statue) to catch their attention
   • Once the heroes meet the person (Oz/Yogurt) in his true form, he tries to act humble while still doing what he can to help the young woman (Dorothy/Vespa) get home

Also Spaceballs related:
- The film marks the first colaboration between effects houses ILM and Apogee since the first Star Wars film (ILM did the chestbuster in the diner scene).
- The coloring book and lunch box in the Yogurt scene were simply Transformers merchandise relabeled.
- One of Helmet's men during the scene where Spaceball One goes plaid (or rather, just after it leaves plaid) is played by Rob Paulson (you can tell by the voice).

 

[nonnewtonian]

Some trivia from everyone's favorite bad movie, The Room:

• Most scenes involving Tommy Wiseau took an inordinate amount of time and takes to finish because Wiseau could not remember his lines, follow his blocking instructions, or hit his marks and eye lines. For example, the eight second long "I did not hit her...Oh, hi Mark" scene took 32 takes and 3 hours just to get something remotely usable.
• Despite two of the main characters getting married, the words "fiance/fiancee" are never said once. Characters instead use "future husband/future wife." Some suspect this is due to Wiseau's dislike of France and the French.
• According to Greg Sestero, Johnny tackling Mark during their park football scene was not scripted. Wiseau was pissed that Greg had spoken French and tackled him out of frustration.
• Kyle Vogt, who played Peter the psychologist, hit his head and developed a concussion during one of his scenes. This is why he blinks so much and awkwardly touches the book case.
• Todd Barron was actually the film's third director of photography. The first two quit after disagreements with Wiseau.
• Drew Caffrey, who is credited as being an executive producer, a casting agent, and an assistant, had been dead for three years by the time production began.
• Wiseau had picture frames purchased to decorate the apartment set, but he was too impatient to replace the stock photos with actual photographs. This is why there are so many pictures of spoons around Johnny and Lisa's apartment.
• The woman in the flower shop scene is actually one of the owners of the store, and the owner of the pug on the table. The "Hi doggy!" line was ad libbed when Wiseau noticed the dog in the middle of the take. It was so still and quiet that nobody had noticed it up until that point.

 

[Watcher]

In the movie Memento the main character Leonard has a flashback to another character named Sammy Jankis sitting in a mental institution. In a very brief moment you can see someone walk infront of the camera and before the movie cuts to another scene you can see Leonard sitting in the same chair as Sammy.

 

[ZepFloyd94]

Some random film trivia involving musicians.

• Sting was Jim Henson's first choice to play Jareth the Goblin King in Labyrinth
• Original Who drummer Keith Moon was slated to make a cameo in Life of Brian, but died shortly before filming started in 1978. The published script was dedicated to him.
• Two of the biggest movies of the '80s originally had two of the biggest names in the music in mind to create their soundtracks. James Cameron initially wanted Genesis keyboard player Tony Banks to score The Terminator, while Wes Craven offered Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi the chance the write the soundtrack for Nightmare on Elm Street.
• George Harrison founded an entire film production company just to finance Life of Brian, HandMade Films. It actually went on the be a fairly successful company in its own right, bringing about hits like Time Bandits, Mona Lisa, and 127 Hours.

 

[The Nothingness]

In the opening scene to Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indiana Jones outruns the Boulder. Harrison Ford actually outran the boulder during the first take and it looked unconvincing. During the second take he accidentally stumbled which was seen as really convincing and was left in the final movie.

The instructions for the construction of the Ark are found in Exodus 25:10. The clothing that Belloq wears while acting as a high priest during the ceremony at the end is found beginning in Exodus chapter 28.

The sound of the Ark of the Covenant's lid being opened is actually the sound designer lifting a toilet cistern's lid.

The opening scene of the film where Indiana Jones steals an idol from an ancient temple that is rigged with booby traps is actually based on a Donald Duck comic that both George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg read when they were 15 and 12 years old respectively.

Stephen Spielberg intended Indiana Jones to essentially be a B-Movie

The Well of Souls sequence was filmed on the same set of the Overlook Hotel in the Shining which released the previous year.

Indiana Jones's iconic wide brimmed fedora was made in such a way so that it would disguise his face when stunt doubles were being used.

When the movie was being filmed in Tunisia, almost all of the cast and crew got very ill. Stephen Spielberg managed to avoid this by exclusively eating cans of Spaghetti-O's he brought with him.

I have another one pretaning to Raiders:
The exploding head at the end netted the movie an R rating. To work it down to a hard PG rating, the effects artists put flames over it.

That in a way helped a bit, since the head looked like this:

Another piece of trivia from this movie, which is pretty much common knowledge now, is that the scene with the sword guy in the market was ad-libbed by Harrison Ford. The script called for a lengthy fight scene but Ford was tired from shooting and after pulling his gun out to kill the sword guy, that ended being the scene for the movie.

 

[Watcher]

Another piece of trivia from this movie, which is pretty much common knowledge now, is that the scene with the sword guy in the market was ad-libbed by Harrison Ford. The script called for a lengthy fight scene but Ford was tired from shooting and after pulling his gun out to shoot the sword guy, that ended being the scene for the movie.

They actually filmed part of the scene

 

[Watcher]

In the original Robocop. During the convenience store scene. The robber walks into the store and picks up a comic book.

If you look closely you can see the comic book he picks up is Iron Man. And you can also see a ROM comic.

Both Iron Man and ROM are cybernetically augmented men who protect the innocent. Much like Robocop. It's a very sly bit of directing on Paul Verhoven's part.

 

[Lieutenant Mumbly]

The Goonies has a holiday on June 7.

 

[Bob Page]

• (Starship Troopers) In the 2nd Fed Net scene where a murderer was put on trial, the murderer is played by the film's screenwriter, Edward Neumeier
• (Cowboy Bebop The Movie) If you look closely during the intro credits, you can see animated versions of the voice actors of Spike, Jet, and Faye, though they're subtly hidden.
• In Star Wars: The Force Awakens, in the scene where BB-8 rolls away from the village massacre, you can hear an alien say something that sounds like 'Kojima', possibly referring to Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima.

 

[American Lollinator Mace]

On the set of Jaws, they referred to the mechanical shark as 'Bruce.' That was the name of Spielberg's lawyer at the time.
Now to connect to something more recent, and something that's not trivia at all: the name of the non-fish-eating great white in Finding Nemo is...Bruce. Could just be part of locating the movie in Australia('s oceans), since Bruce is a pretty common name there, but if it is a Jaws reference, then...well... :?