** Random Movie Trivia Thread **

Soldato
Joined
16 Apr 2007
Posts
23,440
Location
UK
Hey all,

Recently, I've been reading the "Trivia" section of IMDB on some films. Some of them have some pretty interesting bits from films, and I was interested if anyone had found some that they'd like to share :D

V For Vendetta said:
Certain scenes within the film feature James Purefoy as V, who was originally cast in the role but replaced by Hugo Weaving four weeks into filming. Weaving's voice was simply dubbed over Purefoy's performance. Director James McTeigue said in an interview: "Can I tell the difference? Yeah. Can the audience tell? I doubt it."

Source

Batman: The Dark Knight said:
It's Sir Michael Caine's opinion that Heath Ledger beat the odds and topped Jack Nicholson's Joker from Batman: "Jack was like a clown figure, benign but wicked, maybe a killer old uncle. He could be funny and make you laugh. Heath's gone in a completely different direction to Jack, he's like a really scary psychopath. He's a lovely guy and his Joker is going to be a hell of a revelation in this picture." Caine bases this belief on a scene where the Joker pays a visit to Bruce Wayne's penthouse. He'd never met Ledger before, so when Ledger arrived and performed he gave Caine such a fright he forgot his lines.

Source

Inception said:
Joseph Gordon-Levitt went to his audition after a brief character summary, wearing a full suit "just in case", unknowingly matching his character's wardrobe perfectly.

Source

Thanks,

Marky
 
I thought this thread would do well but... maybe not :( :p

In a last ditch attempt at reviving this already dying thread - Here's a bump, with another piece of Movie Trivia...

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang said:
Johnny Knoxville was set to star as Harry Lockhart before being replaced by Robert Downey Jr.

^ Soooo glad RDJ got the part - May not have been such a great film otherwise :eek:
 
Black Hawk Down
The photo of a wife and child that one of the soldiers is looking at is actually a photo of Eric Bana's wife and child. The props department forgot to take a photo of a wife and child with them, so asked Bana's wife and child who were traveling with him if they could use a photo of them in the movie.

a lot of money but truely an amazing scene capturing an important part of history:

Saving Private Ryan
The Omaha Beach scene cost $11 million to shoot and involved up to 1000 extras, some of whom were members of the Irish Army Reserve. Of those extras, 20-30 of them were amputees issued with prosthetic limbs to simulate soldiers having their limbs blown off.
 
Thanks for playing ball dudes :D

The Prestige said:
Chung Ling Soo was a stage character created by a Caucasian American man, William Ellsworth Robinson, who disguised himself as a Chinese man to cash in on audiences' enthusiasm for the exotic. Robinson lived as Chung, never breaking character while in public. He died in March 1918 when a bullet catch trick went wrong. "My God, I've been shot" were both his last words and the first English he had spoken on stage in 19 years.

The Prestige said:
Borden's infant is played by one of director Christopher Nolan's children.
 
I always think its quite cool to read about these. Really shows how much effort films put in.
surprising really.
 
Bladerunner said:
Although Philip K. Dick saw only the opening 20 minutes of footage prior to his death on March 2, 1982, he was extremely impressed, and has been quoted by Paul Sammon as saying, "It was my own interior world. They caught it perfectly." However neither Ridley Scott nor screenwriter David Webb Peoples actually read Dick's novel.
 
Iron Man 2 said:
Sam Rockwell, who was one of the original choices for the role of Tony Stark/Iron Man in Iron Man, plays Stark's antagonist Justin Hammer in the film.

Transformers: Revenge of the fallen said:
Near the end of filming, Shia LaBeouf hit a prop and injured his eye. His injury required seven stitches, and the doctor literally held up a thumb and forefinger and said "Blindness." LaBeouf said it was the most insane experience he'd been through, but he resumed filming two hours later.


Transformers: Revenge of the fallen said:
A single IMAX shot (df250) would take almost 3 years to render on a top-of-the-line home PC running nonstop. If the entire movie was rendered on a modern home PC, you would've had to start 16,000 years ago (when cave paintings like the Hall of Bulls were created) to finish for this year's premiere.


Transformers: Revenge of the fallen said:
According to the ILM animators, Devastator is made of 52,632 pieces (more than 10 times the number of individual parts in an ordinary car), 11,716,127 polygons, and 6,467 textures, and took up 32 gigabytes of computer space. If his components were laid end-to-end they would stretch 13.84 miles. All the gold ever mined in human history could build a little more than half of it.

Matrix said:
Nicolas Cage turned down the part of Neo because of family commitments. Other actors considered for the role included Tom Cruise and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Matrix said:
Will Smith was approached to play Neo, but turned down the offer in order to star in Wild Wild West. He later admitted that, at the time, he was "not mature enough as an actor" and that, if given the role, he "would have messed it up".

Rocky 4 said:
When shooting the film, Sylvester Stallone decided that for the shooting of the fight, he and Dolph Lundgren should hit one another for real, so as to increase the intensity of the scene. After doing three takes of Rocky taking shots to ribs, Stallone felt a burning in his chest, but ignored it. Later that night, he had difficulty breathing and was taken to a nearby emergency room. It was discovered that his blood pressure was over 200, and he had to be flown on a low-altitude flight from Canada to St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, where he remained in intensive care for eight days. What had happened was that Lungren had punched him so hard in the chest, Stallone's heart had slammed up against his breastbone and began to swell, cutting off the blood supply and restricting the oxygen flow throughout the body.

Rocky (1976) said:
After producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff became interested in the script, they offered writer Sylvester Stallone an unprecedented $350,000 for the rights, but he refused to sell unless they agreed to allow him to star in the film (this despite the fact that he had only $106 in the bank, no car and was trying to sell his dog because he couldn't afford to feed it). They agreed, but only on the condition that Stallone continue to work as a writer without a fee and that he work as an actor for scale. After Winkler and Chartoff purchased the film, they took it to United Artists, who envisioned a budget of $2 million, but that was on the basis of using an established star (they particularly wanted Robert Redford, Ryan O'Neal, Burt Reynolds or James Caan). United Artists didn't want Stallone to star, and when Winkler and Chartoff told them that the only way they could get him to sell the screenplay was to agree to cast him, United Artists cut the budget to $1 million, and had Chartoff and Winkler sign agreements that if the film went over budget, they would be personally liable. The final cost of the film was $1.1 million. The $0.1 million came after Chartoff and Winkler mortgaged their homes so as to complete the project.

Rocky (1976) said:
During his audition, Carl Weathers was sparring with Sylvester Stallone and accidentally punched him on the chin. Stallone told Weathers to calm down, as it was only an audition, and Weathers said that if he was allowed to audition with a 'real' actor, not a stand-in, he would be able to do a lot better. Director John G. Avildsen smiled and told Weathers that Stallone was the real actor (and the writer). Weathers looked at Stallone thoughtfully for a moment, and said, "Well, maybe he'll get better." Stallone immediately offered him the role.

Batman Begins said:
Much of Batman's gear and apparel, including his cape and suit, is based on actual military technology.

Batman Begins said:
While shooting on the streets of Chicago, a person accidentally crashed into the Batmobile. The driver was apparently drunk, and said he hit the car in a state of panic, believing the Dark Knight's vehicle to be an invading alien spacecraft.

:D
 
Brilliant thread, made for some really interesting reading while I've been printing! :D

Hehe yeah I love reading these also :) Good effort guys :)

Here are some more...

Tropical Thunder said:
Like his character, Kirk Lazarus, Robert Downey Jr. is a method actor and stayed in character as Sgt. Osiris/Lazarus even while cameras weren't rolling.

Tropical Thunder said:
In the film, Kirk Lazarus says "I don't drop character 'til I've done the DVD commentary." When recording the audio commentary for the unrated DVD and blu-ray, Robert Downey Jr. actually spends the entire commentary in the character that appears on the screen as the movie progresses.

500 Days of Summer said:
According to the DVD commentary, the writer estimates that 75% of the film actually happened to him.

500 Days of Summer said:
During the flashback to Summer's job selling ice cream, Tom can be seen waiting in line.

Die Hard 3: With a Vengeance said:
Originally titled "Simon Says" (where Zeus was scripted as a woman) and was considered as the third sequel to Lethal Weapon.

Die Hard 3: With a Vengeance said:
The sex scene between Jeremy Irons and Sam Phillips was added in at the last minute because John McTiernan knew that the film would get an R rating and he might as well put a sex scene in.

Die Hard 3: With a Vengeance said:
Sean Connery was John McTiernan's very first choice for the role of Simon Gruber. He turned down the role, saying that he didn't want to play such a diabolical villain.
 
Dumb & Dumber said:
Jim Carrey chipped his tooth years earlier, but had the cap removed for the film to make his character look more deranged.

Dumb & Dumber said:
When Harry and Lloyd are in the car, Lloyd asks if Harry wants to hear the most annoying sound in the world. This was not originally in the script (you can tell by the look on Jeff Daniels' face).

Dumb & Dumber said:
Jim Carrey was initially offered $700,000 to appear in the film. However, the offer went in the same week when Ace Ventura: Pet Detective opened at number 1 in the US box office, so by the time Carrey's agents had renegotiated with the film's producers, his salary had upped itself to $7 million, almost half the film's budget.
 
The Goonies
When Chunk and Sloth head down through the grate to follow the gang and the Fratellis, Sloth is wearing an Oakland Raiders T-Shirt. John Matuszak, who played Sloth, was a former Oakland Raiders football player.

The late Corey Haim auditioned for the role of Mouth, but the role was given to Corey Feldman instead. At the time neither Corey knew the other Corey, but they met up again on the set of The Lost Boys and they became best friends. The duo would go on to star in seven movies together in the late '80s and early ' 90s. In the movie _License To Drive (1988)_, Corey Feldman auditioned for the lead role of Les Anderson, but that role was given to Corey Haim
 
Last edited:
Bruce Almighty said:
When Jim Carrey turns on the TV in the beginning of Bruce Almighty the man who appears on the screen is John Murphy, the real-life sports director for WKBW-TV in Buffalo.

Mission Impossible 3 said:
As the production could do nothing about inquisitive crowds watching them while they were filming in Rome, they actually set up a phony second unit a little further away, hired several girls in bikinis and several older women dressed as nuns and pretended to be filming takes for the film, while the main unit got on with their business largely undisturbed.

Mission Impossible 3 said:
Tom Cruise did the vast majority of his own stunts in this film. Most of them were done without major injury; however, Cruise cracked a couple of ribs one time when he turned his upper torso too quick.
 
One bit of trivia from every Fast and Furious film as I will happily admit I love them all :D

The Fast and the Furious
Dominic's RX-7 originally had a roll cage. It was removed to accommodate Vin Diesel's physique.

2 Fast 2 Furious
The cars Brain races against at the beginning are the same models that won the major races in The Fast and the Furious and they reach the bridge in reverse order of their appearance in the first movie. The stunt crew actually reused some of the stunt cars from the original (they were, of course, modified to resemble the cars in the sequel).

The Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift
The VeilSide RX-7 driven by Han used to be a special show car built by VeilSide and crowned "Best of Show 2005" at Tokyo Auto Salon, reportedly worth $150,000. Just the custom leather interior reported cost $20,000. Universal got it for $50,000, and the crew promptly destroyed both the interior and exterior by repainting both (with spray-paint).

Fast and Furious
The Nissan Skyline GT-R R34 that O'Connor drives was provided by Kaizo Industries which was claimed to be legal for road use under "kit car" guidelines. The R34 was later believed to be stolen in July 2009, when it was later revealed to be one of the three R34s seized by government agents. As of September 2009, its fate is unknown.

Fast Five
The stunt involving the flatbed truck slamming into the moving train was filmed practically without the use of miniatures or CGI. The collision nearly derailed the train, as can clearly be seen.
 
The Breakfast Club said:
The joke that Bender tells but never finishes (while crawling through the ceiling) actually has no punchline. According to Judd Nelson, he ad-libbed the line. Originally, he was supposed to tell a joke that would end when he came back into the library and said, "Forgot my pencil", but no one could come up with a joke for that punchline.

The Breakfast Club said:
The scene in which all characters sit in a circle on the floor in the library and tell stories about why they were in detention was not scripted. John Hughes told them all to ad-lib.
 
Last edited:
Fight Club said:
Director David Fincher shot over 1,500 reels of film, more than three times the usual amount for a 120 minute film.

Fight Club said:
In the short scene when Brad Pitt and Edward Norton are drunk and hitting golf balls, they really are drunk, and the golf balls are sailing directly into the side of the catering truck.

Oceans Eleven said:
The cast did gamble during off hours. While there's disagreement between who won the most (George Clooney says Matt Damon, Damon says Brad Pitt), Clooney managed to lose 25 hands of blackjack in a row.

Oceans Eleven said:
The scene of everyone standing around watching the Bellagio fountain and leaving was somewhat improvised, Steven Soderbergh wanted Rusty, Brad Pitt, to leave first. The other actors were told to line up and depart in whatever order felt natural.
 
Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen said:
Did you know the first time Devastator was rendered it fried the workstation

To make matters more complex, Devastator is so big and has so many parts that the animation crew couldn't treat him as a single asset. "When we tried to load the entire model in high res, it would grind the machines to a halt," Benza says. "We had two machines fail trying to work with him. One literally smoked. We don't know for sure if it was a direct result of working with this character, but it certainly did get overloaded – and fried."
 
Knocked Up said:
Much of the dialogue was improvised by the actors or fed to them in the moment by Judd Apatow just before a take.

Knocked Up said:
Ken Jeong, who plays Dr. Kuni, is an actual M.D. He developed his comedy routine while completing his residency in internal medicine in New Orleans.

Knocked Up said:
Jonah suffers from nosocomephobia, fear of hospitals.
 
Back
Top Bottom