jon_chaisson | IMDb Meme (Reply)

1. Look up TEN of your favorite movies on IMDB.
2. Click the "trivia" link in the sidebar.
3. Post a fun and random bit of trivia from each film.

YELLOW SUBMARINE--The scene in which the boxing dinosaur is smoking a Cigar (it has a band) is a parody of the long-running series of ad for Hamlet Cigars. "Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet" was a long-running campaign for Hamlet Cigars, lasting until tobacco advertising on television was banned in the UK in 1991. Radio and television commercials used an excerpt from Bach's Air on the G String, which is still frequently associated with the brand.

CATCH-22--The film has one of the longest, most complex uninterrupted scenes ever made. In the scene, where two actors talking against a background, 16 of the 17 planes, four groups of four aircraft, took off at the same time. As the scene progresses, the actors entered a building and the same planes were seen through the window, climbing into formation. The problem was, for every take, the production manager has to call the planes back and made to take off again for every take of the particular scene. This was done four times.

HEAD--Veteran actor Victor Mature agreed to appear in the movie after reading the script, admitting none of it made sense to him: "All I know is it makes me laugh." (His character "The Big Victor" is presumed to be a comic jab at RCA, who were the distributors for Monkees records - and also owned NBC, who aired their programs.)

SLACKER--The average movie has 500-1,000 cuts in it. This movie only has 163. And almost a third of them come from the last five minutes during the super 8 film scene.

CITIZEN KANE--The camera looks up at Charles Foster Kane and his best friend Jedediah Leland and down at weaker characters like Susan Alexander Kane. This was a technique that Orson Welles borrowed from John Ford who had used it two years previously on Stagecoach. Welles privately watched Stagecoach about 40 times while making this film.

THE THIRD MAN--The ending was the subject of contention during production. Surprisingly, Graham Greene, known for his bleak, depressing stories, wanted the film to have a "happy ending", with Holly Martins embracing Anna Schmidt after Lime's funeral; whereas David O. Selznick, known for his love of "Hollywood endings", advocated that Anna should ignore Holly after the funeral. Carol Reed agreed with Selznick and the sad ending was used. Reed, however, felt insecure about the length of the nearly 2-minute shoot he filmed where Martins waits for Anna and she walks by him without acknowledging his presence.

GOOD WILL HUNTING--Robin Williams's last line in the film, "That son of a bitch, he stole my line," was ad-libbed.

SAY ANYTHING...--The Smithereens were commissioned by Cameron Crowe to write the theme song for the movie, and they came up with "A Girl Like You." Crowe thought that the lyrics were too leading (they outline the entire plot), so he rejected it in favor of Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes." "A Girl Like You" went on to be included in the Smithereen's next album, "11."

RED DAWN--The plot for the movie, a Russian invasion from Mexico, etc., was based on CIA and War College studies of US weaknesses at the time.

THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT--Before the film was released, the three main actors were listed as "missing, presumed dead" on the IMDb.