Dillinger
Guerrilla Ontologist
- Joined
- Sep 19, 2000
- Posts
- 26,152
- The producers of Casablanca originally had Ronald Reagan in mind for the male lead but decided that Humphrey Bogart was more appealing to women. (Ronald Reagan, of course, went on to much bigger and better things such as The Girl From Jones Beach and The Hasty Heart)
- After one of Fred Astaire's first screen tests, a Paramount executive gave him this review: "Can't act. Can't sing. Balding. Can dance a little." (He also added in a second memo: "Can't speak without drooling. Hideous. The epitome of all that is repellent and banal. The essense of evil." Astaire, of course, proved to be one of the most talented and best loved musical stars of all time, and the executive committed suicide some years later, leaving a note ralling against "the foul, insidious, unclean, crawling vermin that is Astaire.")
- Did you know that in Gladiator Oliver Reed died during shooting and some of his sequences had to be edited using a computer-generated image of his face? (And when Joaquin Phoenix called in sick, some of his scenes were shot using the animated Office Assistant character in Microsoft Word Help.)
- Mercedes McCambridge played the voice of the demon in The Exorcist, but she had to sue the producers for credit! (She won the case when her lawyer proved that the defendants' mothers sucked cocks in Hell.)
- In Star Wars: Episode One - The Phantom Menace, Qui-Gon Jinn's communicator is a redecorated Sensor Excel Razor for Women. (This is acknowledged in an "in-joke" later in the film when Qui-Gon Jinn hands his communicator to Queen Amidala, saying "For God's sake get rid of that fuzz under your arms.")
- Alfred Hitchcock enjoyed doing cameos in his film, such as appearing as a man who misses a bus in North by Northwest and in a newspaper advertisement in Lifeboat. (In The Birds he can be seen as the third seagull from the left sitting on the swing and as Tippi Hedren's tailored jacket.)
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