Moviefone Editorial

Tag: trivia

  • 12 Things You Never Knew About ‘Cruel Intentions’ on its 20th Anniversary

    12 Things You Never Knew About ‘Cruel Intentions’ on its 20th Anniversary

    Columbia

    It’s been 20 years since “Cruel Intentions” hit theaters and exposed moviegoers to the seedy, sexual underbelly of New York City prep school life. And despite middling reviews at the time, its popularity has endured over the years. Let’s celebrate the occasion with a few behind-the-scenes secrets about this steamy drama.

    1. The original title for the film was “Cruel Inventions,” but it was altered after test audiences complained that it sounded like a science fiction movie.

    2. “Cruel Intentions” is actually a modernized adaptation of French author  Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ 1782 novel “Les Liaisons dangereuses.”

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    3. That novel has been adapted for film six other times, most notably 1988’s “Dangerous Liaisons.”

    4. Producer Neal H. Moritz previously worked with Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillippe on 1997’s “I Know What You Did Last Summer” and immediately made them his top choices to star in “Cruel Intentions.”

    Columbia

    5. Reese Witherspoon improvised the memorable moment where her character Annette slaps Phillippe’s Sebastian. That’s why Phillippe’s expression of shock is so genuine.

    6. Despite both playing high schoolers in the film, Witherspoon is actually five years older than Gellar.

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    7. Costume designer Denise Wingate purposely clothed Annette in light colors and Sebastian in dark colors in order to contrast their opposing natures.

    8. While Kathryn tells Sean Patrick Thomas‘ Ronald that Sebastian hit her, the film doesn’t reveal whether she’s actually telling the truth. Director Roger Kumble filmed a scene of Sebastian hitting Kathryn but chose to remove it and maintain the ambiguity.

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    9. An earlier screenplay draft featured an alternate ending where Annette chooses to withhold the journal and blackmail Kathryn rather than publishing it.

    10. There are currently two direct-to-video sequels to “Cruel Intentions,” though 2001’s “Cruel Intentions II” is actually a prequel and 2004’s “Cruel Intentions 3” is a loosely connected spinoff.

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    11. “Cruel Intentions 2” was created using footage from three episodes of an unaired TV series called “Manchester Prep,” and follows younger versions of Sebastian and Kathryn.

    12. In 2015, NBC announced plans for a sequel TV series that would feature Gellar reprising her role as an older Kathryn and revolve around Sebastian and Annette’s son.  Unfortunately, NBC eventually scrapped the project the following year.

  • 14 Things You Didn’t Know About ‘Office Space’ on its 20th Anniversary

    14 Things You Didn’t Know About ‘Office Space’ on its 20th Anniversary

    Fox

    Long before “The Office” became a huge phenomenon, director Mike Judge showed us just how ridiculous the life of a corporate drone could be in “Office Space.” To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the endlessly quotable comedy gem, here’s some fun trivia to tide you over to you get your stapler back.

    1. “Office Space” is actually an adaptation of a series of animated shorts Judge created featuring the Milton character. They originally aired on “Saturday Night Live” and MTV in the early ’90s.

    2. The film is also very loosely based on a short story by “Moby Dick” author Herman Melville called “Bartleby the Scrivener.”

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    3. Actor David Herman was determined to appear in the move despite being locked into a contract with “MADtv.” Herman’s solution was to get himself fired by shouting all his lines at a table read.

    4. The role of Joanna had to be expanded after the very bankable Jennifer Aniston was cast, which resulted in the memorable scenes where Joanna argues with her manager about flair.

    Fox

    5. Matt Damon was Fox’s top choice to star as Peter Gibbons. Judge insisted that Peter needed to be played by an actor with less star power.

    6. Judge was inspired to write the iconic printer scene after struggling with a faulty printer during the making of “Beavis and Butthead Do America.”

    7. That printer scene has proven so popular that it’s been parodied in everything from an episode of “Family Guy” to one of Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign ads.

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    8. While the film wasn’t a box office success during its theatrical run, reruns on  Comedy Central are largely credited with transforming “Office Space” into an enduring cult hit.

    9. Actor Gary Cole revealed the original cut of the film included a scene where his character Bill Lumbergh gets angry at seeing his Porsche towed. This scene was removed in order to maintain Lumbergh’s perpetually emotionless state.

    10. Judge was very displeased with the studio’s choice of poster, even blaming it for hurting the box office gross. He was able to convince Fox to add an image of Milton to the cover of the home video release.

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    11. The restaurant Chotchkie’s is meant to be a parody of the T.G.I. Fridays restaurant chain, though the scenes were actually filmed inside an Austin, TX-based restaurant called The Alligator Grille.

    12. Stapler manufacturer Swingline didn’t actually make a red model like the one seen in the film, but they eventually made one available in 2002 in response to growing demand.

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    13. According to Judge, there have been discussions about possibly continuing “Office Space” as either a sequel or a TV series. For now, Judge describes 2009’s “Extract” as a “companion piece” to “Office Space.”

    14. All the license plates featured in the movie are fake, in order to avoid revealing the state in which the movie takes place. However, Peter’s personnel file lists his home address as being in Illinois.

  • Here’s the Connection Between ‘Flubber’ and the Disney Parks That You Never Knew

    Twenty years ago, “Flubber” bounded onto the big-screen. A lavish remake of Walt Disney’s original “The Absent-Minded Professor” (released in 1961 and colorized in 1986), it starred Robin Williams as Philip Brainard, a loopy scientist who creates a magical new compound. (One of the new winkles introduced in John Hughes‘ script is that the titular substance is actually self-aware and has personality, in addition to making cars fly and basketball players bounce.)

    While the film is nothing more than an amiable diversion (with a great score by Danny Elfman), it has had surprising life in the Disney Parks. In fact, you’ve probably never realized that you have been walking past “Flubber” references for years now.

    To explain: By the mid-1990’s, Michael Jackson was falling out of favor with the Walt Disney Company. The two had struck an unlikely alliance years earlier, which produced Captain EO, a Francis Ford Coppola-directed 3D experience that dazzled park goers around the world. But under a sea of child abuse allegations and dwindling albums sales, it was time for a change.

    There needed to be a new 3D attraction at the parks, one without all the bad press that the King of Pop now conjured. So, on November 21, 1994, Honey, I Shrunk the Audience! debuted at Epcot, replacing Captain EO. Less than four years later, in the same complex (The Imagination Pavilion), Journey Into Your Imagination — a revamped version of the breakthrough Journey Into Imagination attraction from 1983 –opened. The fact that they were housed in the same building meant that they shared a storyline, in this case a kind of tech demo open house day at the fictional Imagination Institute.

    As you walk through the queue for the new Imagination attraction, you pass a photo of Robin Williams’ “Flubber” character, as well as one of the original prop robots for his assistant Weebo. The insinuation is that Williams’ Brainard and Wayne Szalinski (played by Rick Moranis from the two theatrical “Honey, I …” movies) were contemporaries and worked together in the Institute. Instantly “Flubber,” like the malleable material, was absorbed into Disney Parks storytelling. And what’s more, the Honey, I Shrunk the Audience attraction would travel the world, opening in Tokyo Disneyland (where it was charmingly renamed MicroAdventure!) in 1997, in Disneyland in 1998, and in Disneyland Paris in 1999.

    The 23-minute attraction — which cannily combined 3D film techniques with in-theater effects (those mice!) — was now part of a shared, science-y ecosystem with “Flubber,” and it translated nicely. And when that attraction closed (around the world in 2010, to make way for a posthumous Captain EO revival), there was still some “Flubber” back in the Imagination Pavilion at Epcot.

    Despite some adjustments to the main Imagination attraction, those “Flubber” callbacks are still present, which, for a time at least, linked a passable Disney remake to an attraction beloved by millions of Disney Parks guests around the world. Next time you’re down in Florida, maybe make your way over to the Imagination Pavilion and keep an eye out for all of those references. There are even some fun ones in the ride — not only to “Flubber,” but some other Disney classics (my favorite is the shout out to “The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes,” something most guests definitely won’t pick up on).

    It’s sort of nice that, since Williams’ passing, he’s still remembered for one of his more iconic characters (at least for a certain audience). He might not have been a scientist in real life, but his inquisitive nature, endless creativity, and ability to conjure something from nothing, were traits he shared with the most advanced minds in scientific fields.

  • Every Post-Credits Scene From Summer 2017 Movies, Ranked

    Every Post-Credits Scene From Summer 2017 Movies, Ranked

  • 11 Things You Never Knew About ‘Wet Hot American Summer’

    Hard to imagine, but when it was released 15 years ago (on July 27, 2001), “Wet Hot American Summer” was an enormous flop.

    Today, however, the spoof of 1980s summer camp movies is considered a cult classic, one that’s spawned a Netflix prequel series (with a sequel series on the way). It also helped launch the film careers of Bradley Cooper, Elizabeth Banks, Amy Poehler, and director/co-writer David Wain.

    Still, as obsessively as you may have watched and re-watched the antics at Camp Firewood over the years, there’s a lot you may not know about how the film got made. Here are the wet hot details.
    1. Wain and co-screenwriter/star Michael Showalter (who played the lovelorn counselor Coop) based a lot of the plot on their own summer camp experiences in the early 1980s. Showalter remembered trips into town as a big deal (as portrayed in the film’s notorious visit-to-town montage). As a counselor, Wain abandoned his charges in the woods, drove a van back to camp to meet a girl, and crashed it into a tree, just like Victor (Ken Marino) does. He also remembered being worried that pieces of Skylab would fall on the camp.

    2. Of course, the other big source of inspiration for Wain and Showalter was summer camp movies like “Meatballs” and the non-lethal parts of “Sleepaway Camp” and “Friday the 13th.” But they also modeled their screenplay after such films as “Nashville,” “Dazed and Confused,” and “Do the Right Thing” — big ensemble pieces with multiple plot lines, set over the course of a single day or weekend.
    3. Many of the cast members — David Hyde Pierce, Janeane Garofalo, Paul Rudd, Molly Shannon — were reasonably well-known. Others, like Elizabeth Banks and Bradley Cooper, were discovered in New York auditions. In fact, Cooper was still finishing up at the Actors Studio drama school and missed his graduation in order to film his “Wet Hot” sex scene with Michael Ian Black.

    4. The line between life and art blurred during the May 2000 shoot at Pennsylvania’s Camp Towanda. The cast and crew slept in cabins, bunks, and sleeping bags and ate at the cafeteria. The only difference was free-flowing beer and liquor.
    5. Garofalo was surprised to see, inscribed on a plaque on a bunk, the name of her “Mystery Men” co-star, Hank Azaria. Turned out he’d attended Camp Towanda for several summers as a kid.

    6. The shoot lived up to the “Wet” part of the title, if not the “Hot.” It rained on 23 of the 28 shooting days, and the temperature was often in the 40s. Which was difficult for actors in shorts or bikinis. Fortunately, unless you’re lighting for rain, it often doesn’t show up on film. The lack of continuity in the weather, over the course of what’s supposed to be a single day, became just one more of the movie’s meta-jokes.
    7. The film’s most elaborate prop, the falling Skylab capsule, took five days to build. It was made largely of wood and PVC pipe, and it weighed just under 500 pounds.

    8. “Wet Hot” cost just $1.8 million to shoot, though the filmmakers claimed $5 million in hopes of getting a better offer when they screened it at Sundance. Despite four sold-out showings at the festival, no one bit.
    9. Months later, USA Films approached Wain with what he considered an insulting offer of $100,000 for the distribution rights, but he still said yes. USA barely released the movie (it never played in more than 12 theaters nationwide), which grossed just $295,000. Rudd has said he never saw a dime from the film.

    10. Of course, the movie became a cult hit on DVD, at colleges, and at midnight screenings, where fans would dress up, “Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp.”
    11. We’re getting another follow-up series from Netflix in 2017 called “Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later.” We’ll be seeing the Firewood counselors as late-twentysomethings in 1991. Which is apt, since all the actors are well into middle age now.

  • Family Game Night Ideas That Show Off Your Movie Knowledge

    harry potter trivial pursuitTrivia is a movie lover’s best friend. Seriously, have you ever been to a dinner with other movie lovers chattering about everything from new releases to which movies Johnny Depp is in to how amazing the Marvel Phase 3 movies are going to be? As you might expect, when movie lovers decide to procreate, a whole new generation of movie know-it-alls is born. But they don’t get that way on their own.

    Oh, no. Family game night is how those little kids blossom from an obsession with “Zootopia” to growing up and watching nothing but Wes Anderson movies. What? You thought showing them movies all the time was enough of an education? No way. You’ve got to shovel as much movie trivia into their lives as possible. This is where family game night comes into the equation: to groom those kids to be future pub night movie trivia champs.

    Movie Trivial Pursuit

    Trivial Pursuit is an oldie but goody and totally worthwhile to play with your family. There are multiple movie-centric editions from the Lord of the Rings Trilogy to various Star Wars versions and even an all-encompassing silver screen classics subsidiary pack. By rotating through the different editions, you ensure that your kids will become mini Trivial Pursuit movie masters in all facets. Sure, you could play one version until everyone in the family knows all the answers by heart, but making sure you switch it up on a regular basis ensures that your kids — and you, for that matter — don’t get bored with the game.

    Movie Jeopardy!

    Remember those games you used to play in school to study for science or history tests? The teacher would create all these questions about the curriculum and you’d study your bum off so your team would win? Well, you can do the same thing with facts about movies. For the “Jeopardy!” format, frame questions in the form of statements, like “In the movie “Toy Story,” this character is Woody’s best friend.” Who is Andy? Correct! How about “In “Marvel’s The Avengers,” this is the place where our heroes eventually reunite to save the day.” What is Stark Tower? Ding-ding-ding! It’s like you’re back in Mr. D’s eighth grade history class learning about the Civil War, except the questions and answers are about Marvel’s “Civil War,” not the American one.

    Guess That Movie From the Still

    Here’s a different angle on movie trivia if your family gets tired of straight-up facts about movies. Choose different scenes from popular movies and let players use a bell to signal that they have the answer. For instance, in what movie can you see Judy Garland dancing down a yellow brick road? Ding-ding! “The Wizard of Oz” — obviously.

    Make It a Costumed Movie Theme Night

    Throw a movie trivia party with your parents, your friends, and your kids’ friends; then assign each person a different character from a film. When party night rolls around, everyone shows up in costume and in character and then has to guess which movie every other character is from. Imagine a little Holly Golightly (“Breakfast at Tiffany’s“) sharing a snack with a pint-size version of Neo (“The Matrix“) and fellow movie buffs trying to outdo each other’s outfits. Sounds like it could be an out-of-the-box movie night of delights.

    Name That Line

    Sure, there are always guess-the-movie-from-the-still games, and most movie trivia games include lines from movies, but isolating lines is its own brand of fun. Collect some of the best known lines from movies, such as “Say hello to my little friend” from “Scarface” or “Just keep swimming” from “Finding Nemo,” and have the players guess which character and movie the lines came from. Want to make it even more amusing? Require the player reading the lines to do so in the proper accent of the character. Like what would Austin Powers be if he said “yeah, baby” without the fake British accent? Nothing, that’s what.

    Sources

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  • ‘Mission: Impossible’: 15 Things You (Probably) Didn’t Know About the Tom Cruise Blockbuster

    Before 1996, “Mission: Impossible” was a long-since-cancelled TV spy series, beloved by Boomers but forgotten by anyone younger. Today, of course, it’s a popular Tom Cruise movie franchise, known for its twisty plotting and jaw-dropping stunt sequences, whose five installments to date have grossed $935 million in North America and $2.8 billion worldwide.

    The change came, of course, with the release of Cruise’s first “Mission: Impossible” 20 years ago, on May 22, 1996. Since then, Brian De Palma‘s clever, convoluted blockbuster has been watched and copied plenty. And while some of the spy franchise’s secrets have become widely known, there are still some that have remained classified — until now.
    1. “Mission: Impossible” marked Cruise’s debut as a producer. In a deal that would become his then-customary contract, he took no money up front but negotiated a lucrative percentage of the theatrical and video gross profits, reportedly as high as 22 percent. Cruise reportedly pocketed an estimated $70 million for the first “Mission.”

    2. The most celebrated (and imitated) action set piece De Palma created for the film was the vault heist at CIA headquarters. That’s really Cruise dangling from those cables and balancing himself inches from the floor. Initially, he kept banging his head on the floor, but he came up with an ingenious way to stay level: He put coins in his shoes as counterweights.
    3. When Jim Phelps (Jon Voight) is reading his team’s personal files on the plane, the one for Jack Harmon (Emilio Estevez) lists his alias as “Tony Baretta,” the name of Robert Blake’s bird-loving sleuth from 1970s detective show “Baretta.”

    4. In another in-joke, a shout out to “Top Gun,” when Cruise’s Ethan Hunt looks over the list of aliases on the NOC spy list, one of them is “Maverick.”
    5. The exploding fish tank stunt was reportedly Cruise’s idea. De Palma tried to shoot it with a stunt double, but the results were unconvincing. So that’s really Cruise you see as he flees from 16 tons of rushing water.

    6. The film’s final action set piece, the battle atop a moving bullet train, almost didn’t happen because the train’s owners didn’t want to allow it, since it appeared too dangerous. Cruise charmed them over dinner, and they changed their minds.7. Even so, much of that sequence was filmed in front of a blue screen on the James Bond soundstage at Pinewood Studios. But the scene where the helicopter blast hurls Ethan onto the surface of the train (above) still involved flinging Cruise himself through the air.

    The producers had to search throughout Europe to find the sole wind machine forceful enough for the stunt. Blowing at 140 miles per hour, it even made the skin on Cruise’s face visibly ripple. “I ended up doing it three or four times and it hurt — I was black and blue for days,” the actor recalled. “But I wanted to make it real, to make it believable.”

    8. Apple ponied up $15 million for a promotional product placement deal, which included showing Ethan using a PowerBook 5300c in key scenes. Unfortunately for the company, it came aboard the production too late to have script approval, so it couldn’t rewrite the scenes where Ving Rhames’ master hacker demands and later uses a Windows laptop. What was worse, the PowerBook was subject of a recall around the time of the film’s release, so consumers inspired by the film to buy one couldn’t find one in stock for four months. Plus, Apple was smarting from a $740 million quarterly loss, the second-worst in the company’s history at the time. As a PR move, the “M:I” tie-in was a compete backfire.
    9. The opening sequence in Prague marked the first time a major Hollywood production had filmed in the Czech capital since the fall of communism. Unfortunately, Cruise and his fellow producers felt gouged by the local authorities when they rented the historic Lichetenstein Palace as an exterior location and were charged 10 times the fee they expected. City authorities claimed the lower-quoted price had never been an authorized offer.

    Playwright-turned-president Vaclav Havel sided with the Americans, arguing that the officials, who were new to capitalism, didn’t see the bigger picture, that they were risking the ultimately more profitable benefits of travel-brochure-worthy footage in a Hollywood blockbuster and a positive reputation among international filmmakers. Indeed, Team Cruise threatened to warn other Hollywood crews against working in Prague, though the actor did use the city again as a double for Moscow in “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol.”

    10. Thanks in part to Cruise’s deferred fee and De Palma’s limited use of CGI, the film cost just $80 to make, a relative bargain by today’s standards. (Last year’s “Rogue Nation” cost $150 million).
    11. “Mission: Impossible” was the first film to open on more than 3,000 screens. (3,012, to be exact.) It earned $181 million in North America and $458 million worldwide.

    12. Many fans of the original TV series bristled at the radical changes the movie made. After all, Jim Phelps was the only character from the old show who’s also in the movie, and the film makes Voight’s Phelps anything but a hero.

    Peter Graves, who played the original Phelps, said he wished they’d just given Voight’s character a new name. Greg Morris, who played tech whiz Barney Collier, left a screening of the movie partway through. Martin Landau, who played master of disguise Rollin Hand on the show, said of the big-screen version, “It was basically an action-adventure movie and not ‘Mission.’ ‘ Mission’ was a mind game. The ideal mission was getting in and getting out without anyone ever knowing we were there. So the whole texture changed.” He also said he and the other original stars had rejected an early screenplay that would have killed off most of the old team. “Why volunteer to essentially have our characters commit suicide?” Landau added that J.J. Abrams invited him to do a cameo in “Mission: Impossible III,” but he said no.
    13. One original element from the show that remained intact was Lalo Schifrin’s iconic, pounding theme song, which De Palma used over the opening credits. But the film closed with a new version by U2 members Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. Their pop instrumental became a top 10 hit worldwide and was nominated at the 1997 Grammys, where it competed against Schifrin’s own new recording of the song.

    14. The movie doesn’t offer much backstory on Ethan Hunt or any of his colleagues. But the “Mission: Impossible” Blu-ray includes dossiers on Ethan and his teammates, letting viewers know that Ethan speaks 15 languages (three fewer than his mentor, Jim Phelps) and that he first developed his talent for impersonating other people while playing alone as a child on the Hunt family farm.
    15. “Mission: Impossible” establishes Ethan for the rest of the franchise as a spy who prefers deception and disguise to violence. In this film, though not in future installments, he never gets involved in a gunfight; in fact, he never even fires a weapon. And the body count for the entire film is just seven casualties.

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  • Quiz: Match the Over-the-Top Nicolas Cage Face to the Movie

    The incomparable Nicolas Cage is the king of outrageous faces. Can you match his wacky mug to the film he starred in?

  • Bryce Dallas Howard Facts: 11 Things You (Probably) Didn’t Know About the ‘Jurassic World’ Star

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    Bryce Dallas Howard might be Hollywood royalty, but she’s proved with her roles in “The Help” and “The Village” that she doesn’t need her last name to get her anywhere. Now, she’s taking on dinosaurs with the help of Chris Pratt in the highly anticipated “Jurassic World.”

    From her first passion to which celeb convinced her to become a vegan, here are 11 things you probably didn’t know about Bryce Dallas Howard.
    [Source: IMDB]

  • Which Famous Serial Killer Are You?

    There’s a darkness inside all of us; a darkness just waiting to get out. Well, maybe not so dark that we’d go around killing people. Still, we get an odd pleasure from tapping into our devilish side (it’s healthy, right? RIGHT?!), so, that said, let’s delve a little deeper and find out which real or fictional serial killer you’re most similar to. Are you a puzzle-loving punisher like Jigsaw, or a quick-witted cannibal like Hannibal Lecter? Take the quiz to find out. (Want more stuff like this? Like us on Facebook.)

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