The did you know thread

Originally posted by papabeard
Trivia for
The Omen (1976)

Charlton Heston, Roy Scheider and William Holden turned down the lead role. Gregory Peck, who hadn't worked for 5 years accepted the lead. William Holden did eventually accept a role in a sequel.

To make the baboons attack the car in the Windsor Zoo park scene, an official from the zoo was in the backseat of the car with the "leader" baboon, which made all the baboons outside go crazy. Lee Remick's terror as the baboons attack the car was real.

When the fishbowl falls to the ground, (dead) sardines painted orange were used in place of actual goldfish, which director Richard Donner refused to kill for the sake of making a movie.

The shot of Lee Remick falling to the floor was done by building the "floor" on a (vertical) wall and dollying an upright Remick backward towards it.

Having changed its title from "The Antichrist" to "The Birthmark," the film seemed to fall victim to a sinister curse. Star Gregory Peck and screenwriter David Seltzer took separate planes to the UK...yet BOTH planes were struck by lightning. While producer 'Harvey Bernard' was in Rome, lightning just missed him. Rottweilers hired for the film attacked their trainers. A hotel at which director Richard Donner was staying got bombed by the IRA; he was also struck by a car. After Peck canceled another flight, to Israel, the plane he would have chartered crashed...killing all on board. On day one of the shoot, several principal members of the crew survived a head-on car crash. The jinx appeared to persist well into post-production...when special effects artist John Richardson was injured, and his assistant killed, in an accident on the set of _Bridge Too Far, A (1977)_ .

In the closing scene, Richard Donner used reverse psychology on young Harvey Stephens telling him, "Don't you dare laugh. If you laugh, I won't be your friend." Naturally, Stephens wanted to laugh, and he instead smiled directly into the camera.

As part of its pre-release publicity campaign, and to point out the significance of "the three sixes" as The Sign of Satan, the movie was sneak-previewed nationwide in the USA on 6 June 1976. While audiences inside the theatres were being scared witless by the film, theatre employees were out front, busily putting up specially made posters declaring: "Today is the SIXTH day of the SIXTH month of Nineteen-Seventy-SIX!" Hokey though it was, the gimmick worked quite well, as many a theatre patron literally "freaked-out" upon seeing those posters as they left the previews.

According to at least one biography of Gregory Peck, he took this role at a huge cut in salary (a mere $250,000) but was also guaranteed 10% of the film's box office gross. When it went on to gross more than $60 million in the U.S. alone, The Omen (1976) became the highest-paid performance of Peck's career.

According to director Richard Donner, he talked the noted cinematographer Gilbert Taylor into coming out of retirement to shoot this film.

Mike Hodges was offered the chance to direct the movie. He refused, but actually went on to direct three weeks of Damien: Omen II (1978) before he was fired over creative differences.

Richard Donner credits the success of the film to composer Jerry Goldsmith, whose music made the film scarier than it would have been had he not be involved.

Richard Donner and Harvey Bernhard asked Alan Ladd Jr. then the head of Twentieth Century Fox for extra money during the film's post-production period to hire composer Jerry Goldsmith, whose music they strongly felt was right for the movie after seeing him perform a live concert at the Hollywood Bowl earlier that year. Ladd was finally talked into giving Donner and Bernhard around $250,000 to hire Goldsmith, who would deliver his first and only Academy Award win for his score in 1977.

Rottweilers experienced a surge in popularity in the US after the release of this film.

Richard Donner decided that Harvey Stephens' naturally blond hair should be died black to give him a more sinister look in his role as Damien.

That was some interesting trivia! I told my dad some of it, and he was kinda sorta impressed.

Trivia for
The Shining (1980)

Stanley Kubrick had a large stack of books that he was looking through to find a movie project. For a couple of hours, his secretary could hear him pick up a book, read it for about a minute, and then hurl it into the wall. She then noticed that this hadn't happened in a while, so she went in to check on him, and found him reading Stephen King's "The Shining". King says that this is really strange, because the start of the book is very slow, and doesn't have much to do with the rest of the story.

During the making of the movie, Kubrick would call King at 3am and ask him questions like "Do you believe in God?"

The Timberline Lodge on Mt Hood in Oregon was used for the exteriors, but all the interiors were specially built on a soundstage in London, England. The management of the Timberline Lodge requested that Kubrick not use room 217 (as specified in the book), fearing that nobody would want to stay in that room ever again. Kubrick changed the script to use the nonexistent room number 237.

The book that Jack was writing contained the one sentence ("All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy"😉 repeated over and over. Kubrick had each page individually typed. For the Italian version of the film, Kubrick used the phrase "Il mattino ha l' oro in bocca" ("He who wakes up early meets a golden day"😉. For the German version, it was "Was Du heute kannst besorgen, das verschiebe nicht auf Morgen" ("Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today"😉. For the Spanish version, it was "No por mucho madrugar amanece más temprano" ("Although one will rise early, it won't dawn sooner."😉. For the French version, it was "Un 'Tiens' vaut mieux que deux 'Tu l'auras'" ("A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush"😉.

Kubrick decided that having the hedge animals come alive was unworkable, so he opted for a hedge maze instead.

Kubrick demanded 127 takes from Shelley Duvall in one scene.

Stanley Kubrick ordered more than 120 takes in the scene where the camera simply slowly zooms in on Scatman Crothers as he "shines" in his bedroom. Kubrick originally wanted approximately 70 takes of the scene where Halloran gets killed by Jack Torrance, but Jack Nicholson talked Kubrick into going easy on the 70 year-old Crothers and stopping after 40. At one point during the filming, Crothers became so exasperated with Kubrick's notorious, compulsive style of excessive retakes that he broke down and cried, asking "What do you want, Mr. Kubrick?"

Director Trademark: [Stanley Kubrick] [three-way] Danny vs. the Overlook vs. Jack

Director Trademark: [Stanley Kubrick] [faces] Jack, as he chases his son through the maze.

Director Trademark: [Stanley Kubrick] [faces] Danny, when he sees the twins in the hallway.

Director Trademark: [Stanley Kubrick] [zoom] when Halloran is on his bed watching TV.

Nicholson ad-libbed the line "Here's Johnny!"

During the scene where Wendy brings Jack breakfast in bed, it can be seen in the reflection of the mirror that Jack's T-shirt says "Stovington" on it. While not mentioned in the film, this is the name of the school that Jack used to teach at in the Stephen King novel.

Stanley Kubrick, known for his compulsiveness and numerous retakes, got the difficult shot of blood pouring from the elevators in only three takes. This would be remarkable if it weren't for the fact that the shot took nine days to set up; every time the doors opened and the blood poured out, Kubrick would say, "It doesn't look like blood." They had tried shooting that scene for an entire year.

Kubrick made the cast watch Eraserhead (1977) to put them in the mood he wanted from them.

All of the interior rooms of The Overlook Hotel were filmed at Elstree Studios in England, including The Colorado Lounge, where Jack does his typing. Because of the intense heat generated from the lighting used to recreate window sunlight, the lounge set caught fire. Fortunately all of the scenes had been completed there, so the set was rebuilt with a higher ceiling, and the same area was eventually used by 'Steven Spielberg' as the snake-filled Well of the Souls tomb in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).

Jack (as played by Jack Nicholson) references Salem, Oregon, the location of his previous film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), which also starred Scatman Crothers.

The Louisville Slugger baseball bat with which Wendy Torrance bludgeons Jack is signed by Carl Yastrzemski, Hall of Fame Red Sox player. Author Stephen King is a huge Red Sox fan.

Every time Jack talks to a "ghost", there's a mirror in the scene, except in the food locker scene. This is because in the food locker scene he only talks to Grady through the door. We never see Grady like we do in the other "ghost" scenes.

When first released, the film had an alternate ending: the party photos shot (now the last shot in the film) dissolves to a scene in a hospital, where Wendy is resting in a bed and Danny is playing in a waiting room. Ullman tells her that they have been unable to locate her husband's body anywhere on the property. On his way out, Ullman gives Danny a ball -- the same one that mysteriously rolled into a hallway earlier in the film, before Danny was attacked in room 237. Ullman laughs and walks away while Danny "shines" the Overlook Hotel. Kubrick had the scene removed a week after the film was released.

According to author Stephen King, the title is inspired by the refrain in the Plastic Ono Band's song, "Instant Karma" (by John Lennon), which features the chorus: "We all shine on."

The movie Wendy and Danny are watching on the opening of Monday is Summer of '42 (1971).

THE SHINING ............continued :

At the time of release, it was the policy of the MPAA to not allow the portrayal of blood in trailers that would be approved for all audiences. In order to overcome this, Kubrick convinced the board that was approving the trailer that the blood flooding out of the elevator was actually rusty water.

Because Danny Lloyd was so young and since it was his first acting job, Stanley Kubrick was highly protective of the child. Through clever and creative directing, Danny didn't know he was working on a horror movie until after it was released.

The former caretaker of the Overlook Hotel has two different names (Charles Grady and Delbert Grady) because he's supposed to be two different people. Charles is the caretaker who murdered his wife and daughters in the winter of 1970, and Delbert is the butler of the Overlook Hotel at the 4th of July party in 1921(which Jack was also at). This is a reference to the original book (the former caretaker's name didn't change like it did in the movie, but he was at the hotel in two different time periods- once at a masquerade ball in 1945 and again as the caretaker in 1970.). The use of two different names in the movie is simply to show that Grady has been at the Overlook Hotel twice, just like Jack.

The throwing around of the tennis ball inside the overlook hotel was Jack Nicholson's idea. The script originally only specified that, "Jack is not working".

Out-takes of the shots of the Volkswagen traveling towards the Overlook at the start of the film were plundered by Ridley Scott (with Kubrick's permission) for the 'happy ending' in the original release of _Blade Runner (1984)_ .

The "snowy" maze near the conclusion of the movie consisted of salt and crushed Styrofoam.

Stanley Kubrick's first choice to play Danny Torrence was Cary Guffey, the young boy from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). Guffey's parents apparently turned down the offer due to the film's subject matter.

Billie Gibson, the old woman in the tub, has been falsely rumored to be Ann Gibson, Mel Gibson's late mother.

Cameo: [Norman Gay] The injured guest who frightens Wendy Torrance (Shelley Duvall) by saying "Great party, isn't it?" was played by film editor Norman Gay.

Neither Lia Beldam (Young woman in tub) nor Billie Gibson (Old woman in tub) appeared in another movie after this one.

There were so many changes to the script during shooting that Jack Nicholson claimed that he stopped reading it. He would read only the new pages that were given to him each day.

Stanley Kubrick composed and shot this film in the negative ratio (1.37:1) format so that in TV we see it in 1.33:1, but in the cinemas wee see it in 1.85:1 (aspect ratio). When a film is shot in 1.37:1, the top and the bottom of the frame are intended to be masked off in the cinemas to create a widescreen version, but are not masked off in the TV - VHS - DVD version.

Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind wrote and performed a full electronic score for the film, but Kubrick discarded most of it and used a soundtrack of mostly classical music. Only the adaptation of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique during the opening credits, the music during the family's drive to the hotel, and a few other brief moments (such as Halloran's plane trip) survive in the final version. Wendy Carlos once noted that she'd like to see the original score released on CD, but there were too many legal snags at the time. As of 2005, Carlos' score for the film has been remastered, and is a part of Rediscovering Lost Scores volumes 1 and 2.

For the scene in which Jack breaks down the bathroom door, the props department built a door that could be easily broken. However, Jack Nicholson worked as a volunteer fire marshal and tore it apart easily. The props department were then forced to build a stronger door.

Anjelica Huston lived with Jack Nicholson during the time of the shooting. She recalled that, due to the long hours on the set and Stanley Kubrick's trademark style of repetitive takes, Nicholson would often return from a day's shooting, walk straight to the bed, collapse onto it and would immediately fall asleep.

Tony Burton, who had a brief role as Larry Durkin the garage owner, arrived on set one day carrying a chess set in hopes of getting in a game with someone during a break from filming. Stanley Kubrick, an avid chess player who had in his youth played for money, noticed the chess set. Despite production being behind schedule, Kubrick proceeded to call off filming for the day and engage in a set of games with Burton. Even though Kubrick won each game, Burton said the director thanked him since it had been some time that he'd played against a challenging opponent.

During the first steadicam tracking shot of Danny on his tricycle, a sign reading "Camera Walk" can be seen next to a staircase.

Kubrick wanted to shoot the film in script order. This meant having all the relevant sets standing by at all times. In order to achieve this every sound stage at Elstree was used, with all the sets built, pre-lit and ready to go during the entire shoot at the studios.

In the scene where Danny Lloyd rides his bike through the hall and encounters the Grady daughters, he never actually sees them. The scene was accomplished by Kubrick directing Lloyd to turn the corner into an empty hall. Kubrick then directed Danny to stop, look scared, cover his eyes, and so on. At a different time, Kubrick filmed the girls by themselves in the hall standing together. In post-production, he took the film from the two scenes and spliced them together to make it look like it was all happening at the same time - hence giving the illusion that Lloyd (who didn't realize until years later that The Shining (1980) was a scary movie) was actually seeing the two girls.

The design of the Overlook's Colorado Lounge and Lobby are based very closely on the beautiful Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite national park. The chandeliers, windows and fireplace are nearly identical, so much so that people entering the Ahwahnee often ask if it's "the Shining hotel".

Steadicam operator Garrett Brown accomplished many of the ultra-low tracking corridor sequences from a wheelchair on which his invention was mounted. Grips would either pull backward or push forward the wheelchair, depending on the requirement of the shot

Stephen King tried to talk Stanley Kubrick out of casting Jack Nicholson in the lead suggesting, instead, either Michael Moriarty or Jon Voight. King had felt that watching either of these normal-looking men gradually descend into madness, would have immensely improved the dramatic thrust of the storyline. Indeed, many fans of the book agreed with King, adding that Nicholson appeared fairly crazy from the very start, thus there was little or no surprise when Jack ultimately went totally overboard.

Vivian Kubrick makes a cameo in the party scene. She wears a black dress and sits on the right side of the sofa closest to the bar.

In the party scene, Stanley Kubrick told the extras to mouth their words and not to nod their heads.

One of the shots in the part where Danny is bouncing a ball against a wall took several days to film. This was because the shot entailed the ball bouncing from the wall onto the camera lens as it filmed. As Kubrick was so determined to get this precise shot, the camera kept rolling while the ball was continually hit against the wall in the hope of it bouncing back and hitting the lens. It took everyone on the entire unit having a go at it in between other shots before the shot was finally achieved after several days.

The Torrance's car is a Volkswagen Beetle.

The opening photo is looking west down Saint Mary's Lake, Glacier NP, on the Road to the Sun. There is an Ansel Adams photograph taken from exactly the same location.

>>> WARNING: Here Be Spoilers <<<
Trivia items below here contain information that may give away important plot points. You may not want to read any further if you've not already seen this title.

SPOILER: Danny croaks "Redrum" 43 times before his mother wakes up and Jack starts to break into the apartment.

SPOILER: There is only one on-screen murder in the film.

impressive! I wonder what kind of movie the character Danny was thinking he was in.

That's some really interesting info about The Shining. Very cool.

😉

Did you know ...............that at the end of "TCM The Next Generation", Marylin Burns from the original film, goes by on a gurney when Zellwegger is in the hospital, and in the credits it says : Patient On Gurney = Unknown

lol, I didn't know that. I really didn't like that movie, it was all pretty lame and cheesy to me. I watched it on HBO once, and I don't really ever want to watch it again.

Did you know that...........George Romero has a cameo in Silence of the Lambs as an FBI Agent.

Did you know that.........

David Hess star of Last house on the Left, wrote and sang the songs on the soundtrack including "The Road Leads Nowhere", which is also played over the end credits of Cabin Fever and is sung by Hess's Son and Daughter.

Originally posted by papabeard
Did you know ...............that at the end of "TCM The Next Generation", Marylin Burns from the original film, goes by on a gurney when Zellwegger is in the hospital, and in the credits it says : Patient On Gurney = Unknown

I knew that when I was like, nine.