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When Ward's son hits the switch marked "Do Not Touch This Switch", every light in the amusement park comes on, music starts playing, and the rides all start moving. It's a funny gag, but it seems unlikely that one switch would power every single thing in the amusement park, and that everything in the park has been left on "full speed." If that's the case, when Angelo first sent the two lookouts to the top of the ferris wheel, everything else in the park should have come on then too. See more...
1941 (1979) - 10 trivia entries
Directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Christopher Lee, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi (add more)
For the scene where the P-40 Tomahawk crashes in the street, the effects guys used a real airplane and put it on a long ramp so that it would actually fly into the scene. No one knew how far it would travel before it came to a stop, so the cast and crew started a pool and placed bets on how far it would go. The day after they shot the scene, some of the crew walked into director Steven Spielberg's office and dumped a huge jar of money onto the desk in front of him. He'd won the pool.
This movie was made before political correctness, and a number of racial slurs are made, just as they would have been in 1941. Amazingly, the film was released in Japan with Japanese subtitles. However, whenever someone used a derogatory slur, the subtitle simply translated it as "Nihon-jin" (Japanese Person).
The writers and producer originally wanted John Wayne to play the part of General Stillwell (a real general in WWII, played by Robert Stack). Wayne was excited about the part and asked for a copy of the script, unaware that it was a comedy. After he read it, he wrote a long letter to the producer of 1941, begging him not to make the film.
After the boy turns on the lights at the amusement park, the Japanese sub fires a torpedo at it, thinking they're firing at Hollywood. Originally, they filmed a scene where the torpedo goes up onto land, goes between the boy's legs, and he rides around on top of it until it it hits a building and explodes. So the audience wouldn't think the boy has been killed, he's seen later running up to his sister and telling her that he's okay. Spielberg eventually cut the torpedo bit but left the part where the boy meets his sister. If you look, his clothes are disheveled and scorched from the torpedo explosion.
Though there are plenty of major (in 1979) stars in this movie, most of the advertising focused on John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. Both actually had fairly small parts, and were never on screen together throughout the film. When Spielberg realized this during filming, he improvised a scene where Belushi and Aykroyd see each other and salute, just before Belushi's character "commandeers" the Japanese submarine. They appear to recognize each other, even though they never meet in the film.
You may also like: The Hunt for Red October | Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade | Saving Private Ryan | Cannonball | The Cannonball Run
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