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Trivia: Burt Reynolds turned down the role of Jack Horner several times, he finally agreed to do it reluctantly. He hated the film, and thought his acting was terrible and that the film would be a total bomb, so he publicly denounced it. He even fired his agent. However, when it came out it was hailed as Reynolds' comeback role, and he was nominated for an Academy Award. He then changed his opinion of the film drastically.

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Trivia: The judge who decides against Amber Waves' child custody battle is played by 1970s adult film actress Veronica Hart, who actually went through a similar ordeal as Amber.

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Trivia: Right after the battle scene where Kambei kills a bandit with a high stance strike, there's a shot of a bandit being swamped by peasant militia. Pay attention to another bandit riding up into this shot in the upper left corner. There's an unsuspecting extra who is standing right in the path of the second bandit's horse. The horse rams the extra, violently throwing him to the ground. (02:46:40)

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Trivia: Toshiro Mifune, who plays Kikuchiyo, was actually the best swordsman and martial artist of any of the actors who play samurai in the film (he was the only one who seriously studied various martial arts). Ironically, he was cast to play the worst swordsman in the group.

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Trivia: In some instances in the film, such as when Gorobei kills the bandit who was checking the water level with an arrow, the actors were actually shot with real arrows. The actor would simply wear a block of wood under his costume (which you can see if you know what to look for) and an expert archer would actually shoot him.

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Trivia: Seiji Miyaguchi, who plays Kyuzo the master swordsman, actually had the least experience with swordplay among all of the actors who play samurai in the film. In fact, he never even touched a sword until a few weeks before shooting the film (he initially turned the role down for this reason). Most of his fight scenes rely on clever editing to make him appear to be a master.

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Trivia: Val Kilmer actually went through a lot of work to learn to play guitar for the role. The Zuckers encouraged him at first, except once they started shooting the dance scenes, they just directed him to mimic playing the guitar in an absurd fashion, and not really play it. Kilmer recalls this was the cruelest joke ever played on him.

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Trivia: At one point they show a movie marquee that says "Dementia 13", which was Francis Ford Coppola's, American Graffiti's producer, first movie.

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Trivia: Harrison Ford wears a white cowboy hat in the film, because George Lucas wanted him to get his hair cut in the 1950's "crewcut" fashion. Ford didn't want to because it was in style to have longer hair at the time and he was afraid it would affect future acting jobs if he cut it. He convinced Lucas to just let him wear the hat to cover his hair.

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Trivia: Harrison Ford learned about the film and got the role through Fred Roos, who was the casting director of the film. At the time, Ford was working as Roos' personal carpenter.

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Trivia: Lucas actually had sort of an affinity for mistakes in this film. There were several instances where he would keep filming shot after shot until the actors would mess something up. Such as when when the guy leaves the liquor store and tosses the bottle to Terry, he stumbles and just about loses the bottle. Or when Terry goes back to the car, Debbie asks him "Did you get it? Did you get it?" but she noticeably flubs the lines up. Or even when the actor who plays Terry couldn't properly handle the motor scooter and has a small accident. These are instances where Lucas had many perfect takes of these scenes, but he kept the ones with mistakes in them to give the movie a more realistic feel.

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Trivia: When Terry is being introduced, he drives up on his scooter, and has quite a bit of trouble parking it. This is because Charles Martin Smith actually didn't know how to drive a stick shift. The small accident he has is real, you can see him crash, look up towards the camera (at Lucas), and continue the scene. Lucas motioned for him to continue, because the crash looked so interesting.

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Trivia: You might have to look close, but the Gyro Captain's copter is completely covered with pornographic pictures. It took many viewings for me to notice this. Apparently he's very sexually motivated, as later in the movie he complains that the only thing he really misses from the old world is lingerie, and the only reason he joins the escapees in the end is because he wants to be with the cute blond girl.

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Trivia: When The Humungous opens his gun case, you can see a skull and crossbones insignia that looks just like a Nazi "Totenkopf" badge that SS soldiers wore on their cap. There's also a photo in the case that appears to be a family picture, with the father in a Nazi outfit (perhaps Humungous' father, or even he himself).

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Trivia: One of the more spectacular stunts in the film was a terrible accident. When one of the raiders is on a motorcycle, he hits a car, flies off the bike, hits his legs on the car and starts cartwheeling through the air. This was a real accident, the intended stunt was to just have the stunt man fly over the top the car without hitting it. Instead the stuntman hit his legs on it, but it just looked so spectacular that they kept it in the movie. The stuntman broke his leg badly, but survived.

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Trivia: When Max opens the Semi's door, a dead body falls out. This body is actually the same "eye popping" dummy that was used at the end of Mad Max 1.

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Trivia: For some reason the filmmakers thought it would be fitting for Max to have a dog. They "interviewed" over a hundred dogs, and were not satisfied by any of them, so they scrapped the idea. Just by chance, the director was at a friend's farm and met the dog who's in the movie, the dog was so intelligent and willing to follow commands he just had to have him. Unfortunately, on the first day of shooting the dog started behaving very strangely and wouldn't listen to commands. They almost scrapped the dog idea again, until one of the crewmen found out that the sound of roaring engines was what was bothering the dog. They plugged his ears with cotton, which you can see if you look close in some shots, and the dog began behaving again.

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Trivia: The entire film was filmed in sequence. Meaning that each shot you see in the movie is the order in which the filmmakers filmed it. This is unusual for films as filming in sequence can be very inefficient, as the filmmakers have to keep revisiting the same sets and setting them up more than once rather than just filming all their scenes while they have the set ready for it.

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Trivia: The centerfold model in the playboy magazine that Major Kong is reading is General Turgidson's "secretary", Miss Scott.

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Trivia: Kubrick originally wanted to make this a serious drama. During the screenwriting process he was confronted again and again with situations that were completely truthful and serious, yet he was afraid and audience would laugh at how absurd it is. Such as general Turgeson referring to general Ripper's sending an entire bomb wing to obliterate Russia as "Overextending his authority". He eventually figured out that the only way to write it would be as a comedy.

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