Trivia: Thornhill is looking up at the Mount Rushmore sculptures, using the fixed, standing binoculars for tourists, and he exclaims: "I don't like the way Teddy Roosevelt is looking at me." The thing is, Theodore Roosevelt, the third from left to right, is the only one of the four heads to be looking as much away from him as could possibly be. I wonder why the screenwriter, Ernest Lehman, made this particular choice? Perhaps he was having a joke on the perceived ignorance of the contemporary cinema-going public at the time. Either that, or it was just sloppy writing. My guess is he just asked some underling: "Who are the four presidents represented on Mount Rushmore?", and then picked one at random.
North by Northwest (1959)
1 trivia entry since 13 May '18, 00:00
Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: James Mason, Cary Grant, Martin Landau, Eva Marie Saint
Continuity mistake: When in James Mason's house in South Dakota, Cary Grant writes a message to Eva Marie Saint on a matchbook from which several matches are missing. When Ms. Saint subsequently reads the message the matchbook is full.
[Roger Thornhill's matchbook carries the initials RoT.]
Eve Kendall: What does the O stand for?
Roger Thornhill: Oh, nothing.
Question: Why is this movie called 'North by Northwest'?
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Chosen answer: The original title for the movie was "In a Northwesterly Direction", as it was originally detailing the flight of a man from New York to Alaska, according to writer Earnest Lehman. According to Alfred Hitchcock, however, he took the title from a line in Hamlet, another work of fiction that is concerned with the slippery nature of reality. It is also worth noting that North by Northwest is not a direction on the compass at all. The nearest to it would be Northwest by North.
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