Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: After Ernest Hemingway guided two extremely expensive (and failed) offshore excursions for original marlin-fishing footage, Warner Brothers settled for existing footage of a world-record marlin caught off the coast of Peru by Alfred C. Glassell, Jr. His taut, heavy-duty fishing line can be seen bouncing wildly, high in the air, in the scene where the marlin finally breaches (even though the Old Man's hand-line is pretty much stationary and angled low to the ocean surface).

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: During the film's formidable two years in production, actor Spencer Tracy lapsed back into alcoholism and found a ready drinking partner in author Ernest Hemingway. One night, while on one of their binges, the two even demolished a bar in Havana, Cuba, and the bar owner demanded that Warner Brothers Studios pay $150,000 in damages. Warner Brothers was so infuriated with Spencer Tracy that they were on the verge of firing him and replacing him with Ernest Borgnine. (source: "Spencer Tracy: Tragic Idol" by Bill Davidson).

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: Spencer Tracy's hair was not naturally white when they first started filming "The Old Man and the Sea"; so, his hair was cosmetically bleached white for the part of Santiago. However, after a grueling two years in production and his lapse back into alcoholism, Tracy's hair naturally turned white by the time they finished the film.

Charles Austin Miller

Elegy - S4-E22

Trivia: In this episode, longtime character actor Sydney Lassick was cast to play Chuck Forsch, an over-sensitive and delusional patient in a psychiatric hospital. Eighteen years earlier, Sydney Lassick played a virtually identical delusional psychiatric patient, Charlie Cheswick, in the Oscar-winning film "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975).

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: The 2009 horror film "Dark House" was a much-lower-budget, B-grade remake of 1999's "House on Haunted Hill," with virtually identical plot, characters and motivations (i.e., a flamboyant amusement park mogul offers people money to stay in a technologically-rigged spook house that turns out to really be haunted). Interestingly, legendary horror actor Jeffrey Combs appeared in both films. In "House on Haunted Hill," Combs played the murderous ghost of a mad doctor who really haunts the house; in "Dark House," Combs played the flamboyant amusement park mogul.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: In the days before ubiquitous digital technology, the majority of visual effects in film were "practical" effects using stuntmen and props on wires, springboards, flash-pots, et cetera. In "Ladyhawke" (which was decidedly on the low-end of visual effects budgets), one of the most dangerous practical effects is seen when Matthew Broderick and Rutger Hauer have a heated discussion in the woods and seem about to part company. As Broderick turns to leave, Hauer's 53" longsword sizzles past the boy's left shoulder and embeds in a tree trunk, to Broderick's horror. In fact, the steel sword was real and hurtled to its target on a guide-wire, barely 8 inches from Broderick's back. If you slow-advance the scene, you can see the sword actually changing trajectory in-flight, it was so unstable. The sword came up in a Hollywood memorabilia auction in 2002 but was not sold. http://www.icollector.com/Rutger-Hauer-prop-special-effects-sword-from-Ladyhawke_i169815.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: Over the decades, one persistent Internet rumor maintains that the tiger used in the first Beastmaster film died a horrible, lingering, 2-year death from skin cancer as a result of having his entire coat dyed black with toxic chemicals. As usual for Internet gossip, the details of this story are dreadfully confused, at best. According to director Don Coscarelli (speaking during an interview with author Staci Layne Wilson for her 2007 book "Animal Movies Guide," page 350), the film's executive producer brought in an animal handler who chose to dye more than one tiger black. Just to be clear, none of the tigers became diseased or expired from the non-toxic black vegetable dye. It was necessary, however, to anesthetize the tigers before applying the dye to their coats; and, unfortunately, one of the tigers simply never woke up from the anesthesia (a known problem with cats). Coscarelli felt horrible about the unexpected death; but, in fairness to him, the decision to anesthetize and dye the tigers was not his choice.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: Near the end, as Lucy starts travelling backwards in time, she pauses in various periods of Earth's natural history. However, after she travels all the way back to the age of the Dinosaurs (at least 65 million years ago), she inexplicably travels forward in time by about 60 million years and meets an Australopithecine, one of humankind's earliest ancestors (that lived around 4 million years ago). She then resumes traveling backward in time to the beginning of the universe.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: One of the reasons that Eric Stoltz was fired from BTTF is because he took the role too seriously and had no comedic instinct. But there were other reasons, too. Following his method-acting chops, Stoltz was always in character; he insisted on being called "Marty" all the time, both on and off the set; and he was always trying seduce Lea Thompson, which made the cast and crew leery of him. Also, Eric would not fake a punch; he made full contact in fight scenes, because he believed it was the only way to achieve realism. Co-star Thomas F. Wilson (who played Biff Tannen) said he was very pissed off that Eric Stoltz kept slamming him full-force in the cafeteria scene, take-after-take, until Wilson's shoulder and collarbone were bruised. In fact, the much larger Thomas Wilson had planned to give Eric Stoltz an actual beating in the parking scene at the school dance, in revenge. Fortunately for Eric Stoltz, he was fired from the role of Marty McFly before they filmed the parking scene, or Thomas Wilson may have killed him. Once Michael J. Fox was hired, everything went smoothly.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: Debbie Reynolds was severely intimidated by power-dancer Gene Kelly. Her feet were blistered and bleeding after just one day on the set with him. She sobbed about working with Kelly so much that her good friend Fred Astaire privately tutored her, gently, in the dance routines.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: According to Robert Zemeckis, the kitchen scene with Michael J. Fox playing three characters simultaneously (middle-aged Marty McFly, his goofy son and bubble-headed daughter all sitting at the same table) was a nightmare to shoot. The characters required individual matte shots that were later spliced together into one scene, requiring many takes; so every visible object in the kitchen background had to remain perfectly stationary and consistent over several days of filming. Thinking ahead, Zemeckis ordered his property crew to hot-glue every single background object in the kitchen in-place, to prevent accidental movement. However, when they were well into filming the tricky scene, the studio was struck by an earthquake, which essentially destroyed the kitchen set, hot glue and all, requiring a rebuild and complete re-shoot.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: Actor David Niven was, in fact, terminally ill with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) when he appeared in both "Trail of the Pink Panther" and "Curse of the Pink Panther" before his death in 1983. Niven's illness was so debilitating that his voice often completely failed him while filming, such that it was necessary to hire celebrity impressionist Rich Little to overdub Niven's voice in both films.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: While everybody's voice was overdubbed here-and-there in "Conan the Destroyer," it is the prolific character actor Tracey Walters (as the thief, Malak) who holds the distinction of being totally overdubbed throughout the entire movie, because the boom microphones couldn't pick up his soft, nasal voice.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: A young Vincent D'Onofrio was cast to play the part of Bozo in the first Toxic Avenger film; however, before filming began, D'Onofrio brashly asked for a pay raise and was immediately fired. D'Onofrio was replaced by actor Gary Schneider.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: Near the end, during their extended nonsense bit about the stolen Beaugard painting, both Chico and Groucho were rapid-fire ad-libbing so heavily that they became irritated with one another. In fact, by the time Groucho ad-libbed, "I'd buy you a parachute if I thought it wouldn't open," he was getting really pissed off at Chico's faster and funnier come-backs. Almost instantly, Chico shot back, "Hey, I already got a pair-uh-shoes!" (which was, again, funnier than Groucho's parachute line). At that point, Groucho snapped and sprang into some improvised physical comedy, falling backwards across the card table and elbowing Chico right in the face, perhaps on purpose. Genuinely shocked from the blow, Chico recoiled wide-eyed, looked toward director Victor Heerman off-camera, and angrily exclaimed, "He's crazy!" (referring to Groucho).

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: When Dark Shadows was cancelled in 1971, several storylines were left incomplete, not the least of which was the fate of Barnabas Collins. Was he doomed to remain a vampire for all eternity? The definitive answer is no. In a 1971 TV Guide interview, the head writer of Dark Shadows, Sam Hall, revealed that the series would have eventually ended with Julia permanently curing Barnabas of his vampirism, and that Barnabas and Julia would live happily ever after in the Far East.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: A young and arrogant Richard Dreyfuss thought the movie "Jaws" was going to be a flop. So, weeks before "Jaws" ever opened in theatres, Dreyfuss did television and magazine interviews in which he criticized the film and apologized in advance for his performance in it.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: In real life, the K-19 was never nick-named "The Widowmaker," and its cursed history was entirely fictional, fabricated for the film. After the fact of the nuclear meltdown, the Soviet military actually nick-named the K-19 "Hiroshima," alluding to the first city ever destroyed by a nuclear weapon.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: There was never a mutiny aboard the real "K-19" as depicted in the film. In real life, the captain ordered all firearms to be thrown overboard, to avoid a mutiny.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: While "Galaxy Quest" has, over the years, achieved cult status, and some commentators have even claimed it is better than Star Trek, the story idea for GQ seems to have originated in Star Trek fan fiction of the mid-1970s. In an anthology of fan fiction commercially released as "Star Trek: The New Voyages" (edited by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath), there is one short story titled "Visit to a Weird Planet Revisited" by Ruth Berman in which the principle actors of the original Star Trek series (William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelly) are somehow, inexplicably, transported from the film studio to the REAL starship Enterprise, where they pretend to be real Federation officers and must deal with a Klingon incursion. It's the identical main story of "Galaxy Quest," except Star Trek fans invented it more than 20 years earlier. Http://members.optusnet.com.au/virgothomas/space/trek/weirdplanet.html.

Charles Austin Miller