Question: How does the show account for money? Truman obviously has real money so he doesn't get tipped off that he's living in a fake town, but how do they go about money for everyone else and any change Truman might get when he purchases items? I don't think the director would risk having any movie money (used in TV and movies to stand in for real money) within the world in case Truman should be handed some by accident.
Answered questions about specific movies, TV shows and more
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Question: This might be a dumb question and more character choice or ignorance, but when Mary Jane is fired from the play she asks "One critic?" to which she gets the response of "No. All of them." Why would she just read or hear of one review? Even if they all said the same thing she would have probably read more than one to look for even the slightest chance of a positive review.
Answer: She most likely knows how bad she was, has gotten poor reviews from previous plays, and couldn't bring herself to read or hear more than one terrible review this time. Nobody wants to read/hear negative things about themselves, and she may be hoping someone will tell her that there is at least one positive review about her.
Question: When the monkey puppet on Mrs. Doubtfire's show says "Here's a monkey bite!", sometimes the monkey is shown on the TV screen next to Lundy and sometimes it's not shown and only zoomed in on Lundy watching (without the monkey at all seen). It seems TV or cable stations/DVD all have one of these versions or the other. Why is it different? Was something inappropriate about a puppet monkey "biting"?
Answer: When movies are shown on TV they are often edited using what is called a "pan and scan" format to fit the television screen. Movie screens are much wider, and when movies are shown on television as they were originally filmed, the image on the sides are cut off. Sometimes movies are shown on TV in a "letter box" format, where you see the black lines at the top and bottom of the TV screen. This shows the entire scene, but it is much smaller overall. "Pan and scan" is edited to cut back and forth between the scene to show the different characters, usually when it is their time to be speaking. Otherwise, one character may be talking, but the audience cannot see them, confusing the plot. The version of "Mrs Doubtfire" that you were watching is done in "pan and scan."
Question: Why are Dr Lester and his friends all planning to go into one mind? Surely they'd want to go into a mind on their own, otherwise they'd be just trapped in someone else's head. Something that Dr Lester was afraid of in the first place?
Answer: Using John Malkovich extends their life. After Malkovich turns 44, the next portal is a newborn baby. So they couldn't, or didn't want to, wait for another mind to go into.
Question: Is Charlie Sheen playing himself, or is he just playing a character called Charlie?
Answer: He's playing himself.
Question: Why does Major Koslova seem relaxed after the jackal presses her hand in the wound?
Question: If the company knew about the Aliens from the start and coveted them as a bioweapon, why did it take 57 years and the reappearance of Ripley for someone from the company to make another effort to get one? In the intervening 57 years, wouldn't the company have sent someone out to the derelict spaceship wreckage?
Answer: The company doesn't wait 57 years, they built a colony on the planet over 20 years prior to finding Ripley. The company was apparently unaware of the exact location of the derelict spacecraft. After finding Ripley and obtaining information from her, Burke was able to send the Jorden family to the precise location of the derelict spacecraft.
Answer: For me anyway, the company doesn't seem to be as hostile as they do in Alien. Won't surprise me that in 57 years there has been a change in leadership and they are no longer interested in capturing the alien, Burke seems to operating on his own. Minor plot hole ultimately.
I think the original answer is right and they simply didn't know where the crashed ship was located on the planet since the beacon was deactivated and all information was on the Nostromo and with Ripley. They built a colony there to find it eventually, just takes a long time. Until they got lucky and found Ripley. Burke is definitely not working on his own though, they still knew about the aliens and the original idea still remained, capture aliens and bring them back to study.
Yes that's right, because when Ripley has a run in with Burke he says that this specimen is worth millions to the bio weapons division and if we bring it back we will be made for life.
Question: In one of the Orca scenes, when Quint shot a line and barrel into Jaws from the rear of the boat, the barrel then had to travel over the boat and almost hit Brody in the head. If you look closely, you can see his glasses getting ripped off by the barrel. Was this staged or an actual near-miss, just inches from his head?
Answer: We cut from Hooper fighting to untie the cleat, to the shot of the barrel launching past Brody's head. At the start, the camera has Brody in profile. In stop motion, you can briefly see that he's wearing the arms of his glasses on the (outside) of his ears - so they're not hooked to his face. He looks over his right shoulder (toward the approaching barrel) then whips his head left, toward the camera, and slings off his glasses, for a great effect.
Question: I was just curious, is there any significance behind why Samuel L. Jackson is the piano player in the church at the beginning of this film? Is it some kind of in-joke or did he just get that part by auditioning? Seems like a very small part for such a good actor.
Answer: He was brought in as a cameo because QT likes bringing in actors from his other movies. It is possible that Rufus is either a nod to or actually is Jules from Pulp Fiction, who said at the end of the movie that he was going to become a drifter. In Kill Bill Rufus was referenced as a drifter. Also, Tarantino has publicly stated (on the El Rey program "The Director's Chair") that he loves Sam Jackson on the set, he just enjoys his company; so it's probably just a buddy-buddy arrangement.
Question: As we know, the magnifying glass in Olaf's tower started the Baudelaire fire. This is the same tool that Klaus uses to burn up the marriage certificate. If the magnifying glass was powerful enough to cause the Baudelaire mansion to burst into flames, which was 37 blocks away, why didn't the stage burst into flames as well?
Answer: A magnifying glass concentrates all the light that goes through it at its focal point, and it is this focal point that needs to be placed on the object which one wants to set on fire. The distance of the focal point to the lens depends on the magnifying glass characteristics, and it is more than likely that Count Olaf chose a glass where the focal point would be situated exactly "37 blocks" away from his house, that is, at the Baudelaire's mansion. When trying to set on fire an object much, much closer, the glass would concentrate much, much less energy, and would only be able to set on fire easily burnt objects, such as thin paper.
Question: After we learn Mr. Orange is the "rat", we see him talking to a co-worker in a diner, which looks really familiar. Is this the diner that Honey Bunny and Pumpkin attempted to rob in Pulp Fiction?
Answer: Yes. They were filmed in different locations in the diner.
Question: This is what I don't get. The mansion actually belongs to who? Wadsworth or Mr Broddy?
Chosen answer: Tim Curry (as Wadsworth) states he knew about the secret passages because the house belongs to a friend of his. Tim Curry (as Mr. Boddy) says at the end of the movie that they "Could stack the bodies in the cellar and could all leave one by one." Which infers that Mr. Boddy has no intention of returning to the house. Either way, there is no definite way to tell who the house belongs to considering all the lying going on.
Question: Why was Chip framing Dinozzo for the murder of the unidentified woman?
Answer: Because Chip made a lab error in a previous job, and Abby and Dinozzo were instrumental in revealing/correcting the mistake which got Chip fired. Hence the grudge against Dinozzo and Abby. So, he framed Dinozzo for a murder and attempted to kill Abby at the end of the show.
Answer: He was only after DiNozzo. He only tried to kill Abby because she found him out and got too close.
Question: For years I've wondered about the scene where Hal meets Rosemary's doctor friend Dr. Sahid (in the children's hospital). Unless there's a cut or deleted scene I'm not familiar with, there's no relevance to the plot with meeting the doctor since he's never seen in the rest of the movie (therefore not knowing if his real appearance is different) - everyone else in the whole movie that Hal never met before ends up with a different appearance after the spell wears off (including men). Can anyone answer this?
Answer: I think he was in the movie to reinforce that she is a genuinely nice person and that she had a wide circle of friends who appreciated her.
Question: When Bruce escaped the pit, did he throw the rope down so the rest of the prisoners could escape? I know they helped him, but isn't letting them go free a bad thing (they're prisoners for a reason, some of them could've been rapists like the ones that killed that little girl's mother)? And how did Bruce get to Gotham so fast? Do we know what country the pit is in?
Answer: Yes, he threw the rope to let the prisoners out. It may have been a dumb move on his part, although there is the potential that numerous prisoners there were also wrongfully imprisoned by Bane, and Bruce is intimately familiar with the criminal world and mindset - he may have simply judged that the remaining prisoners in the pit were worth freeing. Bruce has connections all over the planet, any company, or one could have dropped off billionaire Bruce Wayne back off at the states. It is never mentioned where the prison is located.
Answer: As far as the country the Pit is in, it's never stated in the film, only that it's in the ancient part of the world. In the comics, Bane was born and lived in the prison Peña Duro, although it doesn't share much with the Pit other than being where Bane was in prison. Peña Duro Is located in the fictional country of Santa Prisca, which is located in the northern part of the Caribbean.
Answer: It should be noted that the Pit was now Bane's. While it's a prison in the sense that the people can't escape, it wasn't specifically filled with criminals convicted of a crime in a legal setting. They were Bane's enemies who had been put there to be tortured. While it's likely some of Bane's enemies were criminals, they were probably free before Bane put them there. Remember, before Bane bought or took over the Pit, Ra's al Ghul had killed the prisoners as revenge for the murder of his wife. Although they also might not have been criminals convicted legally and would have been the Warlord's enemies.
Answer: While the actual pit was a set and Hollywood magic, the exterior of the prison [once Batman escaped] is Mehrangarh Fort in Jodhpur, India. A set of circular stones mark the supposed "entrance" to the pit. However, the interior of the prison, which had all of the wall/stairs, have a real life inspiration. Chand Baori, was built in the ninth century, and has 3,500 steps across 13 stories. Apparently, the priests who lived there also liked to chant as they descended the steps to reach water, which sent vibrations through the stairs. (Per Cracked. Com, "5 Mind-Blowing True Stories Behind Famous Movie Locations).
Although this is interesting, this not an answer to the question. I'd recommend to post this again as trivia.
I originally wrote it to answer the second part of the question, as I also wondered where it was set in, but I went overboard with the details. I submitted it to trivia.
Question: I don't know the episode, but didn't Mike Franks have a son who died, and the woman who was in the cab was holding a blonde baby boy? After that Mike Franks just had a daughter in law and a granddaughter.
Chosen answer: Season 4, Episode 8. "Iceman" is where Mike Frank's son Corporal O'Neill is introduced.
Answer: Their ages are never made clear within the film. In the comic Evey is 16 when the story begins. However, since Natalie Portman was in her early 20s at the time the film was made, it can be presumed that Evey is also in her late teens or early 20s as well; since V was an adult during his imprisonment at Larkhill roughly 20 years before the events of the film, he most likely is at least in his early 40s.
Question: I've always had an sequence issue with the saved package that Chuck delivers to the lady "Bettina" in the truck at the end. To me it could either be the return divorce papers from Russia, or just happens to be some other delivery, since she appears to be a regular FedEx customer. Either way doesn't matter here for me. The issue/questions is, if the plane that crashed over the Pacific left the FedEx hub in Memphis, TN then why is a package that is destined for somewhere in Texas taking the long route way over the Pacific, rather than just go from Memphis to Texas the short way? The "Dissolution of Marriage Agreement" (1:02:23), shows from Law office in Santa Fe, NM destined for Jakarta Indonesia (over the Pacific). Has anyone else reconciled this delivery route dilemma?
Chosen answer: Memphis is the "hub" for FedEx. It is a waste of time and energy and money if they send every package exactly where it is destined to go, directly. Instead, every single package goes to one place, where they are grouped and sorted do that they can fill trucks with packages all going to the same destination. In the movie, he brings it back to the original sender of the package, he does not bring it to whom it was originally being sent, which is why he brought it back at the end.
Answer: This package cannot be the same one she sent in the beginning scene. It had pink wings on it! The one Chuck found had golden wings on it. Remember she told the fed ex man to come back on Thursday she had another one to send. This one had to be the one Chuck found.
Answer: Yes, it was being shipped and Chuck returned it to Texas. That's why they play Elvis' Return To Sender.
So this could have been the signed returned divorce papers in a new package with golden wings and not her original sent package with pink wings?
Answer: 1st and foremost any packages she would receive would not have the wings, only packages she sends would have them.
Answer: So that leads me to believe these were not the divorce papers. She was the sender of the 2nd package.
Question: When Rachel tells Alfred to give Bruce the envelope and he says "how will I know" and she says it's not sealed. What does she mean by that? Is she implying that he can read it? I know I may have answered my own question but I just need to be sure.
Answer: Yes, she is implying he should read the letter so that he knows the right time to give it to Bruce.
Chosen answer: The world of "The Truman Show" is created as an actual functioning world. As such, even though Seahaven is a simulation, everything within it is made to seem as "real" as possible. There are actual newspapers and magazines. The snacks Marlon stocks in vending machines are actual snacks. The products in stores are real (and many are available for sale by catalog to the viewing audience). As such, there is every reason to believe that money used in Seahaven is actual legal tender. Why wouldn't it be? Every store and business can be stocked with money for change. Every actor and extra in Seahaven can be provided money for whatever transactions are needed, just as they are provided cars and briefcases and clothes and food. Accountants for the show can track the money just like everything else is probably tracked. The logistics seem overwhelming, but the economic operations of Seahaven have probably developed as the town has developed to meet Truman's needs.
Michael Albert