Questions about specific movies, TV shows and more

These are questions relating to specific titles. General questions for movies and TV shows are here. Members get e-mailed when any of their questions are answered.

Question: In the beginning, Stu tells Adam to messenger a bottle of Jameson's over to Lana who works at Page Six. He also wants a note saying "Irish chicken soup" to be delivered to her. What does he mean? And what is Jameson's?

Bunch Son

Chosen answer: Jameson's is a brand of Irish whiskey. He is making a joke that the whiskey is food, the same as chicken soup.

raywest

Question: At the end of the movie, Stu was hit by a rubber bullet. Did the caller shoot it? Why didn't he kill Stu? The caller loved Kelly, didn't he?

Bunch Son

Chosen answer: The police fired the rubber bullets in an attempt to end the standoff without killing Stu. There's no indication the caller loved or personally knew Kelly. At the end, he warns Stu to maintain his new-found honesty or else face repercussions. He also tells him he's done the same thing to others who were dishonest.

raywest

Question: When Captain Ramey tries to persuade Stu, he asks him what he is doing in a phone booth making calls, then Stu says, "You want to see it?" reaching for something, then the cops shout out him to stop. What was Stu going to show to Ramey?

Bunch Son

Answer: He's reaching for his cell phone.

Chosen answer: Stu was reaching for the gun that the caller had planted in the phone booth as incriminating evidence.

raywest

Answer: He doesn't have time for him.

Question: Why didn't Zep (a hospital orderly) go to a poison control centre for help instead of playing Jigsaw's game?

EK8829

Chosen answer: Zepp is given a set time frame before the poison will kill him. If he went to poison control, in the time it would take for them to find the right antidote he would likely be dead. Being an orderly he would have known this.

Ssiscool

Season 1 generally

Question: In season 1 the mystery is what really happened to the Young family that made Mary Alice kill herself. While it's revealed that Zach was in fact a baby named Dana and a son of Mike and Deirdre, I really don't understand why Zach had a female name and then later got a male name with his new parents. Is there something I'm missing or is Dana just a unisex name?

Katja3101

Chosen answer: Dana is a unisex name. I'm they changed it because of them keeping them without anyone knowing. If you recall Mary Alice's name used to be Angela. All their names were changed.

Baby (1) - S4-E20

Question: Hal and the boys are running back to the car with Reese stuck in the violin case. Which song is playing while Hal can't find the keys?

Show generally

Question: Which 1967 episode or what specific story line has Louis Edmonds in close-up because he didn't have time to put his pants back on?

Pkelly

Answer: It's probably episode 193 (even though the slate at the beginning says 58). It's the episode with Sam demanding that Roger return his paintings. Three clues from the Dark Shadows Companion and from the comments of Kathryn Leigh Scott and Louis Edmonds all agree that 1) Scott is in the episode and is done for the day prior to Edmonds without his pants; 2) Edmonds is wearing a smoking jacket, and 3) Edmonds is leaning on the mantle (which is actually the cabinet where the liquor is, because the fireplace mantle is too high to lean on and the bench in front of it prevents getting too close to). There are several "breaks" in the lengthy scene where commercial were probably inserted, and all of the shots are above the waist. The previously mentioned episode 54 has Edmonds in a suit and Scott isn't in the episode; episode 54 doesn't have Edmonds or Scott; and episode 86 only has Edmonds in a suit.

Lou Edmonds was a consummate actor and would not forget that he had a lengthy scene to perform. Rather, in Episode 86, Edmonds more understandably forgot that he had to perform one last 15-second scene (a simple toast). He had removed his shoes and pants before he was reminded of the final, brief shot, and he hurried back to complete it.

Charles Austin Miller

Answer: There seems to be some confusion among Dark Shadows fans as to the episode: Some claim it was Episode 54, while others claim it was Episode 85. However, the scene actually appeared in Episode 86. Louis Edmonds (as Roger Collins) thought he had completed all his shots for the day and was removing his costume when he was reminded that he had one more shot. With only seconds to spare, Edmonds hurried back to the set without his pants or shoes (some whispering and shuffling is heard in the background just before the camera goes live). Whereupon, with an amused expression, Edmonds pours himself a brandy and strolls across the study before delivering his last line, a toast: "Miss Victoria Winters, no matter where you are." The shot was slightly adjusted to only cover Edmonds from the elbows-up.

Charles Austin Miller

Thank you so much! I had it narrowed down to 3 episodes and the actual one was among them. Thank you again.

Answer: Yes...episode 193 is the only episode to include all three clues (character Maggie appears earlier, character Roger is in a smoking jacket, and lastly, he has brandy in hand and elbows are atop the liquor cabinet. It the last scene in the black and whit episode where Sam Evans is demanding that his paintings back from Roger. And if you keep your eyes on Sam, you will see him glance downward twice at Roger. This eoisode is in Collection 6, disk 2 and even though it's listed in the Dark Shadows Companion as episode 193, the slate at the very beginning says episode 58.

Question: Why is Hermione wearing a bandage? I see no injury to her hand but when they travel back in time she has a bandage on her hand.

ForceSlytherin

Answer: You can see blood on Hermione's hand when Ron says "Scabbers has been in my family for..." before Sirius says "12 years"

Chosen answer: There's no reason given and it is not part of the story line. Most likely, at some point during the filming of this scene, Emma Watson suffered some minor injury and needed to wear a bandage.

raywest

Answer: She could have injured it while she was on the Whomping Willow.

Chosen answer: Danny Masterson is the one who screams "hello Wisconsin".

Question: When Buddy and Carolyn first meet at dinner, Buddy claims that his wife left him. At the motel (after Lester discovers Carolyn cheating with Buddy), Buddy says that he's "potentially facing a very expensive divorce." Why did he lie that his wife left him in the first place?

EK8829

Chosen answer: He wasn't lying that she'd left him. Sometimes when people break up, they don't initiate divorce proceedings right away, and some ex-couples don't bother going through divorce at all purely because it's too expensive. Sometimes, a reconciliation happens. He simply wasn't sure exactly what was going to be happening.

Purple_Girl

Question: Just out of curiosity but how did Quinn, (the one Blade nailed to the wall at the beginning of the movie), "heal" from being burned? I don't think there was ever an explanation and later on he was just fine; how is that possible and also, how did his hand/hands keep growing back and why was he so hard to kill before?

Answer: The vampires in the "Blade" movies can regenerate, especially when they feed with regularity. Also, he wasn't "hard to kill"... Blade just had a particular dislike for him and liked torturing him without killing him.

Question: Two questions; One, what is the language the vampires are always speaking? Was it made up or is it a real language? Two, if Blade was called Eric before, how did he "become" Blade, meaning how did he earn the name?

Answer: The vampire language is Esperanto, a real constructed language created in the late 1800's. To an English listener, the language sounds foreign yet vaguely familiar thus it works as a plausible "secret language" spoken by a secret society. It is never explained how Blade got his nickname, however his proficiency with bladed weapons seems to be a logical explanation. A deleted scene in Blade 2 shows Whistler interacting with Blade when he was young, telling him to "drop his blade".

BaconIsMyBFF

Apologies, but 'BaconIsMyBFF' is incorrect. The vampire language is definitively not Esperanto. Respected language expert and UCLA linguistics professor Victoria Fromkin was hired to create a fictional vampire language. For the second film, a new linguist, J. Matthew Pearson, was brought in to write new language excerpts due to prof. Fromkin's death in 2000. A thread discussing this fact can be found at - http://archives.conlang.info/bhe/qhuenphi/jhurphilwein.html.

Chosen answer: The main goal of the X-Men is to show the world that not all mutants are necessarily evil or to be feared. Showing kindness and giving hospitality to one of their biggest detractors helps their cause, and Senator Kelly admits to having a change of heart just before he dies.

Phaneron

Question: Why did they take Cody off the mission just because he was defending himself from some bullies? Also, why did Cody lie to Natalie by saying he was taken off the mission because he became too close to her?

THE GAMER NEXT DOOR

Answer: The fight with the bullies made the school paper and drew unwanted attention to Cody which could compromise his mission. Cody lied to Natalie to try and impress her.

BaconIsMyBFF

Question: I've always wondered: why does Goldfinger release Bond during the laser scene? I've seen the scene a few times and I still cannot understand it.

Answer: Bond bluffed his way out. He convinced Goldfinger that if he did not report back to his superiors they would send another 00 Agent to replace him. And the agent would have information that could foil Goldfinger. By sparing Bond Goldfinger could force him to make reports as his captive. Bond would be his prisoner but no other 00 agents would come for him.

Question: Very last scene after they turn the car around and you see the back of their heads, to me it doesn't look like Cary Grant or Joan Fontaine? Is it them or their doubles?

Answer: It could have been body doubles, who are often used for filler scenes like this, but there's no way to know for sure.

raywest

Answer: Hitchcock had a different ending on the movie, but the studio and test audiences hated it. Grant ends up splitting up with Fontaine. Hitchcock was pressured into a happy ending, but weeks had passed since the end of filming and the two popular stars were off on other projects. Two actors were hired to as stand-ins for the added footage of the car turning around and the two going happily home together.

Question: The largest sandstorms ever recorded are less than a mile high (reaching only about 5000 feet in altitude). Isn't 5000 feet considered low altitude for a Fairchild C-119G "Flying Boxcar," which could easily climb over such a storm in a matter of minutes?

Charles Austin Miller

Chosen answer: This would most likely be a case of "pilot error." He didn't do what he should have and that led to the accident. If he had flown above the sand storm and didn't crash, then there'd be no movie to watch.

raywest

Question: At the very end of the scene in which Walter and the Dude are spreading Donnie's ashes at the coast, a dark and unidentifiable figure appears for a few seconds in the upper right screen, apparently hiking a trail along the cliff. Was this an accidental walk-on by an actual hiker, or was it written into the script? With all the star-power in this film, I thought every bit of background action was supposed to be meticulously crafted.

Charles Austin Miller

Chosen answer: There's no way of knowing. If the hiker was that far away, it could have been someone who happened to stray into the scene by accident. The filmmakers may or may not have noticed, but if they did, may have felt it added to the realism. I did this myself during the filming of a street scene for the TV show, "Northern Exposure." Filming was underway before I realised I was in the midst of it. I just kept walking like I was supposed to be there.

raywest

Question: What is the reference to the limo drivers at Clair's funeral about. Who is the extra person?

Answer: The guy who killed Claire was the fifth guy. If you go back and look, you'll see he was dressed as a driver at the funeral.

Why would he be present at the funeral?

Answer: Criminals are known to go and revisit their crime victims.

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