1. Nicholas Cage’s real name is Nicholas Coppola, but he changed it to disassociate himself with Francis Ford. After the recent release of Bangkok Dangerous, one wonders if this was such a good idea
2. Samuel L. Jackson politely requests that anyone who claims not to enjoy watching themselves in movies to please stop lying.
3. Francis McDormand and Joel Coen have been married since 1984, the year of the Coen Brothers’ debut film, Blood Simple.
4. The late Paul Newman was originally cast in the role of Captain Quint in Jaws (1975).
5. Sigourney Weaver’s real name is Susan Weaver, but she changed her first name to be named after a character in the classic novel “The Great Gatsby.”
6. Oprah is actually a typo. Her parents wanted to use the biblical name Orpah, but the midwife couldn’t spell so it became Oprah.
7. The Dark Knight is the first Batman film not to have “Batman” in the title.
8. 78% of all musicians-turned-actors are rappers, and of those, 58% are black, and only two are any good.
9. “Beverly Hills 90210” star Luke Perry was born Coy Luther Perry but changed his first name to Luke after the lead character in his favorite movie, Cool Hand Luke.
10. Paul Newman, who starred in Cool Hand Luke, was one of the celebrities on the “Enemies List” kept by Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal.
11. Samuel L. Jackson’s starring role of Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction was ranked by the UK’s Empire magazine as the second coolest movie character of all time, after Brad Pitt’s Tyler Durden, from Fight Club.
12. Jean Claude Van-Damme, ladies and gentlemen, speaks FIVE LANGUAGES.
13. The title “Quantum of Solace” has been kicked around since the time of License to Kill (1989).
14. No one really knew who Samuel L. Jackson was until 1994, when Pulp Fiction was released. By then, he was 46 years old.
15. By 2006, twelve years after his break-out role in Pulp Fiction, Samuel L. Jackson’s films had grossed more money at the box office than any other actor in cinematic history (more than $3 billion).
16. I made fun of Hannah Montana’s Best of Both Worlds concert DVD in my “New DVDs This Week” post here on Hollywire a couple months ago. It went on to become the highest grossing Super Bowl weekend release ever. Oops.
17. Sean Connery wore a toupee in every James Bond film that he starred in, beginning with Dr. No (1962).
18. At Parklane Academy, a private school that she attended in McCombs, Mississippi until October 1994, Britney Spears was on the girls basketball team.
19. I am writing all of this from the heart of China in a city called Luoyang, one of the most intensely Communist cities in the country. Brad Pitt is unable to visit me here, since he’s been banned from ever entering China because of his role in the 1997 film Seven Years in Tibet (feel free to send the wife though, Brad!).
20. Kevin Bacon has had at least a supporting role in 27% of all American movies made since 1982.
21. The first trailer for Cloverfield was shown before Transformers in 2007. It showed an explosion in the heart of New York City and the Statue of Liberty’s head being thrown down the street. It was shot with a hand-held video camera and gave no title.
22. The movie is actually named after the boulevard in Santa Monica, California, where the Bad Robot offices were located during the making of the film. “Cloverfield” was originally just a codename for the movie.
23. Johnny Depp dropped out of school at age 15 with hopes of becoming a rock star.
24. Among the first films ever made was a series of shorts in the late 1870s that showed a horse galloping. Audiences were absolutely amazed.
25. Britney Spears’ name is an anagram for “Presbyterians.”
26. Jack Nicholson hates giving interviews so much that he has not appeared on a talk show since 1971.27. It took $7,500,000 to build the Titanic, approximately 20,000,000 tons of iceberg to sink it, and $200,000,000 to make a movie about it.
28. Titanic passenger Stuart Collet’s insurance claim for lost college-lecture notes – $50. Passenger Charlotte Cardeza’s insurance claim for lost luggage – $177,352.
29. New York Evening Sun headline on April 15, 1912 – “ALL SAVED FROM TITANIC AFTER COLLISION.” Oops!
30. Okay just one more. After the tragedy, Senator W. A. Smith asked, “What exactly is an iceberg composed of?” Fifth Officer Harold Lowe politely responded, “Ice, I suppose, sir.”
31. Since the commercial success of The Happening this year, M. Night Shyamalan has been working feverishly on the script for a film he plans to call The Anticlimax.
32. Superman could clearly kick the asses of both Spiderman and Batman simultaneously. In fact, I don’t understand why there was ever any debate about this.
33. In America, our films and television shows are played in NTSC format, which is 30 frames per second. In much of the rest of the world, they use PAL format, which is 24 frames per second. Our eyes see too slowly to tell the difference.
34. Wes Craven first proposed the script for A Nightmare on Elm Street, one of the most successful horror films of all time, in 1981, but no one was interested. It floated aimlessly until the now hugely successful New Line Cinema eventually picked it up.
35. A Nightmare on Elm Street was the first feature film that New Line Cinema ever produced. Prior to that, they were just a small distribution company for college campuses.
36. John Carpenter was a huge Alfred Hitchcock fan. Two characters in Halloween (1978), were named after characters in Hitchcock films – Tommy Doyle, from Rear Window (1954), and Sam Loomis, from Psycho (1960).
37. Jamie Lee Curtis made her acting debut in Halloween, and her mother, Janet Leigh, was the actress killed in the shower scene in Psycho, one of the most famous scenes in film history. Carpenter considered his casting of Curtis in Halloween to be the ultimate tribute to Hitchcock.
38. 19 years ago today, Hollywire’s own film critic (me) was in San Jose being scared out of his 10-year-old wits by the 7.1 Richter scale Bay Area earthquake.
39. Here’s a big surprise – when Michael Jackson was informed that his Thriller co-star Ola Ray had posed nude for Playboy in June 1980, Jackson confessed that he had never heard of the magazine.
40. Thanks to his background as an actor, Ronald Reagan is the only U.S. President to have ever worn a Nazi uniform.
41. Peter Ostrum, who played Charlie Bucket in Mel Stuart’s beloved Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971), was offered a three-movie contract after the success of the film, but turned it down. He never acted again, and is now a veterinarian for large animals in rural New York state.
42. Mel Gibson is Empire magazine’s 12th greatest movie star of all time and 37th sexiest movie star ever, he was chosen numerous times as one of People magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People (Sexiest Man Alive in 1985), and voted one of the Greatest Movie Stars of All Time by Entertainment Weekly. Despite all this, he met his wife through a dating service.
43. Contrary to popular belief, Angelina Jolie is actually not that attractive.
44. At one point, Jim Carrey and his family lived in a car and they all worked as janitors at a factory to make a living. As a child, Jim wore tap dancing shoes to bed, just in case his parents needed cheering up in the middle of the night.
45. The charming metal band Cannibal Corpse appeared in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994) because they are Jim Carrey’s favorite band (!!).
46. Jim Carrey was Tupac Shakur’s favorite actor. While in prison, Carrey would write letters to Tupac to help him smile and laugh.
47. Tupac was cast in Menace II Society (1993) but was fired after a fist-fight with the film’s director, he auditioned for the part of Bubba in Forrest Gump (1994), and won a role in the film Woo (1998) but was shot and killed five days before filming began.
48. Brad Pitt’s first job was dancing in a chicken suit to attract customers to an El Pollo Loco restaurant on Sunset Blvd.
49. Okay, I made up number 8, 20, and 31, but they seem right, don’t they?
50. Everything else is true.
