MOVIE
TRIVIA

• The movie was originally meant to be made by George Lucas, who was working as Francis Ford Coppola's assistant. He became immersed in another project - a little thing called Star Wars (1977) - and pulled out.
• The film's director, Francis Ford Coppola, appears in the film as a director - a TV director with a news crew.
• In Kurtz's camp, the severed heads were played by real people. Their bodies sweltered in underground boxes from 8am to 6pm, but they did break for lunch.
• The film was originally budgeted at $12 million with a sixteen week shoot. It ended up costing more than $30 million and took more than a year to shoot.

• Warner Brothers says the budget was $30 million, but industry rumour places it closer to $50 million.
• Jack Nicholson was reportedly paid $11 million for his role as the joker, plus a two per cent stake in the merchandising - which reportedly brought in $375 million. (Let's see, 2% of $375 million = $7.5 million ... not a bad Christmas bonus!)
• Despite the high budget and astronomical salaries, the movie became the first in history to gross $100 million in ten days.
• Jack Nicholson helped to choose the cloth used for the Joker's outfits. When the movie wrapped, he bought the lot.
• None of the twenty-four batman cowls offered the wearer peripheral vision, and all rendered him partially deaf.
• The batsuits were made of latex rubber. The cape alone weighed 25 pounds. Kim Bassinger found the suit rubbing off on her in great black gooey globs. Even so, she said she considered it very sexy.

• At $950,000, Casablanca was a big-budget movie for it's time. It grossed $3,700,000 in it's first year alone, and many times more than that since.
• Humphrey Bogart's contract at the time of filming was worth $3,500 a week. Ingrid Bergman's was worth $3,125 a week. Dooley Wilson, the piano player, was paid $500 a week. Villain Conrad Veidt, however, was worth $5,000 a week.
• Casablanca is the most frequently shown movie on American television.
• Although based on a purchased play (Everybody Comes to Rick's), the actors had no idea what their characters were doing from day to day, and certainly no idea how it would all end. Script pages for the day's shooting would arrive each morning.
• The famous line "Here's looking at you kid", was originally written in the play as "Here's good luck to you." This and other changes are attributed to Bogart.
• Fog and Rain? In North Africa?
• 'As Time Goes By' was already old and worn when the movie came out, having been a hit many years before.

Actor Paul Hogan was paid $(AUS)450,000 for his role, and a share of the $(AUS)218,000 script-writer's fee - both of which he returned to the production. He didn't starve, however: he and partner John Cornell owned 65% of the picture, and therefore 65% of it's dazzling profit.

• RKO offered Orson Welles the best movie making contract of all time:
  • A salary of $100,000 per year, to make one movie per year.
  • Complete artistic control.
  • He could do any project he wanted costing less than $500,000 (which was about $100,000 above the standard for the time).
  
  Not bad for a 25 year-old who had never made a movie before in his life!
• Citizen Kane was costed at a shade over $1,000,000, but studio pressure kept it's final costs to around $800,000.
• "I started at the top and worked down." - Orson Welles.
• There were three Rosebud's used in the film. Two were burned for the film, but the third survived - to be bought at auction by Steven Spielberg for $60,000.
• Up to 80% of the shots in Citizen Kane involved some sort of photographic trickery.
• Welles was the first to make ceilings a prominent part of his shots. Up to that time ceilings (and low angle shots) were avoided, to allow the lights to shine on the set from above.

• Total budget for the movie was $10.5 million - a sum that was more than returned in the movie's first weekend of release.
• In the summer of 1982, the movie was making $20 million a week, and director Spielberg was reported to be making $1 million a day from his cut. In total, the movie has now grossed more than $300 million.
• MCA, parent company of Universal Pictures, were keen to retain Speilberg's services (naturally!), and rewarded him with a special retreat on the Universal lot that cost them $3.6 million. When Spielberg - in typical modesty - queried the expense, he was told, "That's less than the rentals for E.T. in Bolivia - don't worry!". It now serves as the headquarters for his production company, Amblin Productions (aka Amblin Entertainment).
• Spielberg's instructions for the creators of E.T.:
  • A creature from a hot, heavy gravity planet, so E.T. should be short, fat and sweaty (actually, if he were from a hot planet, he would find Earth cold, and would therefore shiver rather than sweat).
  • He should have a rear end like Donald Duck.
  • For the face, mix a newborn baby with Albert Einstein's eyes and forehead.
  • It should have an extendable neck, so people don't think of it as a midget in a suit (which, in fact, it was, for any shot where E.T. is walking).
• Almost all the film is shot from waist height (child, or even E.T. height).

• The final cost of $13 million included $1.3 million to reshoot the ending. In the original climax, Alex committed suicide using a knife that had Dan's fingerprints all over it (hence finally getting back at him in death). This didn't test well, and cast and crew were re-assembled to create the more familiar ending. Japanese audiences, however, loved the harikari ending.
• Gross in North America alone exceeded $150 million.
• Michael Douglas (who played Dan) is said to have been disappointed that a planned sex scene with Anne Archer (who played his wife, Beth) was not filmed.
• Following the film's release, 70% of analyst's marital-problems patients in navel-gazing New York claimed to be suffering from Fatal Attraction
• While the name of the film quickly earned something of a reputation as a pseudo-psychological condition, the character Alex is actually supposed to be suffering from a genuine obsessive condition called 'De Cherambault's Syndrome'.
• God they can go forever! At the start of the kitchen sex scene the wall clock clearly reads 4.45. They're still busy at 6.35.

• Finished at a cost of $291,000 - about $100,000 more than the average of the day - the film is reported to have earned $13 million. A hefty percentage profit!
• The novel on which the film was based (Frankenstein by Mary Shelley) has never been out of print. The book spawned nine plays and earned more money than all of her husband's poems (Percy Bysshe Shelley). In fact, for many years Mary was regarded as a successful novelist who married a minor poet.
• Boris Karloff - who launched one of the screen's most successful careers with this film - was actually the third choice for the role of the monster. Lon Chaney was the first choice (and was also the first choice for the same year's Dracula), but he died of throat cancer. Bela Lugosi, who filled Chaney's shoes on the vampire flick, was next in line, but he turned it down.
• While Frankenstein is often regarded as Boris Karloff's debut, he was in fact a veteran of more than sixty films when he was cast as the monster. All were minor, forgettable appearances.
• One of the earliest 'talkies', director James Whale was headhunted from Broadway, as the studios didn't think many of their silent film directors could handle dialogue.
• Jame Whale is credited with this movie as being the first director to use off-camera dialogue, allowing the viewer to see the reaction of others instead of the speaker.
• There are numerous accounts of how much make-up man Jack Pierce's monster make-up weighed, but most start at about fifty pounds. The boots, with four-inch soles, weighed eighteen pounds each.
• Not only did Karloff have all of that clammy make-up to carry around, but the fact that the film was short during a particularly hot August-September meant the actor was sweating buckets. The heat and perspiration tended to melt his head. Karloff, however, remained good natured throughout the ordeal, earning the respect of all those around him.
• The make-up took four hours to apply, and two hours to remove. Karloff retained scars from the neckbolts for years.
• Make-up man Jack Pierce made Karloff remove some false teeth he had on one side of his mouth, so that his cheek on that side look more sunken.
• Too gruesome to stay in. As originally filmed, the monster meets a little girl, Maria, and joins in her game of floating flowers on the water. They run out of flowers, and the monster puts Maria in the water to see if she will float - she doesn't. But that was thought to morbid, and so early movie-goers saw only the monster reaching for the girl, and then the dead girl in her father's arms - leaving many to think that she had suffered worse than a drowning. The shots of the monster throwing the girl in the water were restored for later screenings.

"The producer called me one day. 'We have three girls here,' he said. 'Why don't you come and pick one out?' I would be picking the girl who would be doing a sexy vignette in the film.

"Three girls lined up when I arrived. 'Which one do you like?', the producer asked.

"They walked for us. 'You must be crazy,' I replied. 'There's only one. The blonde.' The girl was signed.

"For her one scene, she wore a dress cut so low I couldn't remember the dialogue. The girl was Marilyn Monroe."






"The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster."
Oscar Wilde

• The original novel by Mario Puzo was a desperate attempt on his part to get out of debt. He had two modest-selling books under his belt, but he was in his mid-forties and had $20,000 of debts over his head. He felt a sensational blockbuster was the only way out. The plan worked - having sold more then ten million paperbacks so far.
• Before the royalties started coming in, however, he was forced to sell an option on the film rights to keep the wolves from his door. The deal with Paramount gave him $12,500 up front, and a total of $50,000 if the project went ahead. He ended up with $80,000 because of a clause that linked his fee to book sales.
• Director Francis Ford Coppola was also having money troubles - but he owed $300,000.
• Originally slated at a budget of $2.5 million, Coppola convinced Paramount to up the stakes to $6,000,000. Still chicken-feed, though - the movie had made $330 million within two years, and NBC paid a further $10 million for a single TV screening.
• Coppola wanted Marlon Brando for the role of Don Vito Corleone, but the studio considered him to be a troublesome has-been. They eventually relented, but Brando could only be paid expenses in advance, had to give various strict guarantees of cooperation, and had to undergo a screen test.
• Early in pre-produciton, a group calling themselves the Italian-American Civil Rights League (who might they have really been we wonder?), began making waves about the injustice the book (and therefore movie) was doing to a section of honest, law-abiding Americans. They were put at ease when producer Albert Ruddy promised to remove all references to the words 'mafia' and 'cosa nostra' (which only existed a couple of times in the working script, anyway), to make a contribution to their hospital building fund (!), and to cast some of the league's members as extras. Leader of the league, Joe Columbo, never saw the movie - he was shot in the head a few blocks from where the crew were filming shortly before principle photography was finished. Presumably, he refused an offer...
• When Coppola edited together The Godfather and it's 1974 sequel into a TV mini-series, NBC paid another $15 million for the privilege of screenning it.
• Marlon Brando chose to forego a fee in favour of a healthy percentage. However, a clause in his contract put a ceiling of $1.5 million of his earnings.
• Francis Ford Coppola - in addition to his $100,000 director's fee and $1,500 a week expenses - was on a 6% cut. Producer Albert Ruddy pocketed 7.5%, and Mario Puzo took home 2.5%. James Caan, Diane Keaton, Al Pacino and Robert Duvall picked up the crumbs, each being paid only $35,000.
• It seems 'the mob' liked the book. Author Mario Puzo found gambling debts in Las Vegas conveniently and quietly paid. The film, however, must not have met with their approval. There were several bomb threats, and Albert Ruddy's car was once sprayed with bullets - fortunately he was not in it at the time.
• Coppola not only went for period realism in front of the camera, but in the way the film was shot as well, opting to direct as a 1940's director would. This created a lack of confidence in him among the crew, culminating in cinematographer Gordon Willis responding to instructions by saying, "Oh, that's dumb!"
• Brando considered The Godfather to be his favourite production in 20 years.

• Total budget: $3,700,000. Total receipts: over $150,000,000
• The novel was already turned down by MGM boss, Irving Thalberg, who decreed, "No civil war picture ever made a nickel."
• Vivien Leigh, a practical unknown when she was cast, was paid a total of $30,000 for her work - and she worked more than any of the other cast members.
• Producer David O. Selznick knew he had to have Clark Gable for the male lead, but Gable was contracted to MGM at the time. A deal was worked out that involved MGM getting a share of the distribution rights. As it turned out, this deal was worth more than $25 million to MGM. Gable's reward? A rise from $4,500 a week to $7,000 a week (and a reported bonus that he denied).
• Producer Selznick never actually read the book before purchasing the movie rights. He had a brief synopsis prepared by an employee.
• Clark Gable married Carole Lombard during filming, and was given two days off for his honeymoon.
• Original director, George Cukor - after completing two and a half years of pre-production work - was fired two weeks into shooting. However, both Vivien Leigh and Olivia DeHavilland met secretly with Cukor throughout filming for coaching sessions.
• "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a darn." Doesn't have quite the same impact, does it? That's what David O. Selznick argued to the industry's moral watchdog, Will H. Hays, for over four hours. In the end, the production company was fined $5,000 for breaching the production code - very definitely a drop in the financial ocean. It took another twelve years before another American film dared to use the word 'Damn'.
• The film had begun shooting before the role of Scarlett O'Hara had been cast. The scenes of Rhett and Scarlett escaping the fires of Atlanta were shot first, using stand-ins.
• Many of the dead or injured Confederate soldiers in that amazing crane shot of the make-shift Atlanta field hospital were played by store dummies - mannequins, that is!
• The part of Stuart Tarleton was played by George Reeves, who would go on to fame (and infamy!) as TV's Superman. His credit in Gone with the Wind is mixed up with another bit-player.
• Every principal character in the movie - including the house, Tara - has their own musical theme. Except one - poor Ashley.

"When I got there, they were on the third week of shooting the cockfight, which really says it all."

• This was the second outing for the two main stars, Fay Wray and Robert Armstrong, with producers Merian Coper and Ernest Schoedsack for RKO. The previous year they had made a jungle adventure film called The Most Dangerous Game (1932), which rapidly disappeared.
• Willis O'Brien - stop-motion pioneer and animator of Kong - quit on the spot when his own film Creation was dropped by the studio in favour of the King Kong project to which he was then assigned. He reconsidered, but pulled the same stunt several times during production.
• RKO had set an absolute ceiling of $200,000 on all productions, yet somehow producers Cooper and Schoedsack convinced head of production David O. Selznick to allow them $650,000. Selznick left the studio before the movie was completed, and his shoes were filled by Cooper.
• The special effects were considered as much a landmark in their day as Star Wars (1977) was in it's - almost half a decade later. Other than the animation itself, these included ...
  • A new synthetic back-projection screen
  • A system to synchronise camera and back-projector
  • Miniature back-projection to put animated objects in front of live action
  • Introduction of the travelling matte
  • Multi-plane backdrops to create an illusion of depth
• The stretched budget was rewarded with takings of more than $2,500,000 at the peak of the American depression.
• The main Kong model was 45 cm (eighteen inches) high. Made by Marcel Delgado, it's skeleton was made of an aluminium alloy and was filled out with rubber and tissue paper. The coat was made from rabbit fur.
• The mock-up head of Kong used for many close ups housed three men operating levers and bellows.
• The only other piece of Kong was the articulated hand in which Fay Wray sat.
• In the animation process, one second of finished action would take around an hour to film. All continuous shots were completed in one sitting, so twenty hour days were common.
• To keep the budget down, the native village set was borrowed from Bird of Paradise (1932), and the giant wall was from Cecil B. DeMille's King of Kings (1927).
• Producers/Directors Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack make a fitting appearance at the end of the movie as the flight commander and his observer. They figured that after all the work, "We should kill that son of a bitch ourselves."
• Kong's voice is a mixture of lions and tigers, recorded (and then slowed) at the local zoo at feeding time.
• My, my ... everyone talks about Fay Wray's infamous 'nude' scene with Kong, but is she just cold, or is she glad to see Bruce Cabot after her chat with the cook??

• The magazine serial, The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammet, had been sold to Warner Brothers in the late twenties. It had already been made into a film twice (1931 and 1936) when writer John Huston chose it as the vehicle for his directorial debut.
• Humphrey Bogart was earning $400 a week as an average screen hood when he was offered the role of Sam Spade. George Raft and Edward G Robinson were ahead of him on the list of preferred leads. Following The Maltese Falcon, Bogie's salary climbed to $3,500 a week.
• Huston wanted to be as faithful to the original story as possible, feeling that that was where the previous efforts had failed. He instructed a secretary to convert the original novel into a script format - same dialogue, same structure, just putting into scenes and shots. It was this version of the script that studio boss Jack Warner saw and approved, not Huston's reworked shooting script.
• Filming was completed in just over a month.
• While this was their first outing, Bogart and Huston made a total of seven films together.
• Sydney Greenstreet, at 61, was the most experienced actor in the company - but on stage, not before the movie cameras. Reports have him as the most nervous person on the lot.