Even some of the best-known movies in history continue to surprise us from time to time, and in the article below we’ve gathered together 30 crazy facts that you won’t believe you’ve never heard about before. Find out which classic horror film used actual bodies instead of props, plus we reveal which award-winning movie had to pay ransom to a Mexican gang after they kidnapped a crew member.
You might think you’ve heard everything there is to know about the likes of Jurassic Park, Titanic and Taxi Driver…but you’d be wrong! Scroll down the article below to read about 30 of the craziest movie facts of all time. Enjoy!
30. Leonardo DiCaprio once wiped his own blood on Kerry Washington
Leonardo DiCaprio is well-known for his method acting, but he took things one step too far on the set of Django Unchained!
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During filming for the infamous dinner scene, the actor accidentally cut his hand open. He was on the sixth take of his racist rant when Leo smashed his hand against the table and hit a glass – ouch! But the actor didn’t flinch and the cameras kept rolling as DiCaprio finished the scene by wiping his own blood on Kerry Washington’s face.
Yuck! Fortunately his co-stars appreciated the epic ad-libbing and once filming stopped, everybody on set burst into applause. “My hand started really pouring blood all over the table,” said DiCaprio. “Maybe they thought it was done with special effects. I wanted to keep going.
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It was more interesting to watch Quentin’s and Jamie’s reaction off-camera than to look at my hand.” He then added that he was glad the director kept in the scene!
29. JoBeth Williams had to swim through a pool of real dead bodies in Poltergeist
Remember that terrifying scene in Poltergeist where JoBeth Williams has to swim through a pool of bones and skulls? Well they weren’t movie props – they were actual dead bodies. Grim! Apparently real human remains were used because they were cheaper than plastic skeletons – who knew?!
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Unfortunately, some fans of the movie believe that the director’s decision to use real dead bodies led to the Poltergeist ‘curse’ behind the scenes…
A bizarre number of actors associated with the movie have been murdered or passed away in the wake of its release – Heather O’Rourke died at the age of 12 years old after suffering a cardiac arrest.
Dominique Dunne was strangled to death by her ex-boyfriend only five months after the film hit cinemas.
And finally, Lou Perryman (aka Pugsley) was murdered with an axe in his own home in 2009.
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Many fans believe the film’s use of real dead bodies sparked the curse in the first place…
28. Buzz Lightyear’s original name was Lunar Larry
“To infinity, and beyond!”
Back in 1995, kids and parents the world over instantly fell in love with Buzz Lightyear, the cocky superhero who just refused to believe he was nothing more than a children’s toy. However, did you know that the character was never supposed to be called Buzz in the first place?!
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The toy’s original name was ‘Lunar Larry’, which really just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
After a lot of back and forth between producers, Larry’s named was changed to Buzz Lightyear, as a nod to real-life astronaut Buzz Aldrin. Nice!
Also, in the original sketches for the movie, Buzz was supposed to be the good guy facing off against an evil pull-string cowboy called Woody. Eventually screenwriters decided to switch the pair around and as a result, one of the greatest Pixar movies of all time was born!
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Our childhood just wouldn’t be the same without Buzz Lightyear flying around! We’re definitely glad they ditched the Lunar Larry name…
27. Blues Brothers had a specific budget set aside for cocaine
Everyone knows that John Belushi was a troubled man. Belushi’s crippling drug addiction severely harmed his comedy career and the performer was booted off the set of Saturday Night Live more than a few times for his behaviour.
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But it turns out that his chronic addiction to cocaine probably wasn’t helped by the fact that the Blues Brothers production crew actually set aside a specific amount of money to pay for the white stuff.
Dan Aykroyd was a close friend of Belushi’s and co-starred with him in the hit film. He once explained in an interview: “We had a budget in the movie for cocaine for night shoots. Everyone did it, including me. Never to excess, and not ever to where I wanted to buy it or have it. [But] John, he just loved what it did. It sort of brought him alive at night—that superpower feeling where you start to talk and converse and figure you can solve all the world’s problems.”
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Whilst director John Landis tried to keep his star comedian away from drugs, there were plenty of enablers on set who were more than happy to keep dishing out the white lines.
26. Natalie Portman was originally cast as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet could have looked a whole lot different if Natalie Portman hadn’t been 13 years old at the time of casting. The fresh-faced actress was actually awarded the role, but the age difference between she and leading man DiCaprio soon became very awkward.
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At 21 years old, Leo was nearly ten years older than his on-screen love interest, and the icky age gap didn’t really translate well in front of the cameras.
Producers eventually decided to re-cast Portman because they said that “it looked as though DiCaprio was molesting her” in the romantic scenes.” Yikes! Eventually the role went to Claire Danes, and the rest is history. We’re glad that somebody was looking out for young actresses in a time before the #Metoo movement! Aside from underage casting drama, Romeo and Juliet also suffered a highly traumatic incident during filming which left cast and crew members shocked.
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Keep reading below…
25. One of the crew members on Romeo and Juliet was kidnapped
Yep, you did read that correctly. One of the crew members on the set of the Shakespeare tragedy was kidnapped by gang members and held for ransom. A hair and make-up artist named Aldo Signoretti was held captive by some bandits during a shoot in the Mexican desert, and it was up to director Baz Luhrmann to try and negotiate terms.
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Eventually the gang members demanded $300 for Signoretti’s safe return and the film’s producers promptly paid up in order to save him from being murdered. Talk about drama!
Luhrmann has admitted that he was relieved they only asked for such a small amount of money, the director later joking that the sum was “a bargain”. One of the producers had to wait outside a hotel and hold up a bag of cash for the gang to collect, and in turn they threw poor Aldo out of a moving car, which broke his leg in the process. Luhrmann later praised his cast and crew for putting up with all of the drama around the film and ended up calling the movie “an incredible quest”.
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We’ll say! Fair play to DiCaprio and Danes for putting up with all that drama as budding actors. Of course, we’re also glad that Aldo escaped from the set with his life.
24. One cast member of The Exorcist later turned out to be a serial killer
As if The Exorcist wasn’t creepy enough, you might be interested to know that there was a convicted serial killer working on the set of the film. Paul Bateson actually plays an X-Ray technician in the scene where Regan is undergoing a carotid angiography procedure.
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He was working as a technician at the New York University Medical Center when the Exorcist producers rolled up to shoot the scene and asked Bateson to appear in front of the camera.
Six years after the movie was released, Bateson was convicted of murdering film critic Addison Verrell. We’ll spare you the gruesome details, but he then confessed to killing a number of men in the 1970s after he was caught boasting to fellow prisoners about the location of the bodies.
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Bateson left a grisly legacy which has only added to the conspiracy theory that The Exorcist was cursed from the very beginning.
23. The androids in Alien are alphabetised
Have you ever noticed this fun fact about the Alien franchise? All of the monsters in the movie have been alphabetised, just to keep things nice and orderly amidst all of the terrifying extraterrestrial mayhem. Each instalment of the movie adds in another android and so far their names have appeared in alphabetical order.
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The creatures are named as follows: Ash, Bishop, Call, and, most recently, David in Prometheus and Alien: Covenant.
Did you know that in the first Alien film, the creature is never filmed looking directly at the camera?
This is because Ridley Scott wanted to avoid showing the alien’s humanoid features and dispel any notions of a man wearing a rubber suit. Instead he insisted on shooting the beast at various close-up angles.
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But if you watch the 1979 film back, viewers never see the monster in all of its entirety, and definitely not from the front.
22. O.J. Simpson was nearly cast as the Terminator
We don’t think the franchise would have been nearly as popular if this casting had actually occurred…
O.J. Simpson is better known today for being found not-guilty of the double murder of his ex-wife Nicole Simpson and her lover Ron Goldman.
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During the trial, Simpson’s long history of domestic abuse, stalking and violence came to the public’s attention but in a shocking twist, the jury still found him innocent. Before the murders, Simpson was a popular football popular and actor – so popular, in fact that James Cameron considered casting him in Terminator.
Funnily enough, Cameron decided against the choice because he thought that Simpson was “too pleasant” to portray such a dark character! Simpson was known for being an extremely charming man on the surface and the director just didn’t think that he would be able to pull off the Terminator role. Cameron later explained: “This was when everybody loved him, and ironically that was part of the problem—he was this likable, goofy, kind of innocent guy.
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“Plus, frankly, I wasn’t interested in an African-American man chasing around a white girl with a knife.”
21. The velociraptors in Jurassic Park are actually tortoises
Whilst the T-Rex gets all the attention in Jurassic Park, it’s really the velociraptors that used to make our skin crawl. That terrifying noise they used to make whilst hunting in packs was the stuff of nightmares, but maybe someone should have told us at the time what that sound really was.
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Apparently, the velociraptor noise in Jurassic Park is actually a recording of two tortoises mating!
Sound designer Gary Rystrom explained all about the decision to use frisky tortoises: “It’s somewhat embarrassing, but when the raptors bark at each other to communicate, it’s a tortoise having sex. It’s a mating tortoise! I recorded that at Marine World … the people there said, ‘Would you like to record these two tortoises that are mating?’” Meanwhile, the sound of the T-Rex came from Rydstrom’s tiny Jack Russell terrier, Buster. Rydstrom has used his pet in several films, including the Alien franchise.
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He also used a baby elephant noise to pull of the sound of the T-Rex screaming. Who knew?!
20. Hattie McDaniel nearly missed out on her Oscar due to racial segregation
In 1940, Gone With the Wind actress Hattie McDaniel made film history after she became the first African-American actor to win an Academy Award.
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However, she nearly didn’t make it to the ceremony at all thanks to the strict racial segregation which existed in America at that time. Producers had to beg the Academy Awards to let McDaniel attend the ceremony, which was being held in a ‘Whites Only’ hotel.
Eventually they relented and allowed McDaniel into the venue – where she was seated a small table at the rear of the hotel away from her fellow nominees. The actress wasn’t allowed to pose with her fellow Gone With the Wind cast members and was not allowed in to any of the after parties either.
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Still, McDaniel was given over a minute for her acceptance speech and sobbed as she stated: “I sincerely hope I will always be a credit to my race and the motion picture industry.”
19. One minute of The Nightmare Before Christmas took an entire week to film
The Nightmare Before Christmas is a kid’s classic now, but back in the early 90s when Tim Burton was making the movie, it’s fair to say that special effects definitely weren’t at their peak.
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In fact, things moved so slowly that each minute of animated footage took an entire week to film. Wow. It took a group of around 100 people almost three years to make the movie – on average each second required 12 stop-motion moves.
It’s no wonder that Tim Burton didn’t want to make a sequel! Disney wanted to make a second movie using computer animation (which would have made things slightly easier), but Burton was having none of it.
“I was always very protective of [Nightmare] not to do sequels or things of that kind,” Burton explained.
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“You know, ‘Jack visits Thanksgiving world’ or other kinds of things just because I felt the movie had a purity to it and the people that like it.”
18. Gene Kelly had a fever of 103F during filming of Singin’ In The Rain
Even if you haven’t seen 1952’s classic film Singin’ In The Rain then you’ll definitely have watched the iconic moment that Gene Kelly sings the title song on the streets of New York.
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Apparently there were some issues behind the scenes though. It took all day to prepare filming for the number, and Kelly showed up to filming with a fever of 103F. Despite being so ill, the actor insisted on doing one take before the director sent him home.
In the end he ad-libbed everything to perfection and the take that you see in the movie is the one that Kelly did before leaving the set to go home! It seems as though Kelly demanded the same level of professionalism from his co-stars as he did from himself, and ended up making a lot of enemies in the process.
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He reduced actress Debbie Reynolds to tears several times – she later stated that making Singin’ in the Rain and childbirth were the two most painful things she had ever gone through in life. Donald O’Connor also later admitted that he didn’t enjoy working with Kelly, whom he labelled a ‘tyrant’.
17. Viggo Mortensen broke one of his bones during filming for Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers
Lord of the Rings fans will remember a very famous scene in the Two Towers instalment when Viggo Mortensen – who plays Aragorn – kicks a helmet then screams in pain before falling to his knees.
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And there’s a good reason why Mortensen managed to make this scene look so realistic – he broke his toe whilst the cameras were rolling. Ouch!
Apparently the actor hadn’t realised how heavy the helmet was and broke two toes after kicking the prop.
However, Peter Jackson decided to include the actual take in the final cut of the movie because he believed that it helped to convey Aragorn’s true anguish at believing Marry and Pippen were dead. Mortensen also got into trouble with the law during filming when someone spotted him practicing his sword fighting technique outside near a road.
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The neighbours thought Mortensen was some kind of lunatic with a weapon and promptly called the police!
16. Nearly all of the dialogue in The Blair Witch Project was improvised
We really wouldn’t have enjoyed being an actor on the set of The Blair Witch Project. First off, nearly all of the dialogue in the movie was improvised, leaving the cast members to try and ad-lib as much as possible.
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Instead of receiving a script, each of them were given a piece of paper at the start of each day with some notes outlining the general narrative for that day’s filming.
Producers decided to turn up the pressure when it came to feeding their actors. Instead of a buffet table, the cast had to track supply crates containing Power Bars, fruit and water using a GPS tracking system.
The merciless director also fed the actors less and less food each day in order to create tension between the cast.
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By the end of filming they were only provided with a piece of fruit and some water each day. Sounds a bit like slave labour to us but hey – all in the name of art.
15. The set of All The President’s Men cost $450,000 to create
Producers working on All The President’s Men (1976) certainly didn’t skimp when it came to their set design budget. They ended up spending a whopping $450,000 in order to try and create an exact replica of The Washington Post‘s offices, getting the detail down right to the trash in each employee’s waste paper basket!
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Talk about obsessive. That attention to detail definitely came at a price, and in today’s money, their budget would have come in at over $2 million.
As well as looking after the set design, producers also had to stroke the egos of their two leading actors. In order to ensure that both Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman would each receive equal billing during publicity for the movie, Redford’s name appeared above Hoffman’s on posters and trailers, whilst Hoffman’s appeared at the top in the film itself.
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This strategy had been used in the past, during publicity for The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) which starred Hollywood legends John Wayne and James Stewart.
14. Daniel Radcliffe was supposed to wear green eye contacts during the Harry Potter movies
Book fans were surprised when Daniel Radcliffe emerged on screen for the first time as Harry Potter and didn’t have the same distinctive green eye colour as Rowling’s literary creation.
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In fact, Radcliffe was supposed to wear green eye contacts throughout the filming of every single Harry Potter movie, but the plan had to be scrapped after Radcliffe struggled with the lenses.
When filming commenced on the first ever movie, Radcliffe found the contacts so uncomfortable that producers decided that Harry would just have to have blue eyes instead! The actor later commented: “I tried contacts in the first film because in the book Harry’s eyes are supposed to be a brilliant green and mine are much bluer than they should be.
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So we put green contact lenses in but they were excruciatingly painful. So I don’t think we’ll be going back down the contact road if I can avoid it.”
13. Harrison Ford ad-libbed one of the most famous scenes in Star Wars history
Remember the heart-breaking scene where Han Solo is about to be frozen? Princess Leia blurts out “I love you” and Solo simply replies “I know” before disappearing into the carbonite, unsure if he’ll actually survive the process or not.
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This iconic scene wasn’t in the original script at all and was actually suggested by Harrison Ford. Ford told the director that his character should respond to Leia with: “I know,” because “it’s beautiful and it’s acceptable and it’s funny.”
The moment has often been cited as one of the greatest improvised lines in movie history. We’re glad Ford had that flash of genius because the original lines are a lot more underwhelming.
After Han kisses Leia, she says, “I love you. I couldn’t tell you before, but it’s true.” But Solo doesn’t say, “I love you” back — his line was “Just remember that, ‘cause I’ll be back.”
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Definitely not as romantic! It just wouldn’t have been the same. Luckily the chemistry between the two actors was unbelievable since Ford and Carrie Fisher had an affair during filming of the three Star Wars movies…
12. Toy Story 2 Was Almost Deleted
Oops! We bet whoever did this was sweating after they made that particular error…
Apparently somebody entered a rogue command in the animation “master machine” used to create Toy Story 2, and it ended up deleting 90% of the film.
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Whoops! That’s a bad day at work for one Pixar employee. Mental Floss described the situation: “A plan was quickly hatched to restore the data from a regular backup, which meant that only half a day of work would have been lost. But the backup system had failed.
Pixar, incredibly, did not have a copy of the Toy Story 2 files on its servers.” Yikes! So what happened next?
Thankfully all was not lost for the animated movie and in the end the production company managed to locate a spare copy of the film footage thanks to one organised staff member. Luckily for everyone involved in the film, one of the technical director’s had a spare copy that she had been working on from home and nearly all of the lost data was restored.
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It just goes to show guys – always keep a back up file in reserve!
11. Jeremy Irons developed vocal problems half-way through recording “Be Prepared” for The Lion King
‘Be Prepared’ is arguably one of the best songs in the original Lion King film. Scar is plotting his rise to power when he breaks into tune and his pals the hyenas get involved for an epic song and dance.
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Unfortunately, actor Jeremy Irons was singing along during recording when he developed some vocal problems mid-way through the song. That’s when producers called on Jim Cummings to finish off the track.
Who is Jim Cummings? He’s only the actor who voiced Winnie The Pooh in all of the Pooh bear movies!
Cummings is actually an award-winning voiceover artist who was more than happy to jump onboard and finish off the rest of the number. Cummings later explained: “Jeremy developed vocal problems while he was recording that number for The Lion King.
So the producers asked me to come in and replace Mr. Irons. Sing the last third of ‘Be Prepared’ in his place.”
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Did you notice the change in voice first time around?
10. Charlie Sheen stayed awake for 48 hours before one of his first ever film appearances
Before Charlie Sheen was ‘winning’ and drinking ‘tiger blood’, he had a minor role in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) as a juvenile delinquent/drug addict who is hanging around the police station and waiting to be charged.
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Fans of the classic 80s movie will remember that Sheen’s character has a very distinctive ‘bad boy’ look, complete with messed up hair, biker jacket and some very red looking eyes.
In fact, Sheen decided to practice a bit of method acting for the role of the drug addict. No, he didn’t take anything (that we know of), but the actor did stay awake for 48 hours straight before filming to achieve an ‘authentic look’. It definitely paid off because Sheen’s acting career took off not long after his appearance in the movie. He then went on to star in a number of successful films and appeared in Two and a Half Men before famously falling out with the producers.
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Nowadays he has that ‘awake all night’ look going for him practically every day – mainly thanks to his tiger blood, of course.
9. The Just My Luck film poster is actually a paparazzi shot of Lindsay Lohan
Remember the film poster for Just My Luck? Probably not, but we bet you didn’t know that the shot of Lindsay Lohan holding up her sunglasses and winking was actually taken from a candid paparazzi photo of the actress? That’s right – Lindsay was stepping out and about in New York when she decided to play up for some photographers hounding her in the street.
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Producers loved the image so much that they stuck it straight on the movie poster for Just My Luck.
In fact, the tagline was also changed to match the photograph and now reads “Everything can change in the wink of an eye.” Unfortunately, Lohan’s wild ways on the set of the movie sparked the beginning of her downward spiral – co-star Chris Pine later described the experience as a ‘cyclone of insanity’. Not good! Pine stated: “It was fascinating to watch, and in hindsight it’s really a distinct moment in someone’s life.
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“You see what’s really wonderful about what we get to do and what’s really dangerous about it.”
8. There Will Be Blood Completely Disrupted Shooting for No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood and No Country For Old Men have more than a few things in common. They were both released in 2007, and were instant hits in the revamped ‘pseudo-Western’ genre. Both movies were even filmed at the same time in the exact same part of the USA.
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Filming locations for both projects were situated just outside the town of Marfa, Texas. Unfortunately, their shooting schedules often collided, causing plenty of problems on set.
At one point during filming, a pyrotechnical test was carried out for a scene in There Will Be Blood which created a huge cloud of smoke that could be seen for miles around.
Unfortunately, this giant cloud of dark smoke got straight into one of the shots for No Country For Old Men. The Coen brothers had to wait for the cloud to completely dissipate before they could recommence shooting on the movie.
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Oops! We’re sure the Coen brothers didn’t mind in the end – they won several Oscar nominations for their work on No Country.
7. Robert De Niro paid a dentist to ruin his teeth
In Cape Fear, Robert De Niro played Max Cady, a sadistic sex offender who vows revenge on his former attorney (portrayed by Nick Nolte).
In order to get an authentic look for the movie, De Niro decided to take things to the extreme by paying a dentist $5,000 to intentionally mess up his teeth. He then had to fork out another $20,000 for his teeth to be fixed afterwards.
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That’s a good chunk of his pay check on dental work alone!
That wasn’t the only film prep De Niro did for the shoot. He hit the gym hard several months before filming began and reportedly brought his total body fat down to only three percent. Wow! Talk about dedication.
The actor also used to regularly call veteran director Martin Scorsese’s home and leave voicemails in Cady’s thick accent because he knew that Scorsese hated the voice.
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Fortunately for De Niro, he and Scorsese are good friends so the director got over it in the end!
6. James Cameron helped to solve one of the greatest mysteries of the Titanic
James Cameron was so dedicated to exploring the Titanic shipwreck that he actually spent more time with the ship on diving excursions than the original passengers did who made the fateful voyage. Cameron was determined to get the look and feel of the movie right and needed to spend a lot of time underwater investigating the sight of the shipwreck.
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In fact, Cameron’s attention to detail and commitment to authenticity helped to solve one of the greatest mysteries to plague the underwater wreck – namely the location of the missing grand staircase.
During filming, the movie set was built as an exact replica and included the original staircase. In one of the many scenes in which the Titanic is sinking, the prop stairs lifted up from their foundations and began to float towards the surface. Therefore scientists were able to conclude that after the ship had begun to sink, the staircase must have travelled up and out of the ship in a similar manner.
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Nice! It’s always fun when movies help to solve a centuries-old mystery. Cameron definitely looks pleased with solving that particular riddle:
5. The constellation that Rose is looking up at was completely wrong
Right towards the end of the movie, the audience sees Rose lying on the wooden door and staring up at the night sky. However, after the film was released, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson contacted Cameron to inform him that the constellations Rose was looking at were completely wrong.
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Ever the perfectionist, Cameron re-edited the movie and corrected the mistake just in time for the 10th anniversary director’s cut.
There are plenty of movie mistakes which did make the cut though – Rose’s beauty spot seems to move around her face an awful lot whilst Jack’s suspenders have been known to disappear in various scenes before magically reappearing! It seems as though even James Cameron couldn’t stop a handful of mistakes entering the final cut.
The constellation mistake must really have got on Cameron’s nerves though, especially as Tyson reportedly rubbed it in the director’s face several times!
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The director didn’t hold it against Tyson though because he later asked the astrophysicist to consult on the director’s cut of Titanic.
4. The man drinking from a flask at the end of Titanic was based on a real passenger – who survived
Remember the guy who decides to start swigging from his hip flask as the ship is sinking? Looking back we can’t say that we blame him, but apparently the character was based on a real-life survivor of the Titanic.
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The individual in question managed to survive in the Atlantic Ocean for several hours thanks to his blood alcohol level.
Charles Joughin was the real-life passenger who managed to hang onto the rails after more than a few cocktails.
Apparently Joughin was a chef who had been drinking whiskey for most of the evening. In the end, the Scotch warmed up his insides and actually helped him to survive the entire disaster.
So next time you find yourself on a sinking ship, make sure you have some whiskey handy because it just might end up saving your life. Plus here’s another eerie Titanic fact…
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If all of the present-day scenes from the movie were deleted, then the film would run for 2 hours and 40 minutes – the exact time it took for the Titanic to sink. Weird!
3. The entire cast and crew of Titanic were poisoned and nobody knows who did it to this day
Tragedy befell the set of Titanic after the entire cast and crew were poisoned. Everyone who worked on the movie was enjoying a celebratory meal when suddenly people started to fall ill.
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It turned out that the clam chowder had been spiked with PCP! Crew member Marilyn McAvoy remembered the incident: “There was no indication that there was anything strange happening… until the meal.
“By the time we got back from eating, after about 30 minutes, that’s when I started noticing something was wrong. Everyone seemed confused.
“Everyone was having trouble getting their work done. […] I also heard later on that as soon as James Cameron realised something had been put in the chowder, he ran up to his room and forced himself to throw up.” McAvoy said that despite being mildly funny, it was also a traumatic incident which left many people in hospital suffering from bad trips.
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To this day, nobody knows who was responsible for the mass poisoning. Some people have blamed a chef who got sacked from production, but nobody has ever been brought to justice.
2. Everyone wanted a pet rat after watching Ratatouille
Ratatouille was the 2007 film of a food-loving rat named Remy who wants to become one of the greatest chefs the world has ever seen. After the movie’s release, kids everywhere were clamouring to get their hands on a pet rat and rodent sales increased sharply in the wake of the film.
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One domestic pet chain experienced a 50 percent increase in sales after Ratatouille hit cinema screens!
Pet shop owners were also rubbing their hands together after Finding Nemo came along. Kids everywhere decided that they wanted a pet fish, and numbers increased sharply.
However, public service announcements had to be released after many children soon got bored of their new friends and mistakenly believed that flushing them down the toilet was the best thing to do. Sadly all that does is trap the fish in a device which is usually used to purify water, and instead leaves the pet …vapourised.
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This means that Finding Nemo has a lot of blood on its hands because the movie is actually responsible for thousands of innocent fish deaths!
1. Taxi Driver was written in a few days
Taxi Driver is widely considered to be one of the greatest films in movie history. So you might be surprised to learn that screenwriter Paul Schrader completed the script in a matter of days!
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He once told The Hollywood Reporter: “I crashed at an ex-girlfriend’s place, and I just wrote continuously. The first draft was maybe 60 pages, and I started the next draft immediately, and it took less than two weeks.” Wow!
Schrader drew heavily on his own experiences in order to write the movie: “I had a series of things falling apart, a breakdown of my marriage, a dispute with the AFI, I lost my reviewing job. I didn’t have any money and I took to drifting, more or less living in my car, drinking a lot, fantasizing. The Pussycat Theater in L.A. would be open all night long, and I’d go there to sleep.”
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