Film trivia is vital to breaking awkward silences and enlivening the dullest of evenings everywhere, so prepare to dazzle your friends with these 51 trivia facts you might not know.
1. Die Hard originated from the failed script of Commando 2.
2. Samuel L. Jackson demanded that the studio keep Snakes on a Plane as the title because it was the only reason he accepted the role.
3. Rather than use CGI, Tim Burton had 40 squirrels trained to crack nuts for Charlie & The Chocolate Factory.
4. Due to a zipper breaking, Olivia Newton-John had to be sewn into the trousers she wears in the last carnival scene of Grease.
5. The sounds made by the Brachiosaurs in Jurassic Park were a combination of whale and donkey sounds.
6. In National Treasure, the good guys in the movie use Google and the bad guys use Yahoo!
7. Django Unchained is the first time in 16 years that Leonardo DiCaprio didn't get the top billing.
8. For Dr. Strangelove, Peter Sellers was paid $1 million, 55 percent of the film's budget. Stanley Kubrick quipped "I got three for the price of six."
9. Ryan Gosling was cast as Noah in The Notebook because the director wanted someone "not handsome."
10. When Harvey Weinstein wanted to edit Princess Mononoke to make it more marketable, the director Hayao Miyazaki sent him a katana with a simple message: "No cuts."
11. For LOTR: Return of the King, Elijah Wood had Alka Seltzer tablets in his mouth so he'd foam when Shelob stabbed him.
12. The total footage shot for 2001: A Space Odyssey was some 200 times the final length of the film.
13. The director of Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan had to wear William Shatner out by doing multiple takes until he'd get tired enough to start actually acting. Extra clarity here.
14. In Halloween, Michael Myers' mask is actually a Captain Kirk mask which was altered for the film. It was purchased for less than $2.
15. In Iron Man/Avengers, J.A.R.V.I.S is an acronym for "Just A Rather Very Intelligent System." Side note -- the voice of J.A.R.V.I.S, Paul Bettany, recently admitted he has never seen any Iron Man or Avengers film.
16. The phrase "old sport" is said 55 times during The Great Gatsby (2013).
17. Kevin Spacey was cast in Se7en two days before filming began.
18. The pile of excreta that the young Jamal jumps into in Slumdog Millionaire was made from a combination of peanut butter and chocolate. Delicious.
19. Josh Hutcherson read the entire Hunger Games trilogy in five days to prepare for his role as Peeta.
20. After Top Gun was shown in cinemas, recruitment into the Navy by young men went up by 500 percent.
21. In total, Daniel Radcliffe went through 160 pairs of prop glasses by the end of the Harry Potter series.
22. Charlie Sheen stayed awake for 48 hours to achieve a suitably wasted look for his cameo as a drugged-up felon in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
23. In 2002, Steven Spielberg finally finished college after a 33-year hiatus. He turned in Schindler's List for his student film requirement.
24. The director of Cannibal Holocaust had to prove in court that the actors were still alive and didn't get killed during the movie.
25. The Soviets made a version of The Hobbit movie in 1985. It's available in full on YouTube. It's... something.
26. The voice actors of Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse from the 1930s got married in real life.
27. James Franco was originally set to play Joseph Gordon-Levitt's role of Arthur in Inception.
28. Ewoks are never referred as Ewoks in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.
29. In the scene in Alien when the alien comes out of John Hurt's stomach, the actors were not actually told it was going to happen. It shows.
30. Martin Scorsese's Hugo was the director's first film in twelve years not to feature Leonardo DiCaprio.
31. Bender from Futurama was named after John Bender from The Breakfast Club.
32. Pierce Brosnan was contractually forbidden from wearing a full tuxedo in any non-James Bond movie from 1995-2002.
33. Walt Disney refused to allow Alfred Hitchcock to film at Disneyland in the early 1960s because he had made "that disgusting movie Psycho."
34. Pumbaa in The Lion King was the first character to fart in a Disney movie.
35. The boy -- Billy Redden -- who played the banjo in the famous Deliverance scene briefly reprised his role, 31 years later, in Big Fish.
36. Every time John Travolta is in the bathroom in Pulp Fiction something bad happens.
37. Ron Jeremy is an extra in Ghostbusters.
38. Steven Seagal was choked unconscious on a movie set by "Judo" Gene LeBelle, and Seagal shit himself.
39. Peter Ostrum, Charlie from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, never acted in another movie after that and is now a veterinarian.
40. Fox passed on The Watchmen because they thought the script was "one of the most unintelligible pieces of shit they had read in years."
41. The Space Jam soundtrack went sextuple platinum, and the movie grossed over $230 million.
42. Christopher Nolan has never had a movie rated as "rotten" on Rotten Tomatoes and his lowest rated movie is The Prestige at 76 percent.
43. In Drive, when Ron Pearlman is getting beat up on the beach, he actually does shatter his kneecap, and his screams of pain are real.
44. The lineup in The Usual Suspects was originally meant to be serious, but Benicio del Toro couldn't stop farting so they laughed throughout.
45. On the set of 1982's The Thing, the whole cast and crew was male.
46. The house in which the true story of The Conjuring is based on had eight generations of families live and die in the house before the Perrons moved in. Andrea Perron suggests that some of the spirits from the families never left. Deaths include two documented suicides, a poisoning death, the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl, two drownings, and the passing of four men who froze to death. Most deaths occurred within the Arnold family from which Bathsheba Sherman was descended.
47. The cake in the movie Sixteen Candles is made of cardboard.
48. Neither Michelle Rodriguez nor Jordana Brewster had drivers' licenses or even learners' permits before production of Fast and the Furious.
49. The original raw footage of Apocalypse Now consisted of 1,250,000 feet of film which is over 230 hours' worth.
50. Walt Disney paid the animators on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs $5 for any gag that made it into the final version of the movie.
51. Katherine Hepburn only drank water throughout The African Queen production as a protest against John Huston and Humphrey Bogart's alcoholism. However, most of the cast and crew became sick from the water and only Bogart and Huston were unaffected because they only drank whiskey.
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