Anaconda comes close to being the strangest cast assembly ever. It's like someone describing a dream: “I was looking for giant snakes in a jungle with Eric Stoltz and Ice-Cube. And Jennifer Lopez was there, and so was Jon Voight and Owen Wilson...."
But single weirdest assembled cast list in the history of cinema is Transformers The Movie: Eric Idle, Casey Kasum, Judd Nelson, Leonard Nimoy, Robert Stack (the guy from Unsolved Mysteries), the fast-talking guy from the Micromachine comercials, and Orson Welles. And Weird Al Yankovic provided original music, which means that Weird Al Yankovic and Orson Wells did a movie together. No kidding. Surprise your friends and family.
Another bit of pointless movie fun: in A Clockwork Orange, when Alex returns to the house of the man whose wife he raped, the man is living with another man who is working-out and who opens the door for Alex. That man is Darth Vader’s body in Star Wars: A New Hope.
And Monica Bellucci, the woman with the strangest resume in Hollywood: the wife of Vincent Cassell (the master thief from Ocean's 12), she was Dracula's bride in the 1992 Dracula film, she was the weird hot woman in Matrix: Reloaded, she was Mary Magdalen in The Passion of the Christ, and, in the film Irreversible, her character was the victim of an anal rape scene that played on screen for a single, uncut nine minute shot. (A reviewer on Salon.com said of the scene "It's just nine minutes, but it feels like an hour, or a year. It was enough time for me to think about my life and wonder how I wound up as the kind of middle-aged ex-bohemian who would go to see a movie like this on purpose.")
And not quite movie trivia, but something worth noting in passing: a friend of mine, a costume designer, one told me that the best costume design in cinema was Cameron Frye’s outfit at the beginning of Ferris Buller’s Day Off, because it subtly but perfectly and instantaneously communicates what you need to know about his character: the neurotically worried Cameron Frye has both suspenders and a belt, a double back up.
I don’t have anything to say about this trivia, other than I think it is funny, and more people should know about it; our days are somehow better off for these things being true.
Okay. Here's my contribution: The Maltese Falcon was actor/writer/director John Huston's directorial debut, plus Humphrey Bogart's first non-studio role. The role of Sam Spade, through which Bogart practically invented the definitive private eye archetype, was originally offered to another actor.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Huston was nominated for an Academy Award for his adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's novel. This is hilarious, because legend has it that he walked into his office one morning, handed his secretary a copy of Hammett's book and asked her to type it into screenplay format by the end of the day.
Here's one: everyone knows that Brando and DeNiro won Oscars for the same character and the guy from "The Best Years of Our Lives" won TWO Oscars for the same role, but this is kooky as well: "Rum Punch" and "Out of Sight" are two Elmore Leonard novels, adapted into films by Tarantino (as "Jackie Brown") and Soderbergh, respectively. No biggie, BUT Michael Keaton plays the same character in both (D.E.A. agent Ray Nicollet). Not earth-shattering, but I like to play along with these things.
ReplyDeleteTouch of Evil baby! Charlie Heston as a Mexican?! Ingrid Bergman as a gypsy?! this is Casting Director as Dada Artist!
ReplyDeletesorry Marlene Dietrich not Bergman... but still.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that I keep finding out that Stephen Fry was in a lot of movies. Things I've seen but cannot for the life of me now recall his parts in them.
ReplyDeleteBut that's all I'm going to contribute. My pointless trivia habit lies in TV Land, specifically with C & D list actors and their resumes. As ye know.