
Right in the heart of Oscar season, the second Saturday in February celebrates Global Movie Day to honor the way movies have captured audiences’ hearts and minds around the world for over 100 years. Since their inception, movies have transcended geography, language, time, and culture, connecting us all through the power of storytelling.
- That slightly scandalous charcoal drawing of a topless Kate Winslet in Titanic was drawn by none other than the director himself, James Cameron. Kate Winslet wore a bathing suit while Cameron sketched the picture.
- The code in The Matrix comes from sushi recipes. Those green symbols trailing down in The Matrix aren’t complicated algorithms. A production designer scanned symbols from his wife’s sushi cookbooks, then manipulated them to create the iconic “code.”
- The cat in The Godfather was a stray. Director Francis Ford Coppola found the cat in the studio and handed it to Marlon Brando before the shot.
- the cat loved the actor so much that it stayed in his lap and purred so loudly that the crew was afraid the noise would drown out the dialogue.
- Sean Connery wore a toupee in every James Bond movie. Sean Connery started balding at age 17.
- Some of the velociraptor noises in Jurassic Park are actually tortoises mating. At least that’s what the sound designer used when the raptors were communicating. Other scenes of the species used horse breathing and goose hisses.
- Michael Myers’ mask in Halloween is William Shatner’s face.
- R2-D2 and C-3PO appear in Indiana Jones.
- Jaws’ most famous line was ad-libbed.
- Toto was paid more than the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz.
- Psycho was the first movie to show a toilet flushing.
- In Star Trek, the sound of the doors opening is actually the sound of a toilet flushing on a Russian train.
- In Titanic, if you added together the duration of all the scenes set in 1912, it would be two hours and 40 minutes, the same amount of time it took the actual Titanic to sink.
- In The Wolf of Wall Street, the actors snorted crushed vitamin powder whenever they had to look like they were snorting cocaine. Jonah Hill was hospitalized because of it.
- Gene Kelly filmed the title number of Singin’ in the Rain with a 103 degree fever.
- Melissa McCarthy styled her Bridesmaids character after Guy Fieri.
- Dooley Wilson, who played the pianist Sam in Casablanca, was a drummer in real life who didn’t know how to play the piano.
- Paul Schrader Wrote Taxi Driver in Two Weeks
- The Snow in Wizard of Oz Is Asbestos
- There Were 10,297 Balloons in Up
- The Most Profitable Film of All Time Is Paranormal Activity. Thanks to its microscopic budget and major success at the box office, the 2007 film Paranormal Activity, scored a return on investment of 19,758 percent, absolutely blowing away the next most profitable film (2015 horror film The Gallows, with an ROI of 6,843 percent). It cost just $60,000 to make and another $400,000 or so to market, yet ultimately brought in more than $89 million.
- George Lucas’ Dog Inspired Chewbacca. The creator of the Star Wars world would drive around with his large Alaskan Malamute in the front seat of his car, which he described as “bigger than a human being and very long-haired.”
- Lucas’ dog was named Indiana.
- Scream Was Originally Titled Scary Movie
- Disney is known for producing family-friendly films, but the director of The Lion King wanted to push the boundaries. For example, the lovable warthog, Pumba, was the first character in a Disney film to ever break wind!
- Alice Guy-Blache was the first woman to direct a movie, and she did so way back in 1896. She went on to make more than 1,000 cinematic works, 22 of which were feature films.
- Every movie that’s won “Best Picture” has received a glowing Oscar statuette—save for one. When the Disney film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs won in 1939, the Academy gave the filmmakers one regular-sized Oscar—and seven miniature ones to represent the dwarfs!
- The Back to the Future films have a loyal cult following, and the title alone conjures up classic images of Michael J. Fox traveling through time in a DeLorean. However, the original title of the box-office hit was Spaceman From Pluto.
- Although the original Tron film was one of the first major motion pictures to incorporate computer graphics, it was blocked from special effects consideration at the 1982 Academy Awards ceremony. Turns out, at the time, computer graphics were considered cheating.
- Yoda, the all-knowing Jedi master from the Star Wars movies, has been portrayed with a different number of toes throughout the films. In some he has three, and in others he has four. Even Yoda action figures are inconsistent!
- Even though so many people put their hearts and souls into making a film, mistakes can slip through the cracks, though most of them go unnoticed by audiences. For those counting, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl has the most mistakes of any movie since 2000.
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