1. Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho was the first film to ever show a toilet flush.

2. After Jaws, Spielberg tried to hang around the movie set for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1976 film Family Plot in the hope of meeting his idol. Things did not work out. Hitchcock had Spielberg forcibly removed from the set and refused to meet him. When actor Bruce Dern asked why, Hitchcock replied that he wasn’t fit to touch Spielberg’s hand after Jaws and that he [Hitchcock] was a whore for having taken $1 million for narrating the Universal Studios Jaws amusement park ride. Source for clarity.

3. The actor who flew “da choppa” away in the last scene of Predator – Kevin Peter Hall – also played the role of the Predator.

4. In Batman and Robin, Batman pulls out his credit card in the audition scene. Its “good until” date reads FOREVER.

5. For its American release, the first 20 minutes of Trainspotting had to be re-dubbed to make the Scottish accents more intelligible.

6. The slow-motion sound effect used in Dredd was inspired by a Justin Bieber song slowed down 800%. Listen here.

7. There are only 15 minutes of dinosaurs throughout the duration of Jurassic Park (9 minutes of which were the grand animatronics of Stan Winston).

8. Bruce Willis was the SEVENTH choice to play John McClane. It was offered to Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Burt Reynolds, Richard Gere, Harrison Ford and then Mel Gibson. Finally Willis got the job. Although, on the bright side, he received an unprecedented (at the time) $5 million pay packet.

(n.b. Correction: prior to any of this, Die Hard was first written as a vehicle for Frank Sinatra, according to the crooner’s contract. When he passed they rewrote it for a younger actor).

9. While filming The Hunger Games, Jennifer Lawrence accidentally kicked co-star Josh Hutcherson in the head, knocking him out cold and giving him a concussion. Badass.

10. Manhattan is Woody Allen’s least favourite of the movies he has directed. He despised it so much that he offered to direct another film for United Artists, free of charge, if they kept his former project hidden for good.

11. The iconic red stapler coveted by Milton in Office Space was created specifically for the film by the prop department. They needed a bright enough colour, thus chose red. Upon release, Swingline received thousands of requests for red staplers. Despite discontinuing the colour years before, Swingline brought it back due to popular demand and the red stapler has been its best seller ever since.

12. Benedict Cumberbatch recorded his screen test for Star Trek Into Darkness at his best friend’s kitchen using an iPhone.

13. Blazing Saddles was shot on the same set (apart from the shop names, of course) as Westworld.

14. During his performance as the Winklevoss twins in The Social Network, Armie Hammer was forced to eat a lot of junk food to keep his weight up. The constant rowing practice would have caused him to lose too much weight.

15. In Saving Private Ryan, all the main actors besides Matt Damon were forced to undergo a brutal week-long fitness camp for their roles as soldiers. Damon was exempt from it in order to generate genuine resentment towards him and his character.

16. For the later scenes featuring an older Kane, Orson Welles sat in the makeup chair from 2:30 am to be ready for a 9:00 am start on the Citizen Kane shoot.

17. The Dude says “man” 147 times in the movie, nearly 1.5 times a minute, in The Big Lebowski.

18. According to David Fincher, Robert Downey Jr. was so exhausted while making Zodiac because the film was shot digitally (leaving them with fewer resets and fewer breaks) that he decided to leave jars of his urine around the set as a form of protest. Source.

19. In The Pursuit of Happyness, the homeless people who worked as extras received a full day’s pay at minimum wage ($8.62/hr) and free catered meals. For some it was the first money they’d made in a while.

20. Joss Whedon is the creative genius behind Rex the Dinosaur in the Toy Story saga.

21. Ridley Scott cast Rutger Hauer in the role of Roy Batty without actually meeting the actor. Having been so impressed by the actor’s previous works, he cast him immediately. However Hauer decided to make one hell of a first impression. At their first meeting, he turned up wearing huge green sunglasses, pink satin pants and a white sweater with an image of a fox on the front. According to production executive Katherine Haber, when Scott saw Hauer, he literally turned white.

22. Wonka Fact One: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was Tim Burton’s second choice for the title role of Willy Wonka in his version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. (Probably Burton’s sense of humour at play here).

23. Wonka Fact Two: Gene Wilder only accepted the role of Willy Wonka on the condition that during his entrance in the movie, he would be walking with a cane and a limp, then somersault and bounce back up. Asked why, Wilder said: “Because from that time on, no one will know if I’m lying or telling the truth.”

24. When Paul Thomas Anderson approached George C. Scott about playing the role of Earl Partridge (Jason Robards’ character) in Magnolia, Scott threw the script across the room, saying “This is the worst fucking thing I’ve ever read. The language is terrible.”

25. Audrey Tautou doesn’t know how to skip stones; the stone-skipping scenes in Amelie were made with special effects.

26. The scene in The Breakfast Club in which all the characters sit in a circle on the floor of the library and tell stories about why they were in detention was not scripted. Hughes told them all to ad-lib.

27. Adam McKay has said that in the first draft of the Anchorman script, the story was about a planeload of news anchors who crash in the mountains and discover that the plane was carrying monkeys and martial arts equipment, leading to a battle between cannibalistic newsmen and star-throwing monkeys.

28. In Skyfall the passport used by Daniel Craig was not created by the props department, but an authentic document as issued by the British Home Office. Everything from the paper, print, photograph and jacket are entirely genuine on James Bond’s “official passport”. Name: John Adam Bryce; Date of Birth: 16th December 1968; Sex: Male; Place of Birth: London; Date of Issue: 22nd June 2012.

29. Fred Kwan (Tony Shalhoub) is seen eating a snack of some sort in almost every scene he appears in in Galaxy Quest.

30. Frank Capra insisted that George Bailey’s workshop in It’s a Wonderful Life included a pet raven for no better reason than that avian star ‘Jimmy’ was a lucky charm who Capra had cast in all of his films from 1938’s You Can’t Take it With You onwards.



31. The phrase “Oh, hi” is spoken nine times, the phrase “Don’t worry about it” eight times, and “Oh, hey” seven times in The Room.

32. In Love Actually, Rowan Atkinson’s character was initially supposed to be an angel and disappear as he walked away from Liam Neeson’s character in the airport scene.

33. In Back to the Future, Michael J. Fox is only ten days younger than Lea Thompson, who plays his mother, and is almost three years older than his onscreen dad, Crispin Glover. To be fair, this is not that surprising, as most of their scenes take place in 1955.

34. Bill Murray was originally considered for the role of Han Solo in Star Wars.

35. The language spoken by Leeloo in The Fifth Element was invented by director Luc Besson and further refined by Milla Jovovich. By the end of filming they were able to have full conversations in this language.

36. Following the tremendous success of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the New Zealand government created the position of Minister for Lord of the Rings; its remit was to exploit all the economic opportunities the films represented.

37. The Bible verse of the “Righteous Man and the Shepherd” cited in Pulp Fiction is rather embellished by Tarantino. Here’s the real verse.

38. In Liar Liar when Fletcher literally beats himself up in the restroom, no sound effects were used; those are really the sounds of Jim Carrey’s head slamming into the urinal, floor and walls.

39. Independence Day was shot in just 72 days.

40. O.J. Simpson was considered to play the role of the Terminator, but producers did not choose him as they thought he would not be taken seriously.

41. Chris Evans once sent a text message to all of the Avengers simply saying “Assemble”. Clark Gregg stated that this was his favourite text message ever sent to him.

42. The first Twilight is the only film in the saga to not receive any Razzie Award nominations.

43. In A Few Good Men, Jack Nicholson repeated his famous courtroom monologue as Col. Jessep off-camera several times so director Rob Reiner could film the reactions of other actors from various angles. Nicholson’s memorable on-camera performance was filmed last, but according to Reiner and the other cast members, Nicholson gave it his all every take as if he was on camera.

44. Whenever Aladdin tells a lie, the plume on his hat falls and covers his face.

45. In the 1980s, Casablanca‘s script was sent to readers at a number of major studios and production companies under its original title ‘Everybody Comes to Rick’s’. Some readers recognized the script but most did not. Many complained that the script was “not good enough” to make a decent movie. Others gave such complaints as “too dated”, “too much dialogue” and “not enough sex”. Source.

46. V For Vendetta‘s domino scene, in which V tips over black and red dominoes to form a giant letter V, involved 22,000 dominoes. It took four professional domino assemblers 200 hours to set it up. The scene itself lasts just 30 seconds.

47. When Steven Spielberg first showed John Williams a cut of Schindler’s List, Williams was so moved he had to take a walk outside for several minutes to collect himself. Upon his return, Williams told Spielberg he deserved a better composer. Spielberg replied, “I know, but they’re all dead.”

48. Whenever Mr Rooney and Ferris have a conversation with each other in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off only one of them speaks throughout the entire conversation; the other is completely silent.

49. The Departed is the movie with the most uses of the word “fuck” and its derivatives (237) to win the Best Picture Oscar.

50. In Miss Congeniality, Cheryl “Rhode Island”‘s answer to the question “What is your idea of a perfect date?” was actually used as an answer in a real beauty pageant.

How many pieces of movie trivia did you know? Let us know in the comment section below.