Welcome back to Tuesday’s Trivia Tidbits. For those of you out of the loop, this is a little compilation of 10 movie related facts that I will be posting weekly and info that I always find interesting. So without further ado, this weeks are…



1: Director Martin Scorsese’s first choice for the role of Sam Bowden in “Cape Fear” was Harrison Ford. He had Robert DeNiro call Ford to try convincing him to take the part. Robert Redford was also considered before Nick Nolte eventually took the role.



2: In “Cinderella Man“, professional boxers played Jimmy Braddock’s (Russell Crowe’s) opponents. They were told to land their blows as close to Crowe’s body as possible. Unfortunately, they sometimes couldn’t pull back in time and ended up injuring the actor.



3: The scene in “The 40 Year Old Virgin” where Andy (Steve Carell) has his chest hair removed required five cameras set up for the shot. Carell’s chest hair was actually ripped out in the scene. The actor had told director Judd Apatow just before shooting the scene: “It has to be real. It won’t be as funny if it’s mocked up or if it’s special effect. You have to see that this is really happening.” The scene had to be done in one shot.



4: So disappointed was he by the poor reception of “The Night Of The Hunter” on its initial release both critically and commercially, Charles Laughton vowed never to direct a film again, and he never did. The film he was planning to direct next was going to be a screen adaptation of “The Naked And The Dead.”



5: In Derek Cianfrance’s “Blue Valentine“, the scenes in the ‘past’ when Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams) are falling in love were shot first, in three weeks. After this Gosling and Williams spent a month together in a rented house to age themselves in preparation for the ‘present’ scenes. They spent a lot of their time grocery shopping, cooking dinner and learning to pick fights with each other.



6: On October 17, 2006, Wesley Snipes was indicted on eight counts of tax fraud. He was ultimately found guilty and sentenced in April, 2008, to three years imprisonment. It was determined that he had not filed federal income tax returns from 1999 to 2007 and owed the IRS approximately $20,000,000 in back taxes. On the day he was sentenced, he paid $5,000,000 to the IRS.



7: Ewan McGregor, Christian Bale, and John Leguizamo auditioned for the role of Mercutio in Baz Luhrmann’s “Romeo & Juliet“, before Luhrman decided to make Mercutio black and cast Harold Perrineau, Jr instead. Benicio Del Toro was also considered for the part of Tybalt before Leguizamo took that role.



8: On the first day of shooting his film debut in “Mrs Brown“, Gerard Butler had to run naked into a freezing sea and, as a result, developed hypothermia. Later during the filming, he saved a young boy from drowning in the River Tay, Scotland and received a Certificate Of Bravery from The Royal Humane Society.



9: During the filming of “The Birds“, Tippi Hedren’s daughter Melanie Griffith was given a present by Alfred Hitchcock: a doll that looked exactly and eerily like Hedren. The creepiness was compounded by the ornate wooden box it came in, which a young Griffith took to be a coffin.



10: The scene at the beginning of “Apocalypse Now” with Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) alone in his hotel room was completely unscripted. Sheen told the shooting crew to just let the cameras roll and he was actually drunk in the scene and punched the mirror which was real glass. Sheen also began sobbing and tried to attack Francis Ford Coppola. The crew was so disturbed by his actions that they wanted to stop shooting, but Coppola wanted to keep the cameras going.

Unfortunately, there will be no Trivia Tidbits next Tuesday or for the short, foreseeable future as it’s at this time that I will be stepping back from this feature and regrouping. Having just missed out on a 2013 Lammy nomination for this, I have decided that fresh material is required. If you must know my true feelings, then the picture of Martin Sheen (above) should suffice in conveying my dismay and despair. 😉

Don’t threat, though, the feature will return in time, when I have researched more and can come back with more material for you all to enjoy. Until next time, the curtains of Tuesday’s Trivia Tidbits have now drawn but in the meantime you can still check out earlier editions that you may have missed.

Just click here.