1. Nicholas Cage’s real name is Nicholas Coppola, but he changed it to disassociate himself with Francis Ford. After the recent release of Bangkok Dangerous, one wonders if this was such a good idea.2. Samuel L. Jackson politely requests that anyone who claims not to enjoy watching themselves in movies to please stop lying.
3. Francis McDormand and Joel Coen have been married since 1984, the year of the Coen Brothers’ debut film, Blood Simple.
Robert Shaw won the role of Captain Quint over Paul Newman through a combination of dumb luck and sheer, unfiltered scariness.
4. The late Paul Newman was originally cast in the role of Captain Quint in Jaws (1975).
5. Sigourney Weaver’s real name is Susan Weaver, but she changed her first name to be named after a character in the classic novel “The Great Gatsby.”
6. Oprah is actually a typo. Her parents wanted to use the biblical name Orpah, but the midwife couldn’t spell so it became Oprah.
7. The Dark Knight is the first Batman film not to have “Batman” in the title.
8. 78% of all musicians-turned-actors are rappers, and of those, 58% are black, and only two are any good.
9. “Beverly Hills 90210” star Luke Perry was born Coy Luther Perry but changed his first name to Luke after the lead character in his favorite movie, Cool Hand Luke.
"No friend of Luke Perry's is a friend of mine!"
10. Paul Newman, who starred in Cool Hand Luke, was one of the celebrities on the “Enemies List” kept by Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal.
11. Samuel L. Jackson’s starring role of Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction was ranked by the UK’s Empire magazine as the second coolest movie character of all time, after Brad Pitt’s Tyler Durden, from Fight Club.
12. Jean Claude Van-Damme, ladies and gentlemen, speaks FIVE LANGUAGES.
13. The title “Quantum of Solace” has been kicked around since the time of License to Kill (1989).
"Which wallet's yours?"
14. No one really knew who Samuel L. Jackson was until 1994, when Pulp Fiction was released. By then, he was 46 years old.
15. By 2006, twelve years after his break-out role in Pulp Fiction, Samuel L. Jackson’s films had grossed more money at the box office than any other actor in cinematic history (more than $3 billion).
16. I made fun of Hannah Montana’s Best of Both Worlds concert DVD in my “New DVDs This Week” post here on Hollywire a couple months ago. It went on to become the highest grossing Super Bowl weekend release ever. Oops.
"I'm not only the Superspy Hair Club President, I'm also a member!"
17. Sean Connery wore a toupee in every James Bond film that he starred in, beginning with Dr. No (1962).
18. At Parklane Academy, a private school that she attended in McCombs, Mississippi until October 1994, Britney Spears was on the girls basketball team.
19. I am writing all of this from the heart of China in a city called Luoyang, one of the most intensely Communist cities in the country. Brad Pitt is unable to visit me here, since he’s been banned from ever entering China because of his role in the 1997 film Seven Years in Tibet (feel free to send the wife though, Brad!).
20. Kevin Bacon has had at least a supporting role in 27% of all American movies made since 1982.
21. The first trailer for Cloverfield was shown before Transformers in 2007. It showed an explosion in the heart of New York City and the Statue of Liberty’s head being thrown down the street. It was shot with a hand-held video camera and gave no title.
22. The movie is actually named after the boulevard in Santa Monica, California, where the Bad Robot offices were located during the making of the film. “Cloverfield” was originally just a codename for the movie.
23. Johnny Depp dropped out of school at age 15 with hopes of becoming a rock star.
24. Among the first films ever made was a series of shorts in the late 1870s that showed a horse galloping. Audiences were absolutely amazed.
25. Britney Spears’ name is an anagram for “Presbyterians.”
26. Jack Nicholson hates giving interviews so much that he has not appeared on a talk show since 1971.
27. It took $7,500,000 to build the Titanic, approximately 20,000,000 tons of iceberg to sink it, and $200,000,000 to make a movie about it.
28. Titanic passenger Stuart Collet’s insurance claim for lost college-lecture notes - $50. Passenger Charlotte Cardeza’s insurance claim for lost luggage - $177,352.
29. New York Evening Sun headline on April 15, 1912 – “ALL SAVED FROM TITANIC AFTER COLLISION.” Oops!
30. Okay just one more. After the tragedy, Senator W. A. Smith asked, “What exactly is an iceberg composed of?” Fifth Officer Harold Lowe politely responded, “Ice, I suppose, sir.”
A proposed sketch for the poster for M. Night's next blockbuster.
31. Since the commercial success of The Happening this year, M. Night Shyamalan has been working feverishly on the script for a film he plans to call The Anticlimax.
32. Superman could clearly kick the asses of both Spiderman and Batman simultaneously. In fact, I don’t understand why there was ever any debate about this.
33. In America, our films and television shows are played in NTSC format, which is 30 frames per second. In much of the rest of the world, they use PAL format, which is 24 frames per second. Our eyes see too slowly to tell the difference.
34. Wes Craven first proposed the script for A Nightmare on Elm Street, one of the most successful horror films of all time, in 1981, but no one was interested. It floated aimlessly until the now hugely successful New Line Cinema eventually picked it up.
New Line Cinema - lovingly referred to as "The house that Freddy built."
35. A Nightmare on Elm Street was the first feature film that New Line Cinema ever produced. Prior to that, they were just a small distribution company for college campuses.
36. John Carpenter was a huge Alfred Hitchcock fan. Two characters in Halloween (1978), were named after characters in Hitchcock films - Tommy Doyle, from Rear Window (1954), and Sam Loomis, from Psycho (1960).
37. Jamie Lee Curtis made her acting debut in Halloween, and her mother, Janet Leigh, was the actress killed in the shower scene in Psycho, one of the most famous scenes in film history. Carpenter considered his casting of Curtis in Halloween to be the ultimate tribute to Hitchcock.
38. 19 years ago today, Hollywire’s own film critic (me) was in San Jose being scared out of his 10-year-old wits by the 7.1 Richter scale Bay Area earthquake.
"Who the hell is Hugh Hefner?"
39. Here’s a big surprise – when Michael Jackson was informed that his Thriller co-star Ola Ray had posed nude for Playboy in June 1980, Jackson confessed that he had never heard of the magazine.
40. Thanks to his background as an actor, Ronald Reagan is the only U.S. President to have ever worn a Nazi uniform.
41. Peter Ostrum, who played Charlie Bucket in Mel Stuart’s beloved Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971), was offered a three-movie contract after the success of the film, but turned it down. He never acted again, and is now a veterinarian for large animals in rural New York state.
42. Mel Gibson is Empire magazine’s 12th greatest movie star of all time and 37th sexiest movie star ever, he was chosen numerous times as one of People magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People (Sexiest Man Alive in 1985), and voted one of the Greatest Movie Stars of All Time by Entertainment Weekly. Despite all this, he met his wife through a dating service.
43. Contrary to popular belief, Angelina Jolie is actually not that attractive.
44. At one point, Jim Carrey and his family lived in a car and they all worked as janitors at a factory to make a living. As a child, Jim wore tap dancing shoes to bed, just in case his parents needed cheering up in the middle of the night.
45. The charming metal band Cannibal Corpse appeared in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994) because they are Jim Carrey’s favorite band (!!).
46. Jim Carrey was Tupac Shakur’s favorite actor. While in prison, Carrey would write letters to Tupac to help him smile and laugh.
No wonder he's so into Angelina's chicken legs!
47. Tupac was cast in Menace II Society (1993) but was fired after a fist-fight with the film’s director, he auditioned for the part of Bubba in Forrest Gump (1994), and won a role in the film Woo (1998) but was shot and killed five days before filming began.
48. Brad Pitt’s first job was dancing in a chicken suit to attract customers to an El Pollo Loco restaurant on Sunset Blvd.
49. Okay, I made up number 8, 20, and 31, but they seem right, don’t they?
50. Everything else is true.
October 17th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Awesome! LOVE THIS LIST! I’m especially partial to #38!
October 17th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
“Friends” star, Luke Perry…
Umm..wrong Perry.
October 18th, 2008 at 9:18 am
on 33. NTSC plays at 29.97fps (huge difference, believe me) and PAL actually plays at 25 frames per second not 24, thats film, and theres no actual visual difference in the playback, because the speed gets converted, nothing to do with our eyes.
October 18th, 2008 at 9:20 am
ronald regan is the only president as far as you know.
October 18th, 2008 at 11:21 am
aaaaa, you’re stupid. Not only have there been more presidents then Reagan, as is common sense, Your statement is beyond stupid, you managed to misspell his name. There has never been a president regan. There has been a president Reagan.
Please grow a brain.
October 18th, 2008 at 11:24 am
Superman has been beaten by Batman several times in the comics, I am sure the movies would follow suit.
October 18th, 2008 at 11:26 am
Batman carries kryptonite in his tights. That’s why there is a debate. Also Superman is a poor example of a super hero. His movies will back me up on this.
October 18th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
In regards to #9….
Luke Perry was not a star on “Friends”, Matthew Perry was.
October 18th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
you sir are a dumbass
October 18th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
the fact that he misspelled the word “the” in #2 made me stop caring…
October 18th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
Angelina Jolie is HOT!
October 19th, 2008 at 10:41 am
I’m still trying to figure out why I kept reading after No. 1… Nicholas Cage is one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, and has been for quite a few years now… He made a few movies that didn’t do so well at the box office (Wicker Man, anyone?) and you insult him for that? I bet Nicholas Cage knows that Luke Perry wasn’t on friends you tool…
Number 6 is inaccurate… Oprah herself claims that her parents intended to use “Orpah”, but changed it to “Oprah” because her parents’ families had a hard time saying “Orpah” and kept inadvertantly saying “Oprah”
Also, Samuel L. Jackson was in Spike Lee’s 1989 “Do The Right Thing”,
1990’s “Menace II Society”, 1991’s “Jungle Fever”, 1992’s “Juice” and “Patriot Games”, and 1994’s critically acclaimed HBO movie “Against The Wall” before his role in “Pulp Fiction”… so don’t claim that no one really knew who he was before “Pulp Fiction”, you self-opinionated twit.
Number 32… Journalism 101 states that you shouldn’t label an article as “50 facts…” if you’re going to throw in opinionated bullshit, check your comic mythology and you’d see that Batman uses kryptonite… either on his suit or occasionally on a ring depending on which stories you follow…
Your fact checking is sub-par at best, a good chunk of your “facts” are merely opinions, and this article bored me to tears.
October 19th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
well, he may be an opinionated douche, be he still got all of you to read AND respond. “Only a fool argues with and idiot.”
October 19th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
great list… I was going to correct you about the “Luke Perry” thing, and let you know that it was Matthew Perry who played the character of Chandler in friends…. however, I was beat to it!
but for real, great list otherwise! thanks!
October 19th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
# 32, if you bothered to check comic book cannon, Batman has kicked Superman’s ass before, usually with a kryptonite ring, but he has used other methods. Don’t use a stupid opinion as a “fact” if you haven’t bothered to substantiate your claims with evidence. I couldn’t bring myself to read any more BS after that “fact” but I’m sure the rest is as idiotic as the first chunk of moronic nonsense.
October 19th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
most of these were very unamazing opinions…
October 19th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
All you Matthew Perry responders got it the wrong way around, the correction should be “90210 star” Luke Perry. Matthew has never changed his name to Luke
October 19th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Hey Hollywood “Insider,” it’s Joel COEN, not Joel Cohen. He just won BEST PICTURE. I think an “insider” would know his name. That’s Hollywood 101.
October 19th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
“32. Superman could clearly kick the asses of both Spiderman and Batman simultaneously. In fact, I don’t understand why there was ever any debate about this.”
Batman always carries Kyrptonite. Superman will never beat batman
October 19th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
Fun to read, some factual issues sure,the only one that mattered to me was that in fact Jimmie Carter graduated #1 in his class at the Naval Academy and I assure you her had to wear the uniform.
October 20th, 2008 at 1:32 am
There’s no way on earth 27 could be true.
October 20th, 2008 at 1:33 am
… and by 27, I actually mean 20. Whoops!
October 20th, 2008 at 5:09 am
Wow, you people are sensitive! I appreciate all the comments, but I have to admit that I found more, ah, “nonsense” in the response section than I found in my 50 ‘facts’! I didn’t expect I’d have to concern myself with explaining the connotation of “facts” in a post that lists, as a fact, that Angelina Jolie is not that attractive. Incidentally, I spelled Reagan and “the” correctly, But I apologize to any offended comic book fanatics…
October 20th, 2008 at 10:09 am
#40. Only president that we know of!
October 20th, 2008 at 10:24 am
Welcome to the internet. It’s full of cynical losers and douchebags.
P.S. I’m cooler than Brad Prick
October 20th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
# JaRod Says:
October 19th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
well, he may be an opinionated douche, be he still got all of you to read AND respond. “Only a fool argues with and idiot.”
LoL, so true. Besides, it’s the internet…there are a billion things out there that say they’re true. Doesn’t mean it is. Was all in good fun to read anyhoo. And if the comic book people had any sense…superman could totally get away from batman before he used any type of kryptonite and just throw a building at him…or ya know…destroy the planet. It would kill everyone else but def kill batman >_> lol, Preternatural power > human in black tights with a lame ass utility belt. So yeah, Superman > Batman. The end.
October 20th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
I don’t know if destroying the planet would be necessary, the man can shoot lasers out of his eyes!
October 20th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
wow so many mean people…
October 20th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
It’s beyond depressing that people will argue with the article like its a life or death situation. I was entertained…isn’t that the point? Some of you need to stop compensating and keep your aggressions away from the keyboard. That’s what Livejournal is for.
October 20th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
Wow,
I stumbled upon this, which means I am just up late, and bored. I may not agree with everything, but it in no way incited a need to be a crazy b*tch about it. You people need to lighten up, I believe it was just for fun kids!
October 21st, 2008 at 2:18 am
welp. i don’t know anything about kryptonite tights or if angelinas’s position on the hot-o-meter in real life. i just liked the post. can i say that? or should i insult your font or something first? thanks for the laughs.
October 21st, 2008 at 5:46 am
43. Contrary to popular belief, Angelina Jolie is actually not that attractive.
Too true! I think most people are so mistaken because they cant see past her chest…
October 21st, 2008 at 7:23 am
Wow. so if someone comes up and misspells stuff they need to be smashed into the ground by a bunch of idiots that apparently have nothing better to than sit at the computer and leave really nasty notes about others things…
And BTW Batman would be owned but Superman, Angelina Jolie i freaking ugly… just way to skinny, the list was great dude. Don’t let these pricks bring you down.
October 21st, 2008 at 8:04 am
Fact #16 is my favorite. I made fun of Hannah Montana too. I can’t figure out why kids want to watch that show.
October 21st, 2008 at 9:47 am
Hahaha awesome
October 22nd, 2008 at 10:26 am
There is debate about Superman beating Batman because, to my knowledge, it has never happened. Batman beats the hell out of Superman every time, most notably with kryptonite filled gloves in _The Dark Knight Returns_.
October 22nd, 2008 at 10:41 am
I liked the “facts” but all your sad ass comments were the best! what a bunch of muppetts….. corecting stupid spelling mistakes so you can feel beter about your crappy burer flipping lives! Fucking lossers!
October 22nd, 2008 at 1:22 pm
explain how #25 is a movie fact…
October 23rd, 2008 at 9:25 am
#25 is a movie fact because Britney Spears has appeared in at least two feature films, has made hundreds of television appearances and has provided the soundtrack for more than a dozen films and television shows. And as for Presbyterians, well, you may not share the same beliefs, but they watch movies too, man. Why do you always have to pick on them?
October 23rd, 2008 at 9:26 am
Number 25 is a movie fact because Britney Spears has appeared in at least two feature films, has made hundreds of television appearances and has provided the soundtrack for more than a dozen films and television shows. And as for Presbyterians, well, you may not share the same beliefs, but they watch movies too, man. Why do you always have to pick on them?
October 23rd, 2008 at 6:03 pm
These comments are so typical of the Internet. The first few say it was great bit nitpick a few things. The next ones slam you for those mistakes and get really negative and personal. Finally people flame the flamers and the cycle starts anew.
October 26th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
Love this list! Great job. I’m especially fond of #38 ‘cuz I was standing right there with you.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
The favourite part about the comments are all the nerds raging about the batman/superman piece…I mean who cares? It might mean a lot to you and your circle of dungeon keeps but us regular people couldnt give a fuck.
November 9th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
I know- “These comments are so typical of the Internet”, right?
I mean, come on you bunch of nerds! Expecting an “article” with the word “facts” in the title to be accurate? Get over yourselves!
Don’t let it bother you, dude- I bet they’re all just losers who don’t even know that Iraq was responsible for 9/11!
I mean really… It says right there at the bottom that TMZ is a favorite source- you don’t get any more fictional than those baboons.