For this list, I have compiled 15 pieces of movie trivia I think are interesting from my many years of reading and researching movie trivia. There is A LOT more where this came from that I may put in future lists, but I hope you enjoy.
#1 In preparation for Saving Private Ryan, Steven Spielberg had all the actors but Matt Damon go through boot camp. He did this to create actual resentment against Matt Damon from the other actors so it would be palpable in the movie.
#2 Billy Crystal was asked to play Woody in Toy Story and turned the part down. He says it was the biggest mistake of his life, and subsequently jumped on the opportunity to play Mike Wazowski in Monsters Inc.
#3 Alan Rickman, who portrayed Severus Snape, was the only other person besides J.K. Rowling to know the ending of the Harry Potter series ahead of time. J. K. Rowling wanted him to know what happened to Snape in the end and be aware of the twist so that he could act accordingly in the movies.
#4 Tobey Maguire actually caught all of the items dropped onto the lunch tray in Spiderman. It took many takes, but there was no use of CGI.
#5 The glass in the car scene of Jurassic Park was not supposed to break, so the screams you hear from the kids in this scene with the animatronic T-Rex are real.
#6 Also in Jurassic Park, there are scenes where the velociraptors are computer generated, but in many scenes it is actually a person in a suit. Many of the frames in the kitchen scene were done with a person in an amazing velociraptor suit.
#7 The desert scene from Independence Day was filmed in the Salt Flats in Utah. When he yells, "And what is that smell?!" the line was impromptu, because the flats smelled so bad. The director kept the line, and the audience attributes the comment about the smell to the alien he is dragging.
#8 Beach attendance dropped significantly in the year 1975 when Jaws came out.
#9 Also, the 1999-2000 hunting seasons struggled badly after the Blair Witch Project came out because of so many people flocking to the forests to film their own Blair Witch documentaries.
#10 Viggo Mortenson who plays Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings broke his toe in the scene in the Two Towers where he kicked the Orc helmet. His subsequent scream is real as he is yelling in pain.
#11 Many scenes of Back To The Future were filmed with actor Eric Stoltz as Marty McFly until Michael J. Fox became available and Stoltz was fired and replaced.
#12 All 9 of the actors who played the fellowship (with the exception of John Rhys-Davies who played Gimli) in The Lord of the Rings got tattoos of the elvish word for nine after production. The stunt double for Gimli went in Davies place and got the tattoo as well.
#13 The first time Tom Hanks met the actors who played the Somalian pirates in Captain Phillips was actually when filming started on this scene on the bridge. Tom Hanks said they looked and felt so authentic that it was not very hard for him to act scared. Conversely, the actors who played the pirates were so star struck by Tom Hanks that they also felt intimidated. The line "I am the captain now" was impromptu by Barkhad Abdi.
#14 Brad Pitt tore his Achilles tendon during production while portraying Achilles in Troy.
#15 Lastly, Jim Caviezel was struck by lighting while portraying Jesus Christ during the Sermon on the Mount scene in The Passion of the Christ.
For more pieces of Movie Trivia, click the links below:
15 More Interesting Pieces of Movie Trivia
10 More Interesting Pieces of Movie Trivia
What other trivia do you know about movies? Let us know and don't forget to like us at
www.facebook.com/simplefilmcritics. There will be more trivia lists in the future.
