Movies have been around for decades and, during this time, we’ve been treated to everything from the classics to the humorous to the heartwarming Disney flicks.
While you might be able to rattle off a few pieces of trivia about your favorite film, there’s still so much to know about what goes on behind the scenes.
Curious? Enter these 10+ random movie facts most fans didn’t know.
1. *Toy Story 2* was almost deleted:
This all happened due to one line of code.
“First, Woody’s hat disappeared. Then his boots. Then he disappeared entirely,” recalled Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull in his book, Creativity Inc .
“Whole sequences—poof!—were deleted from the drive.”
“To reassemble the film would have taken thirty people a solid year,” Catmull recalled.
Thankfully, Galyn Susman, Toy Story 2 ‘s supervising technical director, saved the day since she kept a file of the film at home.
Although there was work missing, it wasn’t nearly as bad as losing everything.
2. There was a rise in pet rats being sold after *Ratatouille*:
Just like a lot of people adopt black cats before Halloween, many people clearly wanted a talking — and cooking — rat after seeing the heartwarming flick.
Britain’s Pets at Home domestic pet chain saw a 50 percent surge in pet rat sales!
3. The opposite ended up happening with *Finding Nemo*:
While news reports announced that people were buying more clown fish, dubbed the “Nemo Effect,” after the film’s release, there is no data to support this claim.
4. Paul Schrader wrote *Taxi Driver* in two weeks:
Talk about skill!
This says a lot, considering the film was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor. It even received the Palme d’Or at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival.
5. Screenwriter Paul Schrader told *The Hollywood Reporter* how he got the movie written so fast:
“I crashed at an ex-girlfriend’s place, and I just wrote continuously. The first draft was maybe 60 pages, and I started the next draft immediately, and it took less than two weeks,” he said .
6. James Cameron drew that charcoal of naked Kate Winslet.
Turns out, he’s not only a brilliant filmmaker, he’s an amazing artist, too.
In 2011, it even sold for $16,000 at a movie memorabilia auction by Premiere Props.
7. ‘There Will Be Blood’ caused production delays for ‘No Country for Old Men.’
What do you get when you film two action movies in the same location at the same time?
Well, in this case, you get a huge smoke cloud from There Will Be Blood messing up a shot in No Country For Old Men .
The rivalry between these two films didn’t stop there.
At The Oscars that year, both pictures led with eight nominations .
This included the big one: the best film, which ended up being taken home by No Country for Old Men .
8. There were 10,297 balloons in *Up*:
Pixar’s attention-to-detail has always been second to none.
One of the film’s effects artists, Jon Reisch, told Tech Radar that, “The entire canopy is filled with balloons. We didn’t just simulate the outer shell.”
9. Christian Bale was inspired by Tom Cruise in *American Psycho*:
The movie’s director, Mary Harron, revealed how Bale captured Cruise in an interview with BlackBook :
“We talked about how Martian-like Patrick Bateman was, how he was looking at the world like somebody from another planet, watching what people did and trying to work out the right way to behave.”
“And then one day he [Bale] called me and he had been watching Tom Cruise on David Letterman.”
She continued:
“And he just had this very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes, and he was really taken with this energy.”
They do say imitation is flattery.
10. George Lucas’ dog inspired Chewbacca:
“I had an Alaskan Malamute when I was writing the film [Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope],” he revealed.
“A very sweet dog, she would always sit next to me when I was writing.”
He continued:
“And when I’d drive around, she’d sit in the front seat. A Malamute is a very large dog—like a 130 pounds and bigger than a human being and very long-haired.”
We just wish he also made the Chewbacca sound!
11. *Scream* originally had a different title.
It was called Scary Movie . The change was due to the controversial former Hollywood producer, Harvey Weinstein, who produced the original.
He changed his mind on the title after hearing the song “Scream” by Michael Jackson in his car.
12. A key scene in *Pulp Fiction* was filmed backwards:
The scene in question was when John Travolta (Vincent Vega) revived Uma Thurman (Mia Wallace) from a heroin overdose by taking a hypodermic needle and plunging it into her chest.
This was filmed backwards to prevent Travolta from accidentally puncturing Thurman’s chest.
“It’s cut so close, you never see the impact, but you see right up to it,” said Jason Bailey, author of Pulp Fiction: The Complete Story of Quentin Tarantino’s Masterpiece .
13. In *Django Unchained*, Leonardo DiCaprio accidentally cut his hand open.
This happened when he smashed his hand on a glass.
Instead of stopping to get medical attention, he stayed in character the entire time and even wiped the blood on Kerry Washington’s face!
14. The poster for *Just My Luck* features a paparazzi photo of Lindsay Lohan.
The photo was taken by a photographer working for the New York Post .
The studio even changed the movie’s tagline to “Everything changed in the wink of an eye.”
15. In *The Incredibles 2*, Frozone’s wife was supposed to make an appearance, but writer-director Brad Bird ultimately decided to keep her out of it.
“1. We felt like we stayed away from the big action scene too long and that we were killing the momentum we were gaining by having the big action scene.”
“And 2. We decided the off-camera-ness of it is part of the joke, and then Honey can kinda be anyone you imagine her to be.”
Although it’s kind of sad that we didn’t get to see her, it’s true that the inside joke will live on forever.
16. In *A Star Is Born*, Bradley Cooper spent six months with a dialect coach so he could try to imitate Sam Elliott’s voice.
And this was before he knew that Elliott would be his on-screen brother .
Now that is some serious dedication.
17. The gloves in *Us* actually have a meaning.
Believe it or not, it’s true.
Jordan Peele revealed that each glove was actually a nod to some very famous people. Who?
O.J. Simpson, Freddy Krueger, and Michael Jackson. Wild, isn’t it?
18. A change to *A Quiet Place* actually made John Krasinski cry.
Millicent Simmonds who plays the daughter suggested that “I have always loved you” be written in, instead of the simple “I love you” that was originally there.
And the reason why is too sweet.
Simmonds explained why she thought the change was so important in an interview about the movie.
“At the end when he signs, ‘I love you,’ I said I think he needs to say, ‘I’ve always loved you.’ Because that covers the difficult period. Then when I suggested that he cried.”
19. Henry Golding almost turned own the role for *Crazy Rich Asians*, because he didn’t think he was a “legitimate actor”.
When he had the chance to audition, he thought, “Oh my god. I’ve heard of this, but it’s for someone else who’s a legitimate actor that the studio is going to gamble on.”
20. In *Move Over Darling*, James Garner accidentally broke two of Doris Day’s ribs.
He picked her up while shooting a scene and everything went sideways.
Day said about it , “[He] picked me up under his arm a little too enthusiastically and cracked a couple of my ribs. I made that movie mummified with adhesive tape, which made it difficult to breathe and painful to laugh.”
They stayed friends the res of their years, however, and, in fact, Day had been known to joke about what happened!
“Jim, if we don’t speak for a while, I forgive you for breaking my ribs. Both of them. Don’t give it another thought.” she said.
21. Gene Kelly insulted Debbie Reynolds’ dancing in *Singin’ in the Rain* so much that she cried under a piano.
She said that he “came to rehearsals and criticized everything I did and never gave me a word of encouragement.”
22. In *Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory*, Gene Wilder bit into wax.
The flower cup was made of candy, or so we were told!
It was actually made of wax . I do not want to imagine what it must have been like to have that taste in your mouth.
23. John Payne, who played Fred Gailey in *Miracle on 34th Street*, loved the movie so much that he wrote a sequel to it! His costar, Maureen O’Hara, said:
“We talked about it for years, and he eventually even wrote a screenplay sequel. He was going to send it to me but tragically died before he could get around to it. I never saw it and have often wondered what happened to it.”
