Hi, I’m John Green. Welcome to my salon. This is Mental Floss on YouTube and did you
know that it was a secret on the set of The Empire Strikes Back that Darth Vader would
say “I am your father”? In the script, his line read, “Obi-Wan killed your father.”
Only director Irvin Kershner and the producers of the film knew the real line. Mark Hamill
was told right before he filmed his close-up for the scene.
And that’s the first of many behind-the-scenes films facts that I’m going to share with
you today. Let’s get started!
Marlon Brando never read Heart of Darkness before filming its movie adaptation, Apocalypse
Now. He fought often with director Francis Ford Coppola about this and Coppola would
read the book out loud to him on the set.
Speaking of Coppola, during a particularly hard day of shooting The Godfather, he was
in a restroom stall when two crew members came into the room. They said, “Coppola
will never make another big picture. Everyone agrees that he doesn’t know what he’s
doing.” He got embarrassed and lifted his shoes up so they couldn’t see him.
When Shelob stabs Frodo in Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, Elijah Wood had Alka Seltzer
tablets in his mouth so it would foam.
Another low-budget special effect: Zachary Quinto aka Spock in the recent Star Trek films
can’t actually do the Vulcan salute, so the crew glued his fingers that way.
Speaking of Star Trek, the Michael Myers mask for the first Halloween movie was a Captain
Kirk mask painted white. It cost $1.98.
Another movie villain associated with the color white is Hannibal Lecter from The Silence
of the Lambs. It was Anthony Hopkins’s idea to dress that way because he’s afraid of
dentists.
Speaking of costumes, the Cowardly Lion costume for The Wizard of Oz weighed 90 pounds.
The Dude’s clothes in The Big Lebowski were less work: Jeff Bridges mostly wore stuff
from his own wardrobe.
Sean Connery wore a hairpiece every time he played James Bond.
While filming Borat, Sacha Baron Cohen attracted the attention of the police, the FBI, and
the Secret Service. Apparently there were so many complaints about a Middle Eastern
man driving around America in an ice cream truck that a whole FBI team was assigned to
him.
While shooting The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, Keanu Reeves gave the
entire stunt team Harley Davidson motorcycles.
Michelle Rodriguez and Jordana Brewster didn’t have driver’s licenses when they got cast
in The Fast and the Furious. They had to take lessons before production.
Another actor who had to get a driver's license to get a part - Nat Wolff in the movie Paper
Towns.
Charlie Sheen stayed awake for 48 hours before he filmed his scene in Ferris Bueller’s
Day Off. Wait a second Meredith, how would Charlie Sheen stay awake for 48 straight hours?
OH.
The scene in Pulp Fiction in which John Travolta stabs an adrenaline shot into the chest of
Uma Thurman was filmed differently than it looks. He pulled the needle OUT of her chest
and it was reversed in post.
Rupert Grint was kicked off the Harry Potter set while Emma Watson and Daniel Radcliffe
were filming their kissing scene. Because he was laughing too much.
Another laugher was Princess Bride director Rob Reiner. He left the set for giggling excessively
while Billy Crystal was shooting some scenes. Crystal would tell Reiner, “Go home and
you’ll see it tomorrow!”
Speaking of directors, it took David Lynch five years to complete his film Eraserhead.
During that time, Lynch took on a Wall Street Journal paper route to support himself and
the project.
Eraserhead was one of Stanley Kubrick’s favorite films, by the way. He screened it
for the cast and crew of The Shining.
The ping pong scene in Forrest Gump was shot without a ball -- it was added later with
CGI.
Which makes me wonder why they didn’t use CGI for the domino scene in V for Vendetta.
The domino V that gets knocked over contains 22,000 dominoes. It took four experts 200
hours to set up.
Ok, gotta make a note of this -- career goal: become a domino expert.
The script for Casablanca was still being written while they were in production, which
Ingrid Bergman hated because she didn’t know which character she was supposed to act
in love with. When she asked director Michael Curtiz, he told her to “play it in between.”
Another actor who had a problem with the script was Harrison Ford while filming Raiders of
the Lost Ark. He had dysentery and was supposed to film a long fight sequence with a swordsman.
When he got to set, he told Steven Spielberg, “Let’s just shoot the sucker.” Spielberg
replied, “I just thought the same thing this morning.”
Coolest person ever or coolest person ever? By the way Indiana, I'm not sure that's your
best hero pose.
And speaking of Indiana Jones, a hurricane hit the Hawaii set of a later Spielberg film,
Jurassic Park. The helicopter pilot who came to rescue the crew was Fred Sorenson, who
played the pilot in the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Rocky contains an unscripted moment, when he points out that he’s wearing the wrong
color shorts in the poster above the boxing ring. The film’s prop department genuinely
made that mistake, so the line was added.
Alfred Hitchcock did all of his directing for Rear Window from within Jeff’s apartment.
The other actors wore earpieces, so he could tell them what to do.
At the start of filming The Sound of Music, the film Mary Poppins hadn’t been released
yet. So when Julie Andrews taught the seven child actors the song “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”
on the first day of filming, they thought she’d made it up and was a genius.
In fact, of course, she hadn't made it up, but she is a genius.
The Alien set had some unusual neighbors -- the rock band The Who spent some time rehearsing
one soundstage over. It came in handy when Ridley Scott was filming the egg chamber scene
and borrowed some blue laser lights from the band.
During production on Groundhog Day, Bill Murray got bitten by the groundhog twice, so he had
to get rabies shots.
And finally I return to my salon to tell you that during an important scene in Memento,
the character Teddy says, “You don’t have a clue, you freak!” Director Christopher
Nolan didn’t like the way actor Joe Pantoliano said the line, so he went back and dubbed
over it in post-production. Nolan himself delivers Teddy’s line. One year after the
film came out, The Sundance Channel’s documentary show “Anatomy of a Scene” interviewed
Pantoliano and asked how he felt about the dubbing. He responded, “This is the first
I’m hearing about it.”
Thanks for watching Mental Floss on YouTube which is made with the help of all these nice
people. Don't forget to watch our other shows on this channel, and as we say in my hometown,
don’t forget that Obi Wan killed your father!