1.
Probably one of the wildest behind-the-scenes facts I know is that Curb Your Enthusiasm literally saved a man accused of murder, possibly even from the death penalty. The man, Juan Catalan, was accused of murdering teenager Martha Puebla in 2003. He said he was at the Dodgers game with his daughter and his friends when the murder occurred, but there wasn’t enough proof of this…until Catalan’s lawyer discovered Curb Your Enthusiasm had filmed at that very same game. Raking through the footage, they were able to find Catalan at the game and back up his alibi.
2.
It’s not the only TV footage that had something to do with a murder trial. The infamous O.J. trial almost used footage from O.J.’s recent TV pilot Frogman, which was never released following the murder accusations. Why was the footage relevant? It showed O.J.’s proficiency with a knife. Simpson had reportedly received military training for the role. Also, Simpson’s costar Todd Allen had once gone with O.J. to Ross Cutlery — the suspected source of the murder weapon, which was never found — between shooting scenes. Eerily, the show also featured the death of the character’s ex-wife.
3.
In another movie-murder connection, The Exorcist director William Friedkin went to an NYU radiology lab to scout locations and extras, and to observe an angiogram that would inspire a similar scene in the film. While at the lab, he met the technician Paul Bateson and decided to cast him as a technician in the movie as well. Bateson was later convicted of the murder of film critic Addison Verrill and is suspected of multiple other murders.
4.
Staying on the subject of murder, some people actually thought The Blair Witch Project was real found footage when it came out — especially considering its marketing and the fact that missing posters of the actors were passed out at screenings. In fact, one of the actors, Michael C. Williams, said people sent his family condolence letters because they thought he was really missing and presumed dead.
5.
The infamously disturbing Italian film Cannibal Holocaust also seemed so real that people thought it was a snuff film. The actors had signed a contract to “disappear” for a year following the film’s release, which only lent more credence to speculation that they were dead. It got so bad that the film’s director, Ruggero Deodato, was arrested and charged with murder. He had to actually get the “dead” actors to come into court to prove his innocence.
6.
Though the film did not include it, the No Country for Old Men novel featured the line, “Here a while back in San Antonio they shot and killed a federal judge.” This was likely referring to the hitman Charles Harrelson’s 1979 murder of Judge John Howland Wood. Charles Harrelson’s son? Woody Harrelson, who was one of the film’s stars. In fact, Charles was a notorious hitman who once claimed to have killed JFK.
7.
Let’s move away from murder to something lighter…Stephen Baldwin has a Hannah Montana tattoo because Miley Cyrus dared him to when she was 15. The two had met at the White House, of all places, and Cyrus had promised he could be on the show if he got the tattoo. Baldwin did, and when Miley’s family surprised Baldwin at his book signing, he showed it off and asked if he could come onto the show. Miley apparently said yes, but it never happened, which means Baldwin has the tattoo for no reason. Luckily, it’s just the initials “HM.”
8.
A body double was used for Willem Dafoe’s nude scenes in Antichrist because, according to Dafoe, if they had used his genitals, “that’s all that people would talk about.” Indeed, it did become all people talked about — especially after director Lars von Trier claimed that Dafoe “has an enormous dick” and that “we had to [have a stand-in dick], because Will’s was too big” and “everybody got very confused when they saw it.”
9.
One of my favorite wild behind-the-scenes facts is that someone spiked the clam chowder with PCP on the last night the Titanic cast and crew were filming in Nova Scotia, leading to about half of them getting disastrously high. They first realized something was off when some crew members started feeling strange, which was shortly followed by the film’s director, James Cameron, running around screaming, “There’s something in me! Get it out!”
Fifty to eighty of them ended up at the nearby Dartmouth General Hospital, where “grips were going down the hallway doing wheelies in wheelchairs,” according to one set decorator. “People are moaning and crying, wailing, collapsed on tables and gurneys,” Cameron described. “The DP, Caleb Deschanel, is leading several crew down the hall in a highly vocal conga line. You can’t make this stuff up.” Actor Bill Paxton was dosed, too, though he had more of a mellow high and ended up leaving the hospital, comparing the scene there to “Bedlam.”
They never discovered who did it, though apparently, at one point (after production had moved to Mexico), a craft service operator was “taken away at gunpoint by the Mexican police because somebody else on the crew said, ‘Oh, I think it was him,’ fingering the wrong person,” according to crew member Jake Clarke. Clarke also said a member of the art department made T-shirts to commemorate the ordeal with a photo of the chowder and the words “good crew, bad crew,” as those were the groups the crew was divided into once they started tripping.
10.
Speaking of Titanic...four years after the film came out, James Cameron was still obsessed with the disaster. In fact, he was filming the documentary Ghosts of the Abyss, which involved underwater footage of the Titanic wreckage and Titanic star Bill Paxton, on September 11, 2001. Twelve hours after the attacks, Cameron surfaced from an underwater dive and asked Paxton, “What is this thing that’s going on?” and Paxton replied, “The worst terrorist attack in history, Jim.” Cameron hypothesized he “was presumably the last man in the Western Hemisphere to learn about what had happened.”
11.
Here’s another 9/11-related fact for you…Perhaps one of the most infamous scenes in the notorious flop Master of Disguise was the “turtle club” scene, in which Dana Carvey, dressed as a turtle, asked, “Am I not turtle enough for the turtle club”? Well, it’s long been rumored that the scene was filmed on 9/11 and that the cast took a moment of silence in costume.* Last year, Carvey finally confirmed the rumors, though he said “they obfuscated” the news and also took “an appropriate time off.”…but yes, eventually, they did all take a moment of silence for the victims of 9/11 while Carvey still in the turtle suit.
“I was in [the costume] all that day and then they said, ‘We’re going to have a group prayer about 9/11,'” Carvey remembered. “And I couldn’t get the thing — I would’ve held everyone for a half hour getting all that prosthetic makeup off — so, as I remember it, everyone else was [wearing] civilian clothes, I’m dressed as the Turtle Man, with a bald head, and I’m holding hands and I’m lowering my head and praying and I just thought at the moment: ‘This is very strange.'”
12.
Arnold Schwarzenegger basically tricked Sylvester Stallone into starring in Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot because Stallone thought he was taking the part from Schwarzenegger, his longtime rival. Stallone told the Hollywood Reporter, “I had heard Schwarzenegger was going to do that movie and I said, ‘I’m going to beat him to it.’ I think he set me up,” and Schwarzenegger has admitted the story is “100% true.”
“I read the script. It was so bad,” Schwarzenegger said. “So I went in – this was during our war [between Schwarzenegger and Stallone] – I said to myself, I’m going to leak out that I have tremendous interest. I know the way it works in Hollywood. I would then ask for a lot of money. So then they’d say, ‘Let’s go give it to Sly. Maybe we can get him for cheaper.’ So they told Sly, ‘Schwarzenegger’s interested. Here’s the press clippings. He’s talked about that. If you want to grab that one away from him, that is available.’ And he went for it! He totally went for it. A week later, I heard about it, ‘Sly is signing now to do this movie.’ And I said, [pumps fist] ‘Yes!'”
13.
Keanu Reeves was also tricked into starring in The Watcher. One of his friends forged his signature on the contract, and Keanu was unable to prove it was forged, and he didn’t want to get sued, so he went ahead and made the film.
14.
I talk about the Prince episode of New Girl a lot, and I usually bring up the fact that Prince wrote in asking to guest star so he could help get Nick and Jess together. It’s wild enough to think of Prince as a regular TV show fan and Ness shipper, but an even funnier tidbit of trivia is that he refused to let the Kardashians appear in the same episode.
According to Lamore Morris, one of the show’s stars, “a family of famous people” was brought on to be in a quick scene at Prince’s party, which Nick and Jess attended in the episode. Prince – who showed up early and was watching the screen — asked what the famous family was doing there. A producer replied, “Well, they’re in the show. They’ve been invited to a Prince party.” Prince replied, “They would never be invited to a Prince party.” His costar, Zooey Deschanel, later confirmed he was referring to the Kardashians and that a PA literally came in and took everyone’s scripts and call sheets and threw them in a bonfire after learning Prince didn’t want them there.
15.
The lengths of Harvey Weinstein’s disgusting behavior may not have come out until the #MeToo movement, but he was still hated in Hollywood by many for years before his downfall. After friction between Weinstein and the Lord of the Rings filmmakers (involving, among other things, Weinstein wanting them to make only a single film), they got some petty revenge by designing one of the orcs to look like Weinstein. “One of the orc masks —and I remember this vividly — was designed to look like Harvey Weinstein as a sort of a f**k you,” Elijah Wood revealed, with Astin confirming the fact.
16.
In a more ridiculous than wild LOTR behind-the-scenes fact, Sam’s horse Bill was played by two men in a horse costume.
17.
LOTR star Christopher Lee has one of the wildest backstories I have ever heard. First, he was the only cast member to have met Tolkien. He also witnessed the last public execution by guillotine. He fought in World War II and was a Nazi hunter, and he also saw concentration camps. At one point, he was reportedly a spy, and fans have theorized that his cousin, Ian Fleming, wrote the Bond books at least partially based on him.
18.
Tupac reportedly auditioned for Mace Windu in Star Wars shortly before his death. Death Row Records engineer Rick Clifford revealed, “He was telling me that he was supposed to read for George Lucas and them. They wanted him to be a Jedi. I’m serious. Samuel L. [Jackson] got Tupac’s part. [Tupac] said [to me], ‘Old man, keep your fingers crossed.’ He said, ‘I’ve got three movies coming up. One of them, I’ve got to read for George Lucas.'”
Aright, now let’s do some rapid fire facts!
19.
It ended up being cheaper to plant real corn for Interstellar rather than use CGI, so Christopher Nolan planted 500 acres of corn fields and then sold the corn afterward for a profit of $62,000.
20.
Ever wonder why acclaimed writer-director Noah Baumbach co-wrote the ridiculous animated sequel Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted? Apparently, he did so to pay for his divorce.
22.
I can’t believe I didn’t know that Dolly Parton helped produce literally my favorite show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
24.
Was no one going to tell me legendary Star Trek actor Leonard Nimoy directed Three Men and a Baby?
25.
Keira Knightley and Thomas Brodie-Sangster were only five years apart when they appeared in Love Actually.
26.
Also, Angelina Jolie, who played Colin Farrell’s mother in Alexander, is less than a year older than him.
27.
And finally, the actor who played Christopher Plummer’s character’s mother in Knives Out, K Callan, was actually six years younger than him.
What’s a bizarre behind-the-scenes fact that you know? Let us know in the comments!