48 Wildly Interesting Movie Facts You Didn’t Know – Part 9

In 'The Island of Dr. Moreau,' Marlon Brando wore a small radio receiver to aid him in remembering his lines. Co-Star David Thewlis claimed, "He'd be in the middle of a scene and suddenly he'd be picking up police messages and Marlon would repeat, 'There's a robbery at Woolworths'."

2. The movie 'Vanilla Sky' has one of the most expensive movie scenes. To get Times Square empty for the scene, director Cameron Crowe got a deal with the NYPD to close off the area between 5 am and 8 am on a Sunday and paid over $1 million for 30 seconds of footage.

3. Dr. Strangelove was originally conceived as a drama about the nature of nuclear warfare, but as Kubrick was writing the screenplay, he felt many of the accurate depictions of nuclear warfare policy were too unbelievable for audiences to take seriously, and so it was turned into a comedy.

4. For 'Wayne's World' Mike Myers demanded to use the song 'Bohemian Rhapsody' in the car scene instead of a Guns n' Roses song, even threatening to quit the production if they didn't use it.

5. The "be prepared" scene featured in The Lion King was based on the 1935 Nazi propaganda film "Triumph of the Will."

In the famous "Business Card" scene in American Psycho, every card has "Acquisitions" misspelled: "Aquisitions".

7. The production of 'Apocalypse Now' had actual dead bodies on set, from someone who supplied bodies to medical schools for autopsies. It turned out he was a grave robber.

8. While filming "Schindler's List," Steven Spielberg would put Robin Williams on speaker phone to cheer up the cast and crew.

9. In a scene in the movie 'Swingers', sirens can be heard in the distance from the state troopers arriving to shut down filming, as the crew did not have a permit to shoot.

10. The boots worn by the actors portraying American soldiers in 'Saving Private Ryan' were made by the same company that supplied boots for American soldiers during the Second World War.

For 'La La Land', Ryan Gosling learned jazz piano, and all of the piano scenes in the movie were played by him

12. Many of the tracks to 'The Lord of the Rings' score features choirs singing in Tolkien's fictional languages, such as Sindarin, Khuzdul, and Rohirric, the lyrics of which often reflecting what is happening on the screen, and usually written as a poem.

13. In the “Life of Brian” scene where Graham Chapman reveals himself naked at a window to his adoring followers, fellow Python Terry Jones realized he lacked one crucial Jewish detail. A Strategically placed rubber band provided authenticity.

14. The infamous scene, in Mel Gibson's film "The Patriot" depicting the herding of noncombatant men, women, and children into a church, and setting it on fire is based on the SS massacre of French villagers in Oradour-Sur-Glane in 1944. Nothing like this ever happened in the American Revolution.

15. The scene in 'Dragonheart' where they are training in castle ruins is actually Čachtice Castle a.k.a. Home to Countess Elizabeth Bàthory - the most prolific female serial killer who is rumored to have bathed in virgin blood to retain her youth.

The scene in Oldboy in which Choi Min-sik eats a live octopus was shot with a real living octopus and required four separate takes. He is also a Buddhist and prayed for each one before eating them.

17. The filming of 'Hardcore Henry' was so intense that it caused severe neck pain and tooth loss for 2 actors who played the protagonist. It is also the first full POV action movie. 96 minutes of Hardcore Henry are all in first person.

18. In the short scene in Fight Club when Brad Pitt and Edward Norton are drunk and hitting golf balls, the actors really were drunk, and the golf balls were sailing directly into the side of the catering truck.

19. While filming his death in 'Goodfellas' Michael Imperioli cut his hand on a glass and was taken to the ER where the doctors rushed to treat his fake bullet wounds.

20. The head-in-the-box ending of "Se7en" was originally rejected by the studio, but David Fincher was accidentally sent the original screenplay with that ending, convincing him to make the movie. The producer still objected to it, but Brad Pitt refused to act in the film unless the scene was kept.

The Matrix' government lobby scene was real. There is no CGI in the scene, just the actors with special effects. All the explosions are real. The office building was a real set, the helicopter on wires, all the firing, real as well as the water pouring all over the place.

22. In the movie "Good Will Hunting", the therapy scene caused Johnny (the cameraman) to laugh so hard that the camera's POV can actually be seen moving up and down slightly as it shows Damon breaking character by also laughing so hard.

23. The 1972 hit movie 'The Godfather' does not contain the words ‘mafia’ or 'la cosa nostra’ because of a deal struck between the producer and the real mafia.

24. During the filming of 'Shaun of the Dead', one of the zombie extras walked up to Edgar Wright, and not knowing he was the director & co-writer, whispered in his ear and joked "Oof, straight-to-video for this one!"

25. For the 1990 film "Arachnophobia," advertisers were uncertain as to whether they should market the film as a thriller or a comedy. Therefore, television spots promoting the film billed it as a "thrill-omedy".