50 Incredible Behind the Scene Facts about Famous Movies – Part 5

During the filming of the Great Escape's famous motorcycle chase, Steve McQueen not only did most of his own motorcycle stunts but also did it as one of the Nazis chasing his character. Thus, through the power of editing, Steve McQueen is actually chasing himself.

27. In 2014, Christopher Nolan's Interstellar was the only film in the top 10 worldwide box office to be completely original.

28. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, they limited the onscreen blood from gunshots during the truck chase by using fine red dust instead of liquid fake blood. Unfortunately, the only red dust available for the squibs was Cayenne Pepper, which caused a lot of suffering for the stunt crew.

29. Harrison Ford and Sean Connery filmed their conversation scenes onboard the Zeppelin in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade without pants on, because of the hot set.

30. To get into character as The Bear Jew in Inglourious Basterds, Eli Roth listened to Hannah Montana songs and thought about what it'd be like if he was Hannah Montana because it took him "to a place of insanity."

The astronauts of Apollo 8, the first manned mission to leave Earth's orbit, attempted to radio back reporting the appearance of a black monolith similar to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, as a prank, but alas discretion prevailed.

32. During the filming of ‘A Clockwork Orange,’ Malcolm McDowell suffered cracked ribs when an actor kicked him in the chest. He also almost drowned when his head was held underwater and got a scratch in the cornea of his eye. Kubrick said, “Let’s carry on, I’ll favor your other eye.”

33. During filming Lawrence of Arabia, Peter O'Toole added foam rubber to his camel saddle to increase comfort. This eventually spread across the Middle East and O'Toole was called the "Father of Rubber."

34. For the film "Psycho" Alfred Hitchcock insisted theatre managers to put "no late admission" policy so that audience either see the film from the very beginning, or they don’t see it all.

35. The scene in Matrix Reloaded when Trinity hacks into a power station's computer is actually an accurate portrayal of a hack exploiting a real SSH vulnerability.

During the filming of Django Unchained, Leonardo DiCaprio stopped mid-scene because he was having "a difficult time" using so many racial slurs. Samuel L. Jackson then pulled him aside telling him, "mother f*cker, this is just another Tuesday for us."

37. Grave of the Fireflies is based on the author’s own experiences as a child and was written as a personal apology for not being able to save his younger sister Keiko who died of malnutrition in Fukui.

38. As an experiment, a copy of Casablanca's screenplay was submitted to 217 agencies under the title "Everybody Comes to Rick's". Out of the 85 that read it, only 8 recognized it specifically as Casablanca, and only 3 declared it as commercially viable.

39. For each word he said in Terminator 2, Arnold Schwarzenegger was paid $21,429. 

40. In the original Japanese version of Spirited Away, all of Chihiro's character development is lost in the end, as she forgets her adventure in the Spirit World when she returns to Earth.

In the movie "Fight Club" Tyler Durden was originally going to recite a workable recipe for home-made explosives as he does in the novel. But in the interest of public safety, the filmmakers decided to substitute fictional recipes for the real ones.

42. The film "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" was shown in Swedish theaters for 11 years straight.

43. During the making of "The Silence of the Lambs", Jodie Foster was so terrified of Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter that she avoided him and never actually spoke to him until the last day of filming.

44. The train scene from Inception was not a CGI. The crew fitted a tractor truck to look like a diesel locomotive and smashed cars with it.

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

The famous line-up scene from "The usual suspects" was scripted to be a serious one. Director Bryan Singer became infuriated when none of the actors could keep a straight face because Benicio Del Toro farted close to 12 takes in a row. After a full day, he gave up and used the funniest takes.

47. The prison used for filming ‘The Green Mile’ was also used for filming ‘Ernest Goes to Jail’ and imprisoned James Earl Ray and Johnny Cash. The abandoned prison is located in Tennessee.

48. The movie ‘Infernal Affairs’ was a 2002 Hong Kong film, which Martin Scorsese watched. He loved the story so much, he directed an American version: The Departed which was ‘The Best Picture winner’ of 2006.

49. Marilyn Monroe was terrible at learning lines. It took her 60 takes to deliver the line "It's me, Sugar", in 'Some Like it Hot'.

50. After the release of the film The Bridge on the River Kwai, tourists came to Thailand to see the fictional bridge. Since there never was a bridge on the Kwai, the Thai renamed a portion of the Mae Klong river containing a bridge to satisfy the tourists.