The Jokes:
Shia LeBeof dropped out of Broadway’s Orphans. Turns out he has parents.
A Gay Marriage plot is coming up in the comic Batwoman. Batwoman marrying another Batwoman. Where will it stop? Marrying Batdogs? Batrocks?
Apple is releasing a watch, Google is making glasses. Soon I will be more machine than man.
And The Oscar Goes To…
We continue our look at every best picture winner ever and stupid facts about them. Yesterday we did up to 1970, which you can take a look at by clicking your mouse here (or, for fancy smartphone/tablet users, tapping your finger).
1971 – The French Connection
Popeye’s Chicken is named after the main character of this film.
1972 – The Godfather
Marlon Brando wanted his character to look like a bullfrog, so he stuffed his cheeks with cotton during his audition. In the actual movie he is wearing a mouthpiece.
1973 – The Sting
The diner Hooker meets Lonnegan in is the same diner Marty McFly meets his father at in Back to the Future.
1974 – The Godfather Part II
The flashback scenes had to be reshot because the actors were wearing pants with zippers, which had yet to be invented.
1975 – One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
Many of the extras were actual mental patients.
1976 – Rocky
In the scene in the meat locker Stallone punched the meat so hard he leveled his knuckles. To this day when he makes a fist his knuckles are completely flat.
1977 – Annie Hall
Woody Allen sneezing into the cocaine was an accident. But it was found to be so funny he left it in and even added extra footage immediately after so audiences wouldn’t miss the next joke while laughing so hard.
1978 – The Deer Hunter
Christopher Walken ate nothing but rice and banana’s to create the hollowed look of his character.
1979 – Kramer Vs. Kramer
JoBeth William’s nude scene was darkened for theatrical release to avoid an R rating. It is now shown with it’s original brightness occasionally.
1980 – Ordinary People
Timothy Hutton’s father passed away and Mary Tyler Moore’s son committed suicide before filming.
1981 – Chariots of Fire
The producers added profanity to the film only to avoid a G rating. They didn’t want people to think it was a children’s film.
1982 – Gandhi
1983 – Terms of Endearment
At the end of filming producer James L. Brooks was given a gift of a book of Life In Hell comics. He was so impressed he asked the cartoonist Matt Groening to create a cartoon for a new show he was working on, The Tracy Ullman Show.
1984 – Amadeus
When Laurence Olivier presented the award for Best Picture he forgot to read the nominees first. He just walked up on stage and said “Amadeus”.
1985 – Out of Africa
The film was shot in Africa, but local laws prohibited using the wild animals there. Lions were flown in from California for the movie.
1986 – Platoon
Most of the movie was filmed in sequence. The emotion Charlie Sheen shows in the helicopter scene is real because he was finally getting to go home.
1987 – The Last Emperor
This was the first film to be about China with full cooperation of their government since 1949.
1988 – Rain Man
The script was originally written with Raymond as a happy outgoing mentally handicapped person with Dennis Quaid and Randy Quaid in mind. Once Dustin Hoffman was cast, he insisted on Raymond being changed a socially withdrawn autistic idiot savant.
1989 – Driving Miss Daisy
Dan Akroyd was nominated for an Academy Award for this. His career would never get anywhere close to that high point again.
1990 – Dances With Wolves
In the scene where a Buffalo charges at a young Indian, the Buffalo was actually filmed running to eat his favorite snack, a pile of Oreo cookies.
1991 – The Silence of the Lambs
Anthony Hopkins modeled the voice of Hannibal as a mixture of Truman Capote and Katherine Hepburn.
1992 – Unforgiven
Between this and Dances With Wolves, two westerns within three years won best picture. The only other Western to win best picture was Cimmaron in 1931.
1993 – Schindler’s list
To get costumes, the costume designer put an ad in local papers. Since many people in Poland were poor many were willing to sell their old clothes from the 40s to the production.
1994 – Forrest Gump
Dave Chappelle, Ice Cube and David Allen-Grier all turned down the role of Bubba.
In the sequel to the novel, Forrest meets Tom Hanks.
Even though Forest Gump won best picture, another nominee from the same year currently sits atop of IMDB’s best movie list: Shawshank Redemption.
1995 – Braveheart
Many of the battle scenes had to be reshot because it was noticed many of the extras were wearing wristwatches and sunglasses.
Blue body paint in battles had stopped being used about 800 years before this movie takes place
1996 – The English Patient
Juliette Binoche had to have the Academy repair her Oscar after she let her 3 year old son play with it.
1997 – Titanic
James Cemeron went scuba diving to the the actual Titanic wreckage multiple times. He went so often he wound up spending more time inside than any of the original passengers.
The staircase had to be built larger for the film than it was on the ship due to people being larger in 1997 than 1917.
1998- Shakespeare in Love
Ben Affleck took a role in the film to be near his girlfriend Gwyneth Paltrow.
1999 – American Beauty
The film was orginally suppose to be about Amy Fisher, who shot her lover Joey Buttafuco’s wife. However every draft of the script drifted further from it.
2000 – Gladiator
Wounds seen on Russell Crowe’s face after the opening battle were real. They were caused when his horse backed him into a tree branch.
2001 – A Beautiful Mind
Although the film is based on the real John Nash, certain details of his life were left out. Such as:
1) he was married twice, both to the same woman
2) in the past, he had several affairs with both men and women;
3) he was arrested by the police by scandal
4) He fathered a child out-of-wedlock in his twenties
5) he believed that through his mental illness the extra-terrestrials spoke him, giving his advanced knowledge by means of cosmic connection with them
6) he tried to renounce to his American nationality some times, in the belief that the USA government pursued him
7) he made numerous anti-Semitic comments during his period of extreme mental illness, most of which equated Jews with world Communism.
2002 – Chicago
Britney Spears was considered for the film.
2003 – The Lord of The Rings: Return of the King
The movie with the longest title to win best picture, it’s a shame Dr. Stragelove, or I Learned to Relax and Love the Bomb did not win when it came out.
The film was finished just 5 days before it premiered.
2004 – Million Dollar Baby
This was the last film to be nominated in every major award category.
Hillary Swank caught an infection and took a week off instead of being hospitalized for three. She didn’t tell anyone working on the film because she thought it would be out of character.
2005 – Crash
This was the last Best picture winner to be released on VHS, and the first to be released on BluRay.
2006 – The Departed
Jack Nicholson refused to wear a Red Sox cap and instead wore a Yankee one despite the film taking place in Boston. That’s some dedicated acting!
2007 – No Country For Old Men
The silencer used on the shotgun did not exist and had to be made just for this film.
2008 – Slumdog Millionaire
This became the second Best Picture winner to portray a kid jumping into a waste pool under a toilet. The first was Shindler’s List.
2009 – The Hurt Locker
Adjusting for inflation, this was the lowest grossing film to ever win Best Picture.
2010 – The King’s Speech
David Seidler stammered as a child and heard George IV’s wartime speech. He wrote the Queen Mother asking if he could make a movie based on his speech. She asked for him not do so while she was alive. He respected her wishes.
2011 – The Artist
The first silent film to win Best Picture since the first one, Wings in 1929.
The dog, Uggie, became the official spokesdog for Nintendo.
Hugo, released the same year, was also about making silent films. Both won 5 Oscars.
The film was shot at 22 frames per second, and then played back at 24 frames per second, creating a slightly sped up appearance. Many silent films have used similar techniques.
