Reservoir Dogs. Image courtesy of Lionsgate.

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Film4 Summer Screen: Movie Trivia

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22 Jul 2019

Geek out with 42 things you probably didn't need to know about our 2019 Film4 Summer Screen season – coulda-been castings, shocking stories and tales from the making of these beloved films.


PAIN AND GLORY

  1. Pain and Glory is the seventh Pedro Almodóvar film to star Antonio Banderas - Almodóvar discovered Antonio in early 80s Madrid.Antonio remembers a fast-talking man with a red plastic briefcase sitting down with him and his friends: “He said to me, ‘You have a romantic face. You should be in movies.’”
  2. The pair then didn’t work together for 21 years after Antonio turned down a role in Almodóvar’s Kika: “Pedro had very hard words for me: ‘Hollywood will break you, you’ll waste your talent. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’ ”
  3. The film was produced by El Deseo, the production company Pedro set up with his brother to give him an unusual luxury: to be able to shoot a movie from first page to the last, rather than in the least expensive order. Pedro says ““It’s completely without precedent. Not even Scorsese himself has been able to do that."

BLACK PANTHER

  1. The superhero comic book character Black Panther actually pre-dates the founding of activist group Black Panther Party. Many people mistakenly assumed the character's name referred to the Party, so to avoid confusion, his name was changed to the Black Leopard, but it didn’t stick.
  2. Director Ryan Coogler has said the precious material only found in Wakanda (vibranium) is based on a real-life situation of the Congo mines, where the valuable mineral coltan (used in manufacturing every single mobile phone in the world, found only in the Congo region) is being mined with devastating consequences.
  3. Black Panther was the first live-action film to be shown in Saudi Arabia in 35 years. The first film was the animated The Emoji Movie the year before.

NICOLAS CAGE DOUBLE BILL: WILD AT HEART + MANDY

  1. Multiple directors have threatened to fire Cage for going overboard – including his uncle Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather ), who was not on board with the falsetto Nic insisted on using in Peggy Sue Got Married.
  2. A huge fan of Cage, actor Ethan Hawke (Before Sunrise) has called him “the only actor since Marlon Brando that’s actually done anything new with the art of acting ... he's taken us away from an obsession with naturalism”.
  3. Mandy received a four-minute standing ovation at Cannes. This is nothing compared to the record holders: Farenheit 9/11 clocked 20 minutes and Pan’s Labrynth had the crowd applauding for a palm-spanking 22 minutes.

THE PRINCESS BRIDE

  1. When the film was in early development in the 70s, a then-unknown Arnold Schwarzenegger wanted to play Fezzik the giant but wasn't the first choice. By the time the movie was made in the early 90s, Schwarzenegger was such a big star they couldn't afford him.
  2. Liam Neeson revealed that he also auditioned for Fezzik, but director Rob Reiner scoffed when he heard that Neeson was 'only six foot four'.
  3. For the Princess Buttercup role, Carrie Fisher was considered, while Meg Ryan, Uma Thurman, Courtney Cox and even Whoopi Goldberg all pursued the part, which eventually went to Robin Wright, who would go on to star in Forrest Gump and House of Cards.

THE MATRIX

  1. After turning down the film, legendary Hong Kong stunt coordinator Woo-Ping Yuen asked for an exorbitant fee and impossible requests to put off the director siblings the Wachowskis. It didn’t. They complied to his high fee and promised complete control of the fight scenes and committed to four months of fight training with the actors before they went on set.
  2. The opening action scene with Trinity (Carrie Anne Moss) alone took six months of training and four days to shoot.
  3. Following the film's surprise mega-success, there was a surge in movies and video clips using ‘the Matrix look’ – slow motion, spinning camera and, most notably, the famed 'bullet time' effect of a character freezing or slowing down as the camera pans around them.
  4. The year The Matrix was made, 1999, is increasingly being discussed as the greatest year in modern cinema history. We're holding a panel to debate the topic (with a free drink) as part of our Behind the Screen programme.

GOD'S OWN COUNTRY

  1. The film’s co-lead Josh O’Connor is currently shooting the fourth season of The Crown, in which he’ll play none other than Prince Charles.
  2. The film is semi-autobiographical – director Francis Lee grew up on a family pig farm, and the film recounts a relationship he had with a Romanian worker on a farm.


THIS IS ENGLAND
 
  1. Lead actor Thomas Turgoose had never acted before, had been banned from his school play for behaving badly and even demanded £5 to turn to go to the call back auditions. He was originally scouted at a scheme for socially disadvantaged kids in Grimsby.
  2. When Turgoose's mother died shortly after filming co-stars Andrew Shim and Stephen Graham made a 'gentlemen’s agreement' that they would always be there for him.
  3. Jack O'Connell (Skins) auditioned for the lead role of Shaun, but lost out to Turgoose. However, Shane Meadows was impressed by O'Connell's audition though and wrote the role of Pukey especially for him.


STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON

  1. The actors re-recorded N.W.A.'s entire Straight Outta Compton album (with its producer Harvey Mason Jr.) to help them get into character.
  2. The film was the highest grossing music biopic of all-time, knocking Walk the Line off top spot. That was until Bohemian Rhapsody came along last year, and Rocket Man is now snipping at its heels.
  3. Despite the success of the movie, the film has never been screened in Compton. Because the city doesn't have a cinema.

BEFORE SUNRISE + BEFORE SUNSET: DOUBLE BILL

  1. Ethan Hawke was working on two time-travelling film projects with director Richard Linklater at the same time - the Before triology, in which he played Jesse every nine years (1995, 2004, 2013) as well as Boyhood, shot once a year from 2002 to 2013.
  2. In Before Sunrise, the Ferris wheel Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy ride in Vienna is the same one used in The Third Man.
  3. As Before Sunset takes in semi-real time during the mid-late afternoon, it was the only time of day director Richard Linklater would shoot the scenes in the film. He felt it added to the hyper reality of the film, and often relied on the actors to get perfect takes at the right time.

GET OUT

  1. The iconic shot of Daniel Kaluuya with a single tear down his cheek was what got him the lead role in his audition. Writer, co-producer, and director Jordan Peele said Kaluuya did about five takes of a key scene, in which his character needs to cry, and each was so perfect that the single tear came down at the exact same time for each take.
  2. Chance the Rapper was so impressed by Get Out that he bought all of the movie tickets from a few Chicago movie theaters just so people could go see the film for free. In one of his tweets talking about the film, he says, "Just pull up with an ID and enjoy the movie."


THEY LIVE

  1. The most infamous line, “I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass, and I'm all out of bubble gum" was ad-libbed by the lead actor Roddy Piper, a TV wrestler who had very little acting experience.
  2. The film’s plot, in which the everyman protagonists see subliminal messages and that people are truly zombies through x-ray glasses was described by Carpenter as a critique of ‘yuppies, Reaganomics and unrestrained capitalism’.
  3. Director John 'Master of Horror' Carpenter famously once said “In France, I'm an auteur; in Germany, a filmmaker; in Britain; a genre film director; and, in the USA, a bum.”

CLUELESS

  1. Clueless is an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma and actually dovetails pretty closely – they are both comedies of manners about a precocious heroine (Emma/Cher) from the upper echelons of their respective societies (Highbury/Beverly Hills), who embark on match-making and makeovers.
  2. Paul Rudd (above) who plays Cher’s brooding, college-aged stepbrother auditioned for the role of Christian, Elton and even Murray (who he assumed was a white teenager trying to act like a rapper).
  3. Writer-director Amy Heckerling originally pitched Clueless as a Beverly Hills, 90210-style show for Fox called No Worries. Unfortunately Fox feared no one would care about a show with so many girls, so Heckerling reshaped her characters into a feature screenplay.


RESERVOIR DOGS

  1. The film contains two hundred seventy-two uses of the word "fuck".
  2. Shot on such a low budget that the cast had to wear mostly their own clothes, the film was a smash hit – in fact it was voted best independent film ever by Empire Magazine.
  3. Madonna, who is the main topic of the opening conversation, really liked the film, but refuted Quentin Tarantino's interpretation of her song ‘Like a Virgin’. She gave him a copy of her "Erotica" album, signed, "To Quentin. It's not about dick, it's about love. Madonna."


THE PIANO

  1. Jane Campion became the first woman to win the prestigious Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival with this film, though she was unable to receive the award in person, as she was due to give birth.
  2. For her Oscar-winning role of Ada, Holly Hunter learnt to play piano and in fact played most of the on-screen piano sequences herself.

To celebrate the screening, we've partnered with London-based brand Girls on Tops to create a t-shirt with Jane Campion's name emblazoned across the chest, which you can be purchased with your film ticket for £30.


INNA DE YARD

  1. Inna de Yard recounts a group of reggae legends – including Ken Boothe, Winston McAnuff and Judy Mowatt – reforming to record an unplugged style album, which was released earlier this year and you can listen on Spotify.
  2. British director Peter Webber has produced a number of documentaries as well as fiction films (Girl with a Pearl Earring, Hannibal Rising) – in our Q&A with him he describes “it’s like using different kinds of muscles… but you’re doing the same thing”.

We’ve partnered with the Jamaican Tourist Board to offer one lucky Inna de Yard fan two return flights from London to Jamaica. Enter here.

 

BOOK NOW

This year's Film4 Summer Screen runs 08–21 August 2019

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