Academy Award Winners – Behind the Scenes

Title: The King’s Speech (2010)

Plot Summary: The story of King George VI of Britain, his impromptu ascension to the throne and the speech therapist who helped the unsure monarch become worthy of it.

Director: Tom Hooper

Writer: David Seidler

Stars: Colin Firth, Geofrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter

Budget: $15,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend: $355,450 (USA) (28 November 2010) (4 Screens)

Gross: $123,546,104 (USA) (6 March 2011)

Trivia:

The film was originally rated 15 by the BBFC, for 17 occurrences of the word “fuck”, but on appeal this was reduced to 12A, with the information “Contains strong language in a speech therapy context”.

Guy Pearce plays George VI’s older brother Edward VIII. In actuality, Pearce is 7 years younger than Colin Firth.

The author, David Seidler suffered from a stammer as a child. Having heard George VI’s wartime speech as a child, he (later in his adult life) had written to the Queen Mother asking for permission to use the King’s story to create a film. The Queen Mother asked him not to during her lifetime, citing that the memories were too painful. Seidler respected her request.

The role of King George VI was written with Paul Bettany in mind but Bettany declined to spend more time with his family and later admitted that he regretted his decision. Colin Firth was cast instead and later nominated for and awarded with an Oscar for his performance.

While talking about Shakespeare, one of Logue’s sons mentions ‘the Scottish play’. The play he refers to is ‘Macbeth’; according to a widely held superstition, this particular play is cursed, and it brings bad luck to say the title ‘Macbeth’ aloud.

Speech therapist Lionel Logue’s diary was discovered just nine weeks prior to principal photography. Quotations from original clinical notes in them were worked into the film’s screenplay.

Read more at  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1504320/

Thor – Official Trailer

Famous lines – Watch the scene

Famous lines – Answer Key

05) “The first night’s the toughest. No doubt about it. They march you in naked as the day you were born. Skin burning, and half blind from that delousing shit they put on ya. And when they put you in that cell, and those bars slam home. That’s when you know it’s for real. Whole life blown away in the blink of an eye. Nothing left, but all the time in the world to think about it.”

Title: The Shawshank Redemption

Year: 1994

Director: Frank Darabont

Plot: Two imprisoned men bond over a number of years, finding solace and eventual redemption through acts of common decency.

Lead Roles: Tim Robbins (Andy Dufresne). Morgan Freeman (Ellis Boyd “Red” Redding) and Bob Gunton (Warden Norton)

Trivia: The American Humane Association monitored the filming of scenes involving Brooks’ crow. During the scene where he fed it a maggot, the AHA objected on the grounds that it was cruel to the maggot, and required that they use a maggot that had died from natural causes. One was found, and the scene was filmed.

In Stephen King’s original story, Red was written as a white Irishman. In the movie, they left the line, “Maybe it’s ’cause I’m Irish”, in as a joke, even after they had cast Morgan Freeman as Red.

Although a very modest hit in theaters, it became one of the highest grossing video rentals of all time.

Kevin Costner turned down the role of Andy Dufresne, a decision he strongly regretted later on.

Stephen King sold the film rights for his novella for a dollar.

Famous lines – Watch the scene

Famous Lines – Answer Key

04) “See, the sad thing about a guy like you is in 50 years you’re gonna start doing some thinking on your own, and you’re gonna come up with the fact that there are 2 certainties in life. One, don’t do that. And two you dropped 150 grand on a fucking education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library.”

Title: Goo Will Hunting

Year: 1997

Director: Gus Van Sant

Plot: Will Hunting, a janitor at MIT, has a gift for mathematics but needs help from a psychologist to find direction in his life.

Lead Roles: Matt Damon (Will Hunting), Robin Williams (Sean Maguire) and Ben Affleck (Chuckie Sullivan)

Trivia: Minnie Driver’s character Skylar is named after Damon’s girlfriend, Skylar Satenstein, who left Damon for Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich before filming began. Damon and Driver became romantically involved during production.

The mathematical equations seen in the opening credits are part of a math technique called “Fourier Analysis” which approximates functions by sines and cosines. It’s used a lot in physics and engineering.

The scene where Sean and Will are in his office, and Sean starts talking about his dead wife and her farting antics. These lines were ad-libbed by Robin Williams, which is probably why Matt Damon is laughing so hard. If you watch the scene carefully you can notice the camera shaking, probably due to the cameraman laughing as well.

When Will (Matt Damon) and Sean (Robin Williams) meet for the first time in Sean’s office, Will recommends that Sean read Howard Zinn’s “People’s History of the United States”. As a boy, Matt Damon was Zinn’s neighbor and provided the voice for the CD recording of that book.

When Will is mopping the floor at the beginning of the movie his name tag identifies him as “Bob” rather than “Will”.

The movie was named as one of “The 20 Most Overrated Movies of All Time” by Premiere.

Famous Lines – Answer Key

03) “Hey, whataya gonna do, nice college boy, eh? Didn’t want to get mixed up in the Family business, huh? Now you wanna gun down a police captain. Why? Because he slapped ya in the face a little bit? Hah? What do you think this is the Army, where you shoot ‘em a mile away? You’ve gotta get up close like this and bada-bing. you blow their brains all over your nice Ivy League suit. C’mere… You’re taking this very personal.”

Title: The Godfather

Year: 1972

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Plot: The aging patriarch of an organized crime dynasty transfers control of his clandestine empire to his reluctant son.

Lead Roles: Marlon Brando (Don Vito Corleone), Al Pacino (Michael Corleone), James Caan (Santino ‘Sonny’ Corleone), Robert Duvall (Tom Hagen) and Diane Keaton (Kay Adams)

Trivia: According to an August 1971 article by Nicholas Pileggi in The New York Times, a supporting cast member became so committed to his role that he accompanied a group of Mafia enforcers on a trip to beat up strike breakers during a labor dispute. But the enforcers had the wrong address and were unable to find the strike breakers. The actor’s name was not revealed.

Mafia crime boss Joe Colombo and his organization The Italian-American Civil Rights League started a campaign to stop the film from being made. According to Robert Evans in his autobiography, Colombo called his home and threatened him and his family. Paramount received many letters during pre-production from Italian-Americans – including politicians – decrying the film as anti-Italian. They threatened to protest and disrupt filming. Producer Albert S. Ruddy met with Colombo who demanded that the terms “Mafia” and “Cosa Nostra” not be used in the film. Ruddy gave them the right to review the script and make changes. He also agreed to hire League members (read: mobsters) as extras and advisers. The angry letters ceased after this agreement was made. Paramount owner Charlie Bluhdorn read about the agreement in The New York Times and was so outraged that he fired Ruddy and shut down production. But Evans convinced Bluhdorn that the agreement was beneficial for the film and Ruddy was rehired.

Marlon Brando wanted to make Don Corleone “look “like a bulldog,” so he stuffed his cheeks with cotton wool for the audition. For actual filming, he wore a mouthpiece made by a dentist; this appliance is on display in the American Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York.

During rehearsals, a false horse’s head was used for the bedroom scene. For the actual shot, a real horse’s head was used, acquired from a dog-food factory. According to John Marley, his scream of horror was real as he was not informed that a real head was going to be used.

The cat held by Marlon Brando in the opening scene was a stray the actor found while on the lot at Paramount, and was not originally called for in the script. So content was the cat that its purring muffled some of Brando’s dialogue, and, as a result, most of his lines had to be looped.

There are approximately 61 scenes in the film that feature people eating/drinking, or just food.

Famous Lines – Answer Key

02) “You get to know a lot butchering meat. We’re made up of the same things -flesh and blood, tissue, organs. I love to work with pigs. The nearest thing in nature to the flesh of a man is the flesh of a pig.”

Title: Gangs of New York

Year: 2002

Director:  Martin Scorsese

Plot: In 1863, Amsterdam Vallon returns to the Five Points area of New York City seeking revenge against Bill the Butcher, his father’s killer.

Lead Roles: Leonard DiCaprio (Amsterdan Vallon), Daniel Day-Lewis (Bill the Butcher) and Cameron Diaz (Jenny Everdeane)

Trivia: Martin Scorsese recreated 19th-century New York on the lot of Cinecitta studios in Rome. When George Lucas visited the massive set, he reportedly turned to Martin Scorsese and said “Sets like that can be done with computers now.”

Most of the gangs mentioned by name were real 19th century New York gangs. Bill “The Butcher” Cutting is based largely on real-life New York gang leader Bill Poole, who also was known as “The Butcher” and had much the same prestige as Daniel Day-Lewis’ character.

During filming Daniel Day-Lewis talked with his film accent during the entire time of production, even when he was not on the set.

Leonardo  DiCaprio accidentally broke Daniel  Day-Lewis’ nose while filming a fight scene. Day-Lewis continued to film the scene despite the injury.

Due to the shortage of English speaking actors in Italy, some of the extras were U.S. Air Force personnel from the 31st Fighter Wing, stationed at nearby Aviano Air Base.

Famous Lines – Answer Key

01) “We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won’t, and we’re slowly learning that fact, and we’re very very pissed off.”

Title: Fight Club

Year: 1999

Director: David Fincher

Plot: An office employee and a soap salesman build a global organization to help vent male aggression. Well, that’s just the beginning…

Lead Roles: Edward Norton (The Narrator), Brad Pitt (Tyler Durden)  and Helena Bonham Carter (Marla Singer)

Trivia: 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.

In the short scene when Brad Pitt and Edward Norton are drunk and hitting golf balls, they really are drunk, and the golf balls are sailing directly into the side of the catering truck.

In the scene where Tyler is giving an inspirational speech to the Fight Club members, he says “We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars.” Right as he says “rock star” at 1:11:00, he looks specifically at Jared Leto’s character. Jared Leto formed the band ’30 Seconds to Mars’ in 1998. Their last album went platinum.

Famous Lines

Can you identify the lines below? From what movies were they taken?

01) “We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won’t, and we’re slowly learning that fact, and we’re very very pissed off.”

02) “You get to know a lot butchering meat. We’re made up of the same things -flesh and blood, tissue, organs. I love to work with pigs. The nearest thing in nature to the flesh of a man is the flesh of a pig.”

03) “Hey, whataya gonna do, nice college boy, eh? Didn’t want to get mixed up in the Family business, huh? Now you wanna gun down a police captain. Why? Because he slapped ya in the face a little bit? Hah? What do you think this is the Army, where you shoot ’em a mile away? You’ve gotta get up close like this and bada-bing. you blow their brains all over your nice Ivy League suit. C’mere… You’re taking this very personal.”

04) “See, the sad thing about a guy like you is in 50 years you’re gonna start doing some thinking on your own, and you’re gonna come up with the fact that there are 2 certainties in life. One, don’t do that. And two you dropped 150 grand on a fucking education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library.”

05) “The first night’s the toughest. No doubt about it. They march you in naked as the day you were born. Skin burning, and half blind from that delousing shit they put on ya. And when they put you in that cell, and those bars slam home. That’s when you know it’s for real. Whole life blown away in the blink of an eye. Nothing left, but all the time in the world to think about it.”