FILM 1897: BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN

FILM 1897: BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN

TRIVIA: Heath Ledger declined to go to the one month cowboy camp that had been organized, as he had grown up on farms in Western Australia. Jake Gyllenhaal was required to attend, however, as he needed "roughing up".

When asked if he had any fears about playing a gay man, Heath Ledger replied that he was not afraid of the role, only that he wasn't mature enough to do it justice.

According to Producer James Schamus, the movie cost so little to make, that it recouped its cost during its first week of limited release.

Heath Ledger, uncertain about the role when he was first offered it, was encouraged by his then girlfriend, Naomi Watts, to take it, immediately after they both read the script. After reading the script, Ledger said he would have flown to Taiwan to meet with Ang Leein order to be hired for the role.

According to reports, Heath Ledger nearly broke co-star Jake Gyllenhaal's nose while filming a kissing scene.

Writer Annie Proulx sent both Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger an original, autographed copy of her story. When she signed the copy to Jake she wrote "To Jake..." but when she signed the copy she had intended to give to Heath she signed it "To Ennis". After writing out her personal message, she realized what she had done, and decided to let it be. At a private screening at Arclight in Hollywood, California, she reflected that Heath Ledger really was Ennis. She left the signed copy that way, because she had felt the actor embodied Ennis in every way she had imagined him.

Michelle Williams requested that her two male leads kiss in front of her to help her get to the right emotional place for her character, Alma. As she was involved with Ledger in real-life, too, she felt that such a thing would help with her portrayal. She had to goad both men as their first few attempts were far too half-hearted for her liking.

One of Daniel Day-Lewis' favorite films. He cites the reason for this as being Heath Ledger's performance. After Ledger's death, Day-Lewis dedicated his SAG award for There Will Be Blood (2007) to Ledger's memory, mentioning in particular the final scene in Ennis's trailer being "as moving as anything I have ever seen."

There was an audible gasp at the Academy Awards when presenter Jack Nicholson read out Crash (2004) as 2005's Best Film over this film, much fancied. Nicholson himself admitted to being shocked as he too had voted for Ang Lee's film.

During its first weekend of release (playing in only five U.S. theaters), this set a record for the highest per-screen gross of any non-animated movie in history.

Director Ang Lee gave Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal copies of the book, "Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest", by Will Fellows, a book that had been mentioned by both Annie Proulx and Diana Ossana as an excellent reference source, to help them understand their characters. Noting what he learned from his reading, Gyllenhaal said, "I don't think that these two characters even know what gay is."

In March 2006, Randy Quaid filed a lawsuit against Focus Features, alleging that the company had misled him into thinking that the film was a low-budget, art-house film, with no prospect of making money. He saw this as a ruse to get him to lower his salary. At the time of the lawsuit, the film had earned more than 160 million dollars. Quaid dropped the lawsuit in May, seemingly after Focus agreed to pay him a bonus. Focus, however, denied that any such payment ever took place, and Focus spokeswoman Adriene Bowles was quoted as saying, "the circumstances of him dropping the suit are as mysterious as the circumstances under which he filed his claim."

Included among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Schneider.

FILM 1894: HULK

FILM 1894: HULK

TRIVIA: Creating the Hulk in CGI was one of the most complex tasks Industrial Light & Magic had ever undertaken at that time. The computer model used 12,996 texture maps, and required 1,165 muscle movements and one hundred layers of skin. It took the combined work and efforts of about one hundred eighty ILM technicians (sixty-nine technical artists, forty-one animators, thirty-five compositors, ten muscle action animators, nine CG modellers, eight supervisors, six skin painters and five motion-capture wranglers), over two and a half million hours, and one and a half years for him to be effectively created and portrayed in the film. With all of that work, some of the public complained that the Hulk looked too fake, comparing him with Shrek (2001).

Edward Norton was approached to play Bruce Banner, but turned it down, as, despite being a fan of the Hulk, he didn't like the script. He later accepted the role in The Incredible Hulk (2008).

A lot of the microbiology work we see on-screen is real, and is the work of Director Ang Lee's wife.

According to the animators at Industrial Light & Magic, the Hulk weighs 3,452 pounds (1,565.8 kilograms), and can exert fourteen tons of pressure per square inch. His skin is ten times as strong as Kevlar. His chest measures seventeen feet and four inches (5.3 meters), his waist twelve feet and ten inches (3.3 meters), his foot four feet and three inches (1.3 meters), and his neck six feet and nine inches (2 meters). If he wore shoes, they would be (U.S.) size eighty-seven. He can move at a top speed of three hundred miles (four hundred eighty-three kilometers) per hour, and cross three to four miles (4.8 to 6.4 kilometers) in a single jump.

Nick Nolte had his hair grown wildly for this movie when he was arrested on drunk driving charges and photographed for his now infamous mug shot.

Ang Lee performed the Hulk using motion-capture technology.

Ang Lee employed the split-screen technique to cinematically mimic the panels of a comic-book page. This required many takes of one scene, which was draining for Eric Bana. It took him four takes to film Banner's first Hulk transformation, and by the time of its completion, he was on the verge of collapse.

This film holds the record for largest second weekend box-office drop for a film that opened at number one, with a 69.7 percent drop.

When the first transformation of Banner into Hulk occurs, the color of the Hulk is either gray or greenish-gray. This is an homage to the first appearance of the Hulk, when he was actually gray in his debut comic (May 1962). The publisher couldn't do gray very well, so Stan Lee changed the color to green, simply because green hadn't been used much by other characters. From the second transformation, he maintains his prominent emerald hue.

CAMEO:Lou Ferrigno: (At around twelve minutes) As a security guard. 

CAMEO: Stan Lee: (At around twelve minutes) The creator of the Hulk (1962) appeared as a security guard. Lee ad-libbed his lines.

FILM 1837: THE ICE STORM

FILM 1837: THE ICE STORM

TRIVIA: In the novel The Ice Storm, Rick Moody writes "And sometimes Paul himself was Ben Grimm, and sometimes he was Peter Parker, a.k.a. the Spider-Man" Coincidentally, Tobey Maguire plays both Paul and Peter Parker in the film versions.

Rick Moody, the author of the novel was so pleased with the film he sobbed through the end credits.

The real ice storm portrayed in the film happened December 16-17 in 1973 and was named "Felix."

To prepare for the film, Ang Lee let the cast members study stacks of magazine cutouts from the early 1970s.

Natalie Portman turned down the role of Wendy Hood.

Film debut of Katie Holmes.

Joan Allen and Tobey Maguire appear together again two years later in Pleasantville (1999).

Director Brian De Palma is an admirer of this film.

Tobey Maguire and Katie Holmes appear together again in Wonder Boys (2000). Both movies have a classroom scene where they are discussing literature.

Included among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Schneider.

Tobey Maguire and Christina Ricci both had cameos in director Terry Gilliam's 1998 black comedy, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

FILM 1666: SENSE AND SENSIBILITY

TRIVIA: Whilst working on the script, Emma Thompson's computer developed a problem and she was unable to locate the file. She took the computer to Stephen Fry, an expert in Apple computers, who, after seven hours, finally managed to retrieve the script. This is why Stephen is thanked in the credits by the producers.

During filming, the Jane Austen Society telephoned co-producer James Schamus to complain about the casting of Hugh Grant claiming that he was too good-looking to play Edward Ferrars.

Emma Thompson has recounted how during the scene where Colonel Brandon, on horseback, approaches Elinor and Marianne in the out-of-doors, many takes were ruined by the horse surrendering to a bout of flatulence. Eventually, they were forced to shoot the scene with the farting horse as the flatulence would not abate, and the rather loud reports later were edited out of the soundtrack.

Emma Thompson's first draft of the screenplay consisted of 350 hand-written pages. The final draft was a culmination of that and 13 other drafts which were written over four and a half years.

Ang Lee originally was considering Kate Winslet only for the smaller part of Lucy Steele even though she really wanted to play Marianne. When Winslet arrived at her audition she pretended that her agent had sent her to read for Marianne, and her reading won her the role.

There is an ironic twist surrounding the casting of Kate Winslet, Emma Thompson and Greg Wise. Although they portray love interests on screen, Kate Winslet and Greg Wise only dated briefly in reality before Greg took to Winslet's on-screen sister Emma Thompson. Thompson and Wise were together for 8 years before getting married. Together they have one adopted son and one biological daughter. Interestingly, Richard Lumsden who portrays Thompson's on-screen brother-in-law Robert Ferrars, is her brother-in-law in real life. Lumsden is married to Emma's younger sister, Sophie Thompson, who was also featured in two movie adaptations of Jane Austen's books, Screen Two: Persuasion (1995).and Emma (1996). Sophie Thompson portrayed in Screen Two: Persuasion (1995). the younger sister of the story's main character Anne Elliot, who was portrayed by Amanda Root, who ironically enough was sought for the role of Marianne in Sense and Sensibility (1995). Root, however, could not appear due to her obligations to film Persuasion. In a nutshell, Amanda Root landed a role in a Jane Austen adaptation and was coincidentally asked to star in another one. When she could not appear, another actress who dated the future husband of her on-screen sister's sister was given the role, and her on-screen sister's real life husband portrayed the on-screen brother-in-law of his real life sister-in-law in the same film that she could not star in.

Emma Thompson, Gemma Jones, Robert Hardy, Elizabeth Spriggs, Alan Rickman, and Imelda Staunton all appear in the Harry Potter series.

In her book "The Sense and Sensibility (1995) Screenplay & Diaries: Bringing Jane Austen's Novel to Film", Emma Thompson writes that after a particularly difficult day filming a sequence that involved a flock of sheep, Ang Lee swore that he would never again use the animals on a movie set. Ten years later, however, Ang Lee went on to direct (and win a directing Oscar for) Brokeback Mountain (2005), which is about two men who meet while sheep herding.

Director Ang Lee had not read Jane Austen's novel when Columbia first sent him Emma Thompson's script.

With her Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Award win, Emma Thompson became the first person to receive Oscars for acting and writing.

The sheer dotted muslin gown Kate Winslet, (Marianne Dashwood), wears during the lawn bowling scene at Barton Park is the same costume Charity Wakefield (Marianne Dashwood) wears at Norland Park in Sense & Sensibility (2008). The costume is also worn by Amelia Warner (Fanny Price, age 17) in Mansfield Park (1999) and by Jennifer Higham (Louisa Musgrove) at Uppercross in Persuasion (2007).

The film's release and popularity saw the original novel returning to the New York Times' Bestseller List.

The scene where Willoughby rescues Marianne in driving rain took about 50 takes. This resulted in Kate Winslet contracting hypothermia.