FILM 1755: POINT BREAK

FILM 1755: POINT BREAK

TRIVIA: Keanu Reeves, who learned to surf for his role, still surfs as a hobby to this day.

Patrick Swayze was an accomplished skydiver, and took part in the big skydiving scene. He made fifty-five jumps in total.

For many of the surfing scenes, Patrick Swayze refused to use a stunt double, as he never had one for fight scenes or car chases.

Johnny Utah became a F.B.I. Agent after a knee injury ended his football career. In real-life, Keanu Reeves was once an aspiring hockey player who suffered a knee injury, and went on to become an actor.

Tyler explains to Johnny Utah that Patrick Swayze's character is named Bodhi, the Bodhisattva. Bodhisattva is a term in the Buddhist religion meaning an enlightened being who, out of compassion, forgoes nirvana in order to save others. Bodhi means "wakefulness".

The scene in which Utah jumps after Bodhi without a parachute, was tested by MythBusters (2003). It was determined that Utah and Bodhi would not have been able to free-fall for ninety seconds (as in the film), nor would they have been able to hold a conversation in mid-air. However, it was determined that, by streamlining his body, Utah could have conceivably caught up with Bodhi after jumping from the plane.

The beach spot, where the football game is played at the beginning of the film, is the same spot used for the soccer game in The Karate Kid (1984).

In her DVD commentary for Strange Days (1995), Director Kathryn Bigelow described filming the foot chase scenes in this movie using a stripped-down, hand-held 35mm camera nicknamed the "Pogo-Cam". The camera weighed eighteen pounds, and was equipped with a gyro-stabilizer, borrowed from a Steadicam. A wire loop on top of the camera gave Steadicam Operator James Muro a rough idea of what was in the frame as he followed the actors at breakneck speed.

The skinny, long-haired guy, named Tone, in Warchild (Vincent Klyn) and Bunker's (Chris Pedersen's) gang was Anthony Kiedis, lead singer for the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Patrick's Roadhouse, often attributed to an in-joke aimed at Patrick Swayze, is a real place located at 106 Entrada Drive, Santa Monica, California. It's right on the Pacific Coast Highway, which would be a reasonably logical place for Johnny and Bodhi to have a meal.

FILM 1163: BONNIE AND CLYDE

TRIVIA: The characters Eugene Grizzard and Velma Davis (played by Gene Wilder and Evans Evans) are based on Dillard Darby and Sophia Stone of Ruston, Louisiana. On the night of April 27, 1933, Darby and Stone were briefly kidnapped by the Barrow gang, who had stolen Darby's car. After driving around Ruston for several hours, Darby and Stone were released unharmed. During the drive, when Darby mentioned that he was an undertaker, Bonnie Parker remarked, "Well, maybe you'll work on me someday." A year later, Darby did just that. He was one of the undertakers who worked on Bonnie Parker's body after she and Clyde Barrow were killed in the roadside ambush near Gibsland, Louisiana, in May, 1934.

The real Blanche Barrow sued Warner Brothers over the way she was depicted in the film. In reality, Barrow was the same age as Bonnie Parker, arguably better looking than her, she was not a preacher's daughter and had married Buck knowing full well that he was an escaped prisoner and twice divorced.

Roger Ebert had only been a film critic for six months when he saw this film and hailed it as the first masterpiece he had seen on the job.

During one of the bank robberies, Buck Barrow (Gene Hackman) does a leap over the tellers' cage. This was a stunt routinely pulled by John Dillinger, who in turn learned it from watching Douglas Fairbanks in the "Zorro" movies.

Michael J. Pollard didn't realize in eating scenes that you don't actually eat all the food because of the possibility of repeated takes. Sure enough, he soon regretted it in the scene in which the outlaws kidnap a couple and eat their lunch in the car. By the 12th take, Pollard was feeling decidedly ill, having had to eat 12 whole hamburgers.

Bonnie's family reunion scene was shot through a window screen to give it a hazy, nostalgic effect.

Heavily influenced by the French New Wave directors, mainly through its rapid shifts of tone and its choppy editing.

Before deciding to play the role himself, producer Warren Beatty's first choice for the role of Clyde Barrow was musician and composer Bob Dylan, who resembled the actual Barrow more strongly than Beatty.

When Warren Beatty was on board as producer only, his sister Shirley MacLaine was a strong possibility to play Bonnie. But when Beatty decided to play Clyde himself, for obvious reasons he decided not to use MacLaine.

Warner Brothers had so little faith in the film that, in an unprecedented move, it offered its first-time producer Warren Beatty 40% of the gross instead of a minimal fee. The movie then went on to gross over $50 million.

Debut of Gene Wilder.

When scouting for locations, production designer Dean Tavoularis was delighted to see that a lot of the smaller Texas towns hadn't changed much from the 1930s.