FILM 1528: DEMOLITION MAN

TRIVIA: Wesley Snipes's kicks and punches sometimes look lurchy and awkward. Snipes is a black belt in real life, and his kicks and punches were so fast that they blurred on camera. Hence the producers asked him to slow them down.

Sylvester Stallone has stated, in interviews, that the idea behind the three seashells was that two were used like chopsticks or to clamp together to pull waste out of the body and the third was used to scrape what was left over. No explanation was made about how they were to be cleaned or sanitized between uses.

Fred Dekker did uncredited rewrites on the script. When he was brought on, the script began in the future and Spartan was introduced when he was brought out of suspended animation. Dekker suggested that the film open with a prologue set in 1996 to showcase Spartan and Phoenix in their natural environment, saying that "If you don't show Kansas, Oz isn't all that special."

Sandra Bullock's costume during the Taco Bell sequence was made of stones and gems weighing approximately 40 pounds. After the fight scene outside the restaurant when her character gleefully jumps and replays the action, her dress actually started to rip, which is why she is holding her arms to her sides after Stallone walks away.

Wesley Snipes hated his blonde dye job and shaved his head to get rid of it as soon as filming was complete. After the film's release, professional basketball player Dennis Rodman (who was part of the San Antonio Spurs playing roster) began dying his hair since the 1993/94 NBA season.

The action figure of the Demolition Man in full armor is actually a repainted He-Man action figure from the line of 1990.

Lenina Huxley tells John Spartan about the Arnold Schwarzenegger Presidential Library, explaining that, based on the sheer popularity of his movies, a Constitutional amendment was passed in order for Schwarzenegger to run for president, which, according to Huxley, he did. In 2003, ten years after this film's release, Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor of California and shortly after his election, three senators separately proposed amendments to the US Constitution to allow naturalized citizens to become president. Additionally, Stallone, along with Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, and Demi Moore backed the opening of the Planet Hollywood restaurant chain.

Though the movie was released in 1993, Simon Phoenix and John Spartan were supposed to have been imprisoned in the cryo-prison in 1996. In the scene where Wesley Snipes' character Simon Phoenix is releasing the other cryo-prisoners, he makes a reference to serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. Dahmer was killed in prison in 1994, after the film's release but before the cryo-prison would have been built. During TV replays, the Dahmer references were edited out because they seemed anachronistic.

Lenina Huxley's name is a combination of Lenina Crowne and Aldous Huxley. Crowne is a character in Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World' (1932), a novel about a future society where everything is predetermined for you so as not to offend others(among other reasons) and where showing even moderate emotion is considered to be unusual and possibly even illegal. Crowne's first name Lenina itself was chosen by Aldous Huxley after the pseudonym of the first dictator of the Soviet Union, Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov).

According to screenwriter Daniel Waters, the inspiration for the three shells came about when he was writing a scene where Spartan has to use a restroom. He was trying to come up with futuristic things you'd find in there. He was having trouble, so he called a buddy, another screenwriter across town, asked him if he had any ideas. Ironically enough that person was in the bathroom when he answered the phone, looked around his bathroom and said 'I have a bag of seashells on the toilet as a decoration.' Waters said 'Ok, I'll make something out of that.'

Lori Petty was initially cast as Huxley, but was fired after two days of filming due to creative differences.

CAMEO: Arnold Schwarzenegger: Schwarzenegger made a uncredited cameo in the film as a muscular thug in the police station, as a personal favor to his friend Sylvester Stallone, and accepted no payment for doing so.

FILM 1455: STALAG 17

TRIVIA: William Holden did not like the part of Sefton at all as written in the script, thinking him too selfish. He kept asking Billy Wilder to make Sefton nicer and Wilder refused. Holden actually refused the role but was forced to do it by the studio.

To improve the chances for commercial success in West Germany (at that time already an important market for Hollywood) a Paramount executive suggested to Billy Wilder that he should make the camp guards Poles rather than Germans. Wilder, whose mother and stepfather had died in the concentration camps, furiously refused and demanded an apology from the executive. When it didn't come, Wilder did not extend his contract at Paramount

Otto Preminger always claimed that, as a director, he would only shout at actors if they were late or if they did not know their lines. Employed solely as an actor in this film, he told Billy Wilder at the start of filming that if he ever forgot his lines, he would present Wilder with a jar of caviar. Wilder later told interviewers that he soon had dozens of such jars.

William Holden's acceptance speech for Best Actor was the shortest in Academy history up until that time. He said only two words: "Thank You." Holden hadn't meant to be so brief, but the televised TV broadcast of the Academy Awards ceremony was running long, and was about to be cut off the air. Holden later took out an ad in the Hollywood trade publications thanking the people he had intended to thank in his speech. The briefness of Holden's speech was later surpassed by Alfred Hitchcock (who accepted his Irving Thalberg Award in 1967 with a simple "Thanks.") and by John Mills, who after playing a mute character in Ryan's Daughter (1970), accepted his 1971 Best Supporting Actor award with a simple smile and a thankful nod of the head.

According to the Virgin Film Guide, Otto Preminger's POW Camp Commandant character Colonel von Scherbach in this film is reminiscent of Erich von Stroheim's similar character, prison camp commandant Captain von Rauffenstein in Jean Renoir's, La Grande Illusion (1937). Although Preminger played a Nazi officer, in real life he was Jewish, as was Erich von Stroheim.

Normally the German military assigned staff officers to command oflags (prison camps for enemy officers), while captains, or the equivalent outside the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe, commanded stalags for enlisted enemy soldiers. It was quite unusual, therefore, for Stalag 17 to have been commanded by a colonel such as Von Scherbach.

FILM 1190: COOL HAND LUKE

TRIVIA: In the "road-tarring" sequence, the actors actually blacktopped a mile-long stretch of highway for the county.

The opening scene, where Luke is cutting off the heads of parking meters, was filmed in Lodi, California. After the filming, the city did not replace the meters, and for many years afterward, you could go there and see a block long row of metal posts, sans meters.

Luke's prison number (37) is a reference to the Bible - Luke 1:37. ("For with God nothing shall be impossible.")

FILM 1124: THE GREAT ESCAPE

TRIVIA: Donald Pleasence had actually been a Royal Air Force pilot in World War II, who was shot down, became a prisoner of war and was tortured by the Germans. When he kindly offered advice to the film's director John Sturges, he was politely asked to keep his "opinions" to himself. Later, when another star from the film informed John Sturges that Pleasence had actually been a RAF Officer in a World War II German POW Stalag camp, Sturges requested his technical advice and input on historical accuracy from that point forward.

During the climatic motorcycle chase, John Sturges allowed Steve McQueen to ride (in disguise) as one of the pursuing German soldiers, so that in the final sequence, through the magic of editing, he's actually chasing himself.

During production, Charles Bronson met and fell in love with David McCallum's wife, Jill Ireland, and he jokingly told McCallum he was going to steal her away from him. In 1967, Ireland and McCallum divorced, and she married Bronson.

Charles Bronson, who portrays the chief tunneler, brought his own expertise and experiences to the set: he had been a coal miner before turning to acting and gave director John Sturges advice on how to move the earth. As a result of his work in the coal mines, Bronson suffered from claustrophobia just as his character had.

Steve McQueen held up production because he demanded that the script be rewritten to give his character more to do.

The film was shot entirely on location in Europe, with a complete camp resembling Stalag Luft III built near Munich, Germany. Exteriors for the escape sequences were shot in the Rhine Country and areas near the North Sea, and Steve McQueen's motorcycle scenes were filmed in Fussen (on the Austrian border) and the Alps. All interiors were filmed at the Bavaria Studio in Munich.

The real-life escape preparations involved 600 men working for well over a year. The escape did have the desired effect of diverting German resources, including a doubling of the number of guards after the Gestapo took over the camp from the Luftwaffe.