Hello to everyone who has been following this blog for many years - I'm still blogging, I'm just moving over to https://www.claireheffer.com/blog - please continue to follow and let me take this opportunity to thank everyone who has been kind enough to visit over the years. May the lists continue...
Showing posts with label underground. Show all posts
Showing posts with label underground. Show all posts

Friday, 20 May 2016



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.



Sunday, 12 April 2015




FILM 1304: FAR OUT ISN'T FAR ENOUGH: THE TOMI UNGERER STORY


Far Out Isn't Far Enough: The Tomi Ungerer Story depicts one man's wild, lifelong adventure of testing societal boundaries through his use of subversive art. This 98-minute film combines traditional documentary storytelling with original animation from over 70 years worth of art from the renegade children's book author and illustrator. Using a historical palette of 20th century events to paint an artist's epic yet controversial life story, this HD documentary film offers a feature-length retrospective of Ungerer's life and art, pondering the complexities and contradictions of a man who, armed with an acerbic wit, an accusing finger and a razor sharp pencil, gave visual representation to the revolutionary voices during one of the most tantalizing and dramatic periods in American history. Far Out Isn't Far Enough explores the circumstances of his meteoric rise and fall on American soil, but also delves into Ungerer's formative years leading up to, and prolific years since, his time in America.

Thursday, 12 December 2013




Book 90: Fight Club – Chuck Palahniuk

History: Palahniuk once had an altercation while camping, and though he returned to work bruised and swollen, his co-workers avoided asking him what had happened on the camping trip. Their reluctance to know what happened in his private life inspired him to write Fight Club.
Palahniuk first tried to publish another novel, Invisible Monsters, but publishers rejected it as too disturbing. Therefore, Palahniuk instead concentrated on Fight Club, intending it to be more disturbing. Initially Fight Club was published as a seven-page short story in the compilation Pursuit of Happiness (1995), but Palahniuk expanded it to novel length (in which the original short story became chapter six); Fight Club: A Novel was published in 1996.