FILM 1986: THE BREAK-UP

FILM 1986: THE BREAK-UP

TRIVIA: Vince Vaughn's parents have bit roles in the movie. His mother plays a tourist and his father plays Jennifer Aniston's father.

Vince Vaughn gained 26 pounds for the role. Vaughn was reported to have gained weight as a result of his recent decision to quit smoking.

In the opening scene at Wrigley Field, Jon Favreau makes a reference to going to "Wiener Circle" to have hot dogs after the game. Wiener Circle is a hot dog stand famous for the staff yelling and cursing at customers when they order. If the customer does not return the favor, they do not take your order. Generally, though, this only happens late at night on the weekends.

Toward the end, Vince Vaughn uses his favorite line when he tells the passengers on his tour boat about getting hopped up and making some bad decisions. He uses the same line at the beginning of his role in The Wedding Crashers.

Jennifer Aniston's character Brooke gets a "Telly Savalas" wax job during the movie. In real life, Savalas was Aniston's godfather.

This is the fourth time Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau have been in a movie together (after Swingers (1996), Made (2001), and Rudy (1993)).

John Michael Higgins plays a member of an acapella group called the Tone Rangers in this movie. Several years later, he goes on to play an acapella competition commentator in the movies Pitch Perfect and Pitch Perfect 2.

Second film starring Vince Vaughn and Vincent D'Onofrio, the first one was " The Cell" (2000)

FILM 1910: A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN

FILM 1910: A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN

TRIVIA: All of the injuries and bruises in the film were real injuries that the actresses received during filming.

The "strawberry" bruise Renée Coleman received on her thigh while sliding into a base remained for over a year.

During filming of the World Series games, stars took turns entertaining the unpaid extras. Tom Hanks did puppet shows over the dugout, Rosie O'Donnell did stand-up comedy; and various actors pretended to be Madonna and sang her songs after the singer balked at performing for the fans.

For the famous split catch, Geena Davis had to have a stunt double slide into the split. Although Davis could do the splits, as shown, she couldn't slide into it.

Geena Davis joined the production as a late replacement for Debra Winger, a few days before filming was due to start. Davis's character was supposed to be one of the greatest female baseball players in America, and the cast had been doing baseball training for months. Within weeks, Davis had mastered the game, and was regularly beating all her co-stars.

The more mature Dottie and Kit are played by Lynn Cartwright and Kathleen Butler, but their voices are dubbed by Geena Davis and Lori Petty.

Actresses auditioning for the film had to prove they could play baseball. All the actresses cast in the film, apart from Geena Davis, did their own baseball stunts. None of the performers wanted stunt doubles.

Tom Hanks gained thirty pounds in preparation for his role. He attributed the weight he gained to a nearby Dairy Queen. All during filming, Penny Marshall encouraged Hanks to keep on eating. Meanwhile, she also told Rosie O'Donnell to eat as little as possible.

In 2012, the film was selected by the U.S. Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry archives.

Lori Petty was, in reality, a faster runner than Geena Davis, and had to run slower while appearing she was running at full speed.

Jon Lovitz had a more substantial role in the film's initial cut. During the extensive post-production editing and screening process, the filmmakers used only his meanest comments and most obvious punchlines and found the audience was roaring with laughter at everything he said. They decided to focus on those moments, cut out extraneous material, and ended up with one of the most popular elements of the final film.

The film portrays the league as initially unpopular and unprofitable, until demeaning gimmicks are used to attract male audiences. In reality, the league was popular and profitable from the start, largely because it played in towns in the upper Midwest that had no way of watching a live baseball game. Eventually, the league grew into a ten-team two-division league. The advent of televised baseball games in the early fifties, however, would lead to the demise in the popularity of the league.

The movie's line "There's no crying in baseball." was voted as the #54 movie quote by the American Film Institute (out of 100).

After league tryouts were completed, all of the players were sent to "Charm and beauty school". This is factual, as the real AAGPBL players were sent to the Helena Rubenstein Beauty Salon to be made over, and they attended Helena Rubenstein's Evening Charm School after afternoon practices where proper etiquette, hygiene and the leagues dress code were taught and reinforced.

Lori Petty and Rosie O'Donnell were the two best players and had hitting competitions. Both could hit the fences at major-league parks.

Not even Tom Hanks knew when he was going to be done "peeing." Penny Marshall was in a stall with a hose and a bucket making the noise.

In Evansville, Indiana, where the Racine games and World series was filmed, Madonnawas so rude to citizens, hotel and restaurant staff, and other locals, that her reputation is still tarnished there. She even spoke poorly of the city in interviews.

Rosie O'Donnell's character, Doris, asks "What are you a Genius?" to Dottie. Geena Davis actually has an IQ of 140. Having an IQ of 140 is actually considered the starting point for the "Genius" level.

Marisa Tomei filmed an audition tape of her playing baseball, being coached by Joe Pesci, on the set of My Cousin Vinny (1992), but according to Penny Marshall, she just wasn't a ball player.

Coaches used a Slip 'n' Slide to teach the actresses how to slide. The first three girls got concussions. They tried different training methods after that.

Sean Young and Demi Moore were both considered for Dottie. Demi had to back out because she became pregnant. Penny Marshall remarked that "Bruce literally screwed her out of the part."

Penny Marshall was the first female director to have a movie earn over 100 million at the box office, after originally being told by the studio they weren't considering her for the role of director because she was a woman, and she wouldn't be able to handle the complexities of being a director, according to Garry Marshall.

Hillary Clinton is a fan of this movie and quoted a line in a graduation speech.

FILM 1699: LONG SHOT

TRIVIA: The title of this documentary, "Long Shot," has a double meaning. Crowd footage at a baseball game is likely to be filmed from a distance - the definition of a "long shot" in camerawork parlance. And there was only a very small chance that Catalan's lawyers would be able to find any footage exonerating him - so their defense strategy was figuratively a "long shot."

FILM 1327: FIELD OF DREAMS

TRIVIA: After the movie was completed test audiences didn't like the name "Shoeless" Joe Jackson because they said it sounded like a movie about a bum or hobo. Universal called director-screenwriter Phil Alden Robinson to tell him that "Shoeless Joe" didn't work, and the studio changed the title of the film to "Field of Dreams". When Robinson heard the news of the change, he called W.P. Kinsella, the author of the book, and told him the "bad" news, but apparently he didn't care, saying that "Shoeless Joe" was the title the publishing company gave the book. Kinsella's original title was "Dream Field".

The studio built the baseball diamond on an actual farm in Dyersville, Iowa. After the filming was completed, the family owning the farm kept the field, and added a small hut where you could buy inexpensive souvenirs. As of 1990, visitors were free to come to the field and play baseball as they please.

The movie's line "If you build it, he will come." was voted as the #39 movie quote by the American Film Institute (out of 100).

Thousands of pallets of green grass were brought in to make the baseball field, but due to the haste in planting because of the shooting schedule, the grass was not able to grow appropriately and died. In order to keep the grass green, the production crew painted the grass.

Then unknown, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are among the thousands of extras in the Fenway Park scene, and are uncredited. Over a decade later, when Phil Alden Robinson welcomed Affleck to the set of The Sum of All Fears (2002), Affleck said, "Nice working with you again." Robinson asked, "What do you mean 'again'?" and Affleck explained the connection.

J.D. Salinger, on whom the character Terence Mann is based, was very offended by the fictional portrayal of himself in W.P. Kinsella's novel "Shoeless Joe", upon which the film is based. His lawyers said that they would be "unhappy if it [the story] were transferred to other media," so the studio created the character of Terence Mann.

Moonlight Graham's one-game baseball career is not as rare as might be suspected. In fact, there are nearly 1,500 players whose entire Major League career consisted of just one game.

The last cinema film of Burt Lancaster. He was 74 at the time of filming.

Gaby Hoffman's first feature film performance.

Film 908: Moneyball

Trivia: When Steven Soderbergh was still supposed to direct, he cast Brad Pitt and Demetri Martin in the lead roles and had already shot interview scenes with baseball players Lenny Dykstra, Mookie Wilson and Darryl Strawberry to be included in the film.

Despite suggestions in the movie that Scott Hatteberg was a bad-fielding first baseman, he ended the year with a fielding percentage (.994) higher than the league average for his position (.993).

Bill James, noted as the statistical influence for the main characters' analysis, is regarded by many to be the father of sabermetrics. This study of advanced baseball statistics is named after the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), an organization to which James and other sabermetrics pioneers belong. The film puts a heavy emphasis upon on-base percentage (OBP), though concepts like on-base-plus-slugging-percentage (OPS), now a widely-accepted measure of a player's hitting ability, are not mentioned. Concepts like runs created (RBIs plus runs scored), ERA+ and others widely used by statisticians are also not mentioned, perhaps owing to their increased acceptance in the years since the events portrayed in the film.

The Oakland A's set the new American League record for consecutive wins, with 20. The all-time Major League record is 26, set by the New York Giants in 1916, including one tie. Without ties, the record belongs to the 1935 Chicago Cubs (21 straight wins).

First baseball movie to be nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award (Oscar) since Field of Dreams twenty-two years earlier.

Cameo: Spike Jonze:  as Alán, the socially awkward partner to Billy Beane's (Brad Pitt's) ex-wife in the film.