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    Uncle John's Facts to Go Screen Gems
    Uncle John's Facts to Go Screen Gems
    Uncle John's Facts to Go Screen Gems
    Ebook88 pages57 minutes

    Uncle John's Facts to Go Screen Gems

    By Bathroom Readers' Institute

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    About this ebook

    In a world…where movies rule…only one man…can write a super-fun e-book about them!

    If you love movies as much as we do, you won’t want to miss this epic e-book! Several classic Bathroom Reader articles, along with a few new ones, will light up your tiny screen with all-things cinema—from the early days of silent movies to the futuristic world of visual effects. You’ll laugh at hilarious bloopers and cringe at stunts gone wrong. And you’ll never look at movies the same way again. So please turn off your phones and try not talk while you read about…

     

    • Awkward movie tie-in products—like Hunger Games silverware

    • Pulp Fiction, starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus (and other “Almost Cast” actors)
    • The enormous cajones of Hollywood’s stunt drivers

    • Our bleak future, as predicted by sci-fi movies

    • What a movie producer actually does all day
    • Why previews are called "trailers"

    • The all-time funnies movie lines

    • Ebert’s best barbs
    • Who was Oscar?

     …And much, much more!
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPortable Press
    Release dateAug 22, 2014
    ISBN9781626862425
    Uncle John's Facts to Go Screen Gems
    Author

    Bathroom Readers' Institute

    The Bathroom Readers' Institute is a tight-knit group of loyal and skilled writers, researchers, and editors who have been working as a team for years. The BRI understands the habits of a very special market—Throne Sitters—and devotes itself to providing amazing facts and conversation pieces.

    Read more from Bathroom Readers' Institute

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      Book preview

      Uncle John's Facts to Go Screen Gems - Bathroom Readers' Institute

      FILM FIRSTS

      The first movie camera was patented in the 19th century, and motion pictures have been dazzling us ever since. Here are some other important milestones in filmmaking.

      First actor and first special effects: The first movie to use actors was a brief drama, The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots, shot in New Jersey in August 1895 and produced by Thomas Edison. The part of Mary was played by (Mr.) R. L. Thomas. This film was also the first to use special effects: After Thomas laid his head on the chopping block, the camera was stopped, a dummy was substituted, and then the camera filmed the decapitation scene.

      First movie kiss: May Irwin and John Rice in The Widow Jones (1896).

      First movie trailer: It ran at the end of the serial The Adventures of Kathlyn (hence the term trailer) in 1912 or 1913. The clip read, Does she escape the lion’s pit? See next week’s thrilling chapter! Soon trailers were moved to the beginning of the film to ensure that audiences saw them before leaving the theater.

      The naked truth: The first American film to feature nudity was called Inspiration (1915).

      First movie shown in the White House: Birth of a Nation, in 1916. Woodrow Wilson was president.

      First movie to premiere at L.A.’s Grauman’s Chinese Theatre: Cecil B. DeMille’s King of Kings (1927).

      First movie stars to leave their hand- and footprints at Grauman’s: Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, April 30, 1927.

      First movie with sound: The Jazz Singer (1927) was about 25 percent talkie, and ad-libbed at that.

      First scripted all-talking feature-length film: The gangster movie Lights of New York (1928).

      First movie shown at a drive-in: Wife Beware (1933).

      First movie star to appear on a postage stamp: Gene Kelly (1993).

      At 15, Sylvester Stallone was chosen most likely to die in the electric chair by his classmates.

      I SPY…AT THE MOVIES

      You probably remember the kids’ game I Spy with My Little Eye… Filmmakers have been playing it for years. Here are some in-jokes and gags you can look for the next time you see these movies.

      THE HANGOVER (2009)

      I Spy…a character from Rain Man

      Where to Find Her: When the main characters approach a craps table, one of the women sitting there is played by Lucinda Jenney. She was reprising her role as the prostitute who tried to pick up Dustin Hoffman’s autistic character, Raymond Babbit, in 1988’s Rain Man. She was even wearing the same blue dress.

      MAMMA MIA! (2008)

      I Spy…two members of ABBA

      Where to Find Them: The Swedish pop stars have cameos in the movie musical based on their music. Benny Andersson shows up as a piano-playing fisherman during Dancing Queen; Björn Ulvaeus appears at the end dressed as a Greek god.

      ON GOLDEN POND (1981)

      I Spy…Spencer Tracy’s hat

      Where to Find It: On Henry Fonda’s head. The fishing cap that Fonda wore in the film (his last) was a gift from co-star Katharine Hepburn. It was the first time the two legends had worked together. Spencer Tracy, who’d died in 1967, was Hepburn’s longtime lover. On the first day of filming On Golden Pond, Hepburn told Fonda that she wanted him to have Spencer’s lucky hat.

      TRUE GRIT (2010)

      I Spy…the Boston Red Sox logo

      Where to Find It: On Matt Damon’s head. He tries to work in a nod to his favorite team in all his movies. But how could he do that in a Western set 20 years before the Sox formed? In the two buckles on his cowboy hat—they form the familiar Red Sox B.

      ROCKY BALBOA (2006)

      I Spy…Sylvester Stallone

      Where to Find Him: Ringside. Background footage from real boxing matches was used for the climactic fight scene. Stallone—who wrote, directed, and starred in the film—had attended one of those fights. If you look closely you can spot him watching his fictional alter ego battle it out in the ring.

      PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES (1987)

      I Spy…the airplane from Airplane!

      Where to Find It: In the exterior shot of the passenger jet where Steve Martin and John Candy meet. In a nod to the classic comedy film, director John Hughes used the same footage from the 1980 disaster spoof.

      1408 (2007)

      I Spy…a famous ax

      Where to Find It: In a fireman’s hands. In Stephen King’s story about a malevolent hotel room, a firefighter uses an ax to break down a door. In the film, it’s the same ax used in 1980’s The Shining (another King story about an evil hotel), with which Jack Nicholson tried to kill his family after yelling, Heeere’s Johnny! (Both films were made at London’s Elstree Studios, where the ax lived in a prop closet.)

      APOCALYPTO (2006)

      I Spy…Waldo

      Where to Find Him: In a pile of corpses. Remember the Where’s Waldo? picture-book series in which Waldo’s tiny image is hidden among hundreds of other people? For some reason, in Apocalypto, a bloody epic about the final days of the Mayan civilization, director Mel Gibson inserted a single frame of a real man dressed like Waldo—blue jeans, red-and-white striped shirt, and red cap. (He appeared only in the theatrical release; Gibson took him out of the DVD

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