Archive for July 15th, 2009
July 15th, 2009
Police investigate the scene of an explosion outside a Starbucks coffee shop May 25 on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The explosion damaged windows and a chair, but there were no injuries. (Stan Honda /AFP-Getty Images)
After the movie FIGHT CLUB opened in 1999, there were occasional reports of actual fight clubs, where fans would pummel each other senseless in an obvious attempt to miss the entire point of the movie. Now, 10 years later, someone has been inspired by another scene in the film. From an Associated Press story at MSNBC.com…
A 17-year-old mimicking Brad Pitt’s FIGHT CLUB character, who plans attacks on corporate America, masterminded a blast outside a Starbucks Coffee shop on Memorial Day, police said Wednesday.
And why did he try to blow up a Starbucks on New York’s Upper East Side? Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly explains:
Shaw apparently told at least one friend to “watch the news over Memorial Day” because he was about to launch his own version of “project mayhem,” Kelly said. … Police say the suspect picked the site because a Starbucks was a target in the movie. It wasn’t clear why the specific coffee shop was chosen. There are dozens around the city.
Technically speaking, Starbucks was not a target in the movie — it was just a very Starbucks-looking coffee establishment, and the Project Mayhem members rolled a giant piece of public art through the front door; they didn’t blow it up. They did, however, blow up several skyscrapers at the end of the movie. So let’s hope Shaw isn’t that dedicated a FIGHT CLUB fan.
And speaking of FIGHT CLUB fans, does anyone remember this guy? Seems like he was taking the scene in the movie where the Project Mayhem crew burns a smiley face on a skyscraper and enlarging it to a national scale.
July 15th, 2009
Snopes.com looks at an intriguing urban legend about a very un-intriguing movie: SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT PART 3.
According to Hollywood lore, the movie was originally shot with Jackie Gleason playing both his Sheriff Buford T. Justice character and the Bandit role. (Burt Reynolds and Sally Fields had bailed on this third movie in the series, though Gleason and Jerry Reed stuck around.)
From the book HICK FLICKS, as quoted at Snopes…
An urban legend persists (propagated by Leonard Maltin, among others) that SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT 3 was originally filmed as SMOKEY IS THE BANDIT, with Gleason playing both title roles. After a disastrous test screening, Jerry Reed took over the role of the Bandit in reshoots, or so the story goes. In reality, it’s hard to believe this idea ever got past the pitch meeting, and not so much as a production still (let along a full-length bootleg copy) of the supposed original version of this film has ever surfaced.
Snopes, however, points to newspaper articles of the time indicating that this was originally an all-Gleason film. They also bring up a third theory, that the film was originally made with the roles of Buford and Bandit combined into one part…
That is, this time around, Sheriff Justice, not the Bandit, was to be the one who took an outrageous bet from Big and Little Enos involving a law-breaking, cross-country run, thereby making Gleason both Smokey, the lawman, and Bandit, the lawman’s nemesis — Smokey IS the Bandit.
Personally, I found the effort to piece together the real story behind SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT PART 3 fascinating in a film geek way. A lot more fascinating than the movie itself.
Read the whole Snopes article here.
July 15th, 2009
Courtesy of Mark Evanier’s blog, News from Me, here’s a video showing how they managed to the leopard-related scenes in the classic comedy, BRINGING UP BABY. There were a surprising number of special effects used — mainly because, according to Evanier, star Cary Grant was unneasy around the big cat.
