Showbiz Circle

The entertainment industry is very very weird.

It is also riddled with coincidences and peculiarities.

Here are a few of the A-L ones:

A B C D E F G H I J K L

"What must one do to receive an Oscar?

Play Biblical characters, priests and victims of sad tragic disabilities."

– Marlene Dietrich

The (fictional) Benthic Petroleum company who employ the rig workers in James Cameron’s ‘The Abyss’ (1989) also have a place in the director’s ‘Terminator 2’ (1991). Their logo is to be seen on the garage-hideout petrol pumps.

‘Almost Famous’ is the first Cameron Crowe film to be lacking an appearance by Eric Stoltz. (He was going to be David Bowie. Fleetingly.) Stoltz was 3^rd billing in Crowe’s ‘The Wild Life’ (1984), but also had cameos in ‘Fast Times at Ridgemont High’ (1982), ‘Say Anything’ (1989), as a mime in ‘Singles’ (1992), and ‘Jerry Maguire’ (1996). His name, however, is mentioned in the rock biopic.

The town over-run by spiders in ‘Arachnaphobia’ (1990) is called Canaima. This is also the moniker taken by the avenging spirit of the Guyana Indians, and is the name of the Venezuelan location where film begins.

The plot of ‘The Astronaut’s Wife’ (1999) is not the only element reminiscent of ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ (1968) – the shorn-blond haircut sported by mother-to-be Charlize Theron is markedly similar to that of Mia Farrow.

The chess moves in ‘The Avengers’ (1998) game played by Emma Peel (Thurman) and John Steed (Fiennes) are the same as in the ‘Blade Runner’ (1982) match between Roy Batty and Tyrell.

Mercedes McNab, who plays Harmony on ‘Buffy’ – Spike’s whiny blond Season#4 girlfriend who proved so infuriating a companion he staked her – has also been irritating elsewhere. In ‘The Addams Family’ (1991), she’s an annoying blond girl scout selling cookies (“are they made from real girl scouts?”) at Wednesday & Pugsley’s lemonade stand. And in the film’s 1993 sequel, she’s an annoying blond summer-camper. Who Christina Ricci gets to tie to a stake and burn as the Indian’s revenge segment of their Thanksgiving Celebrations. (There’s an ever-growing theme here…)

In ‘The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert’ (1994), there’s a prominent poster for the ‘93 movie ‘Frauds’ in the video store. A movie also directed by Stephan Elliot, and also starring Hugo Weaving. Though involving substantially less Pat Butcher eye-shadow.

In ‘All the President’s Men’ (1976) Watergate security guard Frank Mills got to play himself.

Rather than re-dub or add subtitles to the movie for foreign audiences, the film unit behind ‘Al-Risalah’ (1976) decided to shoot two versions of it. So. Scene-by-scene, an English version - released as ‘The Message’ - and the Arabic version were shot on the same set, by the same crew, using two different sets of actors.

While Jasmine’s appearance was based on a combination of Jennifer Connelly and her animator’s sister, in the early drawings for Disney’s Aladdin (1992), the male lead resembled Michael J. Fox. However. Jeffrey Katzenberg, worried that such a hero might not have enough ‘appeal to women’ (how rude to Mickey J), asked that the hero be ‘beefed up’ so as to look more like Tom Cruise. (Who is, like, a real guy. And even though he’s happily married to (um, now dating) someone extremely foxy, is still more likely to be available to his audience for general fornication purposes, than is a two-dimensional character trapped in paints on a animator’s cell. And there’s me thinking we’re supposed to want to see a cartoon for its plot or jokes, not the attractiveness of its stars...) They removed Aladdin’s nipples from the film anyway - a Disney audience wouldn’t want to see nipples - which seems a perplexingly deliberate de-sexualisation of a character they’ve tried to make more sexy.

Oh, and in the film you can alsospot a toy versions of the Beast, Sebastian and Pinocchio – from ‘Beauty and The Beast’ (1991), ‘The Little Mermaid’ (1989) and ‘Pinocchio’ (1940), respectively.

An early draft of the 1979 film ‘Alien’ had a male Ripley (urgh), while director Ridley Scott apparently wanted a much darker ending to the film; the alien would bite off Ripley's head in the escape shuttle, sit in her chair, and then start speaking with her voice in a message to Earth. 20th Century Fox wasn't too happy with this plan. Just like they weren’t too happy with some of conceptual artist H. R. Geiger's early designs, which under-went several revisions because of their blatant sexuality: the top of the eggs looked a leetle too much like labia for the comfort of the Powers That Be. That the face of the alien (costume’s) head is made from a real human skull though, oh, that’s fine...

Those viewers out there who can – hey – read, might also have noticed that ‘Salako’, the name of the ship in ‘Aliens’ (1986) is the name of the town in Joseph Conrad's book ‘Nostromo’. Whose name was used for the ship in ‘Alien’.

It should also be known that Jeanette Goldstein – who played ‘Aliens’’ Vasquez, had thought the film was to be about ‘illegal aliens’, and so had arrived at the audition with waist long hair and a lot of make-up, only to find everyone else in military fatigues.

The improbably proficient basketball shot that Sigourney Weaver makes in ‘Alien: Resurrection’ (1997) – the flip from behind across half the court without even looking – was made by an improbably proficient Sigourney Weaver.

The TV movie ‘Alien Attack’ (1976) was entirely made from neatly spliced scenes of two episodes (‘Breakaway’ and ‘War Games’) of ‘Space: 1999’ (1975).

The delightful & ever-realistic (ha) film ‘Alligator’ (1980) contains a nice couple of movie-in-jokes about, um, the sewers and their inhabitants. A sewer worker character called Edward Noron from ‘The Honeymooners’ was named as one of the victims on a blackboard seen in the background of a press conference, while graffiti on a sewer-wall reads ‘Harry Lime Lives’, a reference to the ‘The Third Man’ (1949) character who was killed in a sewer.

The script for ‘American Pie’ (1999) was submitted to studios under a different moniker to that which we now know & cherish so – screenwriter Adam Herz snappily named it ‘Untitled Teenage Sex Comedy That Can Be Made For Under $10 Million That Most Readers Will Probably Hate But I Think You Will Love’.

Long before the part of Patrick Bateman had been cast for the 1999 film adaptation of ‘American Psycho’, Bret Easton Ellis wrote Christian Bale into his novel ‘Glamorama’, as a bit-player Hollywood star of a recurring character.

Alan Arkin plays John Cusack’s “Wellness Guide” in ‘America’s Sweethearts’ (2001); in ‘Grosse Pointe Blank’ (1997) he also played Cusack’s therapist.

‘Amores Perros’ (2000), unlike most movies (though most don’t linger on dogfighting…), is prefaced with a disclaimer that no animals were harmed in the making of the film.

For ‘Apocalypse Now’ (1979), Dennis Hopper had been intended to play Willard's predecessor, but had a part as a crazy photo-journalist written in for him by Coppola when it became apparent that he was ‘too affected by drugs to play a military type’. During filming, Hopper and Coppola often argued over whether it was possible to forget your lines when you didn't learn them in the first place.

 In the 1993 TV-movie version of ‘Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman’, the film showing at the drive-in when Nancy goes on her rampage is the 1958 ‘Attack of the 50 Foot Woman’.

I’d like to think that if the drivers of the cars on the poster for the original ‘Attack of the 50 Foot Woman’ (1958) are going to die, they’ll die happy, delirious with their view.

During rehearsals for ‘Awakenings’ (1990), Robin Williams managed to break Robert De Niro's nose. Accidentally. Of course. (Well I wouldn’t want to break it on purpose. Would you?)

The main street in ‘Back to the Future’ (1985) is the same one used for Bedford Falls in ‘Gremlins’ (1984), and the cinema in both films is showing the same movies; ‘A Boy’s Life’, which was the working title for ‘E.T.’ (1982), and ‘Watch The Skies’, the working title for ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ (1977). Their directors, Steven Spielberg, actually pops up in the film as well, playing the part of the pick-up truck driver that gives Marty a lift to school. Huey Lewis - bizarrely - also makes a cameo in the film, as the high-school band judge.

Robert Zemeckis & screenwriter Bob Gale also managed to get one of their long-standing traditions into the script for ‘Back To The Future 2’ (1989) - the two police officers who take Jennifer home are called Reese and Foley, which is what all the two-some’s police or government agents are called.

The ‘Back To The Future’ script never called for Marty to repeatedly bang his head on the gull-wing door of the Delorean - as the door mechanism became progressively more temperamental during filming, this running joke was the improvised result of several headaches. It obviously destroyed a few brain cells in the process - in the inbetween 5 years since filming ‘Back To The Future’ and its sequel, Michael J. Fox managed to forget how to ride a skateboard. But then he still managed, over the course of the two sequels, to play himself, his great(?)-grandfather, his son and his daughter. Wigs and make-up are truly wonderful things.

In ‘Bandits’ (2001) and ‘Sling Blade’ (1996), the characters Billy Bob Thornton plays are both afraid of antique furniture. Billy Bob Thornton really does have a fear of antique furniture. (“I get creeped out and I can't breathe and I can't eat around it. But it's only certain kinds of antique furniture… I've had friends tell me that maybe I was beaten to death with an antique chair in a former life.”)

‘Barney and Friends’, the CTV show which features a suspiciously un-terrifying dinosaur, was denounced, attacked and boycotted by the Ku Klux Klan in 1994. Who were ‘outraged’ that the friendly purple one was played by – SHOCK – a black man. And that he – SHOCK – was beloved of their children.

Bob Kane, creator of the original Batman comic strip, was scheduled to make a cameo appearance in the 1989 ‘Batman’ movie, but he couldn't make the shoot. However. The drawing that the newspaper reporter holds up of the ``Bat-Man'' was drawn by Kane. Even sketching from the new cast, the picture is still not entirely Michael Keaton - most shots of Batman in costume show a stunt double instead.

In the film’s 1992 sequel, ‘Batman Returns’, Christopher Walken plays a nasty man called Max Schreck – this is the name of the actor who played the vampire lead in ‘Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens’ (1922). This sequel was branded as ‘anti-Semitic’ by one writer for the ‘New York Times’, because the Penguin, Batman’s nemesis, was seen to have Jewish characteristics. For example… He has a big nose, and likes herrings. (Rather like, um, penguins do.) He was discovered floating down the underground river in a basket, much like Moses was. (The bible says nothing of his parents being circus freaks, however.) And like Christ, he is 33, and carries his umbrella into the graveyard as Christ carried his cross. (Or would have done, had it had more of a stick shape to it.) I personally think that the opinion piece itself was, very probably, the more offensive, and am yet again boggled by the imagination of film critics. (I read one piece in ‘The Face’ magazine which suggested ‘Stuart Little’ endorsed paedophilia. Not, um, fostering.)

In one scene of the (frankly appalling despite the cast & lingering crotch/bum shots in the opening credits) fourth sequel ‘Batman & Robin’ (1997) of the franchise, Batman and Robin bid against each other for the chance to date Poison Ivy. The credit card Batman wields as his ultimate weapon has an expiration date of ‘FOREVER’.

In Alex Garland’s novel, ‘The Beach’, the lead character of Richard simply obsesses over Françoise from afar, she never leaving her boyfriend. In the film, Richard is played by Leonardo DiCaprio. It would have been inconceivable to an audience that he would not get the girl. Particularly when all that was standing in his way was a Frenchman. Pshaw.

The title role of ‘Beetlejuice’ (1988) was originally penned for Sammy Davis Jr.

…Also, when Barbara and Adam are in their Afterlife case worker's office, through the blinds in the window we can see... Elwood and Jake from ‘The Blues Brothers’ (1980).

That LesterCorp is on floor 7½ is discovered 7½ minutes into ‘Being John Malkovich’ (1999).

While Kate Chapshaw’s character is waiting in a pick-up truck in the film ‘Best Defense’ (1984), she is humming the theme song from ‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom’ (1984), which is a delightful piece of self-promotion, as she was in that one too.

Some of the lightning seen in ‘Big Trouble in Little China’ (1986) forms a Chinese symbol as it disappears, which translates ‘carpenter’. ‘Big Trouble In Little China’ was directed by John Carpenter. This is not a coincidence.

The advance poster for Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ (1963) proclaimed ‘THE BIRDS IS COMING!’, which grammatical discordance did much to irritate English teachers the world over.

Two Millennium Falcons (seemingly stalking Harrison Ford through time as well as space) appear in ‘Blade Runner’ (1982). The first is in tattoo form, on the forehead of the snake merchant in the street. The second is as a model incorporated into an actual building. It can be seen in the bottom left of the screen, in the scene where Deckard and Gaff approach police headquarters in a spinner.