25 Interesting Tidbits You Might Not Know About Movies

Ever since the first silent films, movies have helped shape our culture and our world. Whether it is a Bollywood film or a classic Hollywood blockbuster, the cinema is important in our daily lives. It has shaped popular culture in ways that cannot be underestimated. In many ways it determines what is going to be “cool” and what won’t be. Whether it is slang, clothing, or just a general style, there is nothing more potent and powerful than Hollywood in dictating the direction of culture. Even in parts of the world where electricity and internet connection are sparse, people find themselves being influenced by movies.

Of course, along with this influence comes the possibility of division. Movies and cinema play a strong role in dissent and political activism as well. Documentary makers often cast light on things that people otherwise wouldn’t know about. Today we are going to take a look behind the scenes of the movies and find out some quirky facts about the cinema and Hollywood that you might not have known before. So even if you are not a movie buff, we are sure that you will enjoy this list. These are 25 interesting tidbits you might not know about movies.

• Movie trailers actually used to play after films.
• 
  
• It cost more to make the movie Titanic than to actually build the Titanic.
• 
  
• Nigeria actually makes more movies per year than the United States.
• 
  
• Time travel is banned in movies and on TV in China.
• 
  
• More than 90% of American movies filmed before 1930 have been lost.
• 
  
• In the movie The Godfather, the word "mafia" is never mentioned because the real mafia had requested for it not to be.
• 
  
• Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually slowed his movies down so people could see what he was doing.
• 
  
• The Movie Gravity cost more to film than the cost of the entire Indian Mars Mission.
• 
  
• Before acting, Bruce Willis was a private investigator.
• 
  
• Yoda's look was inspired by the look of his creator Stuart Freeborn with a little bit of Albert Einstein thrown in to make him seem more wise.
• 
  
• Speaking of Star Wars, initially the series was meant to have the article "the" before it, as in "The Star Wars".
• 
  
• In Terminator 2, Arnold Schwarzenegger was paid more than $20,000 for every word he spoke.
• 
  
• The movie industry actually moved from New York to Los Angeles to escape Thomas Edison's patents.
• 
  
• Adjusted for inflation, Gone With The Wind is the highest grossing movie of all time (It would have earned nearly 3.5 billion 2014 USD).
• 
  
• Sylvester Stallone was once so poor that he sold his dog for $50. One week later he sold the script for Rocky and bought his dog back for $3,000.
• 
  
• When James Cameron wrote Terminator, he was homeless and he sold the script for $1 along with an agreement that he could direct the movie.
• 
  
• The first Titanic movie was released less than a month after the sinking (Saved From The Titanic). It starred an actress who had actually survived the sinking.
• 
  
• Walt Disney refused to allow Alfred Hitchcock to film in Disneyland during the early 60s because he made "that disgusting movie Psycho".
• 
  
• Because he started balding at 21, Sean Connery wore a toupee in all of his James Bond films.
• 
  
• Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, and Harrison Ford, have never won Oscars. Leonardo DiCaprio would have also been on this list…but he finally won an Oscar this year.
• 
  
• David Holmes, Daniel Radcliffe's stunt double in the first six Harry Potter films was paralyzed during an accident on the set of the 7th film.
• 
  
• Morgan Freeman didn't appear in a movie until he was 34 and didn't get a big role until he was 52.
• 
  
• Borat was a huge hit in Israel because all of Borat's Kazakh lines were actually in Hebrew.
• 
  
• Otto Frank wrote to Audrey Hepburn asking her if she would play the role of his daughter, Anne Frank, in the movie adaptation of her life. Audrey politely turned the role down because of her own past in Nazi occupied Netherlands would make it too emotionally challenging.
• 
  
• NASA keeps Armageddon, Apollo 13, and Around The World In 80 Days aboard the International Space Station.

Article published on http://list25.com/

25 Captivating Facts About Elvis Presley: The King of Rock ‘N’ Roll

Whether you know him as the Memphis Flash, the King of Hillbilly, the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, or simply the King, Elvis Presley is one of the greatest—if not the greatest—cultural icons of the last seventy years. Almost forty years after his death, he still remains the biggest selling solo artist of all time with his records selling more than 600 million (over a billion according to the record company RCA) units worldwide. His dance moves and great looks quickly made him a fashion icon and the world’s premier sex symbol, making women go wild every time he appeared live on stage or TV.

His musical influence and cultural impact on modern music and pop culture is best illustrated by this statement from Rolling Stone: “It was Elvis who made rock ’n’ roll the international language of pop,” and John Lennon’s legendary remark, “Before Elvis there was nothing.” But who was Elvis Presley? Who was the man behind the artist who made billions of people around the world love and admire him even more than religious figures, politicians, and presidents? Find out! These are 25 Captivating Facts About Elvis Presley: The King of Rock ‘N’ Roll.

• Back in 1936 more than 216 people were killed in Tupelo, Mississippi, in one of the deadliest tornadoes in history. One of the survivors of this deadly tornado was fifteen-month-old Elvis Presley.
• 
  
• The first time Presley made a recording, it was for his mother. He paid $4 to Sun Studio to press two songs—“My Happiness” and “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin”—as a gift for her.
• 
  
• Presley recorded anywhere from 600 to 1,200 songs, depending on whether the list includes unfinished works, alternate versions, bootlegs, etc.
• 
  
• When Elvis was only two, he wiggled out of his mother’s arms and joined the choir to sing with them during an Assembly of God service.
• 
  
• At age ten Elvis participated in a children’s talent show and sang “Old Shep.” He finished fifth but his artistic talents began to become clear to those who knew him and watched his performance.
• 
  
• One of the gifts his parents got him was a guitar. Elvis was eleven at the time and had asked for a bicycle, but his parents couldn’t afford one so he ended up with a guitar instead.
• 
  
• As a teenager Elvis worked as an usher at Loew’s State Theater in Memphis. He was fired when another usher ratted on him for getting free candy from the girl behind the concession stand.
• 
  
• Presley’s idol was Tony Curtis, who had shiny black hair. When he decided to dye his hair for the first time, he used black shoe polish. He also dyed his eyelashes to match, which would later cause him minor health issues and allergies.
• 
  
• An online poll during the late nineties showed that “Elvis” was one of the most popular passwords for computers in the United States at the time.
• 
  
• Elvis used to tell his friends and people close to him that he would die in his forties, just like his mother. Ironically, on August 16, 1977, the date of his death, Elvis was only forty-two.
• 
  
• It has been reported that Presley had 199 different prescriptions which totaled to about ten thousand pills the year he died (1977).
• 
  
• Presley, his parents, his grandmother, and his golden palomino quarter horse, Rising Sun, are all buried at Graceland.
• 
  
• In the early 1970s Presley would impersonate a police officer, driving around with a blue light, a long flashlight, a billy club, and guns, and pulling people over. Instead of giving out tickets, he would hand out his autograph.
• 
  
• When Elvis met boxing icon Muhammad Ali, he gave him one of his robes declaring the boxer, “The People’s Champion.” Ali in return gave Elvis a pair of boxing gloves that said, “You’re the greatest.”
• 
  
• During the 1970s Elvis started every concert with “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” a nineteenth-century Richard Strauss tone poem and the theme to 2001: A Space Odyssey, because he liked its rhythm and movements.
• 
  
• Elvis was a huge fan of The Tonight Show until Johnny Carson joked about him being “fat and forty.”
• 
  
• When he was young, Elvis would lose several pounds during a concert tour. Later in life, his metabolism wasn’t so kind to him and he reportedly reached 250 pounds.
• 
  
• While serving in the army overseas, the Germans gave him the nickname “the rock and roll matador.” Also, during his service in Germany he developed the habit of smoking thin German cigars.
• 
  
• Some of Elvis’s favorite foods included biscuits and gravy, potato cheese soup, meatloaf with mushroom gravy and beefsteak tomato. One of his least favorite foods was fish, and he despised it so much that he reportedly wouldn’t allow Priscilla to eat it at Graceland.
• 
  
• His last words, according to his then girlfriend Ginger Alden, were, “Okay, I won’t,” when he assured her he wouldn’t fall asleep reading in the bathroom.
• 
  
• In August 1992 the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) awarded Elvis 110 gold, platinum, and multi-platinum albums and singles, the largest presentation of gold and platinum record awards in history. Almost forty years after his death, Elvis has 106 gold, 63 platinum, and 27 multi-platinum album awards, more than any other solo artist or group in history.
• 
  
• When Elvis met President Nixon in 1970 and took one of the most famous photographs of the twentieth century, the president reportedly said to the king of rock ‘n’ roll: “You dress kind of strange, don’t you?” Presley smiled and replied to him in style, “Well, Mr. President, you got your show, and I got mine.” The meeting remained a secret until the Washington Post broke the story about a year later.
• 
  
• When he died in 1977 there were about 170 Elvis impersonators. It is estimated that today there are more 250,000 worldwide.
• 
  
• The first post-death Presley spotting was in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where a mother of five told the Weekly World News that she saw him in a grocery store and at a Burger King.
• 
  
• In case you’re wondering why some fans call Elvis the first true rock star it is because he would sometimes autograph his female fans’ breasts—“Elvis” on the left and “Presley” on the right.

Article published on http://list25.com/