Film Friday: Some Little Known Facts About Movies

Movies are great, especially if you are a trivia-orientated nerd such as myself.  Such movie fans can tell you with calm certainty that Harrison Ford only shot that dervish in Raiders because he had a stomach bug that day and wasn't up for the fight scene, or that George Lucas was forced to resign from the director's guild because of his decision to begin Star Wars with no opening credits.  These facts are, in fact, our bread and butter. 

If you watch a movie with me, I'll point out all those little factoids.  It is, in fact, quite annoying for average movie fans.  Personally, I think it makes me awesome... but most normal people would probably disagree. 

But I figured I would create a game.  Some of the following facts are true... others are completely bogus.  Some are urban legends, some are mistellings, and others are hard fact.  It's your game to guess.  Simply guess whether each fact is true or false.  I'll post the answers sometime next week.

Have fun!

1. In that famous "deli orgasm scene" from When Harry Met Sally, the woman who says "I'll have what she's having" is actually Meg Ryan's real-life mother.
2. During the chariot-race scene in the 1959 film Ben Hur, one of the stuntmen fell from a Chariot and was trampled by a horse. His death was caught on camera, and included in the final cut of the film.
3. While filming Jurassic Park, critics pointed out that real-life velociraptors were only half the size of those depicted in the film.  However, before filming was complete, a velociraptor skeleton was found that closely resembled that in the film, and was nicknamed "Spielberg's Raptor". 
4. While he played Indiana Jones' father in The Last Crusade, in reality, Sean Connery is only six years older than Ford. 
5. In The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, all of the main characters spoke Italian in the scenes, and were overdubbed into English for the western release.  Clint Eastwood have to overdub his own voice back into English, being the first actor to ever do a voiceover for his own performance. 
6. On the final night of shooting the film Titanic, pranksters mixed PCP (Angel Dust) into a clam chowder served to the cast and crew.  Over 80 people fell ill, many being hospitalized with hallucinations. 
7. More money was spent on advertising and promotion for the film Animal House than was spent on the film itself.
8. During the filming of Gladiator, new laws arose in Greece that prevented the use of animals in violent action scenes, causing those scenes to instead be filmed on a soundstage in Los Angeles. 
9. There was a widespread internet petition to have the title of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers changed, as many fans unfamiliar with Tolkien's 1960s classics felt that the name was in poor taste (referencing the then-recent September 11th attacks). 
10. Kevin Costner has no recollection of ever directing his box office disaster, the Postman.  He simply does not remember doing so, and would later claim he was on heavy painkillers and prescription meds during the entire production run of the movie.