9/11/2018

Tuesday TV Trivia

• Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork both auditioned for the part of "Fonzie" on Happy Days [1974], but were turned down for being taller (6’0” and 6’1”, respectively) than Ron Howard (“Richie Cunningham”), Anson Williams (“Potsie”) and Donnie Most (“Ralph”).

• Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen have each played the son of their real life father Martin Sheen on screen but Emilio actually played a younger version of Martin in a flashback sequence on The West Wing [1999].

• Although her character “Julia” on Designing Women [1986] was a staunch liberal, Dixie Carter was actually a Republican in real life. So a compromise with the producers of the show was reached: whenever Julia got off on a liberal rant, Dixie Carter would get a chance to sing on a future episode.

• According to Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, the scenes for the feminist bookstore on Portlandia [2011] are filmed in the actual bookstore that inspired it with no added set dressing.

• The starship Enterprise on Star Trek: The Original Series [1966] has tubes in its hallways marked “GNDN”. Those initials stand for “goes nowhere, does nothing”.

9/10/2018

Monday Movie Trivia

• According to Matthew Broderick, not a day goes by over the last 30-plus years that a stranger on the street doesn't ask, “Hey Ferris, is this your day off?”

• Even though the song “Dazed and Confused” was the inspiration for the title of the Richard Linklater film of the same name, the Led Zeppelin song he wanted to use in the movie was “Rock and Roll”, which Robert Plant vetoed.

• Although the character of Jimmy (played by Maris Valainis) in Hoosiers [1986] is quite vital to the plot of the movie, he only has four lines.

Blue Jasmine [2013] is the only Woody Allen movie in which the lead American characters are played by non-Americans. (Cate Blanchett is Australian; Sally Hawkins is British.)

• Jim Carrey, who played Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon [1993], shares a birthday with the late comedian: January 17th.

9/07/2018

Friday Factoids

• On a recent visit to Washington DC, Peter Frampton told lawmakers he’d earned $1700 from 55 million streams of his song “Baby, I Love Your Way”.

• Before he became famous Bruno Mars was a well-known Elvis Presley impersonator in his native Hawaii.

• When Paul McCartney got back to London from Lagos, Nigeria after recording the bulk of the Band on the Run album there, he found a letter from EMI, dated before he left, not to go to the African country due to a recent cholera outbreak.

• Phil Collins’ maniacal laugh on the Genesis song “Mama” was inspired by Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five’s hip-hop classic “The Message”.

• Jack White’s birth name is John Anthony Gillis.