Question: When Travis goes into his fitness phase, it shows him hovering his fist over the stove fire. Why is he doing this? What does that achieve?
Answer: It helps him create a tolerance for pain. As we see, he certainly gets a lot of that dished out to him.
Question: Why were the enforcers called sandmen?
Answer: In popular American lore, the Sandman is responsible for putting sand over your eyes to make you go to sleep. In this context the "sleep" is a euphemism for death, and the enforcers are responsible for making sure that everyone dies on time.
Question: When is The Coral Sea Battle shown?
Answer: It's shown in the original 4 hour movie. Most of the scenes from the Coral Sea Battle are cut from this version and the battle is referenced, but never really shown.
Question: How could Damien's mother be a jackal? That has always thrown me for a loop and I could never understand why they'd do that unless it was for entertainment purposes. I mean, I know it's Hollywood and all but that's just too far-fetched.
Chosen answer: The idea wasn't entirely Hollywood's. The antichrist is sometimes said to be "born of a jackal. " Jackals are mentioned in the Bible, and some interpretations consider them a symbol of something that is "not of God." In the movie, it means that the kid was scary as hell, literally.
Answer: It's Satan's twisted and macabre mockery of Jesus' virgin mother.
Question: After the raid on his farm and he has buried his wife and son, where did he get the ammunition (powder, caps and balls) to do all the practising with, as they would have burned up in the fire and the lead balls would have melted?
Answer: At first, the story advances very rapidly, essentially giving the audience a primer lesson on Josey's angry motivation; so, many minute details aren't explored, such as where he acquired his ammunition. We might conjecture that Josey had a separate out-building, called a "powder house" (which was common in that era) where gunpowder and shot was kept for safety reasons. If he did, that raises the question of why the raiders didn't ransack and burn his powder house as well.
Question: When they promote the fight, why do they say January 1st is America's birthday?
Answer: They mean the entire year, 1976, is America's birth "day," being the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence. So the fight, taking place on January 1, is the "first sporting event on our two hundredth birthday."
Question: I have always wondered how the movie crew and cast worked with Natasha Ryan, the actress who played young Sybil. There were scenes that were very frightening, dealing with terrible tortures. I always wondered if that was traumatic for the young girl? Or, if not, how was trauma avoided. More generally, does anyone know how movie productions deal with children on the set of films with frightening, traumatic and/or controversial themes?
Chosen answer: In these types of movies, where young actors are involved in intense scenes, every precaution is taken to ensure that they are never frightened or emotionally compromised. Child psychologists, acting coaches, and the director are on set and work closely with them. A child's parent or guardian is also always close by. Child Protective Services oversee how child actors are being utilized in films and TV shows and there are strict laws and regulations regarding how child actors are treated, how many hours per day they can work, etc. Scenes are also carefully filmed and edited in such a way that can appear to be very intense, but were not emotionally stressful to the child. Also, stand-ins can be used for certain shots.
Question: While a number of cigarettes show up in the silver streak, none appear to be lit. Am I wrong or was this subtle comedy, or production preference?
Answer: Most likely it was a production decision. Having multiple extra actors continually smoking during multiple takes and over hours of filming would make for a smokey set, affect breathing and burn peoples' eyes, be a fire hazard, and create consistency problems with cigarettes being in various stages of use (freshly lit or almost down to a stub).
Question: Why did Mrs. Tredoni kill Father Tom?
Answer: Mrs. Tredoni was enraged that Father Tom refused to give her communion during Mass after he had given it to Catherine, who Mrs. Tredoni calls a whore.
Why did he refuse to give her communion?
Question: The Missouri Breaks starred Jack Nicholson (as Tom Logan, a rustler) and Marlon Brando (as Robert E Lee Clayton, a "regulator" tasked with eliminating him). Yet they never appear together. Brando is absent from over half the scenes featuring Nicholson, and vice-versa. When they do meet, there is a close up of Nicholson speaking to Brando, followed by a close up of Brando replying to Nicholson, and so on. Why do Nicholson and Brando never appear on screen together?
Answer: At this point, Brando used cue cards for his dialogue and liked to improvise lines. Nicholson found this difficult and distracting because Brando continually shifted his gaze to the cue card behind the cameraman and went off script. Although Nicholson said Brando was exceedingly cooperative and "gentle as a lamb" on the set, the two actors took an instant dislike to one another. Each actor was filmed separately while reciting their lines.
Question: Is the ice cream man the same person who plays the man who says "We've got a stretcher for you, ma'am"?
Answer: No.
Question: Why does Babe throw Szell's diamonds away when he could've kept a few? Why would Szell be stupid enough to risk exposure when going to the diamond district of New York where somebody might recognize him?
Answer: The diamonds were "blood money" that were stolen at the expense of many Jewish lives during the holocaust and also resulted in Babe's brother, "Doc" being murdered. For that reason, Babe would not want them, nor would he allow others to profit from them. Szell needed to risk being recognized in New York in order to retrieve the entire cache of diamonds from the bank safe deposit box after his brother, Klaus, was killed. Klaus would retrieve as many diamonds as Szell needed to sell to support himself in South America. Once Klaus was dead, no-one else could gain access to them for Szell, or if they could, probably would have stolen them.
Question: I don't understand what the women in the Porsche were on about. What's so significant about lights at 32 miles per hour?
Answer: They are moving thru city streets where the traffic lights are setup to sequentially change so that a vehicle traveling at 32mph will get a green light all the way through the area, never having to stop.
Question: There is a red headed kid that has several small lines in the movie, primarily in the beginning. He plays 1st base once or twice. Who is he, and why wasn't/isn't his role in the movie as big as all the other kids?
Chosen answer: That red headed kid is Regi Tower, played by now-screenwriter and director Scott Firestone. Several of the boys had very minor roles, so Regi wasn't really an exception. His character did not appear in either of the sequels to The Bad News Bears.
Question: What does Milo Perrier mouth to Jessica Marbles as Benson-mum spoons out the "soup" during dinner? I can't read their lips.
Answer: I think she is a lady...remember at the end when he said she was the daughter of Lionel Twain.
Answer: According to the script, she is mouthing "I think he's lying."
Answer: "I think he's lying."
Answer: No, he mouths "I think he's blind." It's right after the scene where he tests that. The Marbles character responds "who is?"
Question: Does the ray that hits Drefus at the end kill him, or does it just turn him invisible?
Answer: Just Invisible. Besides the fact that his eyeball and eyelid remain intact and in the same position, he returns in a full, visible form (possibly in a film logic borrowed from Looney Tunes cartoons) in the next Panther film.
Question: I'm looking for a movie from the late 80's or early 90's. It's a hilarious comedy, a family movie, about two guys who are on some kind of island and there is a dead dude named Barney with an arrow through his head and sunglasses on it. They discover that when they play music, he walks like a zombie. When the dead guy is walking with the music, he actually is walking to the sea to find a chest with money in it. In the movie there is also a voodoo magic; I remember them sacrificing a goat.
Chosen answer: You're thinking of "Weekend at Bernie's 2".
Answer: He starts to genuinely like her, hence his disgusted reaction at the sick practical joke played on her.
Manky