Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: The world premiere of "Jurassic Park" in 1993 was organized in Washington, DC (rather than Hollywood), in hopes that newly-elected President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton would attend. Universal Studios was livid when the Clintons were a no-show at the premiere, so much so that the studio refused to provide a copy of the film when the White House later requested it for private viewing. The feud apparently cooled off within a couple of months.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: During the restaurant scene with Mr. Creosote, John Cleese entices Terry Jones to finish his meal with a "wafer-thin mint," and Jones explodes in a shower of gastro-intestinal ejecta. In the chaos that follows, as dining guests flee in revulsion, we see Cleese in the background reach into Mr. Creosote's exploded torso and pluck out a very small object (presumably the wafer-thin mint) and start to place it in his own mouth. Cleese improvised this, adding another layer of disgust to the scene.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: During the title sequence, as the camera is panning across all the clocks in Doc Brown's lab, we briefly see a simple electrical timer with its mechanical dial rapidly spinning. Electrical timer dials normally move at the same rate as a clock's minute hand, which is imperceptible. For this sequence, the timer's dial is spinning quickly as an inside tribute to the tabletop clock seen in the 1960 George Pal film, "The Time Machine" (the clock spun rapidly when the Time Machine was activated).

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: During the protracted 11-minute car chase scene between the Ford Mustang and Dodge Charger, we repeatedly see a number of the same incidental cars in background traffic. For examples: In addition to the green VW Beetle that magically reappears in several nonsequential shots, the same white 1968 Firebird also repeatedly appears (as many times as does the Beetle), and the same lavender Cadillac nearly collides head-on with the Charger at two different points in the chase. This is mainly because many of the shots had up to 8 cameras shooting from different angles, and there was a lot of redundant footage. So, the same cars noticeably kept popping up time and again (and the Charger somehow threw 7 or 8 hubcaps). These were all blatant editing problems; however, strangely enough, Bullitt still won the 1969 Academy Award for Film Editing. Go figure.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: Aside from his considerable talent and theatrical qualifications, the reason that Jeremy Brett's portrayal of Sherlock Holmes was so nuanced, meticulous and authentic is because the role was therapeutic to him. In real life, all throughout the various Granada Television series (from 1984 to 1994), Brett was plagued with manic-depression, erratic behavior and heart problems, from which he fatalistically felt he would never recover. Immersing himself in the mentally-disciplined character of Sherlock Holmes gave Brett much-needed focus and clarity in the last ten years of his life.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne purchased a $6,300,000 mansion in Beverly Hills in 1999, three years before they starred in MTV's hit reality television show, "The Osbournes" (2002-2006). Bizarrely, the Prince of Darkness moved in next door to Pat Boone, the wholesome white bread Christian singing sensation of the 1950s and 1960s...and the two neighbors got on famously. Their neighborly friendship was such that Ozzy wanted to use Pat Boone's godawful 1997 cover of "Crazy Train" as the TV series theme song. MTV thought Boone would never agree to it, so they didn't even ask him; instead, MTV hired a Pat Boone impersonator to re-record the song. Later, MTV was amazed when Pat Boone himself said he would have gladly consented to them using his song, if they had only asked. Pat and Ozzy thought it was hilarious.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: Robocop nearly murders Clarence Boddicker at the cocaine factory but delivers the badly-beaten Boddicker to the police station and turns him in at the booking desk. Robocop says, "He's a cop killer," and all eyes in the station turn on Boddicker menacingly. At this point in the production, Director Paul Verhoeven and actor Kurtwood Smith discussed what to do next to show Boddicker's utter contempt for the police, even when he was in custody. The line "Just give me my fuckin' phone call" was added to the end of the scene, but Verhoeven and Smith still didn't think it was forceful enough, and they were at an impasse. So, on the last take, unbeknownst to the rest of the cast, Kurtwood Smith slipped a readily-available blood capsule into his mouth and unexpectedly spat the bloody mess onto the booking desk, right in front of the camera. The startled reaction of everyone on the set was genuine; even actor Robert DoQui, who played the sergeant at the booking desk, involuntarily recoiled in disgust and exclaimed, "Shit!" (which was kept in the movie). Clarence Boddicker thus ended up realistically intimidating the police, and Kurtwood Smith's improvisation made it an iconic scene.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: As Sheriff Bart and The Waco Kid are first getting acquainted, The Kid demonstrates how fast he is by snatching a chess piece from the board before Bart can grab it. Even though Bart plainly captures the chess piece in both his hands, he is stunned to find the piece missing when he opens his hands again a moment later (all in the same shot). No special effects were necessary, because actor Cleavon Little used a simple tabletop magic illusion: As he clapped his hands together around the chess piece and drew it back from the table for a split second, he smoothly dropped the piece into his lap and then immediately opened his hands for the surprising reveal. (00:36:02 - 00:36:28)

Charles Austin Miller

In a Mirror, Darkly (1) - S4-E18

Trivia: In the opening scene of this episode (S4E18), footage from the 1996 movie "Star Trek: First Contact" was ingeniously intercut with new footage to create a startling revision that is still a Star Trek fan favorite to this day. Actors James Cromwell (Zefram Cochrane) and Cully Fredricksen (the Vulcan emissary) shot the original scene for the film "First Contact" in 1995. When the TV series "Star Trek: Enterprise" recycled the movie footage 10 years later, both Cromwell and Fredricksen received a day's pay for appearing as extras in this TV episode (about $120 for a day's work in 2005), even though they never physically appeared on the "Enterprise" set.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: In the pilot of the first series, "Tomkinson's Schooldays," Michael Palin introduces the episode wearing a full black beard, a black poet hat and a black opera cape; but Palin repeatedly bungles his lines and must be coached (by an off-camera Terry Jones) through every word of his introduction. Palin affects the same costume and character to introduce the first episode of the second series, "Whinfrey's Last Case," as well. In both instances, Michael Palin and Terry Jones were mocking the legendary American filmmaker Orson Welles, a heavy drinker who was notoriously difficult to direct and who had descended to appearing in wine commercials on TV by the 1970s.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: The 1980 novel "Neighbors" by Thomas Berger (upon which this comic film is based) was actually a much darker and more serious psychological story about a reserved, unexceptional suburbanite going to war with his younger, less-inhibited new neighbors. In fact, the novel's lead character, Earl Keese (played by John Belushi in the movie), actually dies at the end of the book. The film adaptation attempted a lighthearted, almost slapstick approach to the story, allowing Earl Keese to survive and run away with his zany neighbors to pursue a happier life. Ironically, the movie's production was so chaotic (with temperamental conflicts and rampant drug use among the cast and crew) that John Belushi relapsed into heavy addiction and died of an overdose of cocaine and heroin less than four months after the film was released.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: When Roy McBride is reviewing a top-secret message regarding his father and the LIMA mission, the message filename is "6EQUJ5," which is a very obscure easter egg in the movie. The filename 6EQUJ5 refers to the real-life "WOW Signal," a deep space radio signal received by the Big Ear radio telescope at Ohio State University in 1977. The alpha-numeric designation "6EQUJ5" was a printed readout of the signal's duration and intensity. This signal lasted 72 seconds and was 20 times stronger than background radio noise, causing a surprised astronomer to circle the printed 6EQUJ5 readout in red ink and make the handwritten notation "WOW!" in the margin. While the signal was an anomalous one-time event that was never repeated, and there is still no proof that 6EQUJ5 was alien in origin, it has stimulated debate about extraterrestrial radio signals for decades. Ironically, the movie "Ad Astra" concludes that there are no alien radio signals and that we really are alone in the universe.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: In this wacky 1945 comedy (starring Fred MacMurray, Helen Walker, Marjorie Main, Peter Whitney and Porter Hall), the entire life-or-death plot is driven by a nonsense rhyme that must be decoded: "Honors Flysis, Income Beezis, Onches Nobis, Inob Keesis." The rhyme translates: "On horse flies is, In comb bees is, On chest knob is, In knob keys is" (and, indeed, the hero and heroine of the story eventually discover a valuable safe deposit box key hidden within a knob on a wooden chest). Throughout the film, this nonsense rhyme is repeatedly delivered as a simple but catchy 8-note musical ditty (that was also the movie's main theme song). Some 26 years later, when National Public Radio debuted "All Things Considered" in 1971 (its first news program in the United States), the radio show featured a simple and yet very-familiar musical intro that was credited to composer Don Vogeli. However, many listeners instantly recognized the "All Things Considered" intro as the theme music to "Murder, He Says," composed by Robert Emmett Dolan in 1944. National Public Radio was apparently oblivious to this amazing similarity. In fact, years after "All Things Considered" became their flagship news program, NPR conducted a listener contest inviting the audience to submit original lyrics for the established "All Things Considered" intro tune. To NPR's consternation, many hundreds of listeners contributed the lyrics: "Honors Flysis, Income Beezis, Onches Nobis, Inob Keesis."

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: Longtime TV actor Lee Majors was extremely influential in the overall development of the "Six Million Dollar Man" series. Although he had already appeared in the 3 successful made-for-TV pilot movies in 1973, Majors was very skeptical of entering into a weekly series, and he wanted a guarantee that the show would not devolve into a campy superhero series (like "Batman"). Majors further stipulated that there should be no blood and no violent death on the show. Executive producer Harve Bennett, producer Kenneth Johnson, and ABC Television immediately agreed. Majors also thought the original "Six Million Dollar Man" theme song (sung by Dusty Springfield) was embarrassingly bad, so composer Oliver Nelson wrote the iconic instrumental theme for the series. Two years into the hit show, Majors then became concerned that his character, Steve Austin, would be perceived as gay because he never had an onscreen love interest; so Majors essentially demanded that a female character be added to fill that role. The producers complied without question. According to Lee Majors: "People were really getting to the point where it was like, 'When's this guy [Steve Austin] going to come out of the closet here?' That's when we brought in Lindsay Wagner to be the first love interest."

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: When Neal's wife is watching TV in bed, she is impossibly viewing the John Hughes film "She's Having a Baby," which didn't even premier in theaters until February of 1988, three months after "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" premiered in November 1987. John Hughes (who directed both films) used his own unreleased "She's Having A Baby" footage/soundtrack and a cameo by Kevin Bacon as teasers for the upcoming 1988 film. There's still some speculation that the plots of the two films actually intersect, and that Kevin Bacon (who is credited as the Taxi-Racer in "Planes, Trains and Automobiles") was playing his character, Jake, from "She's Having a Baby."

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: In this regrettable comedy-filler for NBC Television, writer/director Michael O'Donoghue (of "National Lampoon" and "Saturday Night Live" fame in the mid-1970s) presented a jumbled showcase of tasteless, cruel, stupid and unfunny sketches that managed to stoop lower than low production quality and dubious entertainment value. Even the very liberal NBC considered O'Donoghue's video beneath network standards and it was rejected for broadcast. As an example of the video's dismal offerings, one brief segment featured a deadpan Dan Aykroyd removing his shoes to reveal his real-life genetic deformities: His second and third toes are fused together on both feet. Aykroyd prodded his toes with a screwdriver to prove the deformities were real. NBC was not amused. (00:20:25)

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: In this rather clunking classic murder mystery, the closing gimmick of the film is a sequence of several otherwise unremarkable supporting characters grandly removing their heavy latex makeup to reveal A-List Hollywood movie stars who played mundane roles in the film. The heavily-disguised stars in this film include Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis, Robert Mitchum, Burt Lancaster and Frank Sinatra. Director John Huston (who also made a cameo appearance in the film) tried to convince Elizabeth Taylor to play a disguised part in this movie, as well; but, when Taylor learned that her lovely face would be completely hidden under heavy latex, she turned down the role.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: Dick Van Dyke starred in this 1968 film about a fellow who purchases and restores a magical motorcar and must protect it from the greedy clutches of a conniving foreign tyrant; and, of course, "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" became a children's classic. Ironically, three years earlier, in 1965, Jerry Van Dyke (Dick's younger brother) starred in an NBC television situation-comedy about a fellow who purchases and restores a magical motorcar and must protect it from the greedy clutches of a conniving car collector. Widely panned by critics as the worst-ever idea for a TV series, "My Mother the Car" was cancelled in 1966 after one season, and the good-natured Jerry Van Dyke always admitted that the series was the very definition of bad television.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: Widely panned by critics as the worst-ever idea for a TV series, "My Mother the Car" followed the antics of Jerry Van Dyke as he purchases and restores a magical motorcar and must protect it from the greedy clutches of a conniving car collector. The show was cancelled in 1966 after one season, and the good-natured Jerry Van Dyke always readily admitted that the series was the very definition of bad television. Ironically, two years later, in 1968, Jerry's older brother (Dick Van Dyke) starred in a film about a fellow who purchases and restores a magical motorcar and must protect it from the greedy clutches of a conniving foreign tyrant. "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" became a children's classic.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: From its inception, "The Munsters" was supposed to be produced in full color, and its earliest pilot was, in fact, shot in full color. The only reason the series was shot in black and white was because both CBS Television and Universal Studios refused to pay the additional $10,000 per episode for color.

Charles Austin Miller