Jon Lee will be hosting for May. The movies to watch are:
Trivia:
- When Jack Nicholson would get ready to play his nude scenes, he'd prepare everyone on set by warning, "Here comes Big Steve!"
- The fight scene between Nicholson and Ann-Margret took a week to shoot, and at the end of it both performers had lost their voices.
- After auditioning several actresses for the role of Bobbi, Mike Nichols agreed to see Ann-Margret, whom he remembered being very impressed with in Kitten with a Whip.
- The scene in which Sandy takes out a condom while in bed with Susan is the first time a condom was ever shown onscreen.
- After working with Jack Nicholson in Easy Rider, Karen Black went to Mike Nichols, on recommendation from Jack, to test for the role of Bobbie. It was mutually decided that Karen did not have the right figure for the role.
- Writer Jules Feiffer originally pitched the concept to director Mike Nichols as a theatre project. After listening to Feiffer's ideas, Nichols said, "I see it as a movie."
Trivia:
- George C. Scott turned down the role of Colonel Cathcart, saying he had effectively played the same part in Dr. Strangelove.
- While on a tirade in his office, Major Major walks past a framed photo of Franklin D. Roosevelt. In a continuous shot, he paces around his office, and when he passes the picture again, it is of Winston Churchill, as he makes one more round of his office and grabs the fake mustache out of his filing cabinet, the photo has changed to that of Joseph Stalin.
- Paul Simon was originally going to be in the film, but his role was written out.
- The film has one of the longest, most complex uninterrupted scenes ever made. In the scene, where two actors talking against a background, 16 of the 17 planes, four groups of four aircraft, took off at the same time. As the scene progresses, the actors entered a building and the same planes were seen through the window, climbing into formation. The problem was, for every take, the production manager has to call the planes back and made to take off again for every take of the particular scene. This was done four times.
- Second Unit Director John Jordan refused to wear a harness during a bomber scene. While giving a hand signal to another airplane from the tail gunner position in the camera plane, he lost his grip and fell 4000 feet to his death.
- This is the first American film to show an actor on the toilet - Martin Balsam, playing opposite Anthony Perkins. Ten years earlier, the first American film to show a toilet was Psycho, starring Martin Balsam and Anthony Perkins.
- The Mexico location shooting took six months to complete because cinematographer David Watkin would only film between 2pm to 3pm to get the same lighting.
- Orson Welles tried to acquire the rights to the novel so that he could film it. He had to be content with playing the part of General Dreedle.
- Since shooting took longer than planned, Art Garfunkel wasn't able to make it back to New York in time to start writing and recording the Simon & Garfunkel album "Bridge Over Troubled Water". Angered by the delay, Paul Simon wrote the track "The Only Living Boy in New York" about the incident. The lyrics "Tom, get your plane right on time / I know your part'll go fine / Fly down to Mexico" were a thinly veiled attack aimed at Garfunkel (who was "Tom" of Simon & Garfunkel's earlier incarnation, Tom & Jerry), leaving Simon alone in New York to write the bulk of the album himself.
- The squadron patch on Yossarian's leather A-2 flight jacket - a female nude riding a descending bomb, hurling a bolt of lightning - was the actual patch of Joseph Heller's 488th Bombardment Squadron (Medium), one of four B-25 squadrons (the others being the 486th, 487th, and 489th) in the 340th Bombardment Group (Medium) during World War II.
- Stanley Kubrick was considered to direct this film.
Other Films Of Merit
We discussed these other films at the last meeting:
