Tidbits Focuses on Movies with Numbers

This week Tidbits puts the spotlight on some fascinating facts about a number of things, all of which have to do with movies that happen to have numbers in their title. Follow along and see what we found

• “Twelve Years a Slave” is the heart-rending true story of a free African-American man who was kidnapped in 1841 and sold into slavery. Nominated for nine Academy Awards, the film took home three, including Best Picture. Solomon Northup was a New York-born violinist who was offered a short-term series of performances if he would travel to Washington, D.C. with two men. Instead he was taken prisoner and delivered to a slave auction.

• Northrop worked on Louisiana plantations for 12 years before regaining his freedom through the efforts of a Canadian abolitionist who had been hired as a laborer to build a house for the plantation owner. Chiwetel Ejiofor, the actor who portrayed Northup, learned to play the violin for the role. It was the film debut for Lupito Nyong’o, who played female slave, Patsey. Nyong’o received an Oscar for her very first film role.

• Northup was freed in 1853 and published his autobiography that year. Four years later, he disappeared, and it’s still unknown what happened to him. His two kidnappers were eventually trackeddown and tried for the crime, but their case was dropped on technicalities.

• Molly Ringwald really was about to turn 16 when she starred in 1984’s “Sixteen Candles,” as was her co-star Anthony Michael Hall. However, the actor who played her teenage crush was 23 years old, and the actor in the role of the teenage foreign exchange student was actually 28. It’s the story of Samantha, a high school sophomore who is over-the-top excited about her 16th birthday, but is devastated when her entire family forgets about it because her sister is getting married.

• “Sixteen Candles” was filmed at Niles East High School in Skokie, Illinois. The set for Samantha’s bedroom was built inside the high school gym, where the school dance was also filmed. Molly Ringwald decorated the set with items from her own bedroom at home.

• The “Ocean’s 11” film series, which began in 2001, was a remake of a 1960 film by the same name. The films belong to the “heist film” genre, which has a plot featuring expert criminals accomplishing an ingenious and dangerous theft. The 1960 film starred that decade’s “Rat Pack” – Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis, Jr., with Sinatra in the role of Danny Ocean, featuring a series of casino robberies. George Clooney took over the role in 2001, 2004 (“Ocean’s Twelve”), and 2007 (“Ocean’s Thirteen”), accompanied by Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, and Andy Garcia. Clooney wanted Julie Roberts for the female lead and offered to pay her to read the script. At the time, Roberts was commanding $20 million per picture, so Clooney attached a $20 bill to the script, along with a note reading, “I heard you’re getting 20 a picture.” She accepted the role. The series of three films grossed $1.17 billion worldwide.

• The 2007 epic action film, “300,” was loosely based on the Battle of Thermopylae during the Persian Wars of 480 BC. Following the 1998 comic book series, it’s the story of King Leonidas, who was the leader of 300 Spartans in the battle against the invading Persian army numbering upwards of 300,000 soldiers. Gerard Butler, who landed the role of the King, spent four hours a day for over four months training at the gym to prepare for the role. Crews spent two months preparing the 600 costumes, shields, spears, and swords required for the production. Seventeen helmets were created for Butler, each in a gradually-deteriorating state for the ongoing battle. Most of the realistic swords were actually plastic. Thirteen animatronic horses were created for the film.

• Did you see “The Sixth Sense” ending coming? Various clues to the shocking outcome to the 1999 film appeared throughout. Bruce Willis’ character Malcolm Crowe only interacted with his young patient, Cole. And all of the clothes worn by Malcolm were worn the night of his death, slightly modified into different outfits. Because director M. Night Shyamalan didn’t want moviegoers to see that Malcolm wasn’t wearing his wedding ring, the left-handed Bruce Willis learned to write right-handed so that his left hand was never seen.

• Nine-year-old Haley Joel Osment won the role of Cole because Shyamalan loved the fact that he was the only young actor who wore a tie to the audition. Osment had also stayed up the night before, reading the entire script three times. As a six-year-old, Osment had a role in 1994’s “Forrest Gump” as the son of Tom Hanks’ character.

• “The Sixth Sense” was nominated for six Oscars including Best Picture, and had a budget of $40 million. It grossed an astounding $672,806,292 worldwide. It made $8 million on its opening day in the U.S.

• Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore starred in 2004’s “50 First Dates,” the story of a marine veterinarian wooing a young woman with amnesia. Due to Barrymore’s condition resulting from a head injury, Sandler must re-introduce himself and make her fall in love with him every single day, because her memory disappears every night as she sleeps.

• The film calls her memory impairment “Goldfield’s Syndrome,” but this neurological ailment is purely fictional, as there is no such condition. It is, however, similar to anterograde amnesia, the inability to form new memories, which can last for mere minutes up to weeks. But going to sleep isn’t related to this memory loss.

• “Three Men and a Baby” was the Number One box office hit of 1987. It was rejected by two studios, TriStar and Universal, before it was picked up by Disney under their new “Touchstone Pictures” label.

• In the film three bachelors played by Tom Selleck, Steve Guttenberg, and Ted Danson, share a Manhattan apartment, living the free and easy life until Danson’s ex-girlfriend shows up with the child he didn’t know about.

More than 200 sets of twin girls were screen-tested for the part of Baby Mary before Lisa and Michelle Blair were chosen. The company that manufactures Pampers paid $50,000 for their diaper products to be used in the movie scenes.

• The film careers of Heath Ledger and Joseph Gordon-Levitt were launched with 1999’s “10 Things I Hate About You,” a teen comedy drama that became a cult classic. The movie was a modern-day version of Shakespeare’s 16th-century play “The Taming of the Shrew,” with Ledger’s character Patrick Verona based on Shakespeare’s Petruchio.

• Ledger, who beat out Ashton Kutcher for the role, studied Richard’s Burton’s portrayal of the character in the 1967 film adaptation to help with his interpretation of the role. The movie’s teen sisters, Bianca and Kat Stratford, were named as such in honor of Shakespeare’s birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon. □

FIND THE DIFFERENCES: