Showing posts with label trivia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trivia. Show all posts

14 October 2022

Verisimilitude


Verisimilitude: the appearance of being true or real. The appearance.

It's what writers strive do in fiction. Harlan Ellison once said, "I want it to seem real ... to hold up the mirror of life and turn it slightly so you can see things from a new angle."

Create credible characters for readers to follow, to like, to hate, to worry about.

Give the reader fictional hyper-realism. Magic-realism. Hell, anything to show it, to elicit emotion in the reader. Fiction is liberating. It allows us to make up stuff, create people, create worlds, re-create our cities the way we want them to OR show the way they are through eyes with a different vision.

It's easy to screw this up by not paying attention to the details of life, by not showing those details, by taking the lazy way out – such as writing "it was sunny outside" instead of showing sunlight reflecting off a store's window. Pay attention. Observe life and take notes and give it back to the reader with the mirror tilted.

Crime fiction is realistic. The big problem I have, especially with movies, is characters acting illogically (better described as stupidly). I know people make mistakes and do screwy things, but leaving a machine gun on the ground and running off with a revolver with only two shots left in it isn't logical. Why didn't they take the bag of food? They haven't eaten in weeks. Why didn't they take a moment to fill up their canteen? Why don't they call the police right away?

Good ficiton is no easy to write. A writer just needs to give the appearance.

I've quoted Harlan before but I love this one: "I'm a professional liar, folks. I write fiction for a living. I make up weird crap and people pay me for it."

Other tidbits:

Did you know Mike Nesmith of The Monkees wrote "Different Drum" (recorded by The Stone Poneys featuring Linda Ronstadt)?

Did you know Barry, Robin & Maurice Gibb (The Bee Gees) wrote "Islands in the Stream" (recorded by Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton)?

Did you know Sony Curtis of The Crickets (of Buddy Holly and the Crickets) wrote "I Fought The Law" (recorded by The Bobby Fuller Four)?

Pretty sure we all know Neil Diamond wrote The Monkees hits "I'm a Believer" and "A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You."

That's all for now.

16 September 2017

A Trivial Pursuit



by John M. Floyd



Yes, I know: there are a lot of productive things I could and should be doing right now, instead of writing a trivial post about trivia. But, as I've confessed in the past, I love little-known facts about fiction and those who create or portray it.

So, for the next few minutes, I challenge you to forget about the stock market and North Korea and politics and global warming and take a look at these worthless little tidbits about movies and novels and actors and writers. Since they surprised me when I learned about them, I hope they (or at least some of them) might surprise you as well.


- Ian Fleming wrote the children's book Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was adapted from a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

- Jack Kerouac typed the novel On the Road on one continuous roll of paper 120 feet long.

- Dooley Wilson (Sam, in Casablanca) didn't know how to play the piano.

- Dr. Seuss wasn't a doctor, of any kind.

- Harriet Beecher Stowe lived next door to Mark Twain in Hartford, Connecticut.

- The names of the policeman and the cab driver in It's a Wonderful Life were Bert and Ernie.

- Both Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were extras in Field of Dreams.

- Between 1982 and 1984, Nora Roberts wrote 23 novels.

- The announcer who replaced Armed Forces Radio DJ Adrian Cronauer (played by Robin Williams in Good Morning, Vietnam) was Pat Sajak.

- Mel Brooks wrote the lyrics to the theme from Blazing Saddles.

- Steve Buscemi is a former NYC firefighter.

- The final Lord of the Rings movie, The Return of the King, was nominated for eleven Oscars and won all of them.

- Before writing The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown was a pop singer. One of his solo albums was called Angels and Demons.

- In Raiders of the Lost Ark, a drawing of R2D2 and C3PO appears on a column in the Well of Souls.

- The novel Catch-22 was originally titled Catch-18.

- Robert Louis Stevenson burned stories based on readers' informal responses, Leo Tolstoy's son rescued the manuscript of War and Peace from the ditch where Tolstoy had thrown it, and Tabitha King pulled the discarded manuscript of Carrie from Stephen King's wastebasket.

- James Arness (Matt Dillon of Gunsmoke) and Peter Graves (Jim Phelps of Mission: Impossible) were brothers.

- William Atherton, who played the obnoxious TV reporter in Die Hard and Die Hard 2, sang the "What'll I Do?" theme song during the opening credits of the 1974 (Robert Redford/Mia Farrow) version of The Great Gatsby.

- "Goldeneye" was Ian Fleming's name for the Jamaican beach house where he wrote all the James Bond novels. Sting later used the same desk to write the song "Every Breath You Take."

- One of the voices of E.T. was that of Debra Winger.

- Clint Eastwood composed the main theme ("Claudia's Theme") for Unforgiven.


- Tom Wolfe, who was six-foot-six, preferred to write standing up, using the top of his refrigerator for a desk.

- In The Abyss, many of the underwater scenes were actually filmed in smoky air, using fake bubbles.

- Olivia Newton-John's grandfather, Max Born, won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1954.

- Both Erle Stanley Gardner and Agatha Christie dictated their novels. (Though ESG typed his earliest work.)

- To make some of the spacecraft seem larger in the movie Alien, director Ridley Scott filmed his own two children outfitted in miniature space suits.

- Rowan Atkinson has a master's degree in Electrical Engineering.

- Singer Tex Ritter ("Do Not Forsake Me, O My Darlin'," from High Noon) was actor John Ritter's father.

- Actor/director Anthony Hopkins composed the music for the movie Slipstream (2007).

- Clyde Barrow once wrote a letter to Henry Ford (it's on display at the Ford museum in Dearborn, Michigan) praising the V-8 Ford as a getaway car.

- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was the first book written using the typewriter.

- Clint Eastwood did all his own mountain climbing--no stuntmen--in The Eiger Sanction.

- Most of the cast and crew of The African Queen got sick from the water. Only Humphrey Bogart and director John Huston were unaffected because they drank only whiskey.

- Evelyn Waugh's first wife's name was Evelyn.

- Tom Hanks is a descendant of Abe Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln.

- The first U.S. paperback edition of Ian Fleming's Casino Royale was published with the title You Asked for It.

- Michael Myers's mask in Halloween was a two-dollar Captain Kirk mask, slightly altered and painted white.

- Carolyn Keene, author of the Nancy Drew novels, was really a pseudonym for a team of several different writers.

- Hoyt Axton (the father in The Black Stallion) wrote "Heartbreak Hotel."

- Melissa McCarthy and Jenny McCarthy are first cousins.

- The original title of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was The Sundance Kid and Butch Cassidy. It was reversed when Newman decided to take the role of Butch rather than Sundance.

- The same author (Larry McMurtry) wrote Lonesome Dove and Terms of Endearment.

- Frank Oz was the voice of Yoda, the Cookie Monster, and Miss Piggy.

- Mickey Spillane ordered 50,000 copies of his 1952 novel Kiss Me, Deadly to be destroyed when the comma was left out of the title.

- Mia Sara (Ferris Bueller's girlfriend) has had two fathers-in-law: Sean Connery and Jim Henson.

- Director John Carpenter composed the music for most of his movies.

- Noah Webster was T. S. Eliot's great-uncle.

- Ian Fleming got the name for his fictional spy from a book he owned called Birds of the West Indies, by James Bond.

- The charcoal sketch of Kate Winslet in Titanic was actually drawn by director James Cameron.

- Tommy Lee Jones and Al Gore were roommates at Harvard.

- J. K. Rowling came up with the names for the houses at Hogwarts while on a plane. She jotted the names down on a barf bag.

- The keypad on the laboratory's door lock in Moonraker plays the five-note theme from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

- Author Sidney Sheldon created the TV series I Dream of Jeannie and The Patty Duke Show, and won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer.

- When the kid in Home Alone 2 walks into the Plaza Hotel, the person he asks for directions is Donald Trump.

- Tom Clancy was part owner of the Baltimore Orioles.

- Cormac McCarthy wrote with the same typewriter for more than fifty years. When it broke, he auctioned it off for more than $250,000 (to donate to charity).

- In World War II, Roald Dahl was a fighter pilot, Donald Pleasance was a POW, Christopher Lee was an undercover agent for British Inteligence, and Charles Durning was awarded the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and Purple Heart.

- When a hurricane hit the set during filming of Jurassic Park, the pilot who choppered the crew to safety was the man who had played Indiana Jones's pilot, Jock, in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

- The top three most-read books in the world are The Holy Bible, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, and the Harry Potter series.

- In The Secret Life of Ian Fleming, Fleming was played by Sean Connery's son Jason.

- Actor Sam Shepard wrote 44 plays; one of them won him the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979.

- The roles of both John McClane in Die Hard and Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry were first offered to Frank Sinatra.

- When J. K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, she typed three separate copies of the manuscript because she couldn't afford copying fees.

- Samuel L. Jackson's Pulp Fiction quote from Ezekiel was originally written for Harvey Keitel's character in From Dusk to Dawn.

- Chocolate syrup was used as blood in Psycho's shower scene; it was also used as the Tin Man's oil in The Wizard of Oz.

- Mary Shelley began writing Frankenstein when she was eighteen, and it was published when she was twenty.

- Mystery writer John Sandford, a.k.a. John Camp, won a Pulitzer for Non-Deadline Feature Writing in 1986 for articles about the life of a Minnesota farming family.

- Of his 70-plus film roles, Gregory Peck played a villain only twice (I think), in Duel in the Sun and The Boys From Brazil.

- Dolph Lundgren has a master's degree in Chemical Engineering.

- In the UK, Fifty Shades of Grey is the best-selling book of all time.

- George Lucas had a dog named Indiana.

- Robert Duvall had a bit part as Steve McQueen's cab driver in the movie Bullitt.

- The Salvation (2014) was a Western filmed in South Africa, with a Danish director and actors from Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, the U.S., and England.

- Haley Joe Osment, the boy who "saw dead people" in The Sixth Sense, played Forrest Gump's son five years earlier.

- Tippi Hedren (The Birds) is the mother of Melanie Griffith and the grandmother of Dakota Johnson.

- Kurt Vonnegut managed America's first Saab dealership.

- Denzel Washington and Jeff Goldblum both played thugs in 1974's Death Wish.

- As a child, Roald Dahl--the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory--was a taste-tester for Cadbury's chocolate.

- Nathaneal West's 1939 novel The Day of the Locust features a character named Homer Simpson.

- In High Plains Drifter, one of the headstones in the cemetery was inscribed with the name Sergio Leone.

- Married (at one time or another): Geena Davis/Jeff Goldblum, Rachel Weisz/Daniel Craig, Calista Flockhart/Harrison Ford, Marlo Thomas/Phil Donahue, Rita Hayworth/Orson Welles, Uma Thurman/Gary Oldman, Dyan Cannon/Cary Grant, Lorraine Bracco/Edward James Olmos, Catherine Keener/Delmot Mulroney, Mia Farrow/Frank Sinatra, Christie Brinkley/Billy Joel, Barbara Streisand/Elliott Gould, Brooke Shields/Andre Agassi, Lisa Marie Presley/Nicolas Cage, Mary Steenbergen/Malcolm McDowell, Isabella Rosselini/Martin Scorcese, Madonna/Sean Penn, Penelope Ann Miller/Will Arnett, Michelle Phillips/Dennis Hopper, Mimi Rogers/Tom Cruise, Helen Hunt/Hank Azaria, Drew Barrymore/Tom Green, Katherine Ross/Sam Elliott, Scarlett Johanssen/Ryan Reynolds.

-Dated (at one time or another): Helen Mirren/Liam Neeson, Anjelica Huston/Jack Nicholson. Sarah Jessica Parker/Robert Downey Jr., Courtney Cox/Michael Keaton, Whoopi Goldberg/Frank Langella, Carrie Fisher/Paul Simon, Jeanne Tripplehorn/Ben Stiller, Meryl Streep/John Cazale.

- Barbie in Toy Story 3 is voiced by Jodi Benson, who also voiced Ariel in The Little Mermaid.

- Paranormal Activity cost $15,000 to make and has grossed $210 million; Deep Throat cost around $25,000 and grossed $600 million; John Carter cost $350 million and lost $200 million.

- Mickey Spillane was at one time the author of seven of the ten best-selling novels in history.

- Sean Connery wore a toupee in all of his James Bond movies.


And maybe the most valuable and surprising piece of trivia of all:

- Katy Perry's cat's name is Kitty Purry.

(Don't ever say I didn't give you the inside info.)


Can you think of any crazy and lesser-known movie/novel/actor/author facts? Inquiring minds want to know . . .




21 November 2015

02 February 2013

In Pursuit of Mystery Trivia


Last week I did some housecleaning, in the form of thinning out my vast collection of hardback books. I do that every now and then only because I'm forced to--by my wife and by the fact that no matter how big our house is, it's still not big enough for a steady inflow of non-e-books--and as a result I always wind up giving some to the library, some to friends, and some to the garbage crew that comes by every Tuesday and Friday.

The point is, in every one of these sad (for me) "inventories" I seem to find something that gives me an idea for a SleuthSayers column.  This time it was a delightful little collection of questions called The Mystery Trivia Quiz Book, by Kitty Reese and Regis Sinclair. I've long since forgotten where I bought it, or even why I bought it, but I couldn't resist sitting down and paging through the questions. (Now my problem is deciding whether to keep the darn thing or toss it overboard.)
Here is a sampling of the brain-teasers I found there, plus a few of my own. Some are easy, some are tough, and some are just plain silly, but I hope all of them bring back for you (as they do for me) fond memories of mystery novels, stories, authors, movies, and TV shows.

1. What was the full name of Sherlock Holmes's landlady?
2. In what magazine did Dashiell Hammett's first Continental Op story appear?
3. What was Evan Hunter's best-known pseudonym?
4. Who killed Richard Kimble's wife in TV's The Fugitive?
5. What's the name of Bill Pronzini's famous detective?
6. Who played the gangster who carved up Jack Nicholson's nose in Chinatown?
7. What fictional series character hitchhikes across America carrying only a toothbrush, an ATM card, and the clothes on his back?
8. Where did Nick and Nora Charles stay when they were in New York?
9. What mystery (and former Western) author wrote the novel Hombre and the short story "3:10 to Yuma"?
10. What Poe story is considered to be the first "locked-room mystery"?
11. What was taken in John Godey's novel The Taking of Pelham One Two Three?
12.  Who played a judge in the final episode of Perry Mason, telecast in 1966?" (This one isn't as hard as it sounds.)
13. In what city was Spenser based?
14. How do you pronounce Ngaio Marsh's first name?
15. In North by Northwest, what is Cary Grant's reply when Eva Marie Saint says, "Roger O. Thornhill. What does the O stand for?"
16. Who shot J.R., on TV's Dallas?
17. What was the basis of many of the titles of Martha Grimes's detective novels?
18. What was Mike Hammer's secretary's name?
19. What did BullittVertigoThe Maltese Falcon, and Dirty Harry have in common?
20. Who lived on a houseboat called The Busted Flush?
21. Edgar Box is the pseudonym of what writer?
22. Who always includes a number in the titles of her mystery novels?
23. Who played the murderer in Rear Window?
24. In Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd--how did he die?
25. How did Nero Wolfe finish the following line: The only safe secrets are . . .
26. What TV character's name was taken from the British film industry expression "man-appeal" or "M-appeal" (which is what the series producers were looking for)?
27. What was Robert B. Parker's middle name?
28. What was Dick Francis's only collection of short stories?
29. Who was the voice of Charlie in TV's Charlie's Angels?
30. How did Hitchcock manage to do his trademark cameo in the cramped setting of the movie Lifeboat?
31. What's the name of the bog that borders the Baskerville estate?
32. In Richard Diamond, Private Detective, who played Sam (RD's answering service)?
33. What mystery writer is actually Dr. Robert William Arthur?
34. In which of the Thin Man movies did James Stewart play a suspect?
35. Who had to turn down the role of Indiana Jones because he was tied up filming a P.I. series?
36. What's unique about the settings of Nevada Barr's mystery novels?
37. In The Maltese Falcon, what was Sam Spade's partner's name?
38. Who were the two cousins who used the pen name Ellery Queen?
39. What Ben Gazzara/Chuck Connors TV series had the following format: the first half was spent catching the crook and the last half was spent convicting him?
40. What do P.D. James's first two initials stand for?
41. Who writes mystery novels starring sports agent Myron Bolitar?
42. Who was the producer's first choice to play Lt. Columbo?
43. The movie Heavenly Creatures was based on a crime actually committed by what popular mystery writer, when she was in her teens?
44. What musical instrument did Sherlock Holmes play?
45. What TV private detective frequented a bar called Mother's?
46. What was used to simulate blood in the Psycho shower scene?
47. What do Robert B. Parker's Jesse Stone series and Steve Hamilton's Alex McKnight series have in common?
48. What did the dying man tell James Stewart in The Man Who Knew Too Much?
49. What is romance author Nora Roberts's mystery-writer pseudonym?
50. Which Agatha Christie novel featured Alice Ascher, Betty Barnard, and Carmichael Clarke?

That's it--put down your pencil and turn in your paper. By the way, if you felt comfortable answering half of these or more, I don't know whether to congratulate you or feel sorry for you. I will say that you probably spend more time reading and watching mysteries than you should. (I certainly do.) And shame on you, shame I say, if you Googled any of them.

In case anyone's interested, I will supply all fifty answers in my SleuthSayers column two weeks from now. Meanwhile, it's time to get back to my sorting and trashcan detail. Anybody want a copy of Tommy Chong's autobiography?

Didn't think so.