Answers: May 31, 2003
Here are the answers I've emailed out to some of the questions you have asked. As you'll see, I don't always know the correct answer but hope to at least provide a hint to steer the person asking in the right direction. If you can clarify, or want to dispute, any of the answers- be sure to contact me and I'll follow up. Every so often I'll add a new page of answers so check back often!
.
  Other Answer pages:  
CMT Answer Update:
In our first Answers page posted on 04/28, we had the question:
Do you know what it is called when an actor says the movie title of the movie in the script? i.e. In Minority Report: the actor says " I want to see the 'minority report' ".

I couldn't find an answer to the question, but astute CMT reader James Watson wrote in with the answer- it's called the "titular line". Another Tom Cruise movie example: "This isn't Mission Difficult, it's Mission Impossible".
CMT Answer Update:
In our 05/21 Answers page, one reader asked for movies where a character lists off things. We had three readers write in suggesting the list from "Bull Durham"- where Kevin Costner has his 'What I believe in' collection of things that include opening presents on Christmas morning and long, slow, wet kisses. Thanks Toto, T Ladd, and Mike.
In "The Two Towers" what was Gollum's real name?
-Cindy Tarwater
CMT Answer:
The character of Gollum was a CG creation of the New Zealand effects house WETA. The movements of actor Andy Serkis were motioned captured and used as the basis for animating the character, and Andy provided the voice. The 'real' name of the Gollum character given in the movie, prior to becoming Gollum was Smeagol.
.
I have always wondered.....Sergeant Dan in the movie Forest Gump really missing both his legs? I know this is a stupid question but I have always wondered about it :)
-Teal Harris
CMT Answer:
Hey! No stupid questions! (Well most of the time). Not to worry tho', yours is fine...

Sergeant Dan was played by actor Gary Sinise in the 1994 flick, and he is a two-legged actor. You've probably seen both his legs since 'Gump' in other popular flicks like "Ransom" or "Reindeer Games".

In the movie, after his character loses his legs, the filmmakers used a combination of standard camera 'tricks' and digital effects to give the illusion of a legless sarge. For certain scenes, the actor wore blue socks similar to a 'blue screen' (or green screen nowadays) used in the back ground when doing a digital effects shot. Like a blue screen, the blue part
was digitally erased in post-production and replaced with another image, mainly the tops of the stumps of his legs and the background under his legs to make it look like they weren't there.

The special effects team behind Forrest Gump was George Lucas' ILM - Industrial Light and Magic. They've been behind most of the breakthroughs in special effects since they were founded and Gump was no exception. They used new technology (at the time) to blend Forrest seamlessly into the many archival news shots in the movie, and even to digitally create the feather that floats down at the start of the movie.
d

In the Eddie Murphy "Delirious" video half way through there is a shout from the crowd and Eddie drops his microphone and laughs uncontrollably for about 5 minutes, but I cant tell what is shouted at him. Can you help?
-Danny
CMT Answer:
I did some Internet searching but I could not come up with an answer for you. I don't have the video so I can't try listening myself, and the video is not on DVD yet. Maybe when it is finally released, you will have a better audio track to work with and can hear what the guy yelled. If any of you CMT readers know the answer to this one, lemme know!
.
What was Mel Gibson's job in "What Women Want"?
-Nick
CMT Answer:
He was an ad agency executive at a large Chicago firm called "Sloane-Curtis".
.
What was the name of the town where the movie "Funny Farm" was made?
-?
CMT Answer:
Ahhh Funny Farm. I'll always remember Yellow Dog from that movie- what a great, yellow, dog.

The shooting for the Chevy Chase comedy was virtually all done on location in Vermont. Much of the principle photography was done in and around the town of Townshend. The people there liked the gazebo that was constructed for the 1988 film so much that they kept it afterwards and it still stands today. For scenes of the farm itself the Jenne Farm was used, which bills itself as the 'most photographed farm in the world'. It's located about 15 minutes south of Woodstock.
.
Who had a cameo in a Scream sequel and is now starring in "Matrix Reloaded"?
-Cindy
CMT Answer:
Sheesh- answering someone else's movie trivia seems somehow immoral. Anyways, Jada Pinkett-Smith played Niobe in Matrix Reloaded and had a cameo in Scream 2. She was the girl who was killed in the movie theater at the start.
.
What was the worst movie of all time? What was the movie that had the most human casualies?
-Frank Tudor
CMT Answer:
The worst movie of all time is a pretty subjective question. My least favorite would be "Hardware", but it comes up with an average of 5.1/10 on IMDB- a score I still can't believe. Going by IMDB users, which has the largest movie-related database on the net, the worst movie would be the 1966 flick "Manos, the Hands of Fate". It centers on a vacationing family that takes a wrong turn and ends up at a shack in the woods filled with evil creeps. This movie was 'spoofed' on Mystery Science Theater 3000, which is why so many people have seen this low-budget, no-name movie from the 60's. 4,132 IMDB users gave this flick a combined average of 1.5 / 10. This year's Cannes also featured the worst rated movie in the competition of all time- a borefest by Vincent Gallo ('Buffalo '66) called "Brown Bunny" which sounds like basically 90 minutes of a guy driving his van, but featuring a hardcore oral sex scene thrown in for kicks.

I usually only answer one question per person per week so I'll leave your 'casualities' question for now. This also is kind of a subjective question- it depends on your criteria for 'casuality'. Would it be people you actually see get killed, or just people who die in the movie? For example, in the animated flick "Titan A.E", Earth blows up so there would are a few billion casualities, but of course you don't see each death.
.
What was the name of the restaurant in "Vertigo?"
-Rosemary
CMT Answer:
It was called "Ernie's". This was an actual restaurant in San Francisco that was located at 847 Montgomery street, however both the interior and exterior shots for the movie were sets built on the Paramount Lot. The real Ernie's closed in 1995.
.
I'm looking for the name of a D-Day movie involving the kidnapping of an inteligence officer. The Germans try to convince him that it's past the invasion date so that they can trick him in revealing the landing site. He figures it out by a paper cut he remembers getting on the eve of the landing.
-Les
CMT Answer:
Sounds like the movie you are after is a 1964 suspense flick starring James Garner called "36 Hours". It definitely had a cool premise and was a fine little flick. The IMDB link for more info is here:
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0057809
.
What was the first film to have a computer appear as the main character?
-Laura
CMT Answer:
If you mean a computer-generated character, that would be the 'Stained Glass Man' from the 1985 movie "Young Sherlock Holmes". The character was created by (who else), Industrial Light and Magic, George Lucas' special effects shop that pretty much has pushed the envelope for special effects since it was founded in 1975.

If you mean a computer being the main character in a movie, not a CG-character, that is a little more tricky. The earliest I can think of a computer being an actual 'main character', and not just in the movie, would be 1968's "2001: A Space Odyssey". The earliest full-length major movie I could find on IMDB that has computers as a central part of the story would be 1957's "Desk Set" - here's the link:
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0050307
However, the computer is not a 'character' per se.
.

What was the first movie sequel ever made?
-Barry Jay
CMT Answer:
There have been sequels almost as long as there have been movies. Feature length films first appeared around 1913, and the first movie often considered the grandfather of all 'modern' movies, in terms of runtime, narrative structure, and the number of now-familiar movie shots it introduced, was 1915's "Birth of a Nation". And being as this movie has virtually served as a movie template for the last 90-or-so years, it's only fitting that it spawned a sequel- 1916's "Fall of a Nation".

Both movies were controversial - the original was extremely racist; it's hero was a KKK member and all blacks were portrayed as either ignorant, violent, or both. The sequel was basically a propaganda piece for WWI to get Americans involved in the war- Germany invades and seizes control of America in the movie. This was the earliest true movie sequel I could find noted anywhere- I'm sure there were little one or two reel sequels playing to short films in the coin-operated movie houses, but these were not 'movies' in the terms we think of them nowadays.

As a side note, the first movie sequel to feature a '2' in the title, was the 1957 sci-fi flick "Quatermass 2". The sequel to the 1955 genre-fave centered on a scientist who uncovers an alien plot to take over Earth.
In "Batman Forever" what did the director add to the bat suit?
-
CMT Answer:
Bat nipples.
.