Aubreyy Foster

The scene in "Blazing Saddles" (1974) which Mongo knocks out a horse has a basis in reality. Mel Brooks' former "Your Show of Shows" and "Caesar's Hour" boss, Sid Caesar, who was a physically imposing and somewhat violent man, reported in his 1982 autobiography "Where Have I Been?" that while trailriding with his wife, her horse caused trouble and he punched it once between the eyes. The horse collapsed, unconscious. He notes that this event was Brooks' inspiration for the "Mongo vs. horse" scene.

Alex Karras (who played Mongo) was a defensive lineman for the Detroit Lions from 1958-62 and 1964-70. He missed the 1963 NFL season because he was suspended for gambling (along with Paul Hornung). Karras made his film debut in "Paper Lion" (1968), playing himself as a member of the Detroit Lions. As in Plimpton's book, Karras delights his teammates with impromptu monologues about a fanciful past, including his marriage to Hi**er. Onscreen, Karras is also shown as a slave-driving coach in a theatrical sendup. The film led to Karras' appearance on "The Tonight Show." On the show, he described smashing and grinding the opponent into a fourth down. "And then the coach calls on some European soccer player. 'Oh Julian! Julian!' And this little guy comes out, saying, 'I'm going to kick a touchdown!'"

In 1974, he was quickly brought in by ABC in September to replace Fred Williamson as a commentator for the network's "Monday Night Football." He served three years in that role until leaving after the 1976 season, with his most memorable comment coming in his first game, when he joked that bald Oakland Raiders' lineman Otis Sistrunk, who never attended college, was from "the University of Mars," after seeing steam coming off his head.

Athletically-inclined Forest Whitaker initially found his way into college via a football scholarship. Later, however, he transferred to USC where he set his concentration on music and earned two more scholarships training as an operatic tenor. This, in turn, led to another scholarship at Berkeley with a renewed focus on acting and the performing stage.

Whitaker made his film debut at the age of 21 in the raucous comedy "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" (1982, below) wherein he played, quite naturally, a footballer, Charles Jefferson. He went on to play another sports-oriented student, a wrestler, in his second film "Vision Quest" (1985).

The movie that truly put him on the map was "The Color of Money" (1986), with one big scene as a naive-looking pool player who outhustles Paul Newman's Fast Eddie Felson. This led to more visible roles in the "A" class films "Platoon" (1986), "Stakeout" (1987), and "Good Morning, Vietnam" (1987), which culminated in his breakout lead portrayal of the tortured jazz icon Charlie "Bird" Parker in Clint Eastwood's passion project "Bird" (1988), for which Whitaker won the Cannes Film Festival award for Best Actor and a Golden Globe nomination.

Whitaker's greatest success to date is the 2006 film, "The Last King of Scotland". His performance earned him the 2007 Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, For that same role, he also received the Golden Globe Award, the Screen Actors Guild Award, a BAFTA Award, and many critical accolades.

Whitaker cannot fully open his left eye, due to the hereditary condition ptosis.

On this date in 1994, "True Lies" was released.

The set of bra and matching panties worn by Helen Tasker during the st******se scene were Jamie Lee Curtis's own. Curtis rehearsed the scene extensively with director James Cameron, and it was there that the fall she makes in the middle of the dance was conceived (it didn't happen spontaneously during the actual shooting, as is often claimed). Arnold Schwarzenegger was not told of this beforehand, and this is hinted at when Harry briefly sits up in alarm, realizes that he is breaking character, and then relaxes. They did another take with the same gag, but Harry's reaction didn't look as spontaneous.

Curtis performed the helicopter rescue scene herself. At her insistence, Cameron agreed to let her perform this scary spectacle. According to Curtis, on the TV special promoting "True Lies," it was Cameron's idea for her to do the helicopter work; she said, "Oh, yeah. And just where are you going to be while I'm dangling way up there in the air, Jim?" And, according to her, he said, "Hanging out the door filming you with a hand-held camera." So she decided that if he was willing to do that to get the shot, she could stand to do it, too.

When Harry tells Gib that Helen is having an affair, Gib tells a story about his second wife taking everything when she left him, even the ice cube trays from the freezer. This is a direct reference to Tom Arnold's divorce from Roseanne Barr that was happening at the same time; she was reported to have taken his ice cube trays when she left him as well. Arnold told the story to Cameron on the set while saying: "What kind of sick b***h takes the ice cube trays out of the freezer?" Cameron thought the line was hilarious, and incorporated it into the film.

Schwarzenegger stated that while filming a scene with a horse, a camera boom hit the horse and "it went crazy, spinning and rearing" near a drop of 90 feet. Schwarzenegger quickly slid off the horse and stuntman Billy D. Lucas (who was one of Arnold's main doubles and closest friends) caught him; he concluded, "[This is] why I will always love stunt people."

Schwarzenegger's biggest challenge for the movie was not doing all the physical stunts, but dancing a tango. He had to take dancing lessons to realistically perform the dance. He rehearsed the scene for about six months, as he wanted to make sure he was as good at the tango as Al Pacino was in "Scent of a Woman" (1992).

"Zelig," released on this date in 1983, is a mockumentary film written and directed by Woody Allen and starring Allen and Mia Farrow. Allen plays Leonard Zelig, a nondescript enigma, who, apparently out of his desire to fit in and be liked, unwittingly takes on the characteristics of strong personalities around him. The film, presented as a documentary, recounts his period of intense celebrity in the 1920s, including analyses by contemporary intellectuals.

Allen used newsreel footage, and inserted himself and other actors into it, using bluescreen technology. To provide an authentic look to his scenes, Allen and cinematographer Gordon Willis used a variety of techniques, including locating some of the antique film cameras and lenses used during the eras depicted in the film, and even going so far as to simulate damage, such as crinkles and scratches, on the negatives to make the finished product look more like vintage footage. The virtually seamless blending of old and new footage was achieved almost a decade before digital filmmaking technology made such techniques in films like "Forrest Gump" (1994) and various television advertisements much easier to accomplish.
The film uses cameo appearances by real figures from academia and other fields for comic effect. Contrasting the film's vintage black-and-white film footage, these persons appear in color segments as themselves, commenting in the present day on the Zelig phenomenon as if it really happened. They include essayist Susan Sontag, psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim, Nobel Prize-winning novelist Saul Bellow, political writer Irving Howe, historian John Morton Blum, and the Paris nightclub owner Bricktop.

Also appearing in the film's vintage footage are Charles Lindbergh, Al Capone, Clara Bow, William Randolph Hearst, Marion Davies, Charlie Chaplin, Josephine Baker, F***y Brice, Carole Lombard, Dolores del Río, Adolf Hi**er, Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring, James Cagney, Jimmy Walker, Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, Adolphe Menjou, Claire Windsor, Tom Mix, Marie Dressler, Bobby Jones, and Pope Pius XI.

In the time it took to complete the film's special effects, Allen filmed "A Midsummer Night's S*x Comedy" (1982) and "Broadway Danny Rose" (released after "Zelig" in 1984).

On this date in 1988, "Die Hard" was released.

Produced by Lawrence Gordon and Joel Silver, the film is based on Roderick Thorp's 1979 novel "Nothing Lasts Forever," the sequel to 1966's "The Detective." The novel was adapted into a 1968 film of the same name starring Frank Sinatra and was a box-office success. When a movie based on Thorp's sequel went into production, the studio was contractually obligated to offer Frank Sinatra the lead role in "Die Hard." Sinatra, then in his early 70s, turned down the project. The story was then changed to have no connection to "The Detective."

Arnold Schwarzenegger declined the role as he wished to broaden his appeal by attempting comedy in what eventually became "Twins" (1988). Although it has been rumored that at this point the project was repurposed to be a sequel to Schwarzenegger's 1985 action film "Commando," scriptwriter Steven E. de Souza has denied this.

De Souza has said he wrote the script as if Hans Gruber were the protagonist. "If he had not planned the robbery and put it together, Bruce Willis would have just gone to the party and reconciled or not with his wife. You should sometimes think about looking at your movie through the point of view of the villain who is really driving the narrative."

At the time, Willis was largely known for his comedic role as detective David Addison on the television series "Moonlighting." Willis initially turned down the role due to his contractual commitments to the show. However, after his co-star Cybill Shepherd became pregnant, "Moonlighting" was shut down for 11 weeks which provided sufficient time for Willis to work on "Die Hard." Willis was paid $5 million to star in the film, a figure virtually unheard of at the time for an actor who had starred in only one moderately successful film (1987's "Blind Date"), and normally only paid to major stars at the time such as Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty.

Willis's first day on set was on November 2, 1987 when following completion of that day's filming on "Moonlighting" at MGM Studios at Culver City they shot the nighttime scene of him jumping with a fire hose around his waist as an explosion occurred behind of what appeared to be the top of the Nakatomi tower behind him. In reality, he jumped from the roof of a five-story parking garage onto an airbag. The force of the explosion blew him out to the very edge of the airbag. When upon completing the stunt, Willis inquired why they hadn't filmed such a dangerous scene at the end of production, he was told that if they had, then they would have run the expensive risk of having to reshoot the whole movie with another actor. (

As a professional player, Roosevelt "Rosey" Grier was a member of the New York Giants and the original Fearsome Foursome of the Los Angeles Rams.

After Grier's professional sports career he worked as a bodyguard for Robert Kennedy during the 1968 presidential campaign and was guarding the senator's wife, Ethel Kennedy, during the Robert F. Kennedy assassination. Grier and Olympic decathlon gold medalist Rafer Johnson heard shots fired ahead of them that night. As Grier caught up he saw men wrestling with gunman Sirhan Sirhan. Grier jumped into the fray. Grier states, "So I see George Plimpton has the gun pointed at his face, and I'm concerned that it is going to go off, so I put my hand under the trigger housing and I pulled back the hammer so it couldn't strike. I wrench the gun from Sirhan. I find the pin and I ripped it out and held it. Now I have the gun in my hand, so I shove it in my pocket." Grier later said, "I grabbed the man's legs and dragged him onto a table. There was a guy angrily twisting the killer's legs and other angry faces coming towards him, as though they were going to tear him to pieces. I fought them off. I would not allow more violence."

One of the first football stars to successfully make the transition to acting, Grier starred in films including "Desperate Mission" (1969), "Carter's Army" (1970), "Skyjacked" (1972), "The Thing with Two Heads" (1972, below, with Ray Milland supplying the other head), "The Treasure of Jamaica Reef" (1975), "The Glove" (1979), and "The Seekers" (1979).

Grier has authored several books, including "Rosey Grier's Needlepoint for Men" in 1973. Grier became an ordained Protestant minister in 1983 and traveled as an inspirational speaker. He founded American Neighborhood Enterprises, a nonprofit organization that serves inner city youth. Grier sang "It's All Right to Cry" for the children's album and TV program "Free to Be… You and Me."

Actress Zita Johann's first husband, Jacques Haussmann, was a speculator in the international grain markets when she married him, but his business career was wiped out by the Wall Street Crash only a short time after their wedding. It was her idea that he should try to make a new career for himself by following her into the theatre and the movies. This worked out for him; you probably know him as producer and Academy Award winning actor John Houseman.

As for Johann, she is probably best known as the female lead in the 1932 film "The Mummy," starring Boris Karloff. Throughout the film's production, there was great tension between Johann and director Karl Freund, who disliked each other immensely. According to Johann, on the first day of filming Freund attempted to portray her to the producers as a temperamental actress who was very hard to work with.

"Karl Freund made life very unpleasant. It was his first picture as a director, and he felt he needed a scapegoat in case he didn't come in on schedule, 23 days, I believe. Well I was cast as the scapegoat--and I saw through it right away! Before shooting started, I asked Freund and his wife over for dinner. He told me for one scene, I would have to appear n**e from the waist up. He expected me to say, 'The hell I will!' Instead I said, 'Well, it's all right with me if you can get it past the censors,' knowing very well that the censors of that time were very strict. So, I had him there."

Among other indignities, Freund put Johann in an arena with lions while he and the crew were protected inside cages (the scene was eventually cut from the film) and for two days he had her stand against a board so there wouldn't be a crease in her dress. Johann declined to have her option picked up by Universal because of the unpleasantness during filming; her billing was demoted from co-star to the top of the supporting players.

Later, Johann was given an MGM contract with a script approval clause, but turned down every script offered to her. She reportedly said Io production head Irving Thalberg, "Why do you make these awful pictures?"

"I love to write and I had something to say."

Playwright Arthur Laurents' first Hollywood experience proved to be a frustrating disappointment. Director Anatole Litvak, unhappy with the script submitted by Frank Partos and Millen Brand for "The Snake Pit" (1948), hired Laurents to rewrite it. Partos and Brand later insisted the bulk of the shooting script was theirs, and produced carbon copies of many of the pages Laurents actually had written to bolster their claim. Having destroyed the original script and all his notes and rewritten pages after completing the project, Laurents had no way to prove most of the work was his, and the Writers Guild of America denied him screen credit. Brand later confessed he and Partos had copied scenes written by Laurents and apologized for his role in the deception. Four decades later, Laurents learned he was ineligible for WGA health benefits because he had failed to accumulate enough credits to qualify. He was short by one, the one he failed to get for "The Snake Pit."

Upon hearing 20th Century Fox executives were pleased with Laurents' work on "The Snake Pit," Alfred Hitchcock hired him for his next project, the 1948 film "Rope" starring James Stewart. Hitchcock wanted Laurents to Americanize the 1929 British play "Rope" by Patrick Hamilton for the screen. With his then-lover Farley Granger set to star, Laurents was happy to accept the assignment. His dilemma was how to make the audience aware of the fact the three main characters were homosexual without blatantly saying so. The Hays Office kept close tabs on his work, and the final script was so discreet that Laurents was unsure whether co-star James Stewart ever realized that his character was gay. In later years, Hitchcock asked him to script both "Torn Curtain" (1966) and "Topaz" (1969), However, Laurents, in both cases unenthused by the material, declined the offers.

Laurents also scripted" Anastasia" (1956) and "Bonjour Tristesse" (1958). "The Way We Were" (1973), in which he incorporated many of his own experiences, particularly those with the HUAC, reunited him with Barbra Streisand, and "The Turning Point" (1977), inspired in part by his love for Nora Kaye, was directed by her husband Herbert Ross. The Fox animated feature film "Anastasia" (1997) was based in part on his screenplay of the live-action 1956 film of the same title.

"Film is a director's medium. The screenplay is second in importance."

"I did a film in which the director did not change a word or a scene - but the director was so terrible, the result was unrecognizable."

Laurents' Broadway career produced a body of work that includes "West Side Story," "Gypsy," and "Hallelujah, Baby!," winning the Tony Award for Best Musical for the latter (believe it or not, the first two didn't win Best Musical Tonys the years they came out; "West Side Story" lost to "The Music Man," and "Gypsy" lost to "The Sound of Music"). He directed the musical "La Cage aux Folles" in 1983 and received the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical.

"I've had to learn everything about movies by myself. For the theater, I studied with a wonderful old man in Goteborg, where I spent four years. He was a hard, difficult man, but he knew the theater- and I learned from him. For the movies, however, there was no one. Before the war, I was a schoolboy. Then, during the war, we got see no foreign films at all. By the time it was over, I was working had to support a wife and three children. Before, fortunately, I am by nature an autodidact, one who can teach himself, though it's an uncomfortable thing at times. Self-taught people sometimes cling too much to the technical side, the sure side and place technical perfection too high."

The scene near the end of "The Seventh Seal" (1957) in which Death is dancing away with his followers was shot when some of the actors had gone home for the day, using some technicians and a few tourists as stand-ins. Director Ingmar Bergman conceived the scene on the spot, and had to improvise quickly because of an interesting cloud formation that he wanted in the background.

The representation of Death as a white-faced man who wears a dark cape and plays chess with mortals has been a popular object of parody in other films and television. Several films and comedy sketches portray Death as playing games other than or in addition to chess. In the final scene of the 1968 film "De Düva" (mock Swedish for "The Dove"), a 15-minute pastiche of Bergman's work generally and his "Wild Strawberries" (1957) in particular, the protagonist plays badminton against Death, and wins when the droppings of a passing dove strike Death in the eye.

The script is based on a one act play Bergman wrote 1953-1954 as an exercise for the acting students at the Malmö City Theatre. He asked the pupils to suggest roles that they wanted to play. Based on this he wrote a few pages of monologues. After the exercise, Bergman processed the material to the finished piece called "Wood Painting." "Wood Painting" has many similarities with "The Seventh Seal.". The script was initially rejected, and Bergman would end up rewriting it five times. It was only after the success of "Smiles of a Summer Night" (1955) at Cannes that it started to be considered more seriously.

"I started acting when I was five years old. And I was pretty well known for a while. Your self-esteem and your identity start to become wrapped up in that celebrity, and when that starts to fade away, your self-esteem and your identity start to fade away with it. Those roles that I played and the success that I had, that is not who I am. It's part of who I am, but it's not everything. So when it drifts away and you start to feel increasingly insecure, it's kind of a long battle out of that."

Initially a late 1970s teen character star, Jackie Earle Haley played tough, angry, pimply misfit types, notably in "The Bad News Bears" (1976) and "Breaking Away" (1979) (he was actually only 17 years old when he played 19-year-old Moocher in the latter film; he was the only teenager of the group, as co-stars Dennis Christopher, Dennis Quaid and Daniel Stern were all in their twenties).

Haley's "Act Two" began by earning rave reviews in 2006 in an unanticipated comeback with his roles in "All the King's Men" (2006) and "Little Children" (2006, earning an Oscar nomination for his work). Having not done a movie since 1993 and moonlighting here and there as a commercial director, limousine driver, furniture refinisher, security officer and pizza deliverer in Texas, Haley happened to be "just remembered" for his earlier films by director Steven Zaillian for his role in "All the King's Men," and the ball started rolling.

"That transition from child to adult actor is so incredibly elusive. The roles that were coming to me as a young adult were not that great, but I was taking them anyway to pay the rent. And the more bad roles in bad movies I took, the less anybody wanted me for a good role in a good movie."

Haley was the only one of the main actors who was already familiar with the comic book. "Watchmen." He actively campaigned for the part of Rorschach in the 2009 film version. Although Haley has a black belt in Kenpo, he chose not to draw on those skills in his fight scenes, as he felt that Rorschach would have fought in a scrappier, less disciplined style.