Movie Facts Most older people when they think of 3D movies, they think of those movies in the 1950's like the House of Wax or It Came from Outer Space. But movie makers had been experimenting with 3D for much longer than most of us know. The first commercial showing of a 3D movie was in 1915, but the process wasn't very good, even though it did employ the familiar red and green glasses for the audience. In those days they couldn't get the picture to stop shaking. The first 3D talking movie was made in Italy in 1936. In 1947 the Russians made a 3D movie in color, Robinson Crusoe, but guess what, no glasses were needed. From all reports it worked yet we never adopted this system. How did they accomplish this? The screen was like a piece of corrugated metal, the red images would reflect to one eye and the green to the other using the hills and valleys of the corrugated screen. In 1953 the U.S. made the House of Wax and included stereophonic sound and crude glasses. 1953 saw a surge in 3D movie production with twenty seven 3D movies being released. The first actor and actress to put their foot prints in cement outside Granum's Chinese Theatre were Douglas Fairbanks and Norma Talmadge in 1927. Movie attendance in 1926 was over fifty million people per year. The famous director Eric von Stroheim was getting over $100,000 per picture that year but wasn't the highest paid. Ernst Lubitsch was getting $175,000 per movie. I bet old Eric was not a happy camper. For you who don't know who Eric von Stroheim was, he not only was a famous director but played many different parts in the movies including NAZI officers. He died in 1957 at the age of 72 years old. When Stroheim came to this country from Austria, where he was an army officer, he became a fly paper salesman before becoming an extra in the movies. The first father and son to win Oscars for the same film were John and Walter Huston. The film was, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, in which Walter Huston directed and John Huston acted in. The movie was released in 1948 and is considered by many, the finest movie ever made. Pulp Fiction cost eight million to make, five million of which were the salaries for the actors. Of all the stories used in the movies there is one that is used more than any other, can you guess what it is? The answer is the story about Dracula. In the movie Kill Bill, Uma Thurman wears a yellow track suit. The reason for this is that Bruce Lee in Game of Death (1978), wore a yellow track suit. In the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, if you look closely, you can see a Plexiglas glass pane separating Harrison Ford from the King Cobra. The highest award someone in the movie business can receive is the coveted Oscar. The Oscar was designed by Cedric Gibbons and sculpted by George Stanley. I guess they should have called it the Gibbons or the Stanley or maybe the Cedric or the George! The Oscar is made from britannium which is plated over in copper, nickel silver, and 24 karat gold. The manufacturer is R.S. Owens and Company in Chicago, Illinois. Oscar is 13 1/2 inches tall and weighs in at 8 1/2 pounds. The figure is one of a knight with a sword, standing on a reel of film. The reel the knight is standing on has five spokes for the original five types of award areas, which were acting, directing, producing, technical and writing. Did you ever wonder what movie was the longest ever made? And the answer is.... The Cure for Insomnia made in 1987. Total running time is 85 hours. And you thought that the Ten Commandments seem long, didn't you? There have been many movies that had large sums of money put into them but never showed a profit. Here are some of them: Howard the Duck, they should have called it Howard the Turkey. Thirty seven million dollars was poured into this loser that made 16 million at the box office. The Postman cost about ninety million plus and brought back 17 million. It is amazing that anyone associated with this movie was allowed to stay in the business. But seriously, I do like Kevin Costner and I didn't think that this movie was bad, I thought of it more as mediocre. Ishtar was infamous when it came out. It cost 55 million dollars and made a little under 13 million dollars. It was bad. Heaven's Gate cost 44 million to make, but the original budget was only 11 million, and over one and one half million feet of film were shot to make this movie. It brought in under 3 million dollars and forced the sale of United Artists. That is what I really call a bomb. Another money bleeder was Cutthroat Island. The cost was over 100 million to make and the return under 10 million. It was so bad it was taken out of the theaters after two weeks and the company that made it, Carolco, went out of business. As bad as these were The Adventures of Pluto Nash fared even worse. At a cost of about 100 million and a return under 5 million, this film was not worth taking out of the can. Talk about losing money, Dark Phoenix lost a ton. The movie starred James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence and Sophie Turner. It cost the company 200 million and so far, has only returned about 66 million. It is still in release overseas, but there is not much hope of getting back anything near the cost. Another movie which is still in release overseas is the animation Wonder Park. The movie was aimed at children, but they didn’t seem to be too interested in seeing it. The budget for the movie was 100 million dollars and so far, the return has only been a little more than 45 million and not a lot more is expected. I have always enjoyed a good movie, and there have been some great ones. I'm just waiting for a holographic movie to come out.
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