On July 11, 1958, five weeks after being married, Richard and Mildred Loving awoke to flashlights and uniformed policemen hovering over their bed. An anonymous tip had led police to the couple for violating Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act. Richard was white; Mildred was black. In 24 states, including Virginia, interracial marriage was illegal.
The Lovings’ fight against that supreme injustice is the subject of Loving, a new feature from director Jeff Nichols. Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga portray the couple whose love was against the law, and who were forced to flee Virginia and face criminal charges for having wed. (The two were married in Washington, D.C., one of the places that recognized mixed-race unions.) Labeled felons, they were told never to return to their home while they were still together.
It would be years before the Lovings made progress, thanks in large part to the assistance of the American Civil Liberties Union and volunteer lawyer Bernie Cohen. The case was eventually brought before the United States Supreme Court. Their 1967 ruling would break down the last of the legal barriers in the racial segregation that had divided the country for much of the decade.
Loving is currently in limited release. To check and see if it’s playing in a theater near you, go here. To get a glimpse into the making of the film, check out the video below.
You don’t have to wait for Black Friday to get a hefty discount on a tablet. For a limited time, Amazon is knocking an extra $20 off the price of the Fire HD 6 tablet when you use promo code FIREHD6 at checkout. The Fire HD 6 lists for $99.99, and Amazon usually sells it for $69.99. With this deal, you can drop the price all the way to $49.99, a bargain price for a high-definition tablet with eight gigabytes of memory and front- and rear-facing cameras. The Fire HD 6 tablet lets you tap into all your favorite apps, browse the web, and watch video through Prime, Netflix, HBO Go, Hulu, and more. It also features a seamless Kindle Reader integration, and you can even stock up on books when you try Kindle Unlimited for free for 30 days. If you’re looking for a handy tablet that won’t break the bank, it’s hard to pass on this deal.
Mental Floss has affiliate relationships with certain retailers, including Amazon, and may receive a small percentage of any sale. But we only get commission on items you buy and don’t return, so we’re only happy if you’re happy. Good luck deal hunting!
In every big city, there are a handful of restaurants where it can be tough to land a reservation, but a select number of world-class eateries take exclusivity to the next level; no matter how hard you try, you’ll probably never get in, even if you can manage to foot the bill. Seats and Stools, a company that makes restaurant seating, found 11 restaurants where it’s nearly impossible to get a table. If you think the world-famous Noma is hard to get into (it fielded 20,000 reservation calls a day before announcing its imminent close in February 2017), try getting a table at the Walt Disney-founded Club 33, a private club where membership initiation costs $40,000, annual fees run you $12,000, and the waiting list is 14 years long.
Other restaurants have shorter wait times—meaning a year or so—but require reservations to be placed at very specific times (like when the restaurant empties its voicemail box), or at midnight on the first day of the month. Some, like New York’s Damon Baehrel, have waiting lists that are so long, they’ve stopped taking reservations altogether (to the point that some people have questioned that particular restaurant’s myth altogether). Check out some of the world’s most sought-after restaurants below.
In 1991—long before the term “gritty reboot” came into this world and lost all of its meaning—Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro teamed up to make a gritty reboot of J. Lee Thompson’s 1962 thriller Cape Fear. De Niro played Max Cady, a vengeful sex offender who, once out of jail, attempts to torture his lawyer, Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte), who he blames for his 14-year imprisonment. Juliette Lewis made what was for many a first impression for the ages as Sam’s daughter, Danielle. The impressive supporting cast included Jessica Lange as Leigh, Sam’s wife, and cameos from actors who were in the original, including Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck (in what would be his final film). Here are 15 facts about Cape Fear in honor of its 25th anniversary.
1. STEVEN SPIELBERG TRADED THE MOVIE TO MARTIN SCORSESE FOR THE RIGHTS TO SCHINDLER’S LIST.
Martin Scorsese was apprehensive about making Schindler’s List after the controversy surrounding his previous two films, Goodfellasand The Last Temptation of Christ. Steven Spielberg, on the other hand, said he “wasn’t in the mood” to make a movie about a “maniac.” So, once Scorsese promised Spielberg that the Bowdens would survive in the end, they traded. Spielberg had Bill Murray in mind to play Max Cady. Scorsese had other ideas.
2. THE SCREENWRITER PASSED ON THE PROJECT, BUT SPIELBERG DIDN’T NOTICE.
Spielberg had originally contacted screenwriter Wesley Strick (Arachnophobia) about adapting the original 1962 screenplay by James R. Webb, which was based on John D. MacDonald’s 1958 novel The Executioners, but Strick wasn’t interested. “They sent me the original movie and I watched it and didn’t like it very much,” Strick admitted. “It seemed like sort of a failed Hitchcock, which doesn’t really turn me on. And also I didn’t like the vigilante implications of the story—you know, there comes a point when a man’s gotta be a man with a gun and shoot this guy down. It’s not a message I ever wanted to send in a movie.”
Strick planned to pass on the project, but found himself unable to say no to Spielberg when they met in person. “I didn’t want to insult him and tell him I didn’t think it was a good movie idea, but I wanted to convince him that I wasn’t the writer for it, in a sort of polite [way],” Strick explained. “So we sat there and we talked. Actually I did most of the talking; I kind of explained what aspects of the story bothered me, and he listened, and then when it was all over he stood up and said, ‘Well, I’m really glad that you’re coming aboard.’ And he shook my hand, and as I shook his hand back my mouth moved, my lips moved and I said ‘Me, too.’ It was like, in person, I was unable to say no to him, and I remember driving home thinking, What have I done?”
3. SCORSESE MADE THE SCREENWRITER TAKE OUT THE PARTS THAT WERE “TOO CLEVER.”
When Scorsese took over, he kept Strick, but made him take out all of the overly clever dialogue. “Anything that smacked of television, all the dialogue he perceived as being ‘clever,’ everything that was too well reasoned, too neat, too clean, with ideas that were somewhat predigested—he wanted it gone,” Strick told The New York Times. Strick’s new boss insisted on 24 drafts before filming began.
4. IT COULD HAVE STARRED HARRISON FORD AND ROBERT DE NIRO.
Scorsese asked De Niro to ask Harrison Ford to play Sam. Ford told De Niro he would only be interested in working on the film if he played Cady and De Niro played Sam. De Niro said no to that.
5. NICK NOLTE REALLY WANTED THE PART.
Nick Nolte wore a blazer and tie to the Goodfellas premiere, with the hope that Scorsese would see he could play the part of Sam Bowden. “He had played this bear-like man, very big and rough, and I didn’t think he would be right for Cape Fear,” Scorsese admitted. Only after “several” discussions between the two did Nolte win the role. For research, the actor spent many weeks in public defenders’ offices. For the climatic scenes in Cape Fear, he channeled the primates in the opening scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey because, according to Nolte, the cast and crew were “all trying for a very primal image.”
6. REESE WITHERSPOON BLEW HER AUDITION TO PLAY DANIELLE. SO DID DREW BARRYMORE.
“It was my second audition ever,” Witherspoon said in 1999. “My agent told me I’d be meeting Martin Scorsese. I said, ‘Who is he?’ Then he mentioned the name Robert De Niro. I said, ‘Never heard of him.’ When I walked in I did recognize De Niro, and I just lost it. My hand was shaking and I was a blubbering idiot.”
Drew Barrymore auditioned for the role, too, but believed she overacted for one of Scorsese’s assistants. In 2000, she called the audition “the biggest disaster” of her life and said that Scorsese thinks she’s “dog doo-doo” because of it.
7. JULIETTE LEWIS WAS THE FIRST ACTRESS TO BE INTERVIEWED BY DE NIRO FOR THE ROLE OF DANIELLE.
Juliette Lewis first met De Niro for an interview in a room at the Beverly Hills Hotel. “It was to my advantage because I knew that was not a normal situation for [De Niro], interviewing young girls,” Lewis said. “I could tell he was a little uncomfortable. I mean, all the other girls came in with their moms.” Lewis had herself declared as an adult at 14 to be free of child actor labor laws. “So I said something to put him at ease. I summed everything up very quickly, meaning I didn’t tell him an elaborate story of all the pieces of [crap] work I’d done. I said, ‘If you want to see if I can act, just look at this movie-of-the-week I’ve done.'” Moira Kelly, Fairuza Balk, and Martha Plimpton also auditioned, but Lewis won out.
8. DE NIRO BECAME A GYM RAT.
To prepare for the role, six months before shooting began De Niro and his longtime trainer began hitting the gym six days a week, for two to three hours per day. Once filming started, he worked out for five hours a night. De Niro suggested that Scorsese hold off on shooting any scenes that showed off the actor’s muscles until the very end of production, so that he could be as fit as possible, and the director agreed.
De Niro also reportedly paid a dentist $5000 to grind down his teeth, then another $20,000 after filming wrapped to have them fixed.
9. DE NIRO AND LEWIS DIDN’T REHEARSE THEIR MOST FAMOUS SCENE.
Scorsese put one camera on De Niro and one on Lewis for the long scene, which was filmed three times. The first take was the one used in the final cut. Lewis did not know De Niro was going to stick his thumb into her mouth before kissing her. She only received a nonchalant warning from her director that De Niro was “going to do something.”
10. ILLEANA DOUGLAS BASED HER CHARACTER ON THE PREPPY KILLER’S VICTIM.
In the early morning hours of August 26, 1986, 18-year-old Jennifer Levin was murdered in Central Park by Robert Chambers, who came to be known as the “Preppy Killer.” Illeana Douglas had that infamous crime in mind when preparing to play the role of Lori Davis. “I was the one who suggested my part,” Douglas said of her role in Cape Fear. “The original part was called ‘The Drifter.’ She didn’t even have a name. I was in school when Jennifer Levin was murdered in Central Park by Robert Chambers, and I was profoundly affected by that … In the back of my mind, 100 percent it was based on Jennifer Levin. I tried to put myself in the position of somebody who’s new to New York, who’s young, who doesn’t see anything bad coming.”
11. DOUGLAS’S TORTURE SCENE TOOK TWO VERY LONG DAYS TO SHOOT.
Filming the scene in which Cady tortures Douglas’s Davis was no small task. It took two days to complete the scene, and the first day lasted 17 hours. “It really hurt,” Douglas told The AV Club. “My arms really were quite banged up. At one point, De Niro hopped off the bed and started whispering to Marty, and I thought, ‘Oh my God, they’re going to fire me! I’m terrible!’ I’d been crying for hours on end; I’ve never cried so much in my life. Then De Niro hopped back on, and Marty came and said, ‘Bob says you’re done.’” It was like Stephen Boyd in Ben-Hur—like, ‘Just take him off. He’s done.’ I could barely walk, and my arms were all cut up from thrashing around, and then De Niro complimented me. He said that Charles Grodin was a p*ssy, because he couldn’t take the handcuffs when they did Midnight Run. I thought that was a supreme compliment.”
12. GEORGE C. SCOTT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE IN IT.
George C. Scott was scheduled to appear in Cape Fear, but ended up needing an angioplasty after a heart scare while shooting another movie. He never made it to the Fort Lauderdale set.
13. THE HOUSEBOAT SCENES WERE SHOT INDOORS.
Cape Fear‘s houseboat scenes were shot indoors, on a soundstage made just for the production, and featuring a 90-foot water tank. Rain and wind machines helped capture the torrential storm. “It was hard making that commitment to build something so big,” producer Barbara de Fina said. “In the overview, I guess the amount of money we spent to build the tank we’ll save by not having to worry about things like weather and tides and alligators.” In post-production, miniatures of the houseboat were shot in England.
14. ELMER BERNSTEIN RECYCLED SOME MUSIC.
Composer Elmer Bernstein adapted Bernard Herrmann’s 1962 score from the original Cape Fear, even though Bernstein admitted that Herrmann probably would have hated the idea. “He would have killed me,” Bernstein said. “He would have yelled and screamed with no question.” Bernstein said he was in a state of depression for weeks working on the score because the movie was “so depressing.” When Bernstein needed music for scenes not from the original, he “did something else which Herrmann would have hated. As part of the music for scenes for we which didn’t have … appropriate music in the original, we used some of [Herrmann’s] rejected music to Torn Curtain in the score, which was also very effective.”
15. PREVIEW AUDIENCES WERE CONFUSED.
After Scorsese noticed a lot of preview screening audience members wrote that the movie “skips around a lot” on their comment cards, he added shots to connect some of the dots, including one of Max’s arm grasping a rope off of the houseboat. Originally, Cady fell off the boat and got back on with no explanation as to how.
Bike shares are a common sight on the streets of Cleveland, Portland, New York City, and various European cities, but the transportation trend has been slow to take off in any African metropolises. As City Lab reports, Marrakech, Morocco, is now home to the continent’s first: Medina Bike rolled out 10 docking stations comprising 300 bikes across the city’s center earlier this month.
The program is a collaboration between the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), the French bike-sharing company Smoove, and the Moroccan business Estates Vision. The launch of the bike share coincides with the United Nations COP22 climate change conference currently being held in Marrakech. The focus of the event is the realization of the 2015 Paris Agreement between close to 200 nations to limit their use of greenhouse gas-producing fossil fuels. Cars are one of the biggest culprits behind climate change, and the Medina Bike share is meant to offer an earth-friendly transportation alternative.
The program was conceived with the conference in mind: Participants even had a docking station built just for them. But the bikes, along with Morocco’s commitment to responsible energy usage, are there to stay.
One of the most feared and revered snakes on the planet, the king cobra is renowned for its imposing size and deadly bite. But it also has plenty of other unique qualities: a distinctive voice, remarkable nesting habits, and a name that obscures its true identity.
1. THE KING COBRA IS THE LONGEST VENOMOUS SNAKE IN THE WORLD.
This native of south and southeast Asia normally grows to be somewhere between 10 and 13 feet long, but the biggest ever recorded was an individual from modern-day Malaysia living at the London Zoo in the mid-20th century. From end to end, the animal measured 18 feet, 9 inches long.
Despite that common name, king cobras are not classified as true cobras, which belong to the genus Naja. The king cobra is the sole member the genus Ophiophagus; genetic evidence suggests that these big snakes are more closely related to the mambas of sub-Saharan Africa than to true cobras.
Physically, there are many things that set king cobras apart from true ones: Kings have proportionally narrower hoods than Naja species do; Ophiophagus’s head is larger relative to its body size; and at the base of the neck, king cobras have a pair of matching, elongated occipital scales, which are absent in Naja cobras.
3. THEY GROWL.
When threatened, king cobras spread their hoods to make themselves look bigger and raise their heads as high as 6 feet off the ground. But those aren’t the only threatening tools in their arsenal: They also use sound to intimidate. Threatened kings take a deep breath and then rapidly exhale, forcing a burst of air through the tracheal diverticula in their respiratory tract which acts like a resonating chamber, resulting in a sound that one scientist compared to the growl of “an angry German shepherd.” It’s much scarier than your standard issue hiss.
4. THEIR VENOM ATTACKS THE NERVOUS SYSTEM.
Drop for drop, king cobra venom is less potent than that of some smaller snakes, such as Australia’s inland taipan. But when it comes to toxic chemicals, quantity can trump quality: With a single bite, a king cobra can inject as much as 7 milliliters of venom—almost enough to fill 1.5 teaspoons—into its victim.
Different venoms do different things to the human body. Many vipers, for example, have venom that targets the victim’s circulatory system, destroying red blood cells as it spreads. But the venom of a king cobra inhibits communication between nerve cells, which can cause extreme dizziness, blurred vision, and—often—paralysis. Unless the right antivenom is administered quickly, a human bite victim can die within 30 minutes. Their venom is powerful enough that a single bite can kill a 12,000-pound elephant in just three hours.
5. THEY MOSTLY EAT OTHER SNAKES.
Most true cobras have a varied diet that may include lizards, birds, rodents, and fish. But king cobras almost exclusively dine on other serpents, a fact that’s reflected in its genus name: Ophiophagus means “snake-eater.” They’re equal opportunity eaters, devouring harmless rat snakes as well as venomous kraits, various true cobras, and other kings. Not even pythons are safe (although king cobras apparently can’t swallow constrictors that exceed 10 feet in length). King cobras will also eat eggs and the occasional monitor lizard.
6. MALES WRESTLE.
Like many other species of animal, male king cobras fight over females during breeding season. First, the snakes size each other up, raising their heads as high as 4 feet off the ground. Then, they wrestle. Bodies intertwined, the snakes try to pin one another to the ground. (There’s no biting involved—these snakes are largely immune to their own venom.) When one of the participants is finally pinned, he leaves.
7. SCIENTISTS SEQUENCED THE KING COBRA GENOME.
In 2013, an international scientific team sequenced the Ophiophagus genome [PDF], which revealed that the animal’s venom glands can trace their evolutionary origins to the pancreatic system. The team also concluded that the snake’s deadly venom was developed during an eons-long “arms race” with prey items: Over many generations, these would-be victims grew increasingly immune to the snake’s chemical cocktail, so cobra venom evolved to be more and more dangerous as time went by (which is why, despite the fact that the snakes don’t eat elephants, their venom is strong enough to kill one). “Our results,” the scientists wrote in the paper, ” … provide a unique view of the origin and evolution of snake venom.”
8. KING COBRAS ARE MAINLY ACTIVE DURING THE DAY.
While many true cobras are crepuscular, king cobras snakes are diurnal, meaning they’re most active during daytime. After sunset, they take shelter under logs, buttress roots, or termite mounds.
9. THIS IS THE ONLY SPECIES OF SNAKE IN THE WORLD THAT BUILDS NESTS.
Snakes, by human standards, are not model parents: 70 percent of snake species lay eggs, usually in a convenient hole or crevice, and many will abandon their clutches immediately. But the king cobra is an exception. The reptile builds a nest. First, the female gathers leaves, using her coils as a makeshift rake. After she lays 20 to 30 eggs in the middle, she gathers more leaves, layering them over her clutch (the decomposition of the leaves helps keep the eggs warm). The process can take four full days to complete, after which the female curls up on top of the nest for the next two or three months until the eggs begin to hatch. Females don’t eat the entire time they’re guarding the nest and are unusually aggressive, lashing out at pretty much anything that comes too close—but just before the eggs hatch, they take off.
At birth, baby king cobras are just around a foot long and, with alternating black and whitish-yellow bands running the length of their bodies, are more vibrantly-colored than adults. As they grow up, most snakes gradually lose the bands; when fully grown, king cobras have an almost solidly-brown or olive color scheme (though the snakes do have faded yellow bellies). But not every snake goes solid: In Myanmar, adult kings tend to remain banded.
11. THESE SNAKES CAN LIVE TO BE OVER 20 YEARS OLD.
In captivity, the king cobra’s average lifespan is 17.1 years; 22 is the oldest verified age for this species.
12. KING COBRAS ARE GREAT CLIMBERS AND DECENT SWIMMERS.
While kings do most of their hunting on solid ground, they can often be found hanging out in trees and will occasionally stalk their prey high above the forest floor. One individual which had been fitted with a tracking device pursued a pit viper up into the canopy of a south Indian forest, climbing more than 65 feet off the ground in the process [PDF]. And while no one would describe them as semiaquatic snakes, king cobras have been known to swim for short distances.
Deadpool was an undisputed hit with critics and audiences when it premiered in February, earning more than $750 million worldwide and becoming the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time. Now, with awards season upon us, star Ryan Reynolds is looking for even more accolades for his foul-mouthed comic book adaptation.
Along with a screener copy of the movie from 20th Century Fox, Reynolds sent a hilarious letter to critics groups, Writers Guild members, and Academy voters to remind them to think about the Merc With a Mouth’s big screen triumph when making their award choices this year. For Your Consideration letters usually harp on a movie’s emotional impact or filmmaking prowess, but Reynolds filled his note with sarcastic claims like, “Despite countless roadblocks, the incredible team of Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, Tim Miller, and I continued onward until somebody at Fox accidentally said ‘Yes’ thinking we were a Maze Runner spinoff.”
This letter taps right into the crass tone that made Deadpool a success in the first place, even including a line about how the movie’s low budget would “barely cover the cocaine costs on most studio films.” Though the movie was an unlikely success, any real award consideration would be even more surprising. But that’s not stopping Fox from pushing for Reynolds to get some Best Actor consideration. You can read the entire letter over at IndieWire.
Even if Reynolds’s award plea falls on deaf ears, fans shouldn’t be too disappointed: Deadpool will be back in a sequel tentatively set for 2018.
Harvard Theatre Collection via Wikimedia // Public Domain
Lately, if you mention clowns, people think of creepy clown sightings or perhaps various political campaigns. But in the mid-1800s, if you said clown and politics in the same sentence, everyone who heard you would think of Dan Rice.
Rice was arguably the most famous entertainer in America in the latter half of the 19th century. Born in New York in 1823, he became a clown, a comedian, an acrobat, a strongman, an animal trainer, a singer, a dancer, an impresario, a political commentator, and an occasional political candidate during his lifetime. He was so famous that some think his trademark look—goatee, striped pants or formal suit with a top hat—may have been one of the models for Uncle Sam’s image (although some evidence also exists to show that Uncle Sam predates Rice).
In Rice’s day, the American circus was in its infancy. In the early 1800s the circus was frequently an animal show, usually centered on equestrian acts. When Rice started in show business in the 1840s, he presented trained animal acts, including “Sybil, the Learned Pig” (also known as Lord Byron) and later his trained horse Excelsior. At one point, he even presented a trained rhinoceros and an elephant who could walk across a tightrope. But Rice also expanded from the basic animal show to add more acrobats and the clowns that we expect in a circus today, helping to give the circus something of its modern form.
As Rice’s circuses became famous, they toured all over the country, by wagon in the East and by boat in the South. When winter came, he moved his shows into cities and indoors into theaters, sometimes drawing thousands. The circus of the 1800s was not for kids, and Rice’s shows were wild and wooly affairs. Performances featured lots of ladies in tight, skimpy clothes and double entendres (or even all-out dirty jokes) flying around the ring. If a fight didn’t break out during a performance or outside of the tent, it was notable. According to legend, the exclamation “Hey, Rube!”—a cry used for decades by circus roustabouts and carnies to call for help whenever a fight broke out—was based on the time a member of Dan Rice’s troupe was caught in a fight in New Orleans and yelled for help to his friend Reuben.
But it was his clowning and commentary that made Rice most famous; to a modern audience, Rice’s act would resemble a stand-up comedy show. He stood in the center ring—at first with one of his animals and later by himself—and emitted a constant stream of comic patter. (Think Robin Williams at his fastest and Jon Stewart at his most political.) He would comment on anything and everything, and exchanged rapid-fire quips with audience members.
As America’s middle class grew and started looking for respectability, Rice gradually began billing his productions more often as shows instead of circuses (by then, circuses were seen as lowbrow entertainment). He also began to call himself “the Great American Humorist.” One of his signature acts was to perform witty parodies of Shakespeare’s plays.
Rice was involved in politics during most of this life, mostly as a commentator, but also sometimes as a candidate. As the Civil War approached, Rice’s political leanings—and his commentary—moved toward the Democrats and away from abolition and the new Republican Party. This was a position that he continued to hold during the war. He ran for the state senate in Pennsylvania as a Democrat in 1864, but lost the election. In 1868, he made a serious run for president, but withdrew from the campaign when he realized that he was unlikely to win. After the Civil War, there were stories that Rice had gone to the White House during the conflict to tell jokes and cheer up Lincoln—but these are probably tales Rice himself spread around.
Rice’s personal fortunes took a variety of twists and turns. He got rich, then lost his money several times over. Later in life, he became an alcoholic and died broke in 1900 in Long Branch, New Jersey. But his memory lives on: The town of Girard, Pennsylvania, where Rice made his home and winter headquarters for many years, still holds Dan Rice Days every summer to honor his legacy.
