Author: Jennifer M Wood

One of Steven Spielberg’s funniest, breeziest movies is the one about a teenage con artist who pretends to be a pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer. What fun! OK, he also steals more than $2 million—but at least nobody gets hurt. Catch Me If You Can was Spielberg’s first (and so far only) collaboration with Leonardo DiCaprio, his fourth with Tom Hanks, and the first time those two mega-stars worked together. The result? A hit with critics and audiences alike, with a 96 percent Rotten Tomatoes score and a worldwide box office haul of $352 million. Put on your fake Pan Am uniform and dive into the behind-the-scenes story. 

1. IT TOOK 22 YEARS FOR THE BOOK TO BE TURNED INTO A MOVIE.

The real Frank Abagnale Jr. published his memoir (co-written by Stan Redding) in 1980, and sold the film rights the same year. (It was Johnny Carson who encouraged him to write a book, by the way.) A decade later, producer Michel Shane optioned the book again, then sold the rights in 1997 to another producer, Paramount’s Barry Kemp, who hired Jeff Nathanson to write the script. Finally, in 2001, Kemp, Shane, and Shane’s partner Anthony Romano accepted “executive producer” credits so that DreamWorks could bring in its own producer/director: Steven Spielberg. The film was released on Christmas Day 2002.

2. FRANK ABAGNALE ADMITS THAT THE STORY WAS EXAGGERATED.

When the film came out, Abagnale posted a message on his website acknowledging that it would probably have some exaggerations—because so did the book it was based on. The memoir’s co-author, Stan Redding, interviewed Abagnale “about four times” and “did a great job of telling the story, but he also over-dramatized and exaggerated some of [it].” “He was just telling a story and not writing my biography,” Abagnale said, and the book had a disclaimer indicating as much. Abagnale wrote that he was “honored” to have Spielberg, DiCaprio, and Hanks make a film inspired by his life, but added, “It is important to understand that it is just a movie … not a biographical documentary.” Still, he later told an interviewer that the movie and subsequent stage musical based on it were “about 80 percent accurate.” 

3. A WHOLE LOT OF PEOPLE ALMOST DIRECTED IT BEFORE STEVEN SPIELBERG DID.

As of 2000, David Fincher was going to make the film, but dropped out to make Panic Room instead. Gore Verbinski was next in line, with Leonardo DiCaprio attached as the star. (Verbinski cast James Gandolfini in the Tom Hanks role, Ed Harris in the Christopher Walken part, and Chloë Sevigny in the role Amy Adams would eventually play.) But DiCaprio’s commitment to make Gangs of New York first led Verbinski to drop out (that’s when he made The Ring). Lasse Hallström was in negotiations next, followed by Spielberg (in his role as producer) offering it to Milos Forman and almost Cameron Crowe. Spielberg finally decided, in August 2001, to direct it himself. 

4. IF IT WERE TRUE-TO-LIFE, CHRISTOPHER WALKEN WOULD HARDLY BE IN IT.

In real life, Abagnale never saw his father again after he ran away. But Spielberg wanted to have Frank Jr. continue to seek his father’s approval, to show up in his Pan Am uniform to impress him and seek advice from him. (For what it’s worth, the real Abagnale approved of these changes.) 

5. FRANK’S MOTHER WAS RECOMMENDED BY BRIAN DE PALMA.

Spielberg wanted an actual Frenchwoman to play Paula Abagnale, so he asked the Scarface and Carrie director, a longtime friend then living in France, to look around. De Palma did screen tests with several actresses, including Nathalie Baye, whom Spielberg recognized from the 1973 François Truffaut film Day for Night. She was exactly what he was looking for. 

6. LEONARDO DICAPRIO HAD 100 WARDROBE CHANGES.

Costume designer Mary Zophres said, at first glance, she thought dressing DiCaprio would be easy. Isn’t Frank in his fake pilot’s uniform for most of the movie? Turns out, no. His wardrobe changes more than 100 times, though that includes minor alterations like removing a jacket. 

7. THEY SHOT IN MORE THAN 140 LOCATIONS IN JUST 52 DAYS.

That’s an average of almost three locations a day, many of them in and around Los Angeles, but quite a few in New York City and Montreal. And as anyone who’s worked on a film set can tell you, even a move of a few blocks is a massive undertaking. Spielberg and his crew worked fast.

8. WALKEN IMPROVISED HIS CHARACTER’S BIG EMOTIONAL SCENE.

It’s when Frank Jr., now successful in his line of work (con artist), meets his father in a restaurant. The script calls for Frank Sr. to describe meeting his wife in France during the war (“Two hundred men, sitting in that tiny social hall, watching her dance …”). Walken delivered the lines several different ways and then, on one take, without warning, became emotionally overwhelmed. “It was completely unexpected,” DiCaprio said. “It wasn’t in the script … I thought the man was having a heart attack in front of me.” Spielberg was blown away by the choice Walken had made for the character and the flawless way he executed it. That’s the take they used in the final cut. 

9. JENNIFER GARNER ONLY HAD TO WORK FOR ONE DAY.

Spielberg had seen Jennifer Garner on Alias and thought she was about to become a big star. He was pleased that she was willing to take such a small role in his movie, and she was probably pleased, too: it only required a day of shooting. 

10. DICAPRIO MET THE REAL FRANK—WHICH SPIELBERG DIDN’T THINK HE SHOULD DO.

DiCaprio told an interviewer that Spielberg “thought maybe it wouldn’t be a good idea” for him to meet Frank Abagnale. But DiCaprio contacted him anyway, somewhat secretly, and spent a few days following him around with a tape recorder. 

11. THE ONLY MAJOR CHARACTER WHOSE NAME WAS CHANGED WAS THE FBI AGENT.

Carl Hanratty is based on several FBI agents who pursued Frank Abagnale, mostly one named Joseph Shea. It was Shea who caught Frank, hired him at the FBI, and was friends with him for the rest of his life. Abagnale called him Sean O’Reilly in his book (since Shea was still working for the FBI at the time), and it became Carl Hanratty for the movie. Interestingly, at one point the screenplay called him Shea, or perhaps Shaye.  

12. IT BECAME A MUSICAL, BUT NOT A TERRIBLY POPULAR ONE.

Catch Me If You Can was subsequently adapted into a stage musical, with songs by the Hairspray team of Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman. After a Seattle tryout, it opened on Broadway in the spring of 2011 and closed 170 performances later—a far cry from Hairspray, which ran for 2642 performances. Catch Me If You Can did win one Tony Award, though, for Norbert Leo Butz as Carl Hanratty. It went on to have a successful national tour.

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DVD behind-the-scenes features

It’s election time again. And that means nothing but Instagram photos of people’s “I Voted” stickers, long lines at polling booths, and the occasional celebrity taking an ill-advised voting booth selfie.

Which begs the question: Is it illegal to take a voting booth selfie?

Short answer: Depending on where you live, possibly—although probably not for much longer. And, assuming you’re not taking the photo for some dark and evil purpose, your chances of being prosecuted are low. (But that’s not an excuse to do it!)

The reason for this has nothing to do with being a Luddite and everything to do with the integrity of the voting process in three main ways: vote buying, undue influence, and voter intimidation.

VOTE BUYING/VOTER INFLUENCE

In 2012, a citizen of North Carolina brought his smartphone to the polling booth. He had made his notes of which candidates he wanted to vote for on his phone, took out his phone to read the list, and was immediately descended upon by election officials, who ultimately made him leave the room, make notes on a piece of paper, and then return to cast his vote. As local station WRAL explained, there were two problems: The first was that, by having a cell phone, he could be texting someone and receiving information about who to vote for.

The second point was that if some criminal spent large sums of money to buy votes, the only way they could tell if a voter followed his or her instructions would be with a picture (widespread vote buying in the late 19th century is the reason we now have secret ballots). WRAL even mentioned stories of criminal syndicates giving people cell phones to document their votes in the polling booth.

Of course, these points are weakened slightly thanks to the proliferation of absentee voting. In 2000, a satirical website, Vote Auction, appeared. The premise was that you would auction off your vote and then fill in an absentee ballot. That absentee ballot would be sent off, verified, and mailed to the correct polling place.

The website, of course, was ridiculously illegal and was quickly shut down (the webmaster claimed it was a protest against the role of money in government), but it became another example of the increasing worries of how the internet would affect voting.

A closely related sibling to vote buying is voter influence—and this is where it gets dicey for celebrities. If it’s obvious a major star is voting for Candidate X, their fans may want to emulate that celebrity. In countries with strong anti-influence-election-laws, such as New Zealand, posting a completed ballot selfie online on Election Day can result in heavy fines, and the Electoral Commission says, “It also potentially exposes the voter’s friends to the risk of breaching the rules if they share, re-share, or repost the voter’s ‘selfie’ on election day.”

VOTER INTIMIDATION

There’s another worry about selfies at polling places: other people. According to The Huffington Post, in 1994 there were concerns that videos of polls in the South were “thinly veiled attempts to intimidate black voters at the polls.” And in the 1960s, there were reports that Texas Rangers were “in Mexican-American districts and used cameras, apparently taking pictures of the voters.” While these cases were never pursued, they helped create a wave of photographic restrictions not just in the polling booth, but in the area around them as well. Which makes sense, as the person behind you in line may not want anyone to know that they’re voting.

WILL I GET PROSECUTED?

Tough to tell. Several states don’t even really have enforcement mechanisms for the law (for a list of state laws, see here). And most states don’t care if you’re just posting it for your own benefit, as legitimate political speech was never supposed to be the target, although it’s never a good idea to gamble on the kindness of bureaucrats.

But they might soon be legal. The ACLU has been fighting several high-profile cases regarding these bans, with varying levels of success. So whether you take a selfie or not, you’re participating in the long struggle between freedom of speech and a free election.

Have you got a Big Question you’d like us to answer? If so, let us know by emailing us at bigquestions@mentalfloss.com.

When it comes to Dana Carvey, the question most people ask isn’t “What’s your favorite Dana Carvey impression?” or “Is Wayne’s World 3 still happening?” It’s “What the hell happened to Dana Carvey?” The former Saturday Night Live star has kept a rather low profile since his 2002 bomb, The Master of Disguise. But now he’s back in the spotlight thanks to his Netflix special, Straight White Male, 60. Here are five quick facts about the comedian to catch you up on his multi-decade career. Party on, Dana.

1. HE HAD SMALL PARTS IN HALLOWEEN II AND THIS IS SPINAL TAP.

Before Dana Carvey landed his star-making gig on Saturday Night Live in 1986, he racked up a few film credits in blink-and-you’ll-miss-him roles. His first movie was Halloween II, in which he played a news crew assistant with zero lines. At least he got more to do in Rob Reiner’s definitive mockumentary, This Is Spinal Tap. That time, he appeared as a mime waiter alongside Billy Crystal. Watch them gripe outside the kitchen in the clip above. 

2. HE AUDITIONED FOR SNL WITH ROBIN WILLIAMS AND JIMMY STEWART IMPRESSIONS.

Carvey is famous for his impressions, and they certainly helped him win over Lorne Michaels in his audition for Saturday Night Live. As you can see in the above video, he warmed up with his take on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous host Robin Leach before moving on to Jimmy Stewart, “senile” Robin Williams, and John Travolta. You can also see flashes of Wayne’s World co-host Garth Algar in his impersonation of his brother Brad, who inspired the character.

3. HIS SHORT-LIVED SHOW HELPED LAUNCH THE CAREERS OF LOUIS CK, STEPHEN COLBERT, AND STEVE CARELL.

After leaving SNL in 1993, Carvey made a few movies, like Clean Slate and Trapped in Paradise. Then, in 1996, he debuted his own sketch show—The Dana Carvey Show. The series featured an insane slate of comedic talent: Saturday Night Live veteran Robert Smigel co-created the show, Louis CK was the head writer, Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell wrote and performed on the show, and the writers room was populated with future showrunners and screenwriters like Robert Carlock (30 Rock) and Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). Still, the show struggled with ratings, so ABC canceled it before the eighth episode even aired. The Dana Carvey Show enjoys a cult status among comedy nerds today, particularly for skits like Carell and Colbert’s “Waiters Who Are Nauseated by Food.”

4. HE TURNED DOWN HOSTING NBC’S LATE NIGHT.

Before Carvey developed his failed series, he was approached with an intriguing offer. David Letterman’s jump from NBC to CBS left a hosting vacancy on the Late Night show. Carvey was offered the job, but turned it down because he thought it was too big of a commitment. So instead, the hosting spot went to another SNL alum (albeit in the writing department): Conan O’Brien.

5. HIS WORK WAS REFERENCED AT GERALD FORD’S FUNERAL.

Many public figures bristle when an SNL actor impersonates him or her on TV. But not George H.W. Bush. The former president was a huge fan of Carvey’s impression of him. He invited the comic to stay at the White House, and the two even exchanged letters. But perhaps Bush’s most public endorsement came during Gerald Ford’s funeral. In the middle of his remarks, Bush observed, “[Ford] had a wonderful sense of humor, and even took it in stride when Chevy Chase had to make the entire world think that this terrific, beautifully coordinated athlete was actually a stumbler. Ford says it was funny. He wrote that in his memoir. I remember that lesson well, since being able to laugh at yourself is essential in public life. I’d tell you more about that, but as Dana Carvey would say, ‘Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent.’”

Whether it was due to creative differences or illicit substance use, sometimes popular bands and recording artists just hate their own albums. Here are 13 of them.

1. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN // BORN TO RUN (1975)

While recording Born To Run in 1975, Bruce Springsteen became so increasingly frustrated with writing and mixing the songs that he grew to hate the album. He hated it so much that he threatened to give up and not release it at all.

“After it was finished? I hated it! I couldn’t stand to listen to it,” Springsteen admitted. “I thought it was the worst piece of garbage I’d ever heard. I told Columbia I wouldn’t release it. I told ‘em I’d just go down to the Bottom Line gig and do all the new songs and make it a live album.”

2. JAY-Z // IN MY LIFETIME, VOL. 1 (1997)

Jay-Z believes his second album, In My Lifetime, Vol. 1, suffered from writing songs for radio play instead of making music he loved.

“I don’t listen to that album because I think I messed it up,” Jay-Z said in 2009. “There’s so many incredible records on there that I think I missed having two classics in a row by trying to get on the radio … I can’t listen to it. When that record comes on it just irks me.” He later called the album “the one that got away.”

3. FOO FIGHTERS // ONE BY ONE (2002)

Foo Fighters’ fourth studio album, One by One, was a commercial and critical success in 2002, even winning the band a Grammy Award for Best Rock Album of the Year. Despite its success, frontman Dave Grohl grew to hate the album because he felt that it was rushed and poorly made.

“I was kinda pissed at myself for the last record,” Dave Grohl told Rolling Stone in 2005. “Four of the songs were good, and the other seven I never played again in my life. We rushed into it, and we rushed out of it.”

4. EMINEM // ENCORE (2004)

Eminem had a pretty serious prescription drug problem throughout the 2000s. The albums he released between 2003 and 2008 before he got clean weren’t indicative of his best work, particularly 2004’s Encore.

“Looking back on it now, there was some pretty mediocre things that I was putting out,” Eminem admitted to Vibe. “When I was making Encore, my addiction took on a life of its own. I remember going to L.A., recording with Dre and being in the studio high, taking too many pills, getting in this slap-happy mood and making songs like ‘Big Weenie’ and ‘Rain Man’ and ‘A** Like That.’”

5. WEEZER // PINKERTON (1996)

While Weezer didn’t find commercial or critical success with Pinkerton (Rolling Stone readers considered it one of the worst albums of the year), the sophomore effort from the Los Angeles-based rock band found a cult following over the years. However, when Weezer followed it up after a five-year hiatus with the long-awaited “Green Album” in 2001, frontman Rivers Cuomo grew to resent Pinkerton because fans and critics kept comparing the two albums.

“The most painful thing in my life these days is the cult around Pinkerton,” Cuomo told Entertainment Weekly in 2001. “It’s just a sick album, sick in a diseased sort of way. It’s such a source of anxiety because all the fans we have right now have stuck around because of that album. But, honestly, I never want to play those songs again; I never want to hear them again.”

6. MORRISSEY // KILL UNCLE (1991)

Steven Patrick Morrissey is very dismissive of his second solo album, Kill Uncle. He believed that he ran against his limits while writing and recording the 1991 record, which he described as “pale and pasty” and “session-musician embalming fluid” in his 2014 autobiography.

7. OASIS // BE HERE NOW (1997)

Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher considers Be Here Now the band’s worst album. He described it as “The sound of a bunch of guys, on coke, in the studio, not giving a f*ck. All the songs are really long and all the lyrics are sh*t and for every millisecond Liam is not saying a word, there’s a f*cking guitar riff in there in a Wayne’s World style.”

8. DRAKE // THANK ME LATER (2010)

Although Drake’s debut album, Thank Me Later, was a mainstream hit in 2010, the Canadian rapper believes it wasn’t his best work because it felt incomplete and rushed. He tried to make a better album with his sophomore effort, 2011’s Take Care.

“To be 100 percent honest,” Drake told the Los Angeles Times. “I wasn’t necessarily happy with Thank Me Later. People loved it [but] I just knew what I was capable of with a little more time.”

9. R.E.M. // AROUND THE SUN (2004)

In 2004, R.E.M. released their thirteenth studio album, Around The Sun. It was the band’s first record that failed to reach the top 10 on the Billboard 200 since 1988, and received mixed reviews from music critics. R.E.M. was so ashamed of the album that its songs are usually excluded from live shows.

“It seemed like we’d turned into one of those bands that just book like a million months in the studio and just beat it to death,” said R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck. “The last record, for me, just wasn’t really listenable, because it sounds like what it is, a bunch of people that are so bored with the material that they can’t stand it anymore.”

10. THE STROKES // ANGLES (2011)

After The Strokes released their third studio album, First Impressions of Earth, in early 2006, the New York City-based band took an extensive five-year break from recording and touring. They came back together with their long-awaited fourth album, Angles, in 2011. While it was a commercial hit, the record received mixed reviews from music critics.

In an interview with Pitchfork for The Strokes’ 10-year anniversary, frontman and singer Julian Casablancas admitted, “I was going to let things go so there’s a bunch of stuff [on the record] I wouldn’t have done.” Guitarist Nick Valensi mirrored Casablancas’s remarks, saying, “I won’t do the next album we make like this. No way. It was awful—just awful.”

11. LYKKE LI // YOUTH NOVELS (2008)

Swedish singer Lykke Li admitted that she hates her first record, Youth Novels, because it felt so raw and unrefined. In an interview with The Telegraph in 2014, the singer was quite candid with her feelings about her debut. “I cannot stand my first album,” she said bluntly. “It is so bad. I sucked.”

12. THE CLASH // CUT THE CRAP (1985)

In 1985, The Clash released their sixth and final record, Cut The Crap. At the time, Clash vocalist Joe Strummer was pretty jaded about his band, and was also grieving the death of his parents.

“CBS had paid an advance for it so they had to put it out,” Strummer later explained in 2000. “I just went, ‘Well f*ck this’, and f*cked off to the mountains of Spain to sit sobbing under a palm tree, while Bernie [Rhodes, the band’s manager] had to deliver a record.”

13. AT THE DRIVE-IN // RELATIONSHIP OF COMMAND (2000)

In the year 2000, At The Drive-In released their third and final album, Relationship of Command. Although the hit record brought the El Paso, Texas-based band mainstream success, At The Drive-In broke up shortly after its release due to their growing popularity.

Despite its success, guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López openly bashed At The Drive-In’s final release, telling Alternative Press, “One of my only regrets out of everything I’ve ever done is the way that record was mixed. People think that was a raw and energetic record, but what they’re hearing is nothing compared to what it truly was before it was glossed over and sent through the mixing mill.” He added, “I just find it the most passive, plastic … It’s the one record I still to this day cannot listen to. The mix ruined it for me.”

The premise of 1991’s Father of the Bride seems simple: George Banks’s (Steve Martin) 22-year-old daughter, Annie (Kimberly Williams-Paisley), gets engaged to Bryan (George Newbern) after knowing him for three months. But George isn’t quite on board and quickly unravels, as his wife, Nina (Diane Keaton), and the rest of his family think he’s going insane. The film gave a peek into the 1990s return to family values, with the depiction of a normal, tightly-knit nuclear family. Former real-life couple Charles Shyer and Nancy Meyers co-wrote the script, and Shyer directed.

The movie is a remake of Vincente Minnelli’s Oscar-nominated film of the same name, which starred Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Bennett, and Spencer Tracy. (A TV version aired from 1961 to 1962.) That film was adapted from Edward Streeter’s 1949 novel. Both films had sequels—Father’s Little Dividend was released in 1951, and Father of the Bride Part II in 1995—and the plots of both films saw the daughters having a baby.

The remake and its sequel were rather successful: Father of the Bride grossed $89 million and became the ninth highest-grossing film of 1991; Part II grossed $76 million and ranked in 17^th place for the year. Here are 10 heartwarming facts about the wedding comedy.

1. STEVE MARTIN AGREED TO PLAY GEORGE BEFORE THE SCRIPT HAD BEEN WRITTEN.

In a unusual move, Steve Martin’s casting occurred before Nancy Meyers and Charles Shyer wrote the screenplay. “It’s a gift because you know you’re writing for Steve Martin, so you know you can be funny and you can be loose and you can do all these twists and turns in the scene,” Meyers told IndieWire.

2. THE STUDIO DIDN’T WANT TO WORK WITH DIANE KEATON.

Father of the Bride was the second time Diane Keaton had worked with Meyers and Shyer; the first time was 1987’s Baby Boom, and Meyers would go on to direct Keaton in 2003’s Something’s Gotta Give. “Disney Studios—Jeffrey Katzenberg at the time—didn’t ever want to work with me,” Keaton told Film Scouts. “Charles Shyer and Nancy Myers, who’d worked with me before, had to beg to get me into Father of the Bride. I was very fortunate, because they were very staunchly for me.”

Keaton said the reason Disney/Touchstone passed on her was because her box office track record wasn’t good. “Just before Father of the Bride, I’d done a movie called The Good Mother, which was a big failure. Like, big failure. And that was it! And that was a Disney movie. So when Charles and Nancy wanted me for Father of the Bride, Disney didn’t want anything with me.”

3. IT WAS THE END TO THE “HIPPIE” WEDDING.

In an interview with The Morning Call, Martin said: “This movie represents the complete death of the hippie laurel-wreath standing-on-the-mountaintop marriage. Although it’s been dead a long time, this is the first movie to see it.” He furthered explained, “I mean, the big wedding is as much of a fad as the little wedding. So, [Father of the Bride] is a statement about something that’s probably going to be around for a long time.”

4. FRANCK EGGELHOFFER WAS BASED ON A REAL WEDDING PLANNER.

Martin Short portrayed the incomprehensible, over-the-top wedding planner Franck Eggelhoffer, who he based on Kevin Lee, who assisted with Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston’s wedding, and makes regular appearances on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. “We had a great time together,” Lee told Moviefone about working with Short.

5. A BRIDE HOUSE SOLD FOR ALMOST $2 MILLION.

The 4397-square-foot Colonial-style home, situated in Los Angeles’s Alhambra neighborhood, sold for $1,998,000 in August 2016 after being on the market for only two months. The wedding reception and the basketball game were filmed at this location, but the exteriors were filmed at a Pasadena home. In 2004 the Alhambra house sold for $1.25 million, and when it sold in 2011, it increased to $1.275 million.

Owners of the Pasadena home, Sarah Bradley and Darrell Spence, told HGTV they held their wedding reception at the house. They also said couples have proposed outside of the home, and fans of the movie and house felt “protective” when the family replaced the white picket fence. “Neighbors would see the construction and panic,” Bradley said. “We had to convince them they wouldn’t be able to tell the difference once we were done.” The couple paid $950,000 for the house in 1999, but it’s now worth $2,764,841.

6. THE WEDDING COST A WHOPPING $249,323.

BeFrugal.com broke down the wedding costs of the weddings at the center of Father of the Bride, Bridesmaids, Sex and the City, and a few other movies. Because Annie and Bryan got hitched in her parents’ backyard, the venue was free. However, Annie’s dress cost $68,000. With 572 guests at $250 per head, George shelled out $143,000 on wedding reception food. The bridesmaid dresses tacked on an additional $10,000, and flying in nine relatives from Copenhagen smacked George with a $10,323 price tag. That’s a lot, considering the median American wedding costs about $15,000.

7. MARTIN SHORT “SOFTENED” FRANCK’S ACCENT FOR FATHER OF THE BRIDE PART II.

At first, Short didn’t want to do a sequel. During a 1995 interview with Charlie Rose, Short said, “Only because it seemed like the character was such an extreme spice in the first one and it kind of had been successful and you didn’t want to taint it with an appearance.” Upon reading the script, he changed his mind. “I soften the accent a little bit,” he said. “In the first one, the character really existed as a comedic bone of contention for Steve Martin,” because everyone could understand what Franck said except George. “In this one, that’s one joke,” Short continued. “In the sequel, no one at any point says, ‘What did he say?’ Because we’ve done that. So I softened the accent a little bit without losing the character.”

8. KIMBERLY WILLIAMS-PAISLEY WORE SNEAKERS TO HER OWN WEDDING.

George Banks produces athletic shoes for a living, so in the movie, he creates a special pair for Annie to wear on her wedding day. When Kimberly Williams married country star Brad Paisley in 2003, she also donned sneakers. “Down the aisle, I wore heels, but then the rest of it I wore sneakers with the heels,” she told Glamour. “It makes perfect sense to wear sneakers because it’s such a long night.”

9. FRANCK DOESN’T THINK MUCH OF KIM KARDASHIAN.

When Short appeared on the show The Talk in 2014, the hostesses asked Short, as Franck, what he thought about Kim Kardashian. “He would say, ‘She is not bright; I did her dress,’” Short said in Franck’s accent. “She thinks soy milk is Spanish for ‘I am milk.’”

10. MARTIN THINKS FATHER OF THE BRIDE IS A “PERFECT STORY.”

“Well, I tend to think there’s movie families, and then there are families,” Martin told The Morning Call. “What I mean is—I’m not demeaning the movie at all—it’s kind of a wish family. It’s like the perfect statement of a beautiful problem: Your daughter’s getting married.” He said emotions swelled from the mundanity of getting married. “It’s a perfect story because what happens is so minor, and yet the emotions are so big. It’s like the birth of a baby. It’s so common, happening all the time, and yet it’s one of the most powerful, large things that can happen to you.”

The Pentagon, home to the U.S. Department of Defense, is a remarkable building—and has been since ground was broken on its Arlington, Virginia site 75 years ago, on September 11, 1941. Within three months, the U.S. would declare war on Germany, Italy, Japan, and their allies, and by 1945 the Pentagon would be home to the most powerful military in the world.

1. IT’S SIMPLY ENORMOUS.

Okay, you know this already, but how big is enormous? About 6.6 million square feet. More than 17 miles of corridors. A five-acre central plaza. It’s only 77 feet above ground (five stories), but each of its five sides is 921 feet long, which means a lap around the outside of the building is almost a mile, which may make it easier to understand why in the early years—before there were telephones at every desk, and before email—some messengers took to the hallways on roller skates. When finished in 1943, the Pentagon became the largest office building in the world, and it’s still one of the biggest.

2. THEY BUILT IT FAST.

Because it was built in sections, by the end of April 1942—a mere eight months after the first batch of concrete was poured—employees were moving in. On January 15, 1943, thanks to a multiple-shift, 24-hour-a-day construction schedule, it was complete.

3. THE PENTAGON’S ARCHITECTS COULDN’T KEEP UP WITH CONSTRUCTION.

There was such pressure to build quickly—there was simply not enough office space for the thousands of military personnel flooding into Washington after Pearl Harbor—that construction on parts of the building often began before blueprints and other design documents were finished, despite there being about 1000 architects designing the building onsite.

4. IT’S MOSTLY MADE OF CONCRETE. 

It seems fitting that the choice of building material for the Pentagon was informed by a war shortage. Because of World War II, which had been going on in Europe for two years before construction began, steel was in short supply. Because steel is needed to build high, the Pentagon was designed to be short. The primary building material? Concrete, comprised, in part, of 680,000 tons of sand and gravel from the Potomac. Also absent, until recently—elevators, because you need steel to make them. Now, thanks to a massive renovation project, there are 70 of them.

5. IT’S FIVE-SIDED BECAUSE THAT WAS THE SHAPE OF ITS ORIGINAL SITE.

The first site chosen for the building was Arlington Farms, which was pentagon-shaped. But planners figured out that the building would block the view of Washington from nearby Arlington National Cemetery. So another site was chosen (where Hoover Field used to be). By this time, planning was so far advanced that the shape couldn’t be changed. Also, President Roosevelt liked the design—an important factor in keeping the original layout. “I like it because nothing like it has ever been done that way before,” Roosevelt said of the design.

6. THE PENTAGON SHAPE WAS ALSO EFFICIENT.

“Like a circle, a pentagon would create shorter walking distances within the building—30 to 50 percent less than in a rectangle, architects calculated—but its lines and walls would be straight and, therefore, much easier to build,” wrote Steve Vogel in Washington Post Magazine. In theory, at least, it takes no longer than six minutes to walk between any two spots in the building. According to Vogel, the shape also proved conducive to optimal use of space and utilities, such as electricity and plumbing.

7. IT ALMOST HAD SEGREGATED BATHROOMS.

As specified by Virginia state law regarding segregation in public buildings at the time it was built, the Pentagon almost had segregated bathrooms and eating areas. But President Franklin D. Roosevelt had, in June 1941, outlawed discrimination in the defense industry with Executive Order 8802. After Roosevelt visited the partially-completed building in 1942 and noticed a surfeit of bathrooms (284 in all), he may have insisted that there be no separation according to race. This was only one of a number of racial issues that surfaced during construction, according to Snopes. 

8. ANTIWAR PROTESTERS TRIED TO LEVITATE THE BUILDING.

The year was 1967, and passions against the U.S. military presence in Vietnam were running high. Thousands of protesters marched to the Pentagon, and, as part of a dramatic “exorcism,” tried to lift it off the ground. The attempt failed, because—to begin with, 680,000 tons of sand.

According to Arthur Magazine’s oral history of the event, in the planning stages, military representatives negotiated with the protest leaders, and came to a compromise regarding the liftoff: they could only raise the building three feet, not 22, as originally planned. The military was concerned that lifting it higher would cause major structural damage.

9. IT INCLUDED A SECRET APARTMENT.

In order to save time during the construction phase, apartments were built onsite for supervisors, and even after completion, one remained. After Captain Robert Furman discovered that his former digs—a small, windowless apartment in the Ordnance Department office bay—remained, he used it to save on hotel expenses during his post-construction visits to Washington. Eventually, higher-ups caught on, and the secret hideaway was dismantled. During his stays there, office workers would see him suddenly emerge with his suitcase, but remained clueless as to why.  “They all wondered what was in that room,” he said.

“Call me mint jelly, because I’m on the lam!”

The fact that there’s no B at the end of that particular lam suggests that the origin of “being on the lam”—that is, on the run from the law—doesn’t lie down on the farm. So where does this bizarre expression come from?

The phrase on the lam first emerged in the late 19th century as to do a lam, a slang expression defined in an 1897 article in Popular Science as simply “to run.” (Alongside it, we’re told Victorian criminals were already taking kips when they fell asleep, were rubbernecking when listening in on others’ conversations, and would give longwinded spiels instead of speeches). But by the turn of the century, to do a lam had morphed into to go on the lam, which first began to crop up in print in the early 1900s and has remained unchanged ever since.

As a verb in its own right, however, lam dates back as far as the late 16th century. The Oxford English Dictionary has unearthed it in a dictionary compiled in the mid-1590s (alongside a long-lost equivalent form, belam), but back then the word’s meaning was considerably different: in 16th century English, to lam meant “to beat” or “to thrash someone harshly.”

In that sense, lam is probably a distant cousin of lame (and so might have originally implied beating someone to the point of injury) and actually still survives in the word lambaste, which today means “to scold” or “castigate,” but back in the 17th century also meant “to beat.” Precisely where the word came from before then, however, is a mystery, but it’s possible that lam has Scandinavian ancestors and could be descended from an Old Norse word, lemja, meaning “to beat” or “strike.” But no matter what its earliest origins might be, how did we get from beating someone to running away from the law?

Lam survived in this original sense until the 19th century when, having steadily fallen out of everyday use, it began to crop up in the schoolyard slang of British (and later American) schoolchildren. By the mid-1800s, lamming out or lamming into someone was being widely used in reference to schoolyard fights and scuffles, and it’s perhaps through association with schoolboys running away before they were caught fighting by their teachers (or else, with the hapless victim running away before the first blow was thrown) that lamming finally came to be used to mean “to escape” or “to abscond.”

In this sense, lam first appeared in print on its own in 1886, in Allan Pinkerton’s memoir Thirty Years A Detective. In it, Pinkerton—the Scotland-born founder of Chicago’s renowned Pinkerton National Detective Agency—describes in detail the precise operations of a pickpocketing gang:

“After selecting their victim or ‘mark,’ who is engaged in drawing a large sum of money from the bank, one of the number will take up his position inside the bank, where he can watch every movement of the man who is to be robbed … Quick as a flash, and yet with an ease of motion that attracts no particular attention, the ‘tool’ turns sideways, almost facing the man, but upon his right side. The ‘tool’ usually carries a coat upon his arm for the purpose of covering his hand; with the concealed hand he will work under the man’s coat, and taking the wallet or package by the top, will raise it straight up, until it is entirely clear of the pocket; then drawing it under his own coat, the robbery is complete … If he is rather slow about getting to the wallet or the money and he notices that the front men [two other members of the same gang] are getting somewhat uneasy, he calls out ‘stick!’ This means that in a few seconds he will be successful, and that they are to stay in their respective positions. After he has secured the wallet he will chirp like a bird, or will utter the word ‘lam!’ This means to let the man go, and to get out of the way as soon as possible. This word is also used in case the money cannot be taken, and further attempts are useless.”

It’s from here that phrases like doing a lam eventually emerged in the later 1880s, and criminals have been going on the lam ever since.

Have you got a Big Question you’d like us to answer? If so, let us know by emailing us at bigquestions@mentalfloss.com.

People of a certain age remember it fondly, but Steven Spielberg’s Hook was not well-received when it was released in December of 1991. Critics found it overlong and curiously lacking in imagination, and though it was profitable, it wasn’t the mega-hit everyone expected from a Spielberg movie about a grown-up Peter Pan played by Robin Williams. (It was the sixth highest-grossing movie of 1991. Among Spielberg movies, it ranks 15th out of 30.) Home video earned Hook some more young fans, and it eventually became something of a cult favorite for ’90s kids.

1. THE FILM WAS DELAYED, APPROPRIATELY, BY STEVEN SPIELBERG’S DESIRE NOT TO BE AN ABSENTEE FATHER.

Steven Spielberg had been thinking about a live-action version of Peter Pan through the first half of the 1980s, but put it on hold in 1985, when his first child, Max, was born. “I guess it was just bad timing,” the director later said, according to Joseph McBride’s Steven Spielberg: A Biography. “I didn’t want to go to London and have seven kids on wires in front of blue screens swinging around. I wanted to be home as a dad, not a surrogate dad.”

2. IT WAS INSPIRED BY A 3-YEAR-OLD’S DRAWING.

Screenwriter Jim V. Hart had been trying to find a new angle to the Peter Pan story for years when, in 1982, his 3-year-old son produced a drawing. “He said it was a crocodile eating Captain Hook,” Hart recalled in Steven Spielberg: A Biography, “but that the crocodile really didn’t eat him, he got away … So I went, ‘Wow, Hook is not dead. The crocodile is. We’ve all been fooled.'” A few years later, Hart’s son brought up the subject of Peter Pan again, asking whether he’d ever grown up. “I realized that Peter did grow up, just like all of us Baby Boomers who are now in our forties,” Hart said. “I patterned him after several of my friends on Wall Street, where the pirates wear three-piece suits and ride in limos.”

3. MICHAEL JACKSON WAS SPIELBERG’S FIRST CHOICE FOR THE LEAD.

“Michael had always wanted to play Peter Pan,” Spielberg told Entertainment Weekly in 2011. “But I called Michael and said, ‘This is about a lawyer [who used to be Peter Pan],’ so he understood at that point it wasn’t the same Peter Pan he wanted to make.” However, Vanity Fair reported in 2003 that Jackson had paid a witch doctor to put a curse on Spielberg (among others), so perhaps there was lingering resentment.

4. NICK CASTLE WAS PAID $500,000 NOT TO DIRECT IT.

The director of The Last Starfighter and The Boy Who Could Fly (not to mention an episode of Spielberg’s Amazing Stories) was working with screenwriter Hart to get the movie made at Columbia-TriStar when Sony bought the company and put someone new in charge—Mike Medavoy, who’d been Spielberg’s first agent. Medavoy sent Spielberg the Hook script for perusal, and Spielberg jumped at the chance to direct it. Castle was taken off the project with a $500,000 settlement and a “story by” credit along with Hart. (As the story goes, Dustin Hoffman and Robin Williams weren’t willing to make the film with Castle anyway, so it wasn’t a matter of Spielberg “stealing” a movie from another director.)

5. IT WAS ALMOST A MUSICAL.

The most famous previous adaptations of Peter Pan (the Disney cartoon and the Broadway show) had been musicals, so Spielberg had that in mind for his version. John Williams wrote several songs for it before the idea was discarded, later incorporating their tunes into the musical score. Two songs (with lyrics by Leslie Bricusse) did make it into the final film: “We Don’t Wanna Grow Up” and “When You’re Alone.” 

6. PRINCESS LEIA WROTE SOME OF IT.

Though Spielberg liked Hart’s screenplay overall, he thought the characters of Captain Hook and Tinkerbell were underwritten. To work on Hook’s dialogue, he brought in a writer named Malia Scotch Marmo (who later helped on Jurassic Park, too). For Tinkerbell, Spielberg called on Carrie Fisher—actress, novelist, and screenwriter. Marmo got a writing credit, but Fisher remained uncredited.

7. IT WENT WAY OVER SCHEDULE AND WAY OVER BUDGET.

Spielberg had been a careful and conscientious director ever since the disastrous excesses of 1941, but he let the size of the Hook production get the better of him. Shooting was supposed to last 76 days; it lasted 116. It was supposed to cost $48 million; it cost somewhere between $60 and $80 million. Hoffman and Julia Roberts’s perfectionism were contributing factors, along with the general difficulties of working with children, employing huge live-action special effects, and coordinating scenes with hundreds of extras. Still, Spielberg accepted all the blame himself. “It was all my fault,” he said. “Nobody else made it go over budget.”

8. GWYNETH PALTROW GOT HER PART THE OLD-FASHIONED WAY: CONNECTIONS.

Gwyneth Paltrow, who was 18 years old at the time, was cast as the teenage version of Wendy when Spielberg—her godfather and a close family friend—noticed she looked like Maggie Smith, who plays the elderly Wendy. Spielberg said he realized it when the Paltrow and Spielberg families were driving home from seeing The Silence of the Lambs. 

9. GLENN CLOSE HAS A CAMEO.

Glenn Close plays the (male) pirate who displeases Captain Hook and gets locked in a chest with a scorpion. 

10. THE KIDS ARE NAMED AFTER HANSEL AND GRETEL.

Peter Banning’s kidnapped children are called Jack and Maggie, which are nicknames for John and Margaret. The German equivalents of those names, Johannes and Margarete, have the familiar diminutives of Hansel and Gretel. 

11. IT HAS MORE HOFFMAN THAN YOU REALIZED.

In addition to playing Captain Hook, Dustin Hoffman provides the voice of the airline pilot when the Bannings fly to England—appropriate, of course, because he says, “This is your captain speaking.” Young Peter Pan is played by Hoffman’s son, Max, then not quite 7 years old, and Max’s older brother, Jake, appears as a Little League player. 

12. JULIA ROBERTS WAS HAVING A TERRIBLE TIME.

Her million-watt smile notwithstanding, America’s sweetheart was miserable for much of the shoot because of problems in her personal life. She’d recently had a nasty breakup with Kiefer Sutherland, was beginning a new romance with Jason Patric, and was generally frail and exhausted. Defending her, Spielberg said, “Her biggest problem was timing. Her personal life fell apart, and she reported to work on the same weekend.” She freaked out one day on the set when someone called for “Kieffo” (the name of Hoffman’s stunt double) and Roberts misheard it as “Kiefer,” i.e., Sutherland. “Call security. How did he get on the lot?” she asked the set coordinator, who cleared up the confusion. 

13. THE SET WAS CRAWLING WITH STARS, EVEN ONES WHO WEREN’T IN THE MOVIE.

One of Hollywood’s top directors working with some of its biggest stars on one of the most expensive sets ever built—naturally, everyone wanted to stop by Sony Pictures Studios and see what all the fuss was about. Among the celebrities sighted on set were Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, Whoopi Goldberg, Michelle Pfeiffer, Warren Beatty, Annette Bening, Mel Gibson, Prince, and actual royalty: Queen Noor of Jordan. 

Additional sources:
Steven Spielberg: A Biography, by Joseph McBride

If it seems like there’s nothing to watch on Netflix right now, maybe you just don’t know where to look. The streaming giant has been making waves in the original programming department, having just released the third seasons of British hits Black Mirror and The Fall. That trend will continue this month, as both The Crown and the long-awaited Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life make their debuts. Here’s a list of every new movie, television series, special, and documentary coming to Netflix this month.

November 1

• The African Queen
• Alfie
• Bob the Builder: White Christmas
• Candyman 2: Farewell to the Flesh
• The Confessions of Thomas Quick
• Cujo
• The Doors
• The Heartbreak Kid (2007)
• Jetsons: The Movie
• King’s Faith
• Love, Now
• Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You
• Pervert Park
• Ravenous
• Stephen King’s Thinner
• Tales from the Darkside: The Movie
• Thomas & Friends: A Very Thomas Christmas
• Thomas & Friends: Holiday Express
• Thomas & Friends: Merry Winter Wish
• Thomas & Friends: The Christmas Engines
• Thomas & Friends: Ultimate Christmas

November 2

• Dough
• Food Choices
• Meet the Blacks

November 4

• The Crown (Season 1)
• Dana Carvey: Straight White Male, 60
• The Ivory Game
• Just Friends
• World of Winx (Season 1)

November 9

• Danger Mouse (Season 2)

November 11

• All Hail King Julien (Season 4)
• Case (Season 1)
• Estocolmo (Season 1)
• Roman Empire: Reign of Blood (Season 1)
• Tales By Light (Season 1)
• True Memoirs of An International Assassin
• Under the Sun

November 12

• Take Me to the River

November 13

• Chalk It Up

November 14

• Carter High

November 15

• Dieter Nuhr: Nuhr in Berlin
• K-POP Extreme Survival (Season 1)
• Men Go to Battle
• The Missing Ingredient: What is the Recipe for Success?

November 16

• The 100 (Season 3)
• Burn After Reading
• Jackass 3.5: The Unrated Movie
• Paddington

November 17

• Lovesick (Season 2)
• Paranoid (Season 1)

November 18

• The Battle of Midway
• Beat Bugs (Season 2)
• Colin Quinn: The New York Story
• Divines
• Prelude to War
• San Pietro
• Sour Grapes
• Thunderbolt
• Tunisian Victory
• Undercover: How to Operate Behind Enemy Lines
• Why We Fight: Battle of Russia
• WWII: Report from the Aleutians

November 22

• Mercy

November 23

• Penguins: Spy in the Huddle (Season 1)

November 25

• 3% (Season 1)
• Boyhood
• Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life
• Michael Che Matters

November 29

• Silver Skies

November 30

• Ghost Team
• I Dream Too Much
• The Jungle Book (2016)
• Level Up
• Traded

In addition to being one of Black Mirror’s most universally acclaimed episodes, season three’s “San Junipero” installment is also notable for being one of the hit series’ most uplifting episodes … well, as “uplifting” as a show about the many ways technology can be terrifying can be. Part of the episode’s strength is that it’s partly rooted in 1980s nostalgia—specifically: 1987—with all its bad fashions and great music.

While the episode itself features a handful of highly recognizable tunes—including Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven is a Place on Earth” and The Smiths’s “Girlfriend in a Coma”—series creator Charlie Brooker’s musical inspiration for the episode went far beyond what you hear during its runtime. Now, he’s paying tribute to all 42 of the songs that informed the episode’s narrative with a new Spotify playlist, according to NME.

The musical genres range from straight pop to rap, with Madonna, INXS, Depeche Mode, Run DMC, and Public Enemy among the featured artists. Even Was (Not Was), the band behind “Walk the Dinosaur,” gets some airtime.

In an interview with Vogue, Brooker explained his reasons for setting the episode in the past:

“One, I wanted to do a period episode. Two, I’d read that some people were worried that after Black Mirror went to Netflix it was going to be all Americans. So I thought, ‘All right, f*ck you. Opening scene: California.’ I was deliberately trying to upend what a Black Mirror was. If you think about the first episode of the third season of Black Mirror, you probably picture it’s someone in the year 2045 scowling at the app store. So I thought, let’s not do that. So 1987—I think I would have been about 16—it felt like a really good era to anchor it in. It was shiny, it’s aspirational, and it just felt like the perfect place to revive this sort of simulation, with this heightened, movie-fied version of 1987. And then there’s huge nostalgia for me. All the music I said I hated, I secretly loved all of it; T’Pau and all of that. It was a great way for me to indulge in all those guilty pleasures. To go back and revisit all of that music people claimed to hate in 1987. In the ending, I did want to do something where you saw them in loads of different eras, like in the 1920s. It’s so much fun when it jumps to 1980, and 1996, and 2002.”

Take a listen for yourself on Spotify.

[h/t: NME]