Author: Jennifer M Wood

Every year since 1981, the Golden Raspberry Awards, a.k.a. the Razzies, have taken place the day before the Academy Awards to celebrate the worst in cinema. Ironically, on several occasions actors have won both a Razzie and an Oscar—sometimes in the same year (we’re looking at you, Sandra Bullock). Yet the Razzies never cease to amaze with their picks. Here are 12 surprising winners.

1. LEONARDO DICAPRIO

Leonardo DiCaprio’s first film after the juggernaut Titanic was the 1998 swashbuckling remake of The Man in the Iron Mask. He played twins King Louis XIV and Philippe, and apparently neither one of them gave a very impressive performance. In 1999—five years after he received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nod for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape—DiCaprio defeated Spice World to win for Worst Screen Couple at the Razzies, which means he won twice. 

2. DONALD TRUMP

In 1991, more than a quarter-century before he was sworn in as the 45^th President of the United States, Donald Trump won a Worst Supporting Actor Razzie for playing himself in Ghosts Can’t Do It. The movie’s IMDb description reads: “Elderly Scott kills himself after a heart attack wrecks his body, but then comes back as a ghost and convinces his loving young hot wife Kate to pick and kill a young man in order for Scott to possess his body and be with her again.” Anthony Quinn plays Scott, and Bo Derek plays Kate (Leo Damian played the young man, not Trump). Trump won the award at the 11^th annual ceremony, held on March 24, 1991. If it’s any consolation, John Derek won Worst Director for the movie, Bo Derek won Worst Actress, and the movie tied with Andrew Dice Clay’s The Adventures of Ford Fairlane for Worst Picture. In his category, Trump edged out Gilbert Gottfried (who was nominated for three movies), Burt Young, Wayne Newton, and his own co-star, Leo Damian.

3. EDDIE REDMAYNE

Eddie Redmayne’s 2016 Razzie win is yet another example of an Oscar winner alternating the high with the low, because the previous year he won a Best Actor Oscar for The Theory of Everything (and was nominated in the same category again last year, for The Danish Girl). Redmayne beat out Chevy Chase, Josh Gad, Kevin James, and Jason Lee to take home the Worst Supporting Actor award for Jupiter Ascending, which received additional nominations for Worst Picture, Worst Actor (Channing Tatum), Worst Actress (Mila Kunis), and Worst Director and Screenplay (the Wachowskis)—though Redmayne was the film’s single award winner.

4. AND 5. GEORGE W. BUSH AND DONALD RUMSFELD

Michael Moore’s controversial 2004 documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 treated both former president George W. Bush and his secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, as villains. In 2005, for the first time ever, the Razzies nominated a movie that was both critically-acclaimed and a financial success (it grossed $222 million worldwide). Bush beat out Ben Stiller, Ben Affleck, Colin Farrell, and Vin Diesel—actual actors—for Worst Actor, while Rumsfeld was named Worst Supporting Actor over perennial favorite Val Kilmer, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jon Voight, and Lambert Wilson. Bush also won for Worst Screen Couple: “George W. Bush and either Condoleezza Rice or his Pet Goat,” the book Bush read to Florida schoolchildren the morning of the 9/11 attacks. Fahrenheit 9/11 won a total of four Razzies, including one for Britney Spears, who made a tiny cameo in the film (as herself).

6. MARLON BRANDO

Over the course of his more than 50-year career, Marlon Brando earned eight Oscar nominations and won twice. But that didn’t prevent him from starring in a few stinkers. Brando received his first Razzie nod at the very first Razzie Awards, in 1981, when he was nominated for Worst Supporting Actor for The Formula. He was nominated in the same category again in 1993, for Christopher Columbus: The Discovery, and then again in 1997, when he won for playing Dr. Moreau in the critically panned The Island of Dr. Moreau. He beat out co-star Val Kilmer, Burt Reynolds, Steven Seagal, and Quentin Tarantino to win the not-so-coveted award.

7. NEIL DIAMOND

Neil Diamond segued into film acting when he starred in the 1980 remake of The Jazz Singer. The movie grossed a middling $27 million, but the Diamond-penned and performed soundtrack sold 5 million copies. The odd thing is, in the same year that Diamond won a Worst Actor Razzie for The Jazz Singer, he was nominated for a Best Actor in a Musical/Comedy Golden Globe for the same role.

8. SIR LAURENCE OLIVIER

9. RONALD MCDONALD

In 1989, McDonald’s iconic mascot, Ronald McDonald, won a Worst New Star award—beating out then-newcomer Jean-Claude Van Damme—for playing himself in Mac and Me. The movie, about a wheelchair-using young boy and his alien friend, was also nominated for Worst Director, Worst Picture, and Worst Screenplay. Today, Mac and Me is probably best-known for finding its way into movie clips whenever Paul Rudd appears on Conan.  

10. SYLVESTER STALLONE

Sylvester Stallone is a three-time Oscar nominee, and a Razzie veteran. He won his first Golden Raspberry in 1985, for Worst Actor in Rhinestone. He has been nominated for dozens more Razzies since then, and won 10 of them, including a Worst Actor of the Century in 2000 and the Razzie Redeemer award in 2016, which is about as nice as the Razzies get, as it was for his move “From All-Time Razzie Champ to Award Contender for Creed” because of the Best Supporting Actor Oscar nod he received last year for Creed.

11. AND 12. ERIC ROTH AND BRIAN HELGELAND

Oscar-winning screenwriters Eric Roth (Forrest Gump) and Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential) won a Razzie in 1998 for adapting the book The Postman into a terrible Kevin Costner movie. Their script, according to the Razzies, was worse than the screenplays for Anaconda, Batman & Robin, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and Speed 2: Cruise Control. Fortunately (or unfortunately), Roth and Helgeland weren’t the only members of The Postman team to earn some attention from the Razzies; the film also won for Worst Picture (Costner), Worst Actor (again, Costner), Worst Director (again, Costner), and Worst Song (not Costner). The day after the Razzies, Helgeland and writer/director Curtis Hanson won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for L.A. Confidential. Roth, who had won an Oscar in 1995 for writing Forrest Gump, shook off his Golden Raspberry win and went on to win three more Oscars (and counting).

Loyal viewers who grew up watching the independent, intelligent, and perky career woman named Mary Richards always knew that she would make it after all. Younger folks who’ve only seen the show in reruns likely don’t realize just how groundbreaking The Mary Tyler Moore Show was. While some of the scenarios presented seem dated by today’s standards, the show’s portrayal of how women in general, and single women in particular, were treated in the workplace—and by society—was very accurate for that time. Fortunately for future single working women TV characters like Elaine Benes and Liz Lemon, our Mare had spunk!

1. A Dick Van Dyke show (no, not that one) helped to launch Mary’s solo sitcom career.

When The Dick Van Dyke Show ended in 1966, Mary Tyler Moore was poised to make the leap into films. She had inked a deal with Universal Pictures and starred in three features in rapid succession, only one of which (Thoroughly Modern Millie, with Julie Andrews) won critical praise and performed well at the box office. With her marquee value fading, Moore leaped at the offer to reunite with her old co-star in the 1969 CBS variety special Dick Van Dyke and the Other Woman. The show was written by Sam Denoff and Bill Persky, the same duo who’d written for Van Dyke’s sitcom; their inspiration for the special was a minor complaint Van Dyke’s wife, Marjorie, once made—that very often, when she was out in public with her husband, she’d hear comments about him “cheating” on Laura (Moore). The special was a critical and ratings success, and based on the strength of those Nielsen numbers, CBS offered Moore a half-hour slot on their network with a guarantee of 24 episodes, no pilot necessary.

2. Mary Richards was originally a divorcée.

When the creative team behind The Mary Tyler Moore Show was originally brainstorming the concept, they envisioned Mary Richards as a recently divorced 30-year-old who had moved to a new apartment and needed to find a job after her husband had left her. But CBS network researchers warned series co-creator Allan Burns that there were four things viewers (especially the all-important “mainstream audience in Peoria”) would never accept in their living rooms and which could spell early death for a TV show: New Yorkers, Jews, divorced women, and men with mustaches.

Despite the warning, Burns and his staff kept the brash Jewish New York-transplant Rhoda character (played by Valerie Harper), who originally tested poorly with audiences but who softened up after a few episodes. They did acquiesce on the divorcée angle, though, after preview audiences (who couldn’t distinguish between Mary Tyler Moore and Laura Petrie, her character from The Dick Van Dyke Show) openly reviled Mary for leaving a nice guy like Dick Van Dyke. Instead they made Mary a woman who had recently broken off a two-year long engagement and was looking to start life anew, in her own apartment, supporting herself, and being unencumbered by a relationship.

3. The MTM kitten was found in a Minneapolis shelter.

It was Grant Tinker’s (Moore’s then-husband) idea to name their new production company MTM Enterprises, and Moore didn’t argue since that meant her name was the company. The similarity to MGM hadn’t gone unnoticed and during an early staff meeting someone suggested that since MTM was a small company, wouldn’t it be cute to have a kitten meow like the MGM lion? A staffer visited an animal shelter in Minneapolis and found several orange kittens (they wanted a cat with a fur color similar to a lion’s) and chose the one with the loudest “mew.” The kitten was named Mimsie and she appeared in many different forms in the production tags of various MTM shows. A crew member adopted her and took her home to San Bernardino, where Mimsie lived until the ripe old age of 20.

4. Gavin MacLeod auditioned for the role of Lou Grant.

Allan See started losing his hair at age 18, while he was studying drama at New York’s Ithaca College. By the time he graduated he was pretty much bald, which limited his roles as an actor. He changed his name to Gavin MacLeod and maintained a fairly steady career playing heavies, thanks to his bald pate and bulky physique. MTM co-founder Grant Tinker invited MacLeod to audition for the role of Lou Grant, which he did, but afterward he asked to read for the role of Mary’s co-worker, Murray Slaughter. He thought he could bring more to the affable Murray character than the gruff and imposing Lou. The producers agreed with him after Ed Asner tested for the role of Mary’s boss.

5. The producers had Jack Cassidy in mind when they created the character of Ted Baxter.

But Cassidy turned them down, having just played an egomaniacal pretty-boy actor on the sitcom He & She. He wasn’t looking to get typecast as a hammy buffoon. The role went to Ted Knight instead. Once The Mary Tyler Moore Show became a hit, however, Cassidy changed his mind and appeared as Ted’s preening egotistical brother, Hal, in the episode “Cover Boy.”

6. Ted Knight was living paycheck-to-paycheck when he was cast as Ted Baxter.

The second choice for the role of the anchorman was Lyle Waggoner, but he was happily ensconced on The Carol Burnett Show and had no desire to leave a successful series for an untested one. Jennifer Aniston’s father, John, read for the part of Ted and was called back twice, but the producers were not quite sure he was “the one.” Producer Dave Davis happened to see Ted Knight performing in a local production of the Broadway comedy You Know I Can’t Hear You When the Water’s Running and reported to the rest of the team that Knight was hilarious and that they should have him read for the role of Ted Baxter.

Even though the silver-haired Knight was a far cry from the hunky heartthrob-type they originally had in mind, Knight came to the audition wearing an anchorman-style blue blazer he had purchased from a thrift store with part of his rent money and impressed them with his booming voice and comedic chops. During that brief reading, he brought some layers to the anchorman character (cocky and arrogant on the outside, but secretly vulnerable and very human) that impressed the MTM staff and inspired some new newsroom story ideas for the show.

7. Ted Knight hated being confused with “Ted Baxter” and almost quit the show.

Midway through the show’s third season, Ted Knight walked into co-creator Allan Burns’ office before the start of rehearsal with tears running down his face. Alarmed, Burns ran from behind his desk to embrace the actor and ask what was wrong. “I can’t do it,” Knight cried. “I can’t play Ted Baxter anymore. Everybody thinks I’m stupid and I’m not. I’m intelligent and well-read, but everyone treats me like I’m a schmuck.” Burns consoled Knight, giving him examples of other great comedic actors who were nothing like the characters they played. Knight eventually composed himself and turned to go out to the stage for rehearsal when co-creator James L. Brooks walked into the room and congenially slapped the actor on the back, greeting him with “Ah, Ted—the world’s favorite schmuck.”

Luckily, Knight soldiered on. As the series progressed, his character found a girlfriend, got married, and had the occasional “very special” episode to remind the audience that he wasn’t all bluster and buffoonery.

8. Hazel Frederick was seen in every single episode of the series.

Hazel who? Picture it: It was a cold, blustery day in downtown Minneapolis in 1969, and Hazel was out doing her shopping at Donaldson’s Department Store. She exited the store and proceeded across Nicollet Avenue, one of the busiest streets in the city.  She noticed an attractive young brunette walking ahead of her into traffic. The woman suddenly stopped and gleefully tossed her hat into the air. That brunette was Mary Tyler Moore, and a film crew (using hidden equipment in order to be unobtrusive and keep the scene more natural) was recording her hat toss for the opening credits of her upcoming new show. To make it more realistic, traffic wasn’t halted, and Mare had to negotiate her own way across the street for that famous freeze frame. (That’s Hazel Frederick between the “James” and the “And.”)

9. Mary Richards was “evicted” from her old apartment.

For the first five seasons of the show, Mary Richards lived in Apartment D, located inside an 1892 Queen Anne Victorian home outfitted with Palladian windows and an iron balcony. Paula Giese, who owned the house with her husband at the time, claimed that she’d been told the exterior shots of her house would be used for a documentary that would be aired one time, not for a TV series. Once The Mary Tyler Moore Show became a hit, Giese was inundated with visitors at all hours of the day and night ringing her doorbell to ask if “Mary” was home. Eventually tour buses full of fans showed up on her curb.

In the spring of 1973 the Gieses got word that MTM producers would be back in the area to film more outdoor shots of their house for future use in the opening credits. Paula, a local political activist, immediately hung a series of “Impeach Nixon” banners on the outside of her home to discourage the cameramen. Her tactic worked, and Mary Richards moved to a new high-rise early in season six.

10. Valerie Harper almost didn’t get the role of Rhoda because she was too attractive.

The character of Rhoda, Mary’s neighbor and eventual best friend, was originally described as “a self-made loser—overweight, not good with hair and make-up, and self-deprecating.” Of all the actresses who tested for the role, Valerie Harper was the producers’ hands-down favorite. But there was one problem: she was beautiful. The producers asked her to “frump herself up a bit” for her second reading, but she still looked too pretty. So, just like the characters of Ted Baxter and Murray Slaughter, the producers rethought the character to suit the actor. They decided that even if she was attractive, they’d make Rhoda the type of woman who didn’t think she was and who regularly put herself down.

11. The script supervisor (and Phyllis’s daughter) rescued the pilot episode.

The MTM brass made the unusual decision to perform the premiere episode twice; first they would invite a studio audience in to watch the dress rehearsal on Tuesday, and they would also have tape in the cameras recording it so that the cast and production staff could watch and evaluate it prior to Friday’s actual filming. The actors went through their paces but weren’t getting the laughs that they were expecting. A post-show poll of the audience revealed that they hated Rhoda, thought she was too mean to sweet Mary in the opening scene, and that perception left a pall over the rest of the episode.

While the writers were frantically trying to find a fix for their show without having to do a major overhaul, script supervisor Marjorie Mullen came up with an idea: The show opened with Phyllis Lindstrom (Cloris Leachman) and her young daughter, Bess (Lisa Gerritsen), showing Mary her new apartment. They find “that dumb, awful Rhoda” (according to Phyllis) out on the balcony, washing the window because she was under the impression that it was going to be her apartment. Mullen’s idea was to give Bess an extra line not originally in the script: “Aunt Rhoda’s really a lot of fun! Mom hates her … ” The change worked; if a little girl thought Rhoda was cool, it was OK for the audience to like her, too. The laughs came in all the right places during Friday’s taping.

12. The men in the cast weren’t sorry to see Valerie Harper leave the series.

The Rhoda character eventually became popular enough to be spun off into her own series, and the “boys” on the show were happy to see her go. Nothing against Valerie Harper—by all accounts she was very sweet and easy to work with. It was just that when Rhoda was still on the show, many episodes focused on “the girls” and the action took place at Mary’s apartment and away from the newsroom, leaving the men with a lot less screen time.

13. The “designer” of Mary’s infamous green dress met a tragic end in real life.

Barbara Colby first appeared as a hooker named Sherry in the “Will Mary Richards Go To Jail?” episode and made such an impression that she was brought back a second time. In “You Try to Be a Nice Guy,” Sherry enlists Mary’s aid to find a job in order to maintain her parole. She ultimately tries her hand at fashion design and presents Mary with a green dress that exposes a lot of flesh (which elicits a priceless reaction from Ted Baxter). Colby was given a co-starring role in the Cloris Leachman spin-off series Phyllis in 1975. She had filmed just three episodes when she and a male friend were accosted and shot by two men in a Venice, California, parking lot the night of July 24, 1975. Colby died at the scene; her companion lived long enough to describe their mysterious attackers (who hadn’t robbed them) before dying of his wounds. The culprits were never caught and the case remains unsolved.

14. Mary really did have to struggle to keep a straight face during the “Chuckles Bites the Dust” episode.

Often listed as one of the best sitcom episodes, this entry touched on a dark subject: the death of WJM children’s show host Chuckles the Clown. (He’d been dressed as Peter Peanut to serve as Grand Marshall of a circus parade and a rogue elephant tried to shell him.) Mary was supposed to remain grim and mournful while the rest of the newsroom made jokes about his unusual demise, but during every rehearsal she continually cracked up whenever Mr. Fee-Fi-Fo (one of Chuckles’ many characters) was mentioned. She recalled in her autobiography that the insides of her cheeks were almost raw from biting them so hard to keep from laughing during the actual taping of the episode.

15. It was the first U.S. network series to break character and feature a curtain call.

After seven seasons Grant Tinker and Mary Tyler Moore decided to end their show while it was still performing strongly in the ratings rather than continuing on, risking a drop in quality and ultimately getting cancelled. It was one of the rare series finales that allowed the characters to bid farewell to one another in the context of the show, and it also featured another first: Moore introduced each of her castmates to the audience for a final curtain call before the end credits rolled.

Additional Sources:
After All, by Mary Tyler Moore
Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted: And all the Brilliant Minds Who Made The Mary Tyler Moore Show a Classic, by by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong
Archive of American Television interviews with Edward Asner, Gavin MacLeod, and Mary Tyler Moore

This post originally appeared in 2015.

The entertainment industry lost one of its most empowering voices today when Mary Tyler Moore passed away at the age of 80. The actress, who rose to fame on The Dick Van Dyke Show, later helped to define the “modern woman” as the star of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which ran from 1970 to 1977.

In the years since, she has been an outspoken advocate for a variety of social, charitable, and political causes, including animal rights, and has never been shy about expressing her opinions on making the most of the cards life deals you. Here are 15 of her most memorable quotes.

1. ON INDULGING IN ONE’S INSTINCT

“I knew at a very early age what I wanted to do. Some people refer to it as indulging in my instincts and artistic bent. I call it just showing off, which was what I did from about three years of age on.”

2. ON CHOOSING THE BETTER PATH

“My grandfather once said, having watched me one entire afternoon, prancing and leaping and cavorting, ‘This child will either end up on stage or in jail.’ Fortunately, I took the easy route.”

3. ON THE IMPORTANCE OF PAIN

“Take chances, make mistakes. That’s how you grow. Pain nourishes your courage. You have to fail in order to practice being brave.”

4. ON BRAVERY

“You can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you.”

5. ON THE NATURE OF RELATIONSHIPS

“Sometimes you have to get to know someone really well to realize you’re really strangers.”

6. ON THE FUTILITY OF PERFECTION

“Don’t be looking for perfection. Don’t be short-tempered with yourself. And you’ll be a whole lot nicer to be around with everyone else.”

7. ON BEING TRUE TO ONESELF

“I’m not an actress who can create a character. I play me.”

8. ON THE POWER OF LAUGHTER

“I’ve had the fame and the joy of getting laughter—those are gifts.”

9. ON TAKING CHANCES

“Take chances, make mistakes. That’s how you grow.”

10. ON EXPERIENCE

“I’m an experienced woman; I’ve been around … Well, all right, I might not have been around, but I’ve been … nearby.”

11. ON THE CURRENT STATE OF COMEDY

“The kinds of shows that seem to work now, the comedy shows, are those which require very little attention. They’re superficial and I like articulate comedy.”

12. ON THE NECESSITY OF WORRYING

“Worrying is a necessary part of life.”

13. ON DEALING WITH CHALLENGES

“Three things have helped me successfully go through the ordeals of life: an understanding husband, a good analyst, and millions of dollars.”

14. ON MAINTAINING PRIVACY

“There are certain things about me that I will never tell to anyone because I am a very private person. But basically, what you see is who I am. I’m independent, I do like to be liked, I do look for the good side of life and people. I’m positive, I’m disciplined, I like my life in order, and I’m neat as a pin.”

15. ON THE IMPORTANCE OF HAVING DREAMS

“Having a dream is what keeps you alive. Overcoming the challenges makes life worth living.”

When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, John Clem decided to enlist in the Union Army. There was just one problem: The Ohio resident was just 9 years old. Undeterred by his youth, Clem forced his way into the conflict. By the time he was discharged near the end of the war, he had not only seen active combat but had become a national folk hero as well—and he wasn’t even 13.

Yet with folk heroes come folktales. Once a real person’s deeds achieve near-mythic status in public perception, hearsay tends to bury fact. While much of Clem’s story is 100 percent verifiable, he did make a few claims that some historians question. Here’s what we know for sure.

“I’D LIKE MIGHTY WELL TO BE A DRUMMER BOY”

The son of French-German immigrants, Clem was born in Newark, Ohio on August 13, 1851. Though his parents christened him John Joseph Klem, he later changed the spelling of his last name to “Clem” because he felt it sounded more American. (Clem would later adopt Lincoln as a replacement middle name.) Vegetable farming was the family business, and growing up, John pitched in by selling their freshly-grown produce door-to-door, with his younger siblings Lewis and Elizabeth usually tagging along. Sadly, the children lost their mother, Magdalene, when she was hit by a train when crossing railroad tracks in 1861. John’s father, Roman, quickly remarried, and although their stepmother was kind to the children, John would soon disappear.

John’s interest in military service had begun shortly after Confederate rebels fired on Fort Sumter, officially starting the U.S. Civil War. At one point, he approached the Third Ohio Regiment of Volunteers, which happened to be passing through Newark, and asked the commanding officer to take him on as their drummer boy. “He looked me over, laughed, and said he wasn’t enlisting infants,” Clem later wrote. But he wasn’t willing to let the matter drop. His sister Elizabeth later recalled that as the family sat eating dinner one night in May 1861, “Johnnie said … ‘Father, I’d like mighty well to be a drummer boy. Can’t I go into the Union army?’ ‘Tut, what nonsense boy!’ replied father, ‘You are not yet 10 years old!’”

After the Klems finished eating, John announced that he was going out for a swim. Instead, he ran away from home.

In his 1914 autobiographical essay “From Nursery to Battlefield,” Clem claimed that he took a train to Cincinnati, where he approached the Twenty-Second Michigan Regiment. Supposedly, this unit also rejected him at first, but he followed it around anyway until the men gradually accepted him as their drummer boy. Since he couldn’t legally be put on the payroll, the adults dug into their own pockets and pooled together a $13 monthly allowance. They also supplied Clem with, as he put it, “a soldier’s uniform, cut down by the regimental tailor from a man’s size.”

The historical record shows that at just 11, John Clem was made a private within that regiment on May 1, 1863. Little did he know that he was about to dive into a clash of historic and devastating proportions.

FROM CHICKAMAUGA TO ICON

After Gettysburg, the Battle of Chickamauga had the second-highest body count of any battle in the Civil War. For three days beginning on September 18, 1863, Union and Confederate forces tore into each other around the Chickamauga Creek in northern Georgia. The rebels’ goal there was to thwart a southward Union march. They succeeded, but it was a costly victory: By the time the battle ended, it had claimed the lives of 34,000 men—including 18,000 Confederates.

John Clem and the Twenty-Second Michigan Infantry were a part of that repelled northern advance. “At Chickamauga, I carried a musket, the barrel of which had been sawed off to a length suitable to my size,” Clem wrote in “From Nursery to Battlefield.” On the final day of the battle, Clem said he found himself behind enemy lines, where he shot and wounded a charging Confederate Colonel. Clem describes the incident in his essay, writing that the man “rode up and yelled at me ‘Surrender, you damned little Yankee!’” Rather than drop his gun, Clem pulled the trigger, and knocked the officer from his horse.

Up north, word quickly got around that a 12-year-old had shot a rebel officer. For unionists who’d grown desperate for some sliver of good news from the Georgian front, the story was a welcome rallying cry. The press nicknamed Clem “The Drummer Boy of Chickamauga” and, as news of his heroics spread across the Union, Clem quickly became a celebrity. Soon, his wardrobe got a free makeover thanks to some Chicago women who had obtained the boy’s measurements from his comrades and sent him a new handmade uniform.

Meanwhile, the war raged on. Just a few weeks after the battle that made him famous came to an end, Clem was captured in Georgia by Confederate forces. He was brought before Joseph Wheeler, then a Major General, who allegedly said, “See to what sore straits the Yankees are driven, when they have to send their babies to fight us!”

Two months later, Clem was set free as part of a prisoner exchange. The Drummer Boy of Chickamauga spent the remainder of the war serving under General George H. Thomas’s Army of the Cumberland. He was wounded twice and participated in such major battles as those of Kennesaw and Atlanta before being discharged in September 1864.

With the war nearing its end, Clem returned to civilian life, graduating from high school in 1870. His next move was applying to the U.S. Military Academy. Despite his decorated battlefield experience, the young man failed his entrance exam several times over—but by then, his celebrity was so well established that President Ulysses S. Grant felt compelled to intervene and make Clem a Second Lieutenant in the Twenty-Fourth Infantry Regiment on December 18, 1871.

Clem went on to graduate from Fort Monroe’s artillery school, took part in the Spanish-American War, and rose to the rank of Colonel. In 1915, when he retired, he became a Brigadier General (a tradition for retiring Civil War veterans). It was a truly historic departure: Before Clem left the military, he was the last Civil War veteran to serve the U.S. Army.

In 1916, Congress honored Clem by promoting him to Major General. He died on May 13, 1937, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

A LEGACY ON TRIAL

Did Clem really do everything he claimed to have done? In his lifetime, his supposed exploits in the Civil War were broadly accepted as fact. But today, some are skeptical of these anecdotes.

Consider this: In his autobiographical essay “From Nursery to Battlefield,” Clem states that he accompanied the Twenty-Second Michigan to the Battle of Shiloh, where a “fragment of a shell” totaled his drum. According to Clem, his comrades then gave him the nickname “Johnny Shiloh,” which Disney went on to use as the title of a 1963 movie about his life. There’s just one problem: The Battle of Shiloh was fought on April 6 and 7, 1862—and the Twenty-Second Michigan wasn’t established until the following summer. In fact, the new regiment didn’t even start recruiting troops until July 15.

Historians have their theories about this discrepancy. Some believe Clem wasn’t at the battle at all, while others suspect that he did participate—just with some other regiment. In a conversation with author and history popularizer Henry Howe, Elizabeth seemed to support the latter position. During their exchange, she said that her brother enlisted as the drummer boy of the Twenty-Fourth Ohio Regiment—which saw action at Shiloh—before leaving them to join the Twenty-Second Michigan.

And then there’s the matter of that wounded Confederate tale. In the late 1980s, Greg Pavelka—a park ranger and amateur historian—effectively called Clem a liar. His arguments were published in the January 1989 issue of Civil War Times Illustrated. Pavelka pointed out that Clem couldn’t have fought in the Battle of Shiloh as a member of the Twenty-Second Michigan Infantry. The ranger also dismissed the story about Clem shooting a southern officer at Chickamauga. Pavelka maintained that there was simply no record of a Confederate Colonel being wounded during this particular battle. So, as far as he was concerned, Clem must have falsified his war stories.

In Newark, Ohio, the article caused quite a stir. For over 120 years, Clem’s hometown had embraced him as one of its greatest heroes, even naming the local elementary school after him. To settle the debate over Clem’s legacy once and for all, the citizens of Newark invited Pavelka to defend his allegations in a mock “trial.”

The whole community took part. Linda Leffel, a now-retired teacher who worked at John Clem Elementary, has fond memories of the event. “I was thrilled to get the students, teachers, and parents involved in activities taking place the week leading up to the trial,” Leffel told the Newark Advocate in 2015. The school also organized an essay contest for its fifth graders. The winners—James Galbraith and Hila Hayes—were recruited to portray John and Elizabeth Clem at the trial. Clem’s defense was to be presented by Dr. Dean Jauchius, an ex-Marine and Franklin University professor who had collaborated with future Ohio governor James A. Rhodes to co-author a 1959 historical novel about Clem’s life.

On October 14, 1989, the trial began at Newark’s courthouse. Around 350 people showed up to witness the spectacle firsthand, including a number of curious bystanders in full Civil War regalia; a jury (made up of local politicians and public figures) was also in attendance. By far, the most esteemed visitor was General Dwight E. Beach, Clem’s great-grandson.

Once things kicked off, the mock “attorneys” were given 20 minutes each to state their cases. Pavelka reiterated the points he’d made in Civil War Times Illustrated; Jauchius countered by reminding the jury that Clem was only nine years old when his involvement with the Union army began. Clem’s age meant that his enlistment technically wasn’t legal. Hence, the professor argued, the regiment(s) he was involved with probably did not list him in their official rosters, lest they incriminate themselves by doing so. That, in turn, might explain why there’s no record of Clem at Shiloh.

As for the Chickamauga incident, Jauchius maintained that Clem really did shoot a Colonel who went on to become an attorney in Texas. He added that the two met face-to-face many years later, at which point the former Confederate told Clem, “So you’re the little [expletive] who shot me.”

Swayed by Jauchius’s evidence, the jury unanimously found Clem innocent of misrepresenting his war record in any way. “He’s become a legend,” Pavelka said, “and you can’t fight a legend.”

Since then, the city’s love affair with Clem has only grown. Ten years after the trial, sculptor Mike Major unveiled a bronze statue on Main Street. Dedicated to local veterans, it depicts a youthful John Clem tapping away on his war drum. In 2007, the Cincinnati-based film company Historical Productions, Inc. released Johnny, a biopic about the patriot. Naturally, its world premiere was held in Newark.

Though it didn’t premiere to over-the-top ratings, over the course of five seasons, Breaking Bad morphed into a bona fide television phenomenon—thanks in large part to word of mouth and the increasing popularity of binge-watching. At its most basic level, it’s the story of a soft-spoken chemistry teacher who, after being diagnosed with lung cancer, risks everything he has worked for to make sure his family will be taken care of in the event of his death. But, like all great TV shows, the story is really not that simple. And it evolves over time, with each season somehow being able to top the one before it.

Regularly cited as one of the greatest television series of all time (Rolling Stone recently ranked it number three on its list of the 100 best shows, right in between Mad Men and The Wire), here are 25 things you might not have known about Breaking Bad.

1. LOTS OF NETWORKS PASSED ON IT, INCLUDING HBO.

In 2016, it was announced that Vince Gilligan is working on a limited series about Jim Jones for HBO. But the “It’s not TV” network wasn’t always so hot on Gilligan. In a 2011 interview, Gilligan shared that he pitched Breaking Bad to HBO, and that it was “the worst meeting I’ve ever had.”

“The trouble with Hollywood—movies and TV—is people will leave you dangling on the end of a meat hook for days or weeks or months on end,” Gilligan said. “That happened at HBO. Like the worst meeting I ever had … The woman we [were] pitching to could not have been less interested—not even in my story, but about whether I actually lived or died.”

HBO wasn’t the only network that ultimately said no to Walter White: Showtime, TNT, and FX all passed on Breaking Bad, too, for various reasons.

2. THE NETWORK REALLY WANTED MATTHEW BRODERICK TO STAR.

It’s impossible to imagine Breaking Bad with anyone other than Bryan Cranston in the lead role, but he wasn’t as well known when the series kicked off, and AMC wanted a star. They were particularly interested in casting either Matthew Broderick or John Cusack in the lead.

“We all still had the image of Bryan shaving his body in Malcolm in the Middle,” a former AMC executive told The Hollywood Reporter about their initial reluctance to cast Cranston. “We were like, ‘Really? Isn’t there anybody else?’” But Gilligan had worked with Cranston before, on an episode of The X-Files, and knew he had the chops to navigate the quirks of the part. The network brass watched the episode, and agreed.

“We needed somebody who could be dramatic and scary yet have an underlying humanity so when he dies, you felt sorry for him,” Gilligan said. “Bryan nailed it.”

3. JESSE PINKMAN WASN’T SUPPOSED TO LIVE PAST SEASON ONE.

While Breaking Bad ultimately ended up being largely about the tumultuous partnership between Walter White and Jesse Pinkman, Jesse wasn’t originally intended to be a major character. While it’s often stated that he was supposed to be killed off in episode nine, and that it was the 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America strike that saved him, Gilligan set the record straight in 2013, saying it became clear much earlier than that that Jesse’s character—and relationship to Walter—was integral to moving the show forward.

“The writers’ strike, in a sense, didn’t save him, because I knew by episode two—we all did, all of us, our wonderful directors and our wonderful producers,” Gilligan said. “Everybody knew just how good [Aaron Paul is], and a pleasure to work with, and it became pretty clear early on that that would be a huge, colossal mistake to kill off Jesse.”

When asked during a Reddit AMA about how he would have felt if Jesse had been killed off in season one, Paul posited that, “My career would be over. And I would be a sobbing mess watching week to week on Breaking Bad.”

4. THE WRITERS STRIKE DID CHANGE THE STORY ARC FOR SEASON ONE, WHICH TURNED OUT TO BE A GOOD THING.

The Writers Strike did end up shortening the show’s first season, which forced Gilligan to cut two episodes that would have seen Walter’s transformation into Heisenberg happen much more quickly—and violently. Gilligan was glad it worked out the way it did.

“We had plotted out all our episodes before the show ever went on the air, and we didn’t know how well the show would be received,” Gilligan told Creative Screenwriting. “Not knowing how the public would take to it, you tend to want to be a little more sensational. You want to really keep the show exciting and interesting and keep ’em watching. All of that to say that those last two episodes, because of that, would have been really big episodes, and would have taken the characters into a hugely different realm than that they were already in, and it would have been a hard thing to come back from, coming into season two.”

“We’re not just doing those two episodes coming into season two,” he added. “We threw those out completely and we’re starting somewhere else. We’re building more slowly than we otherwise would have built. I think that’s really good, because I know we’ve all had our favorite shows that were really interesting up to a certain point, but maybe they just go too far, and then there’s no going back from it. To me, the trick is to do as little as possible with the characters, and yet keep them as interesting as possible. It’s a real balancing act.”

5. THE DEA HELPED OUT, AND EVEN TAUGHT BRYAN CRANSTON AND AARON PAUL HOW TO COOK METH.

Because of the subject matter, the show’s creators thought it was only right to inform the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) what they were making—and welcome their help. “We informed them—with all due respect and consideration—that we’re doing this show, and ‘Would you like to be a part of it in a consultancy in order to make sure that we get it right?’” Cranston told High Times. “They had the choice to say, ‘We don’t want anything to do with it.’ But they saw that it might be in their best interest to make sure that we do it correctly. So DEA chemists came onboard as consultants and taught Aaron Paul and me how to make crystal meth.”

6. THE SCIENCE IS SOUND, BUT NOT PERFECT. AND THAT WAS INTENTIONAL.

Dr. Donna Nelson, a chemistry professor at the University of Oklahoma, began serving as a science advisor on the show midway through the first season, and was tasked with making sure the show got its science right—or, at least as “right” as is safe.

“I don’t think there’s any popular show that gets it 100 percent right, but that’s not the goal,” Nelson told mental_floss in 2013. “The goal is not to be a science education show; the goal is to be a popular show. And so there’s always going to be some creative license taken, because they want to make the show interesting.”

Of course—particularly with a show about drug-making—you don’t want to give viewers a primer on how to start their own meth empires. “In the case of Walter White, his trademark is the blue meth,” Nelson said. “In reality, it wouldn’t be blue; it would be colorless. But this isn’t a science education show. It’s a fantasy. And Vince Gilligan did a fantastic job of getting most of the science right. And I am just thrilled with that. I think Vince Gilligan is a genius, and you can quote me on that!”

7. THAT ICONIC BLUE METH IS ROCK CANDY.

Whenever you see Walter and Jesse’s signature blue meth, what you’re actually seeing is blue rock candy. More specifically: blue rock candy from The Candy Lady, a boutique candy store in Albuquerque. (They have a whole line of Breaking Bad-inspired treats, which they sell under The Bad Candy Lady line.)

8. GUS FRING’S ROLE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE MUCH SMALLER.

Initially, Giancarlo Esposito wasn’t interested in taking on the role of Gus Fring, which was a much smaller part in the beginning. “I had not seen Breaking Bad, but my manager at the time told me it was his favorite show,” Esposito told TIME. “My wife said I should I try it, but it was a guest spot and I’ve done a lot of guest spots. I wanted to develop a character. But I did one episode and then I agreed to do two more with the caveat that I wanted to be part of a filmmaking family.”

When Gilligan offered him another seven episodes for season three, Esposito countered that he wanted a bigger role. “There was some negotiating and I ended up doing 12,” Esposito said. “I wanted to create a character who became intrinsic to the show. And at some point, I realized that I had slid into the Breaking Bad family. Vince told me that I changed the game and raised the bar for the show. And I’m proud of that, but I could only do that because of the depth of the writing and due to the chemistry between Bryan Cranston and myself. And their writing inspired me to think, to create someone who was polite, threatening and poignant.”

9. GIANCARLO ESPOSITO CHANNELED HIS INNER EDWARD JAMES OLMOS.

In the mid-1980s, Giancarlo Esposito made a few guest appearances on Miami Vice. The experience clearly had an effect on him, as he used Edward James Olmos’s character from that series, Lieutenant Martin Castillo, as a model for Gus Fring.

“Eddie did very little and he was very convincing,” Esposito told the Toronto Sun. “I also thought he was a bit flat, but he did very, very little in playing [Castillo] and I thought it was really effective. Juxtaposed to Philip Michael [Thomas] and Don [Johnson], who were at times a bit full of themselves but were doing a little bit of acting, Eddie was just doing his job. And I wanted Gus to be in that mode.”

10. GILLIGAN GOT SOME HELP FROM THE WALKING DEAD CREW FOR FRING’S FINAL EPISODE.

Fring’s final sendoff is one of the most memorable visual images from the entire series—and they were able to enlist the help of some true gore experts. “Indeed we did have great help from the prosthetic effects folks at The Walking Dead,” Gilligan told The New York Times. “And I want to give a shout-out to Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger, and KNB EFX, those two gentlemen and their company, because their shop did that effect. And then that was augmented by the visual effects work of a guy named Bill Powloski and his crew, who digitally married a three-dimensional sculpture that KNB EFX created with the reality of the film scene. So you can actually see into and through Gus’s head in that final reveal. It’s a combination of great makeup and great visual effects. And it took months to do.”

11. YES, AARON PAUL DOES SAY “BITCH” A LOT—BUT PROBABLY NOT AS MUCH AS YOU THINK.

While any Jesse Pinkman impression ends with a “bitch,” by one calculation, Paul uses the word a total of 54 times throughout the series. Which, considering there are 62 episodes, seems a little on the low side.

12. PAUL RELEASED A “YO, BITCH” APP.

Even if that above number seems underwhelming, Pinkman’s favorite add-on became so synonymous with Paul that, in 2014, the actor released an app called Yo, Bitch.

13. WALTER’S BOSS AT THE CAR WASH IS A CHEMIST IN REAL LIFE.

Marius Stan, who played Bogdan, Walter’s boss at the car wash, wasn’t a familiar face to many of the show’s viewers. That’s because the series was his (and his eyebrows’) acting debut. In real life, rather coincidentally, he has a PhD in chemistry and, according to a Reddit AMA, is a “Senior Computational Energy Scientist at Argonne National Lab—which is one of the national laboratories under the U.S. Dept. of Energy—and a Senior Fellow at the University of Chicago, the Computation Institute.”

14. WALTER WHITE’S ALTER EGO IS A NOD TO A REAL PERSON.

Walter White’s drug kingpin alter ego, Heisenberg, is a nod to Werner Heisenberg, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who developed the principle of uncertainty.

15. HEISENBERG’S SIGNATURE HAT WAS A MATTER A PRACTICALITY.

Heisenberg’s porkpie hat came to identify Walter White’s dark side, but it originated from a very practical place. “Bryan kept asking me, after he shaved his head, ‘Can I have a hat?’ because his head was cold,” Kathleen Detoro, the show’s costume designer, explained. “So I would ask Vince and he kept saying no; Jesse wore the hats. Finally, Vince said, ‘I think there’s a place …’ It was Bryan asking for a hat, me asking Vince, and then Vince figuring out where in the story it makes sense: It’s when he really becomes Heisenberg.” (If you want to buy your own Heisenberg hat, it was made by Goorin.)

16. THE WHITES’ HOUSE HAS BECOME A TOURIST ATTRACTION—AND LOTS OF PIZZA HAS BEEN THROWN ON THE ROOF.

Though Walter White and his family live at 308 Negra Arroyo Lane, the home that you see in exterior shots is actually located at 3828 Piermont Drive NE, a private home in Albuquerque that has become a pretty major tourist attraction. Many fans, caught up in the excitement of seeing the home where Walter White managed to hurl the world’s largest pizza onto the roof in one swift move, have attempted to recreate that scene—leaving the home’s owner with a regular mess.

In 2015, Gilligan appealed to the show’s fan base to refrain from throwing pizza onto the home’s roof. “There is nothing original, or funny, or cool about throwing a pizza on this lady’s roof,” Gilligan said. “It’s been done before—you’re not the first.”

“And if I catch you doing it, I will hunt you down,” added Jonathan Banks, in true Mike Ehrmantraut fashion.

17. CRANSTON MANAGED TO GET THAT PIZZA THROW IN ONE TAKE.

Speaking of that infamous pizza scene: It really was Cranston who threw it, and he managed to do it in one take. Gilligan called it a “one-in-a-million shot.”

18. TUCO GAVE JESSE A CONCUSSION.

A fight scene between Jesse and Tuco (Raymond Cruz) turned serious when Cruz ended up accidentally knocking Paul unconscious. “Yeah, Raymond Cruz who played Tuco gave me a concussion during the episode ‘Grilled,’ where Tuco takes Walt and Jesse to his shack in the middle of nowhere where we meet the famous Uncle Tio,” Paul said in a Reddit AMA. “Tuco takes Jesse and he throws him through the screen door outside, and if you watch it back you’ll notice that my head gets caught inside the wooden screen door and it flips me around and lands me on my stomach and the door splinters into a million pieces. Raymond just thought I was acting so he continued and kicked me in the side and picked me up over his shoulder and threw me against the house, but in reality I was pretty much unconscious … I kept pleading to him, saying ‘stop.’ The next thing I know I guess I blacked out and I woke up to a flashlight in our eyes and it was our medic. And then I hopped up acting like nothing wrong, but it appeared like I was drunk, and I kept saying, ‘Let’s finish the scene’ but then my eye started swelling shut so they took me to the hospital. Just another fun day on the set of Breaking Bad!”

19. JANE’S DEATH WAS THE HARDEST SCENE FOR PAUL TO SHOOT.

When asked about the hardest scene to shoot during a Reddit AMA, Paul said that it was Jane’s death. “I honestly think the hardest scene for me to do was when Jesse woke up and found Jane lying next to him dead,” Paul said. “Looking at Jane through Jesse’s eyes that day was very hard and emotional for all of us. When that day was over, I couldn’t be happier that it was over because I really, truly felt I was living those tortured moments with Jesse.”

The scene was hard on Cranston, too, who reportedly spent 15 minutes crying after filming was complete.

20. MIKE’S DEATH WAS HARD FOR EVERYONE.

When asked about filming his final scene, Jonathan Banks shared that, “The crew on the set that day all wore black armbands all day long. There are a lot of friends on that crew. It was an emotional day to say the least on set—a lot of tears. Tough day, brother.”

21. JESSE’S TEETH STILL BOTHER GILLIGAN.

When asked about whether he had any regrets about the show or any of its storylines, Gilligan admitted to one: “One thing that sort of troubled me, looking back over the entirety of the show: Jesse’s teeth were a little too perfect. There were all the beatings he took, and, of course, he was using meth, which is brutal on your teeth. He’d probably have terrible teeth in real life.”

22. WARREN BUFFET RESPECTS WALTER WHITE’S BUSINESS ACUMEN.

Warren Buffet was a fan of the series, and even showed up to its fifth season premiere. On the red carpet, he expressed admiration of Walter White’s entrepreneurship, calling him “a great businessman,” and saying that, “he’s my guy if I ever have to go toe-to-toe with anyone.”

23. THERE ARE 62 EPISODES IN TOTAL—A NUMBER THAT HAS A SPECIAL MEANING.

Over the course of five seasons, Breaking Bad produced a total of 62 episodes—which is no arbitrary number. The 62nd element on the periodic table is Samarium, which is used to treat a range of cancers, including lung cancer.

24. THE FINAL DEATH TOLL IS PRETTY IMPRESSIVE.

Though you may have underestimated the number of times Jesse uttered “bitch,” you might be surprised by how many people were killed throughout the show’s entire run: 270. (BuzzFeed created a thorough breakdown of some of the most memorable ones.)

25. IN 2016, A METH COOK NAMED WALTER WHITE WAS WANTED BY THE AUTHORITIES.

Last year, a 55-year-old man named Walter White rose to the top of Tuscaloosa, Alabama’s most wanted list for manufacturing and selling meth. Though White wasn’t a teacher, there have been other real-life stories that mirrored Walter White’s descent into the criminal underworld: In 2012, a chemistry teacher named William Duncan was arrested for selling meth; in 2011, Irina Kristy, a 74-year-old math professor, was arrested for running a meth lab.

When did U.S. presidents start outsourcing the writing of their speeches?

Ross Cohen:

According to Robert Schlesinger, author of Presidents and Their Speechwriters, “Judson Welliver, ‘literary clerk’ during the Harding administration, from 1921 to 1923, is generally considered the first presidential speechwriter in the modern sense—someone whose job description includes helping to compose speeches.”

And then FDR had a number of people helping him.

That said, some of it started right from the beginning, to some extent. Not outsourcing, per se—at least not consistently—but certainly collaboration.

The first draft of George Washington’s famous farewell address was prepared with the assistance of James Madison, five years before he ultimately delivered it. Years later, Alexander Hamilton put in a lot of work helping Washington revise it before it reached its final form.

James Monroe delivered his famous doctrine in a State of the Union Address, but it was primarily written by his Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams.

“When James K. Polk asked Congress for a declaration of war against Mexico in 1846, his words were written by Secretary of the Navy George Bancroft, the most distinguished American historian of the time,” according to Profiles of U.S. Presidents. “Years later Bancroft was again the presidential amanuensis, this time of Andrew Johnson.”

According to the same source, Woodrow Wilson was the last president to write his own speeches.

After Wilson came Harding, who was the first president with a dedicated speechwriter (though I’m not sure if his immediate successors, Coolidge and Hoover, had one as well). Once they were through it becomes a little clearer, as FDR is known to have used a number of ghost writers for his speeches.

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The small mountain town of Park City, Utah is being invaded this week by thousands of movie lovers eager to see what’s premiering at the Sundance Film Festival. But you don’t have to be among them to enjoy the Sundance experience. Many of the festival’s past hits are available to stream into your own home, where presumably you will not have to stand in line or wear a parka. If you’d like to program your own mini-festival, here are 10 Sundance world premieres to get you started. 

1. THE HOUSE OF YES (1997) 

Where to watch it: Amazon/iTunes

Parker Posey, the undisputed Queen of Sundance in the 1990s, won a Special Jury Recognition for her performance in this dark comedy about an unstable, Jackie Kennedy-obsessed young woman who gets very upset when her twin brother (Josh Hamilton) brings home a fiancée. Dysfunctional hilarity ensues as the family’s old secrets come to light. The film was by Mark Waters, who later made Mean Girls.

2. HAMLET (2000)

Where to watch it: Amazon/iTunes

Sure, you’ve seen Hamlet before. But have you seen it set in modern-day New York City, with Ethan Hawke as the Dane, Kyle MacLachlan as Claudius, and Bill Murray as Polonius? Michael Almereyda (who made last year’s Experimenter) retains the Bard’s language while refitting everything to the present: Elsinore is a luxury hotel; eavesdropping is accomplished via hidden microphone; and instead of staging a play to embarrass his uncle, Hamlet makes an artsy short film. Nothing rotten here!

3. CHAIN CAMERA (2001)  

Where to watch it: Amazon

Want to feel hopeful about the future? Here’s a documentary showing that the kids are all right. Or at least they were in 1999 to 2000, when this was shot. Kirby Dick gave video cameras to 10 high school students and had them film themselves for a week before passing the cameras along to someone else. Sixteen kids’ weeks were chosen and distilled into the segments in Chain Camera, offering a unique view (and now something of a time capsule) of young life at the turn of the century.

4. MANIC (2001) 

Where to watch it: Amazon

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, future stars of Sundance hit 500 Days of Summer, first appeared together in this low-key drama set in a juvenile psychiatric ward. (Don Cheadle is here, too, as their tough but sympathetic doctor.) Shot on digital video at a time when digital video tended to make things look cheap, Manic overcomes its aesthetic limitations with believable characters and totally natural performances. 

5. PUMPKIN (2002) 

Where to watch it: Amazon/iTunes

Christina Ricci plays a Southern California sorority blonde who’s paired up with a mildly disabled fellow named Pumpkin (Hank Harris) during a charity drive, disrupting her rich, clueless life. It’s a sunny, exaggerated satire—think Bring It On meets Heathers—and there’s an added level of curiosity: the directors, Anthony Abrams and Adam Larson Broder, never made another movie before or since. 

6. THE STATION AGENT (2003)

Where to watch it: Amazon/iTunes

Tom McCarthy is up for two Oscars this year for directing and co-writing Spotlight, but he started his directing career (after more than a decade as an actor) with this enormously pleasant comedy about a surly dwarf (Peter Dinklage) who inherits a rural train depot and reluctantly becomes friends with the locals (including Patricia Clarkson and Bobby Cannavale). The film won Sundance’s Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award as well as the coveted, regular-people-like-this-too Audience Award.

7. THE SAVAGES (2007) 

Where to watch it: iTunes/Amazon

Not to be confused with Savages, the 2012 Oliver Stone movie, The Savages is a sharply funny comedy starring Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman as over-educated, under-achieving siblings grappling with their father’s impending death and their own midlife crises. Writer-director Tamara Jenkins’ screenplay and Linney’s lead performance were actually nominated for Oscars in 2008, but the film largely slipped away from public consciousness after that. 

8. WORLD’S GREATEST DAD (2009)

Where to watch it: Netflix/Amazon/iTunes

There are some red flags on this one: it’s a dark comedy about suicide, and it stars Robin Williams. To enjoy it requires not just a suspension of disbelief, but a suspension of taste. But if you can handle it, it’s hilarious, as Williams plays a high school teacher who writes fake diaries to change students’ perception of his loathsome son after the latter’s death. It was written and directed by Bobcat Goldthwait, who has emerged as one of the most daring filmmakers in the business.

9. PARIAH (2011)

Where to watch it: Netflix/Amazon/iTunes

One of the more widely praised films at the 2011 festival was this drama about a 17-year-old black lesbian (Adepero Oduye) in Brooklyn trying to navigate her sexuality without upsetting her family. Coming-of-age dramas about gay teens aren’t rare (especially at Sundance), but this one has an air of raw authenticity that many lack, and it offers a glimpse into a corner of American culture that will be new to a lot of viewers.

10. THE SKELETON TWINS (2014) 

Where to watch it: Amazon/iTunes

It was just two years ago that this dramatic comedy about suicidal siblings—played by Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig—made waves in Park City and earned the festival’s screenwriting prize. It went on to make just over $5 million in its limited theatrical release before being forgotten entirely. It deserved better, especially for fans of Hader and Wiig’s un-fakeable comic chemistry.

Accused criminals have used some wild excuses to explain away their crimes. Ethan Couch said he suffered from “affluenza.” Dan White blamed junk food (well, not exactly). But perhaps the most controversial defense to this day is dissociative identity disorder (DID)—previously known as multiple personality disorder.

There’s an enormous amount of suspicion surrounding dissociative identity disorder. Psychiatrists believe that people who suffer from this condition splinter their personality to deal with a trauma, often childhood abuse. By this definition, someone with DID could conceivably commit a horrific crime and not even know it—because one of their “multiples” or “alters” did it instead.

Skeptics believe criminals lie about having this disorder to avoid consequences, and it probably doesn’t help that characters in pulpy movies like Fight Club, Identity, and M. Night Shyamalan’s new film Split all have it. Still, some courts have accepted this plea, as three of these real-life cases show. But the other two prove that DID remains a highly contentious legal defense.

1. BILLY MILLIGAN

Most people trace the multiple personality defense back to Billy Milligan. Milligan was hauled into court in 1978 on several counts of rape, aggravated robbery, and kidnapping. His case soon garnered national attention when his lawyers pursued a plea of insanity, arguing that two different personalities had committed the crimes—not Milligan. This defense was highly unusual for the time, but it worked. Milligan was found not guilty, and the judge committed him to a psychiatric hospital. He escaped for four months in 1986, was released in 1991, and died from cancer in 2014.

Psychiatrists have suggested that Milligan had as many as 24 personalities, including a Yugoslavian munitions expert and a 3-year-old girl. Milligan’s life was also the subject of a nonfiction book, The Minds of Billy Milligan, which has long been in movie development. And if Leonardo DiCaprio has his way, he’ll be starring as Milligan.

2. JUANITA MAXWELL

Juanita Maxwell’s legal problems began in 1979, when she was charged with beating a 73-year-old woman to death. The murder occurred at the hotel where Maxwell worked as a maid and where the woman in question, Inez Kelly, lived. But Maxwell insisted that she hadn’t killed Kelly; her brasher personality, Wanda Weston, had. Whereas Maxwell came off as quiet and prim, Weston was chatty and bragged about smoking weed. She had no problem admitting on the witness stand that she had bludgeoned Kelly with a lamp, because the woman refused to return a pen. Maxwell’s transformation on the stand spooked onlookers, and the court found her not guilty by reason of insanity.

Maxwell was committed to a mental ward, with the full support of her husband, Sammy. Yet in 1988, soon after she was released, she landed in jail for robbing two banks in St. Petersburg, Florida. By that point, she had seven personalities, but Wanda was still pinned as the culprit of the crimes.

3. BILLY JOE HARRIS

When Billy Joe Harris was arrested in 2011, police called him “one of the most wanted men in Texas.” Others knew him as the “Twilight Rapist,” for his early morning assaults on elderly and disabled women. His DNA linked him to multiple attacks and burglaries spanning two years and several counties. Harris insisted he was not a serial rapist, though; rather, it was one of his alters.

According to Psychology Today, Dr. Colin Ross testified in court that he believed Harris had dissociative identity disorder, with reservations. He said he questioned Harris’s insanely high scores on the screening tests for DID—which were administered by the defense attorney, not Ross—and had caught Harris in lies about his personal life. Clearly, everyone else in the courtroom had suspicions, too. Some jurors suppressed laughter when Harris became “Bobby,” another one of his alleged personalities, on the stand. Worse still, he was recorded in a phone call to his girlfriend bragging about putting on a “good show” in court.

The judge tossed out Ross’s testimony and the jury convicted Harris. He received a life sentence, which he has tried to appeal—so far with no success.

4. DWAYNE WILSON

The case against Dwayne Wilson began on September 20, 2005, when his nephew, Paris, called the police. The boy explained that his uncle had stabbed him, his brother, his sister, and his mother in their New Jersey home. Paris was the only survivor.

When Wilson’s hearings commenced four years later, his lawyer argued that one of the defendant’s three personalities, “Kiko,” had actually committed the murders and that Wilson could not be held responsible for the crimes. But the judge rejected this argument and sentenced Wilson to 40 years in prison.

5. THOMAS HUSKEY

Thomas Huskey was known as “Zoo Man” among prostitutes in Tennessee, because he used to work in the elephant barn at Knoxville Zoo. But this whimsical nickname turned sinister when Huskey was charged with a string of murders. He confessed to killing four women, and was accused of raping and robbing two more. Police also recovered jewelry they believed Huskey had taken off his victims’ bodies as “souvenirs.” Huskey’s attorneys, however, insisted that their client had not confessed, kept trophies, or done anything wrong. The perpetrator was “Kyle,” his alternate personality.

The first jury to hear this case could not reach a consensus on the murder, and the prosecution eventually gave up those charges. But Huskey was convicted of the rapes he committed before the murders, and sentenced to 64 years in prison. The Knoxville News Sentinel called his case one of the most expensive in state history.

The modern presidential library is more than a roadside attraction. It’s a multifaceted venue where interested parties can thumb through the archives and gaze upon the personal effects of former commanders-in-chief. Many have put some bewilderingly fascinating items on display, from the coconut shell that saved JFK’s life to a pair of “I Like Ike” pantyhose. Cited as “living memorials,” presidential libraries are now designed by world-class architects and tend to come with steep price tags—the two newest ones, for example, cost over $160 million apiece.

By comparison, the earliest presidential libraries were rather modest. The history of these places began over a century ago, when Rutherford B. Hayes’s family struck a trend-setting deal with their home state: In 1873, a pre-presidency Hayes moved into a secluded estate known as “Spiegel Grove” in Fremont, Ohio. And it was to this quiet abode that he returned after his one-term presidency ended on March 4, 1881. When Hayes passed away 12 years later, he was buried on the grounds.

In 1912, the former president’s son, Colonel Webb C. Hayes, deeded the property to the Buckeye State. Then he handed over thousands of important documents from his father’s political and military career to the Ohio Historical Society. The Colonel’s gifts came with two key stipulations: First, he insisted that his family be allowed to continue living on the premises at Spiegel Grove. Additionally, he wanted the state of Ohio to put together a library and museum that would be dedicated to the memory of his late father.

The state happily complied. On May 30, 1916—Memorial Day—a new facility called the Hayes Memorial opened up just a stone’s throw away from Spiegel Grove. A combination museum/library, it was designed to house the president’s archives and a selection of his belongings, including Hayes’s 12,000-volume personal library. Altogether, these items took up so much space that the building had to be extended just a few years later. Hayes’s descendants finally moved out of Spiegel Grove in 1965, at which point the historic home opened its doors to the public.

It was decided that the private documents of President Hayes ought to be made accessible to anyone and everyone who might wish to look through them. That choice has been an absolute boon to U.S. history buffs. Visit Spiegel Grove today, and you can freely examine every book and letter in the library’s collection (although some of the more fragile items must be retrieved from a closed stacks section by a member of the staff). Back in the early 20th century, this was a radical notion. At the time, the archives of an outgoing commander-in-chief were regarded as his personal property. Over time, many a presidential paper trail was either divided up between multiple parties or, in a few cases, destroyed. The Zachary Taylor collection literally went up in smoke when Union soldiers occupied his son’s home in 1862. And then there’s the case of Chester A. Arthur who, on the day before his death in 1886, personally burned numerous private documents.

Webb Hayes and Ohio’s government deserve a great deal of credit for seeing America’s first presidential library through. However, the concept didn’t begin to spread until it was embraced by Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

An avid history buff, the 32^nd president recognized that the growing mountains of personal papers, correspondences, and pamphlets he’d accumulated over the course of his political life would be invaluable to future historians. Inspired by Hayes and Spiegel Grove, Roosevelt began making plans for a presidential library of his own [PDF].

On December 10, 1938, FDR announced that such a place was in the works and that it would soon be built on his family’s land in Hyde Park, New York. At a press conference, the then-president spoke at great length about what he called “probably the largest collection of original source material of almost anybody over the last quarter of a century…. I do not wish to break [these papers] up … It is my desire that they be kept as a whole and intact in their original condition, available to scholars of the future in one definite locality.” The building that Roosevelt had in mind would also have some personal knickknacks on display, including his beloved miniature ship collection.

Even before the official announcement, FDR gleefully micro-managed almost every aspect of the library’s creation. Early in 1937, he sketched a plan that bore a very close resemblance to the finished product. Roosevelt also helped his Hyde Park staff organize the papers and memorabilia he was constantly dropping off. Although it was being funded privately, Roosevelt decided very early on that the federal government would operate his library after its completion.

FDR’s critics denounced the library as an exercise in narcissism. Newspaperman John T. Flynn called it a “Yankee pyramid,” while one congressman protested that “Only an egocentric maniac would have the nerve to ask for such a measure.” Despite these charges, Congress passed new chartering legislation for the library in July 1939. That November, construction began.

On June 30, 1941, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum held its dedication ceremony. Addressing a small crowd, the president said, “The dedication of a library is in itself an act of faith. To bring together the records of the past and to house them in buildings where they will be preserved for the use of men and women in the future, a nation must believe in three things. It must believe in the past. It must believe in the future. It must, above all, believe in the capacity of its own people so to learn from the past that they can gain in judgment in creating their own future.”

Roosevelt’s successor chose to follow in his footsteps. In May 1955, ground was broken on Harry S. Truman’s privately funded presidential library. Three months later, Congress passed the Presidential Libraries Act of 1955. This piece of legislation specifically authorized the General Services Administration (GSA) to accept any “papers, documents, or other historical materials ” that an ex-president might offer to be used for a future “Presidential archival repository.” The Act spawned a whole system of libraries. Like Roosevelt’s, these were built with (mostly) private funds, then turned over to the federal government, which covers their operating costs.

Modern presidential libraries basically fall into one of two categories: 13 of them—namely, those that commemorate every president from Herbert Hoover to George W. Bush—are overseen by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), in accordance with that 1955 Act. (Hoover opened his in 1962.)

However, there are also several outliers that have no association with the NARA and, accordingly, don’t receive any federal funds. This category includes the presidential libraries of Hayes, Abraham Lincoln, and Woodrow Wilson—all of which rely on foundations, private citizens, and state and local governments for financial support.

The Watergate scandal had a major impact on the contents of presidential libraries. Incensed by Nixon’s role in a break-in at the DNC headquarters, Congress passed the Presidential Records Act (PRA) in 1978, which decreed that the paperwork of an outgoing commander-in-chief elected after 1980 must be made public through Freedom of Information Act requests five years after he or she leaves office. However, the PRA does allow a president to withhold certain sensitive documents from the public eye for “up to 12 years.”

It’s hard to say what the future holds for presidential libraries, but at the very least, we do know that a brand new one is well on its way. Jackson Park, on Chicago’s South Side, was recently chosen as the future home of The Obama Presidential Center, which is scheduled to be completed by the year 2021.

Also, construction on a Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum is currently underway in Dickinson, North Dakota. Because the Bull Moose’s paper trail has been scattered far and wide over the past century, the museum will feature an archive that mainly consists of digitized documents. “It’s very difficult to create a traditional presidential library for TR, because all the materials will never be gathered physically in one place,” Sharon Kilzer, the Dickinson State University alum who’s overseeing the project, said. “This [digital archives approach] could be a model through which the legacies of … other presidents are also preserved and made accessible to the public.”