Where the magic happens

Hello boys and girls and welcome to another installment of Eccentric Spheres!

Today we're going to the land of magic and make-believe, or Hollywood to exact. I have a hankering for odd movie trivia, so that's the main feature of tonight's performance.

We'll star off with a true classic: Gone with the Wind.

They originally shot half a million feet of film (152400 meters), and then edited it down to 20000 feet. (6096 meters). Since it's 238 minutes long that means that every minute is about 84 feet long. Had they left it uncut (impossible, I know) Gone with the Wind would have been 5952 minutes long, or 99 hours, in other words just over four days!

As anyone who has read the book knows (I haven't by the way) Scarlett O'Hara has green eyes. Now Vivien Leigh has blue eyes. So what? Well, the GwtW was produced by David O. Selznick, who was a stickler for details. Sure contacts did exist back then, but Vivien couldn't wear them. So they did all they could to reflect green into her face, and when that wasn't enough, they recolored her eyes on the final print, by hand. By hand! They went through 20000 feet of film with a pen in hand painstakingly recoloring her eyes. I'm getting a cramp just writing this...

Keep the above mentioned fact in mind. Now consider that 1400 actresses were interviewed for the role, and 400 got as far as doing readings. And still they ended up with a blue eyed girl.

OK, enough with the romantic drama. Time for some crime!

Most of you have probably seen The Godfather, right? Even if you haven't, you have most likely heard of the famous horse head scene right?

In a nutshell, a big time movie producer, Jack Woltz (based on Warner chief Jack L. Warner) refuses to do a favor for Don Corleone, so one morning, he wakes up with the severed head of his favorite horse in his bed.

That was a real horse head. A real, severed head.

They practiced with dummies, but got a real head from a dog food factory. Eewwwwww.

Finally, did you know an X-rated film has won an Oscar for Best Picture? It's true, but not the way you think. It's not a porn film so good it got an Oscar. You would have heard about that!

No, it's Midnight Cowboy, starring Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight.

Back when the MPAA came up with the movie ratings system, the G, PG, PG-13 (invented later), R and X, they intended for X to stand for Mature Audiences Only. Sure sex is that, but Midnight Cowboy is a drama about male prostitution, poverty and the mean streets. It's by no means a skin flick. The MPAA however made a huge mistake. They forgot to copyright the X rating, and in no time, every porn producer out there used it so sell their films.

And when one X wasn't enough, they added a couple more. That's where the “XXX stands for hardcore sex” thing comes from.

So find yourself a good movie, settle down and wait out the rest of the winter.

See you next spring! (That's next Monday in case you didn't know).