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I know, It’s a Wonderful Life is one of those movies you either adore or hate. And it’s definitely what Snopes calls “glurge,” but I love it anyway. So, in the spirit of the Halloween Horror movie posts, I thought I’d deliver a little inside information about this Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed classic.
• You’ll never hear him referenced by name in the movie, but the script for IAWL says the head angel (not Clarence’s boss Joseph, but his superior) is named Franklin. Why Franklin? Well, originally, the head angel was going to be Benjamin Franklin. He was going to be shown up in heaven, tinkering away at one of his many inventions.
• The movie started as The Greatest Gift, a short story by Philip Van Doren Stern. RKO Pictures bought the rights to the story and started to rewrite some of it, but it was going nowhere fast. Ideas including Uncle Billy committing suicide and a “Good George” battling “Bad George”. Frank Capra loved the story, though, and used his own cash to buy the story from RKO. Although a few of the RKO scenes were kept, including the scene at the dance, Capra and his writers (including Dorothy Parker, who was never credited) rescued It’s a Wonderful Life and made it the classic it is today
• When you see the boys sledding near the beginning of the movie, there’s a lot going on here. First of all, all of them are wearing caps with skull and crossbones. That’s because they all belong to a secret club (boys only, I’m sure). And among the boys there are Ernie and Sam Wainwright. Ernie isn’t ever referenced in the movie, but you know it’s Sam because he gives his “hee haw” sign. Also, if you look close, you’ll see that they are trespassing on old man Potter’s territory. In an earlier version of the script, Potter let his attack dogs loose (“Smithers, release the hounds.”) on the boys, and when they started running, Harry fell through the ice.
• Donna Reed grew up just outside of Denison, Iowa (not too far from Des Moines) and won a bet with Lionel Barrymore, the actor who played Mr. Potter, when he bet her that she couldn’t milk a cow. Apparently she was also an accomplished baker – her rolls won a coveted blue ribbon at the Iowa State Fair when she was just 13.
• Sure, the movie looks like it takes place in a snowy December setting. But it was actually filmed during a heat wave in California (that gym with the swimming pool under the floor is Beverly Hills High School). It got so unbearable that Frank Capra actually gave everyone a day off to recover from a hard, hot day of shooting.
• The FBI kept a file on Frank Capra because they felt that It’s a Wonderful Life was nothing more than Communist propaganda. Comments included the observation that the Mr. Potter character was obviously an attempt to discredit bankers.
• Zuzu’s name comes from ZuZu gingersnaps. Jimmy Stewart cleverly calls her a little ginger snap near the end of the movie, alluding to the origins of her name. Also, there used to be an all-girl band called Zuzu’s Petals – the lead singer of the band, Laurie Lindeen, is married to former Replacements frontman Paul Westerberg.
• Since Sesame Street first introduced our favorite Muppet odd couple, there has been speculation that they were named after Bert the cop and Ernie the cab driver from It’s a Wonderful Life. Not true, says longtime Muppet writer and puppeteer Jerry Juhl. It’s just a coincidence.
• And, finally, a bit of thievery from my mental_floss post on National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation – The Capra family must have Christmas in their genes. The assistant director of Christmas Vacation, Frank Capra III, is the grandson of the legendary Frank Capra, who directed It’s a Wonderful Life. The part where Clark “fixes” the newel post by sawing it off with a chainsaw is an homage to It’s a Wonderful Life – the newel post at the Bailey’s house was also loose. Also, Russ is watching It’s a Wonderful Life on TV when his grandparents arrive.
So, it snowed during the New England Patriots-Arizona Cardinals game today (I’ll let you guess where they were playing). Of course, that means that touchdown celebrations have to be taken to a whole new level, like this one from Patriot Wes Welker:
What do you think? Rude, or funny? Personally, I enjoyed it.
This is an interesting logic puzzle – it kind of reminds me of that old game Pipe Dream. You have to rotate the “wiring” pieces and connect each bulb to light up the tree. It’s harder than it sounds!!
Leave it to science to reveal all of life’s greatest mysteries. Here’s the secret to baking the perfect cookie, by food scientist Shirley Corriher: it’s all about the gluten!
Among the cookie problems bakers face is that the cookies can emerge from the oven soft and intact, but when the cookies travel, they may turn into a box of crumbs.
To beat this problem, Corriher suggests adding a tablespoon of water to a cup of flour that’s going to be used in the cookies. The two proteins in flour — glutenin and gliadin — grip water, Corriher tells NPR’s Melissa Block, and make "springy stretchy, strong elastic sheets of gluten." The gluten will hold the cookies together, she says.
Here’s your next rock star: Meet Sara, a 13-year-old kid who kicks butt playing Rush’s YYZ on the drums, complete with stick twirling theatrics and such.
VideoSift has the clip: Link [embedded YouTube] | Sara’s website (in Japanese)
If you like that, here’s Sara (11yo), playing Rush’s Freewill on the drums and singing too!
Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is a web service that lets you assign tasks to human workers in exchange for payments. It is named after The Turk, a chess playing automaton made by Wolfgang von Kempelen in the late 1700s (it turned out that a chess master was hiding inside the machine).
Andy Baio of Waxy was curious to see what exactly the Amazon Mechanical Turk looks like, so naturally he started a new Turk experiment to answer two questions: what do these people look like, and how much does it cost for someone to reveal their face?
Here are his answers, #1:
And #2: about $0.50
What happens when Bollywood combines Harry potter and Home Alone? Here’s Hari Puttar – A Comedy of Terrors, directed by Lucky Kohli.
The movie is about a ten year old Indian boy named Hari Prasad Dhoonda, nicknamed Hari Puttar (Puttar means "son" in Punjabi), who was left home when his parents go on vacation. Just like Home Alone, Hari soon has to face burglars who wanted to steal his father’s secret formula.
Given the similarity to its movies, Warner Bros. decided to sue but the case was thrown out by Indian courts on the grounds that the public would be able to tell the difference and Warner had waited too long to file their case.
Hari Puttar’s official website | Trailer of the movie at Clipser: Link
Between 1983 and 1991, Australia held an annual ultra-marathon of 544 miles (875 km). World’s most elite racers ran from Sydney to Melbourne in 5 days – these athletes trained specially for this event, which was considered one of the world’s most grueling races.
One day, a 61-year-old Australian potato farmer named Cliff Young entered the race …
In 1983, a man named Cliff Young showed up at the start of this race. Cliff was 61 years old and wore overalls and work boots. To everyone’s shock, Cliff wasn’t a spectator. He picked up his race number and joined the other runners.
The press and other athletes became curious and questioned Cliff. They told him, "You’re crazy, there’s no way you can finish this race." To which he replied, "Yes I can. See, I grew up on a farm where we couldn’t afford horses or tractors, and the whole time I was growing up, whenever the storms would roll in, I’d have to go out and round up the sheep. We had 2,000 sheep on 2,000 acres. Sometimes I would have to run those sheep for two or three days. It took a long time, but I’d always catch them. I believe I can run this race." [...]
All of the professional athletes knew that it took about 5 days to finish the race. In order to compete, one had to run about 18 hours a day and sleep the remaining 6 hours. The thing is, Cliff Young didn’t know that!
When the morning of the second day came, everyone was in for another surprise. Not only was Cliff still in the race, he had continued jogging all night.
Eventually Cliff was asked about his tactics for the rest of the race. To everyone’s disbelief, he claimed he would run straight through to the finish without sleeping.
Cliff Young won the race, and became a legend: Link – Thanks Ali!
A man who was shot in the head Tuesday is back at work already -with the bullet still in his skull! 74-year-old E.T. Strickland was hit during an armed robbery at a convenience store.
Strickland was told by his doctors not to have the bullet removed unless it was pressing on any arteries or causing health problems. He does plan to see a neurosurgeon though because he wants it taken out if possible.
Strickland says it hurts, but not enough to keep him from going to work. Link -Thanks, Geekazoid!
Customs agents in Milan, Italy seized 88 pounds of Beluga caviar as it was smuggled from Poland. The stash is valued at over half a million dollars!
Newspaper Corriere Della Sera says the caviar had an estimated value of $550,000 (£370,000).
Tests showed the caviar to be edible, so it is to be given to canteens, hospices and shelters for the poor.
Beluga caviar is the most expensive variety of the delicacy.
Link -Thanks, Justin!
A modified cell phone could allow doctors to analyze blood samples for HIV, malaria, and other diseases in remote villages where costly lab equipment and the power to run them are unavailable! The device is called a LUCAS imager (Lensfree Ultrawide-field Cell-monitoring Array platform based on Shadow imaging).
UCLA researcher Dr. Aydogan Ozcan images thousands of blood cells instantly by placing them on an off-the-shelf camera sensor and lighting them with a filtered-light source (coherent light, for you science buffs). The filtered light exposes distinctive qualities of the cells, which are then interpreted by Ozcan’s custom software. By analyzing the cell types present in a much larger sample, a more accurate diagnosis can be made in a matter of minutes. No more sending blood away to a lab and waiting days or weeks for the results.
Ozcan is seeking a manufacture so these devices can be mass-produced. Link -Thanks, Dave Bullock!
