Quote
"Friendship is the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words."
George Eliot
Joke
Did I tell you the time I fell in love during a backflip? I was heels over head!
Fun Fact
Interpol began in 1914 when legal professionals from 24 countries got together to discuss catching fugitives.
These days, Interpol (or the International Criminal Police Organization) may be well-known for tracking down outlaws around the world. But the group dates all the way back to 1914 when the International Criminal Police Congress was held in Monaco. That meeting saw police and judicial representatives from 24 countries get together with the goal of improving contacts between police forces in different countries in order to increase the effectiveness of international investigations.
History Fact
Hollywood moved from New York to Los Angeles to escape Edison’s patents.
Hollywood is globally recognized as the movie capital of the world. Yet it wasn’t always so.
The movie industry was originally based in New York in the 1800s, which was close to New Jersey – and New Jersey was where patent-master Thomas Edison was based.
Edison had patents on over 1,000 different things, including most of the technology needed to make high-end movies, and boy did he flex on them patents.
In short, if you wanted to be in the movie business, you basically had to go through Edison.
So the “independent” film-makers chose an alternate option to fighting Edison: fleeing Edison. And that’s what they did!
They moved to California, to an area of the country where the judges weren’t as friendly to Edison and his patents, and where the wheels of copyright law would take longer to roll over them.
Movie/TV Trivia
One of the crew members on Romeo and Juliet was kidnapped
Yep, you did read that correctly. One of the crew members on the set of the Shakespeare tragedy was kidnapped by gang members and held for ransom. A hair and make-up artist named Aldo Signoretti was held captive by some bandits during a shoot in the Mexican desert, and it was up to director Baz Luhrmann to try and negotiate terms.
Eventually the gang members demanded $300 for Signoretti’s safe return and the film’s producers promptly paid up in order to save him from being murdered. Talk about drama!
Luhrmann has admitted that he was relieved they only asked for such a small amount of money, the director later joking that the sum was “a bargain”. One of the producers had to wait outside a hotel and hold up a bag of cash for the gang to collect, and in turn they threw poor Aldo out of a moving car, which broke his leg in the process. Luhrmann later praised his cast and crew for putting up with all of the drama around the film and ended up calling the movie “an incredible quest”.
We’ll say! Fair play to DiCaprio and Danes for putting up with all that drama as budding actors. Of course, we’re also glad that Aldo escaped from the set with his life.
Movie/TV Quote
“Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death!”
Auntie Mame, 1958
Conversation Starter
What’s the strangest movie you have ever seen?
Writing Prompt