Saturday

22 Movies From the 90’s Whose Production Will Always Be Remembered in Hollywood

The 1990s are rightfully called the golden decade of cinema. The movie industry would spend millions of dollars on actors and special effects, and independent studios were not afraid of dealing with very serious topics. Every year, the movies we still rewatch every now and then were released on the big screen. But during the production of many of those films, the directors often had arguments with the owners of studios, actors had to make sacrifices for their roles, and the entire film crew was under the pressure of the viewer’s expectations and someone else’s ambitions. And sometimes, there was a story from before the start of the shooting process that could change the entire perception of the film.

Bright Side decided to take a look behind the scenes of the films from the 90s and found a lot of unexpected facts that could really surprise you.

Actress Sean Young was the main candidate for the role of Catwoman in Batman Returns but right before the shooting, she was injured. When she found out that she had been replaced immediately, she came to the set wearing the Catwoman costume and asked for another audition. Director Tim Burton, as the actress thought, was hiding from her in the bathroom. We think that Young as Catwoman looks just as good as Michelle Pfeiffer.

Kim Basinger and Alec Baldwin made the shooting process of The Marrying Man a true challenge for their colleagues. Baldwin was very irritable and Kim was extremely moody. The actress gave orders to the makeup artist, criticized the script, and even tried to change the director. Interestingly, during the shooting, these 2 unbearable actors met each other, fell in love with each other, and got married 3 years later.
It may appear that the bench in Good Will Hunting, that the characters, played by Robin Williams and Matt Damon, sat on and talked was located in an empty park. But in fact, during the shooting, there were about 3,000 fans of Robin Williams around. After Robin’s death in 2014, the bench became a memorial: there are always flowers there and on the ground, people leave memorable quotes from the actor.

The antagonist in the first part of Beethoven is a doctor that does cruel experiments on animals. The vet association wrote a protest letter to the management of the film for this strange depiction of the doctor. But the viewers still liked the film because the scenes with the villain were funny and grotesque.
In order to prepare for the production of Boys Don’t Cry, Hilary Swank spent one month dressing and looking like a man. The actress had her hair cut, she wore her husband’s clothes every day, and tied bandages around her breasts. The neighbors even confused Hillary with her brother.

There are 2 versions of the film Leon, the American and European. The latter was riskier: in the film, the relationship between the 11-year-old girl and Leon, the killer, develops in a different way. Also, there is one more version of the film where the girl takes a more active part in Leon’s job.
The character played by Kathy Bates in the adaptation of Stephen King’s book Misery is an ex-nurse that killed people. She holds a writer hostage. And she is less bloodthirsty than the book character. The character of the book, for example, cuts off the prisoner’s foot and kills a policeman. In fact, in the beginning, the creators of the film shot a scene where Kathy Bates runs over a cop with a lawnmower, but they had to remove it. By the way, when creating the character, Stephen King was inspired by a real person — a real nurse who was doing a 99-year-long prison sentence.
Anthony Hopkins (The Silence of the Lambs) and Jim Carrey (Ace Ventura) had to watch animals in order to prepare for their roles. When talking at dinner, the actors found that they had been using similar methods. Hopkins used reptiles as inspiration (he didn’t blink) and Carrey used birds as inspiration (the walk, the bright shirts, and his voice).

In The Green Mile, there are quite a few scenes where Michael Duncan, who stopped working out at the gym before the shooting (in order not to scare viewers with how big he was) truly cries. The actor recalled his childhood in these moments, when his father left him and the tears just appeared on their own.
The director of Heat, Michael Mann, organized the meetings between the actors and the people from the professions that they needed to portray. One day, the actors that played the detectives had dinner with real detectives, and the actors that played the criminals — ate with real criminals. Consultants for the film included policemen and secret service agents who helped create the right tactics for the action scenes. The atmosphere of the film was so realistic that some of the episodes of the film are shown to amateur navy soldiers. Besides, this movie inspired director Christopher Nolan to create Gotham City when he was working on the trilogy about Batman.

Actor Edward Norton wanted to increase his screen time by 20 minutes and decided to work on the final editing of American History X. During this period, director Tony Kaye was in a different country. But when he found out, he prohibited showing the illegally edited film at any festivals. Besides, Tony Kaye was offended by the studio’s actions and wanted to change his name in the credits to “A Humpty Dumpty film” and he also filed a $200 million lawsuit to get his rights back for the final cut.
In Interview With the Vampire, the actors that portrayed the vampires were hung upside down while makeup was put over the lines of their veins — this way, the makeup artists achieved a more realistic look. Brad Pitt suffered the most. The makeup, the contact lenses, and the darkness made him want to escape from the project. But he changed his mind when he found out how big of a fine he would have to pay for leaving.

The creators of The Mask saved a lot of special effects money thanks to Jim Carrey’s incredible mimics. The actor learned to speak with fake teeth and amazed everyone because the teeth were supposed to be used for the scenes without any dialogue.
Michael Jackson recorded the song It Is Scary for the film Addams Family Values. A short horror film was shot based on the song. The story goes that the local people with children come to the Addams’ mansion with torches and pitchforks and accused Jackson of his scary behavior. But the children loved Jackson and wanted to stay in the house. The song never appeared on the soundtrack because of the charges already against the singer, but it was a great promotion for the film.

The theater version of Blade didn’t include the scene where the characters discuss the question of what the vampires would eat if all people became vampires. The answer was: save some people just in case. This was actually shown in the third part of Blade and also the film Daybreakers with Ethan Hawke.
For the film Twelve Monkeys, Brad Pitt had to transform from a calm and neat person into a nervous talkative psychopath. In order to make the tension and his manner of speech more natural, the director took cigarettes away from Pitt and the actor himself visited a psychiatric hospital in order to study schizophrenia.

In the film Contact, the character played by actress Jodie Foster works at an astronomy center where she receives a signal from an alien civilization. This place really exists — the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. In 1974, the station really sent out a radio signal with all the basic information about humans. The message was created in hopes that it would be received and decoded by aliens.
Actress Linda Hamilton, in the first part of The Terminator, has to play a weak girl that is in horror because of what is happening. But in Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Sarah Connor was supposed to walk with a machine gun, break doors, and scare T-1000. In order to achieve that, Linda spent 100 days training according to the Navy Seal program just 2 weeks after giving birth to her child.

To promote the movie, Gattaca’s marketing team posted a fake ad in the Washington Post that had the tagline “Children made to order.” The ad was supposedly about a company that can genetically alter embryos. Surprisingly, thousands of people called the number on the ad, which was disturbing, to say the least.
In The Fifth Element it is incredible, but the film was shot according to the script by 16-year-old Luc Besson, who felt very lonely and depressed over the divorce of his parents. The prototype of the main character became a friend for the little Besson. It wasn’t until 22 years later that the film was actually released. By the way, the Leeloo language was known only to the director (aside from Mila Jovovich). Together, they created a 400-word dictionary. This is why the surprise on the faces of the other characters that you can see in the film looked so natural.

During the shooting of the Mummy, Brendan Fraser was amazed at how crazy the director was about the film. During the strangling scene, the actor really started to suffocate and lost consciousness. But when he was resuscitated, the crew continued the filming immediately in order to not lose any time.
In 1990, the 3-hour-long epic film Dances with Wolves by director Kevin Costner was released. It was about a Native American tribe. In order to recreate the wild part of 19th-century America, Costner needed 300 horses, 3,500 buffalos, an army of Native Americans, and 2 wolves. The actors were taught the Native American etiquette and language by a woman from the Lakota people. For his meticulous work, Costner got an award from Native Americans: he became an honorable member of the Sioux people.