TV and Movie Trivia: Fight Club Starbucks

Forrest Gump has more CGI than Jurassic Park. When Forrest ran through a jungle in Vietnam, and showed his table tennis skills, that was CGI. Even the feather at the opening scene is computer-generated. Overall, Forrest Gump has more minutes of CGI screen-time than Jurassic Park. Another one of those funny facts that are hard to believe.

Cooking shows are almost always scripted. For most cooking contests, contestants would get the ingredients they have to use weeks earlier. For restaurant improvement shows, the restaurants they feature usually go bankrupt a month after their episode is aired.

There is a Starbucks cup in all frames of Fight Club. Move aside, Game of Thrones. David Fincher directed Fight Club at the height of Starbucks cafes popping up everywhere. He claimed it was “too much of a good thing,” and put a Starbucks cup in every shot of the film. Starbucks allowed their products being shown in the ‘90s cult classic, as long as their shop was not destroyed on film. For the cafe scene, Fincher used the fictional Gratifico Coffee instead.

Woody was supposed to be a ventriloquist doll in Toy Story. Woody was originally written as the antagonist of the film, a “sarcastic bully” trying to pit the other toys against Buzz.

The Great Reality TV Swindle is exactly what it sounds like. In 2002, 30 people were conned to join a fake reality TV show in the U.K. Nik Russian, a bookstore clerk at the time, posed as a TV producer who offered a 1-year show. Russian persuaded the participants to leave their homes, quit their jobs and partners. However, there was actually no program deal nor prize money. As a result, most of the 30 contestants went bankrupt. Since then, Nik Russian has not been convicted (since he did not take money from anyone) and nobody has been able to track his whereabouts.

Reality TV phone calls are almost always fake. Phone calls are a familiar reality TV template, but there’s not much reality to them, either. It’s relatively easy, since the fake conversation can be shot for each speaker and then edited together.