Would the iPhone Exist If Steve Jobs Did Not Take LSD?

Nearly two months ago I took my first hit of acid.

The most profound experience I remember from that day was how blown away I was with the apps on my iPhone. How different, how beautiful and yet oxymoronically, how similar they were to each other compared to my pre-acid perception.

I also remember having this child-like sense of awe with the phone itself; its internal and external design features, a lucid dream behind a glass screen. It was the mirror-image sensation of the awe I had when I laid eyes on the first iPod Touch.

Upon unboxing the iPod Touch, I had nothing else in the world to compare it to. Yes, there was the Nintendo from my early childhood, the PlayStation, the computer, the cell phone, the internet, but as sufficiently advanced as those technologies were, to me, their magic was meager to the Touch.

Back to the acid:

The LSD did not take me on a “trip,” but to take my metaphor further, it let me unbox the world for the first time. Acid didn’t allow me to “think outside the box,” it allowed me to “live outside the box”; to hold the world and feel the world hold me.

It doesn’t surprise me that Jobs put “i” in front of most of Apple’s product names. After all, “i” is an effective way to symbolize both perception through “eye” and individuality through “I.” It also doesn’t surprise me that the first iPod Touch was essentially the world’s first “touch” technology. A sensory amalgamation of sight and kinesthesia; shifting realms of reality, like those that envelop the first time acid takers ego, their “I”.

Interestingly, when being asked how Steve Jobs reacted to LSD during a government security clearance, he answered that he had “no words” for it. He did, however, share that:

“It was a positive life changing experience for me and I am glad I went through that experience.”

The full quote from Walter Isaacson’s book, Steve Jobs.

If someone had asked me how I reacted to the iPod touch, I would have answered similarly. Words like “magical,” “erotic,” “profound,” and “beautiful” all fall short. It’s not that language itself is the limiting technology, but our capacity to synchronize it effectively with our emotions.

Where am I going with this?

Well, I came to the conclusion, a self-realization I should say, the Steve Jobs would not have invented the iPhone had he not taken LSD.

I arrived at this realization by examining my feelings about the iPod Touch when I had first “taken” it, as one would an exogenous substance. The feelings I felt about the world, people, myself, beauty, and everything else, after taking LSD, showed me the former was an expression, a containment, a symbol, a vessel, a carbon copy, of the latter.

My belief is that Steve Jobs, at some point in his life, decided he would give as many people across the world access to a connection, a love, an experience, so deep, as deep as he had with LSD, but through his work.

Whereas a musician might write and sing for the same purpose, to create, express, connect, and evolve further with his audience, the iPhone was made as a synonym, of sorts, to the experience of psychedelia.

Nine hours after my first dose of acid, I fell asleep at 6AM. Later that day I was interested to see if anyone else had made the same connection between LSD and Steve Jobs’s creation as I had. There were two interesting articles. The first was from Times, and it was titled ‘Steve Jobs Had LSD. We Have the iPhone‘:

“The paradoxes of love have perhaps never been clearer than in our relationships with Apple products — the warm, fleshy desire we feel for such cold, hard, glassy objects. But Jobs knew how to inspire material lust. He knew that consumers want something that not only sparkles and awes, but also feels accessible, easy to use, an object with which we want to merge and to feel one and the same.

Not coincidentally, that’s how people describe the experience of taking psychedelic drugs. It feels profoundly artificial yet deeply real, both high-tech and earthy-crunchy, human and mystically divine — in a word, transcendent. Jobs had this experience. He said that taking LSD was one of the two or three most important things he’d ever done. “He said there were things about him that people who had not tried psychedelics — even people who knew him well, including his wife — could never understand.

As attested by the nearly spiritual devotion so many consumers have to Jobs’ creations, the former Apple chief (and indeed many other top technology pioneers) appeared to have found enduring inspiration in LSD. Research shows that the psychedelic experience is, in fact, long lasting: a new study published last week found that people who took magic mushrooms (psilocybin) had long-term personality changes, becoming more open, more curious, more intellectually engaged and more creative. These personality shifts persisted more than a year after taking the drugs.

– John Markoff reported for the Times.

The second was from Metro News and it was titled ‘The Apple that Steve Jobs built based on sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll‘. Mr. Dormehl told Metro:

“You have Jim Warren, the creator of the West Coast Computer Faire. In the ‘60s, he was a full-blown hippie. He joined anti-war protests, he joined a commune — the whole shebang. He was also hosting naked house parties and dropping acid.’

Jobs certainly grew up in the thick of the 60s revolution. Allen Ginsberg wrote his seminal poem Howl, one of the most popular of the counterculture generation, only a few months after Steve Jobs was born in 1955, in a coffee house just one hour away from where the future Apple CEO enjoyed his childhood in California.

Mr Dormehl said: ‘Certainly, if we didn’t have this revolution which went on in the 1960s and 1970s, which was largely fuelled by drug use and LSD exploration, giving people new ways of looking at the world, personal computer technology wouldn’t have developed along the same lines that it did.

‘Before Apple, computers were seen as these sinister government mainframes that regular people wouldn’t have access to.

‘After Apple, suddenly personal computers are these tools of freedom fighting and tools of personal creativity.’

In their 1991 profile of Jobs, the FBI noted: ‘Mr Jobs may have experimented with illegal drugs, having come from that generation.’”

Is All Acid Corrosive?

Before taking LSD I thought the experience would be mostly visual, and if anything, very confusing. When I thought of an acid experience, I thought of people sitting in the corners of rooms for days, thinking they’re oranges and scratching their skin off. I thought of things like MKUltra and A Clockwork Orange. I thought of things like hallucinogen persisting perception disorder and being arrested.

Two or three weeks after taking acid for the first time, I compared these notions to what I actually experienced. There was a glaring disconnect between what I expected psychedelics to be and what they actually were. After doing some digging on LSD research, I stumbled across an article titled ‘Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris is the first scientist in over 40 years to test LSD on humans — and you’re next‘.

Here’s an extract:

Professor David Nutt, the director of the Neuropsychopharmacology Unit where Carhart-Harris is doing the research […] has written extensively about the wrong-headedness of the current drug laws. “It is absurd to treat LSD and psilocybin as more dangerous than heroin,” he tells me. In a 2010 study published in The Lancet, following on from the work that led to his controversial sacking from the chair of the Government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs the year before, Professor Nutt ranked the 20 most commonly used drugs according to the evidence for the overall amount of harm they do to the users and to society. Psilocybin came last, with an overall harm score of six, and LSD came 18th with a score of seven, compared with alcohol’s 72 and heroin’s 55.

When I ask why LSD was prohibited, he has a surprisingly simple three-word answer: “the Vietnam war”. Essentially, when its use spread to the general population in the mid 1960s, “Young Americans realised they didn’t want to fight any more. That brought a huge tension into society. So they had to create reasons for banning the drug. Everyone knew the arguments were totally specious. But no one stood up.”

Carhart-Harris has a further explanation: “Psychedelics are scary because they reveal the mind, and people are scared of their own minds. They’re scared of the human condition, really.”

LSD is banned from medical research in the U.S. due to its classification as a Schedule I substance under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. A Schedule I substance is defined as having no safe dose with any medical supervision (such as one that would be conducted under a strict research experiment), and as having no accepted medical use.

Just like marijuana, LSD is non-addictive, but both substances continue to be categorized as Schedule I substances. Furthermore, today in 2015, it is still not possible to research LSD or mushrooms in the U.S., whereas addictive substances such as methamphetamine can not only be researched, but also prescribed for treatment of ADHD and weight loss under the name of Desoxyn.

I don’t consider myself knowledgeable enough to provide an argument for the legalization of psychedelics, and I probably never will if LSD and mushrooms remain unavailable for medical research. This has to change.

Compared to cocaine and heroin, I know absolutely nothing about the short-term effects, long-term effects, benefits, or downsides of psychedelics; and that’s all because it’s legally not possible for researchers to administer experimental doses (of substances that entrepreneurs, musicians, artists, scientists, “trippers,” and everyday people have been taking for hundreds of centuries combined) to willing volunteers.

What little research there is seems at odds with the mainstream taboos:

“In Johns Hopkins’ ongoing program of psilocybin research, scientists have treated over 150 volunteers in 350 drug-trial sessions. Although many participants experienced at least some type of anxiety reaction while on the drug, none of them reported lasting harm, and 70% rated the experience as one of the top five most meaningful events of their lives, comparable to the birth of a first child or the loss of a parent.”

There is plenty of anecdotal evidence all over the internet, by people of all walks of life:

“Based on my own LSD experience I would concur, second only to the birth of my son (which wouldn’t have happened if not for my earlier LSD experience).”

Then there’s also the experiences of some of the best musicians of our time:

“The Beatles, Santana, Jimi Hendrix, Grateful Dead, Eminem, Green Day, Jefferson Airplane, Pink Floyd, the Moody Blues, Fatboy Slim, Suede, the Doors, Cream, and Janis Joplin are just a few of the artists known to use acid as part of their creative process.” — Hijacked

Not to mention that the most interesting experiences shared might not even come from musicians and entrepreneurs, but from people online having “documented” their thought process while taking acid for the first time:

“Why am I here? I dont belong. Work my life away for essential worthless? and IOU from a personal bank? in comparison to spending time with my faimly and friends creating memories instead. Why can’t I find my meaning? Is it staring me in the face? Is it happiness? how do I achieve this? 2.) Society, I don’t understand, I don’t belong to this. The majority of people I see only care for their personal comfort. Not the senseless war and killing of human beings so long as it doesn’t interfere with their personal comfort. There’s always something to fight and die for? Why? Why can’t we as a society catch on to the meaniless cycles we keep repeating. Over and Over again. Work, work, work, war, war, war. Followed by distractions to keep unfocused.”

So why the disconnect? Conspiracy? Illuminati? Aliens? I think it was much simpler.

Carhart-Harris’s believes LSD was originally banned because:

“Psychedelics are scary because they reveal the mind, and people are scared of their own minds. They’re scared of the human condition, really.”

Before taking LSD for the first time I was afraid, putting myself through a state of consciousness I had never experienced.

What if I kill myself? What if I say something really absurd because of the acid and people think I’m crazy? What if I say something really absurd because the acid lets me, and I convince people that I actually believe it, because I actually do, and people think I’m crazy? What if I run outside or yell or get arrested? What if I get in a car and start driving?

It is clear to me now, that everything I was afraid about doing on psychedelics, was not a fear of what I would do differently, but a fear of what I might truly want to do in normal life. For example, in the past I’ve suffered with suicidal thoughts, and I was worried I would hurt myself because that’s what I may have wanted to do all along. Needless to say, even this wasn’t worth fretting over.

A poem I wrote in my room while on LSD

As a kid I wasn’t the best at not letting my curiosity or patience get the best of me. You’ve probably done the same thing yourself before: need to be at least 13 years or older to join Facebook? Click, 1990, next. Need to read a 100-paged terms of agreement that says your location, habits, and personal information can be stored and shared with just about anyone if you sign up? Click agree, next.

If acid had a terms of agreement, I’d imagine they would look something like this:

WAIVER OF LIABILITY FOR THE ACID OR MUSHROOMS YOU ARE ABOUT TO EXPERIENCE:

Possibilities are as follows: profound life experiences, paranoia, life-long perception altering realizations, unrealized life passions and goals, acute anxiety, depression, flashbacks, suicide, distortion of time and space, movements and patterns of people and surfaces, belief that you’re an alien, belief that you’re an avatar, kissing floors, painting, drawing, watching videos and feeling like you’re in them, long-lasting psychoses such as schizophrenia or severe depression, fear of insanity, death, terrifying thoughts and feelings, hearing colors and seeing sounds, rapid emotions, new emotions, high blood pressure, low blood pressure, sleeplessness, dry mouth, tremors, nausea, weakness of the limbs, inability to speak, weakness of the lips, paranoia of choking, sweating, high body temperatures, hallucinations, delusions, desire to be naked, desire to be clothed in multiple layers, desire to drive, desire to ride a bicycle, desire to have sex, desire to learn something new, desire to engage in marijuana smoking, feeling as amazed by the world as the psychedelics wear of as when they first kicked in, hoping that psychedelic patterns and thoughts remain throughout your life at least at one percent intensity, and many other possibilities. Not to mention that any psychedelic experience is often 100% unpredictable, and no matter what you think about “tripping” before putting such a substance in your body will prepare you for anything that you’re going to discover once it kicks in.

I know I don’t regret reading those long terms of agreement pages or waiting until I turned 13 to make an email account, play RuneScape, or play teen-rated video games. I also know I don’t regret doing barely any research into what acid was before placing a little white piece of paper on my tongue, holding it there, and waiting to experience something I had no idea of what to expect going in, simply because it was available, non-addicting, and promising.

If someone made me sign a waiver of liability like the one written above before taking acid, I would have done so without reading it, as I did with the CoSM entry ticket papers and various other important papers I should have read in my life before signing.

I don’t know how Steve Jobs would have reacted to a similar waiver had it been placed in front of him before embarking on any of the things he did in his life, but I like to imagine he would have shared my frivolity.

“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

– Steve Jobs

ACiD

Steve Jobs said “You can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backward.” When I connect the dots I see a clear line between the iPhone and LSD.

“You’re born alone, you’re going to die alone,” he said. “And does anything else really matter? I mean what is it exactly is it that you have to lose Steve? You know? There’s nothing.”

However Mr Jobs’s views softened after he became ill, Mr Isaacson told a CBS 60 Minutes programme marking the release of the book ‘Steve Jobs’ on Monday.

“Maybe it’s ‘cos I want to believe in an afterlife,” he recalled Mr Jobs saying. “That when you die, it doesn’t just all disappear. The wisdom you’ve accumulated. Somehow it lives on.

– (Steve Jobs refused on/off switch for iPhone because he hoped there was an afterlife)The Telegraph

Whether LSD really was responsible for the development of the iPhone, to me, is a moot point. Of course, genetics, environment and randomness played a huge part. The point of this post is the question, not the answer: Would the iPhone Exist If Steve Jobs Did Not Take LSD? If this question can be legitimately asked, analyzed, and considered plausible then surely that says as much about the potential nature of LSD as any small-scale study could.

Can LSD enrich the world? I don’t know. But I’m not gonna stop asking until I do.

84 Random Facts About . . .Hollywood Movies

The “running W” was a trip wire to make horses fall over at the critical moment during filming. The device broke countless horses’ legs and necks. It is now illegal.t The most filmed author is William Shakespeare, including straight film versions, modern adaptations (West Side Story [1961], The Lion King [1994], etc.), and Shakespeare parodies. The shortest dialogue script since the introduction of talkies was written for Mel Brook’s Silent Movie (1976), which has only one spoken word throughout: “Non.” Count Dracula is the most often portrayed horror movie character The character most frequently portrayed in horror films is Count Dracula, the creation of the Irish writer Bram Stoker (1847-1912). The first motion picture to depict a non-pornographic sex act was Extase (1933) starring Hedwig Kiesler, known later as Hedy Lamarr (1913-2000). Her character flees from an impotent husband, runs naked through the woods, bathes, and then has sex with a young engineer in a hut.l The earliest known American pornographic film is the 1915 A Free Ride, a.k.a. A Grass Sandwich. The film was directed by “A. Wise Guy” and was written by “Will She.”l The Western Hero most portrayed on screen has been William Frederick Cody, a.k.a. Buffalo Bill, followed by William Bonny, a.k.a. Billy the Kid.l The first African-American to play a leading role in a feature film was Sam Lucas (1850-1916) who was cast in the title role of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1914). The first African-American actor to make a career in films was Noble Johnson (1881-1978).l The Hollywood star who played the most leading roles in feature films was John Wayne (1907-1979), who appeared in 153 movies. The star with the most screen credits is John Carradine (1906-1988), who has been in over 230 movies.l The American Humane Association (AHA) objected to the scene in the Shawshank Redemption (1994) where the character Brooks feeds his crow a maggot. The AHA stated it was cruel to the maggot, and it required that the crow be fed a maggot that had died from natural causes.q In The Godfather (1972), John Marley’s (Jack Wolz) scream of horror in the horse head scene was real, as he was not told that a real horse head, which was obtained from a dog food company, was going to be used.a The first movie fashion fad was Hollywood star Mary Pickford’s (1892-1979) curls, which were augmented from the hair of Los Angeles prostitutes, employees of Bit Suzy’s French Whorehouse.e The first nude scene in a major motion picture was of swimmer and actress Annette Kellerman (1887-1975) in A Daughter of the Gods (1916).l The top five biggest grossing films on opening day in the United States and Canada before inflation are The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009), The Dark Knight (2008),Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), Spider-Man 3 (2007), and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009).b The five highest domestic grosses adjusted for inflation are Gone With the Wind(1939), Star Wars (1977), The Sound of Music (1965), E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial(1982), and The Ten Commandments (1956).b In 1923, Mark Sennett, Harry Chandler, and the Los Angeles Times put up the “Hollywoodland” (later shortened to “Hollywood”) sign to publicize a real estate development. The sign cost $21,000.a For The Twilight Saga: New Moon, each actor portraying one of the wolf pack was required to have documentation proving Native American descent.r The director of 2012 (2009), Roland Emmerich, is a fan of rapper 50 Cent, whose real name is Curtis Jackson. The Jackson Curtis character in the film is 50 Cent’s real name inverted.o The Twilight Saga: Twilight movie’s opening weekend totaled to $69.6 million, which was the biggest opening for a film directed by a woman and starring a woman. Nearly 80% of tickets were bought by women.s My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) is the highest grossing movie never to reach number one The highest grossing movies never to reach number one on the U.S. charts are My Big Fat Greek Wedding(2002) $241,438,208, Alvin and the Chipmunks (2007) $217,326,336, and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs(2009) $196,519,585.m The most profitable movies, based on absolute profit in worldwide gross, are Avatar (2010), Titanic (1997), Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), Jurassic Park (1993), and Shrek 2 (2004).m The top five largest worldwide grossing movies of all time before inflation are Avatar(2009), Titanic (1997), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006), and The Dark Knight (2008).b The biggest money losers, based on absolute loss on worldwide gross, are Town & Country (2001), Stealth (2005), The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002), Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001), and The 13th Warrior (1999).m According to the Movie Mistakes website, the movies with the most goofs areApocalypse Now (1979) 390, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) 296,Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) 289, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987) 267, and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) 262.n To Have and Have Not (1945) is the only instance when a Nobel prize-winning author (Ernest Hemingway) was adapted for the screen by another Nobel-winning author (William Faulkner).t In the 1985 horror film Day of the Dead, zombies are actually feasting on turkey legs that were barbecued in a special way to look like human flesh.j The three main actors in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) all met an untimely death. James Dean died in a car crash, Natalie Wood drowned, and Sal Mineo was stabbed to death.a Bela Lugosi’s (1882-1956) face was used as a model for Satan in Walt Disney’s production Fantasia (1940). Lugosi was famous for playing Count Dracula on the stage and on screen.t D.W. Griffith (1875-1948), a pioneering Hollywood film director, is credited with using the first close-up, the long shot, the fade-out, and other film techniques in his 1915 groundbreaking and highly racist film The Birth of a Nation (a.k.a. The Clansman), a film that portrayed the Ku Klux Klan in a positive way.l The term avatar is Sanskrit for "incarnation" With an alleged budget of $280 million, Avatar is one of the most expensive movies of all time.f The wordavatar is Sanskrit for “incarnation” and is used in Hindu scripture to refer to human incarnations of God.p Thomas Edison invented the first moving pictures, which were small film images that could be viewed in a box. Initially, he was opposed to showing movies on the big screen because he thought one-on-one viewing would be more profitable.d The first Hollywood movie star is arguably Mary Pickford (1893-1979), who along with Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith formed United Artists Corp (1919). At the peak of her popularity, she made a record-breaking $10,000 a week (over $196,000 in 2008 USD).e The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) called for a boycott of the 1947 Disney film Song of the South, an adaptation of the Uncle Remus stories that showed happy slaves on a plantation. Though the film inspired the Disneyland ride “Splash Mountain,” the film has never been released in its entirety on home video in the U.S.e In the 1969 musical Paint Your Wagon, star Clint Eastwood sang “I Talk to the Trees, But They Don’t Listen to Me.” Eastwood says the experience prompted him to start producing and directing his own movies.t David O. Selznick was fined $5,000 for the line “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn” in Gone with the Wind (1939). The Catholic Legion of Decency gave the movie a B rating, citing that the film was “morally objectionable in part for all.”c The first movie to be filmed in Technicolor was Becky Sharp (1934).l The first movie to gross over $100 million was Jaws (1975).l The shortest performance to win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor was Anthony Quinn’s eight-minute tour de force as Gauguin in Lust for Life (1956). The shortest performance to win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress was Beatrice Straight’s 5 minutes and 40 seconds performance in the 1976 film Network.l The first African-American Oscar winner was Hattie McDaniel who was awarded the 1939 Best Supporting Actress for her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind. Twenty-four years would lapse before another African-American would win: Sydney Poitier forLilies of the Field (1963), which was filmed in just 14 days.a The all-time box office record set by an R-rated movie is The Passion of the Christ(2004) $370,782,930. The record for a PG-13 film is Avatar (2010). For a PG film it’sStar Wars (1977), for a G film it’s Finding Nemo (2003), and for an NC-17 film it’sShowgirls (1995).m The movie that was most weekends at #1 was E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982). The movie that occupied the most consecutive weeks at #1 was Titanic (1997). The lowest grossing #1 movie of all time was Jerry Maguire (1996).m The movie to hit $100 million the fastest was The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009).m The original title for Ghostbusters (1984) was “Ghost Smashers.”e After a difficult battle with censors, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966) was the first movie released with the stipulation that no one under age 18 would be allowed in the theater.l Toy Story (1995) is the first feature film created entirely with CGI The first feature film created solely with Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) was Toy Story (1995). Over 800,000 hours of mathematical equations went into the film, which works out to more than a week of computer time for every second on the screen.l The first movie shot in CinemaScope was The Robe(1953).l The first picture to sweep all five major Academy Awards—winning for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Screenplay (adaptation)—was Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night (1934) starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. The second movie to do the same was One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest(1975).l In Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963), live trained birds were thrown at actress Tippi Hedren (1930-). For part of the sequence, some birds were tied to her with nylon threads so they wouldn’t fly away. Shooting would stop every few minutes so blood could be painted on her skin and her clothing could be torn.a The laser swords in Star Wars (1977) were actually fiberglass rods coated with a highly reflective material. Light was reflected onto the rods by mirrors in front of the camera lens and color was later enhanced by animation.d In The Exorcist (1973), Regan (Linda Blair) turns her head almost completely around to face backward. A life-like dummy with a swivel neck performed the famous scene. The sound of her neck turning was made by twisting an old leather wallet around a microphone.a It took 15 crew members to operate each of the three full-scale (25-foot) mechanical sharks used in Jaws (1975).a A real bridge with a real train crossing it was blown up for the 1957 The Bridge on the River Kwai.a When early executives at Warner Brothers were having financial difficulties, they decided to take a risk on this unusual first-time film: The Jazz Singer (1927), the first “talkie” picture.e The swimming pool used in the opening scene of Sunset Boulevard (1950) was the same one James Dean, Natalie Wood, and Sal Mineo played at the bottom of inRebel Without a Cause (1955).t One 10-minute scene in Heaven’s Gate (1980) cost nearly $4 million. The film is not only one of the most notorious flops of all time, but the noted amount of animal abuse during filming prompted the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) to authorize the American Human Society to monitor the use of animals in all subsequent filmed media.t Girl-next-door actress Doris Day rejected the role of Mrs. Robinson, the middle-aged sexpot with a penchant for younger men in The Graduate (1967).t Gary Cooper was the first choice for the part of Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind(1939), but Cooper had just signed a contract with Goldwyn Studios, and Goldwyn was unwilling to lend him to MGM.t Adolph Hitler put studio head Jack Warner on his “extinction list” because of his filmConfessions of a Nazi Spy (1939).t Katherine Hepburn, Loretta Young, Helen Hays, and Lana Turner all tested for Gone with the Wind’s Scarlet O’Hara. Even Lucille Ball read for the part.a Star Trek: The Motion Picture(1979) used Yellowstone National Park to create the planet Vulcan Planet Vulcan in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) is actually Yellowstone National Park.a The famous “burning of Atlanta” scene in Gone with the Wind (1939) consisted of burning the old sets from King Kong (1933), The Last of the Mohicans (1936), andLittle Lord Fauntleroy (1936).t The scene in which Judy Garland sings “Over the Rainbow” in The Wizard of Oz(1939) was almost cut from the movie. Assistant producer Arthur Freed is credited with convincing MGM exec Louis B. Mayer to keep the scene.t There were 124 midgets hired to play munchkins in The Wizard of Oz (1939). One midget fell into a studio toilet and was trapped there until somebody finally found him.l When Clark Gable was filmed sans undershirt in It Happened One Night (1934), wives all over the country stopped buying their spouses the undergarment, causing a depression in undershirts in the 1930s.t The most expensive black-and-white movie ever made was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966). Production costs totaled $7.5 million, due in large part to the salaries of its stars, Liz Taylor and Richard Burton.l The largest number of fatalities ever in a production of a film occurred during the shooting of the 1931 film Viking. Twenty-seven people died, including the director and cinematographer, when a ship they were shooting from exploded in the ice off the coast of Newfoundland.l The most extensive screen tests in the history of motion pictures were held for the role of Scarlet O’Hara in Gone with the Wind. MGM shot 149,000 feet of black-and-white test film and another 13,000 feet of color film with 60 actresses.l The largest cast of living creatures in a Hollywood film were the 22 million bees employed by Irwin Allen in The Swarm (1978).l The longest take in a movie is in Andy Warhol’s Blue Movie (1996), which consists of a 35-minute uninterrupted scene of Viva and Louis Waldon making love.l The greatest number of takes for one scene in a film is 324 in Charlie Chaplin’s 1931City Lights.l The largest makeup budget ever for a film was for Planet of the Apes (1968) The largest make-up budget was $1 million for Planet of the Apes (1968), which represented nearly 17% of the total production cost.l The largest Hollywood film set ever built was the 1312’ x 754’ Roman Forum for the Hollywood epic The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964).l The largest indoor set was the UFO landing site built for the climax of Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).l The smallest set for the entire action of a movie in terms of confined acting space was the lifeboat in Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat (1944).l The first film studio in the world was Thomas Edison’s “Black Maria,” a frame building covered in black roofing paper built at the Edison Laboratories in New Jersey. It cost $637.67 to build in 1893.l The first Hollywood stunt man was ex-U.S. cavalryman Frank Hanaway who was cast in The Great Train Robbery (1903) for his ability to fall off a horse without hurting himself.l The first Hollywood stunt woman was Helen Gibson who doubled for Helen Holmes in the first 26 episodes of The Hazards of Helen (1914). She was trained as a trick rider and married to cowboy star Hoot Gibson.l The last wholly silent film produced for general distribution was George Melford’s The Poor Millionaire (1930) with Richard Talmadge (who played the hero and the villain) and Constance Howard.l According to BodyCounts.com (which counts only onscreen killings, not characters killed in planet explosions), the movies with the largest body counts are The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003) 836, Kingdom of Heaven (2005) 619, 300 (2007) 600, Troy (2004) 572, and The Last Samurai (2003) 558.h The first film to receive an X rating under the Motion Picture Association of America system of classification was the anti-establishment Greetings (1968) with Robert de Niro, though it later received an R.l The Muppet Movie (1979) was cut by New Zealand Censors on grounds of gratuitous violence. Sweden banned E.T. (1982) for children under 11 because it claimed the film showed parents being hostile to their children.l During the “chest bursting” scene in Alien (1986), director Ridley Scott had the actors unexpectedly showered with actual entrails bought from a nearby butcher shop so that their screams of horror would be real.g Landmark movies Bonnie & Clyde (1967), The Graduate (1967), and Easy Rider(1969) signaled a shift from “Classic Hollywood” movies to “New Hollywood” or “Post-Classical Hollywood” films because they broke several social taboos and traditional filming techniques.i Some of the most infamous Hollywood film “curses,” in which cast members and crew are beset by tragic coincidences, are usually associated with horror movies such as Rosemary’s Baby, The Poltergeist, The Exorcist, and The Omen.k -- Posted February 8, 2009 References a 100 Years of Hollywood. Editors. 1999. Richmond, VA: Time Life Books. b “All Time Box Office Records.” BoxOfficeMojo.com. Accessed: January 25, 2010. c “Average U.S. Ticket Prices.” NATOonline.org. Accessed: January 25, 2010. d Beaver, Frank, ed. 2000. 100 Years of American Film. New York, NY: Macmillan. e Brown, Gene. 1995. Movie Time: A Chronology of Hollywood and the Movie Industry from Its Beginnings to the Present. New York, NY: Macmillan. f Farley, Christopher John. “’Avatar’” Passes “’Titanic’” to Set World-Wide Box Office Record (Update)”. Wall Street Journal.com. January 26, 2010. Accessed: January 26, 2010. g Greenberg, Harvey Roy. 1993. Screen Memories: Hollywood Cinema on the Psychoanalytic Couch. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. h “Highest Body Count Movies.” Movie Body Counts.com. Accessed: January 24, 2009. i Kramer, Peter. 2005. The New Hollywood: From Bonnie and Clyde to Star Wars. New York, NY: Wallflower. j Molinari, Matteo and Jim Kamm. 2002.Oops! Move Mistakes That Made the Cut. New York, NY: Citadel Press. k Poupard, L. Vincent. “The Reality behind Horror Movie Curses.” Associated Content.com. September 10, 2009. Accessed: January 25, 2010. l Robertson, Patrick. 2001. Film Facts. New York, NY: Watson-Guptill. m The-Numbers.com. Accessed: January 23, 2010. n “Top 30 Movies with the Most Goofs.” Movie Mistakes.com. Accessed: January 21, 2010. o “Trivia for 2012.” IMDB.com. Accessed: January 20, 2010. p “Trivia for Avatar.” IMBD.com. Accessed: January 20, 2010. q “Trivia for Shawshank Redemption.” IMDB.com. January 20, 2010. r “Trivia for Twilight.” IMDB.com. Accessed: January 20, 2010. s Vary, Adam B. “’New Moon’ Banks at Box Office.” CNN.com. November 25, 2009. Accessed: January 25, 2010. t Warner, Karen and Michael Lapoce. 1986. The Ultimate Hollywood Trivia Quiz. San Francisco, CA: 101 Productions.