Category: Trivia

Alton Brown is the beloved host of Good Eats, one of the most popular shows on Food Network. His show is based on molecular gastronomy, which is the “application of scientific principles to culinary practices”. As a result, his show is usually half traditional cooking show and half Mr. Wizard’s World. People enjoy the show not only for its “wacky” style, but also because Mr. Brown teaches sound scientific principles that easily carry over to everyday cooking. For example, if Alton was making a spaghetti sauce, he’d show the scientific reasons why the aromatics needed to be added first, and why some form of alcohol needs to be added to the tomatoes to unlock alcohol-soluble flavors. Thus, even if you don’t use Alton’s exact recipe, you still learn how to make your own dishes properly. Which is good.

But there’s a lot you might not know about Mr. Brown and his show:

He was originally a cameraman! Actually, a lot of people know this. But did you know that he was a steadicam operator for the Spike Lee film School Daze? Did you know that he was the director of photography for R.E.M.’s “The One I Love” video?

He changed careers midstream! One day, Alton Brown decided that the quality of American cooking shows was lacking. Having little cooking experience, Brown decided to enroll in the New England Culinary Institute. He also considered himself to be a poor student of math and science, so he also read a considerable amount on both subjects whilst enrolled at the cooking school. So while it wasn’t much of a leap to go from cameraman to cooking show host, he had to spend a considerable amount of time learning about the subject matter!

Continue reading “What You Didn’t Know About… Alton Brown”

It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia is a hilarious comedy on FX. The show is about four friends that own an Irish bar in Philadelphia. It’s similar to Seinfeld in that the characters are vain, selfish, and self-centered. In fact, you might think of it as a low-budget Seinfeld for the Gen X\Gen Y crowd. But although many make comparisons to the megahit of the 1990s, there’s a lot about Philadelphia that’s unique:

• The pilot episode cost $85 to make! The cast of the show were already good friends, so no money was needed to hire any additional actors. The show was shot in various locations that the friends could use for free, and since one of them owned a video camera, the only cost they had was for video tapes. Although FX has repeatedly stated that the pilot episode cost $200 to make, actual cast members have said that the actual cost was closer to $85.
• The show has no original music! Although there have been a few scenes in the series where the characters sing popular songs – such as Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” – the show itself uses no original music. According to Wikipedia, the opening theme “is a piece of production music called ‘Temptation Sensation’ by Heinz Kiessling” and the rest of the music comes from stock libraries.
• Charlie’s unattainable love is… his wife! One of the friends – Charlie Kelly (played by Charlie Day) – is in love with an unnamed barista who works at a coffee shop near the bar. She is completely unattainable to Charlie; she constantly rolls her eyes at him, sighs and asks “what do you want, Charlie?”. What makes this funny is that the waitress is played by Charlie’s real-life wife Mary Elizabeth Ellis.
• The ending has backwards messages! The ending of each episode has the “RCH Production” logo, which features the friends wearing hoodies. A backwards message is also heard. In season 1, the message said “You are stupid for playing this forward”; in season 2, the message was changed to “Is it brown? Is it brown? Is it brown? Good work. Is it brown? Is it brown? Is it brown? Good work”. No, I have no idea what that means.
• Frank’s MySpace page exists! In the final episode of season 2, the guys hook Frank (Danny DeVito) up with a MySpace page. Not only does the profile actually exist, he has only one friend (Tom, the guy who’s everyone’s friend!)

All In The Family was one of the most popular shows in TV history. While the show was a comedy at its heart, it was also known for taking an unflinching look at American society. The show regularly took on topics considered taboo for any TV show (much less a comedy) like racism, homosexuality, women’s lib, rape, breast cancer and impotence. Although just about everyone has seen the show at least once, there’s a lot you might not know about it:

– It was supposed to be filmed in black and white! Norman Lear, the show’s creator, originally wanted to film All In The Family in black and white to make it more “gritty”. CBS had only recently upgraded to 100% color broadcasts, so they vetoed the idea immediately. Lear opted instead to decorate the set in drab, washed-out colors as a substitute, so that’s why the Bunker’s house looks so “dreary”.

– The furniture cost thousands of dollars. Sort of. Archie’s famous chair (and the rest of the Bunker’s furniture) originally came from a Los Angeles area Goodwill store. Late in the show’s run – after All In The Family had become an American icon – the Smithsonian came calling, wanting Archie’s and Edith’s chairs for their American history museum. Lear donated the items, but then the show had to spend thousands of dollars creating exact duplicates to use in the show.

– The theme sequence was a compromise! The opening sequence of the show, which featured Archie and Edith singing a song together at the Bunker’s living room piano, is one of the most famous (and most parodied) in TV history. But the truth is that after filming the show’s pilot, there was simply not enough money left in the budget to put together a splashy introduction. So Lear came up with the idea of Archie and Edith simply singing at the piano. Several versions of the introduction were used over the years; one version even had an extra verse! But two continuing trends of the updated intros were Stapleton singing her famous line “and you knew who you were THHHHEENNN” in an ever louder and “screechier” voice, and both O’Connor and Stapleton carefully enunciating the last line of the song (“Gee our old LaSalle ran great”) ever more clearly, as viewers complained that they couldn’t understand that line.

– The show was the king of spin-offs. Sort of. “Spin-offs” are new TV shows based on popular characters in existing shows. For example, Kelsey Grammar’s popular doctor Frasier Crane was “spun-off” of Cheers into a new show called Frasier. All In The Family spun-off several shows, and if you include spin-offs of the spin-offs, it reigns supreme as the show with the most spin-offs in TV history. All In The Family itself spun-off Maude, The Jeffersons, 704 Hauser, Gloria and Archie Bunker’s Place. Further spin-offs include Checking In (a spin-off of The Jeffersons) and Good Times (a spin off of Maude).

– It was a show of firsts. All In The Family has a long line of “firsts” under its belt: the show was the first to be videotaped before a live audience (as opposed to filmed), it was the first sitcom to rank #1 in the ratings for five consecutive seasons (only The Cosby Show has matched that feat), it was the first show to feature the sound of a flushing toilet, the first show to use words like “spade” and “nigger” on a regular basis, and was also the first show in which all of the cast – Carroll O’Connor, Jean Stapleton, Sally Struthers and Rob Reiner – won Emmy awards for their work.

Friends was one of the most popular sitcoms in American TV history. Even people that claim to hate the show can get a chuckle or two out of it if they’re stuck on an airplane or in a Jiffy Lube waiting room. And there’s a lot of interesting trivia about the show you might not know:

• The first cast member to get a movie role after the show went big was… Marcel the Monkey! Actually, Marcel was played by two female monkeys named “Monkey” and “Katie”. Katie played a central role in 1995’s Outbreak, a film which starred Dustin Hoffman and Rene Russo. One wonders what that says about the rest of the cast’s acting ability!
• The fridges actually worked! The refrigerators in Monica\Rachel’s and Joey\Chandler’s apartments actually worked; the cast and crew kept their lunches and drinks in Monica’s fridge, which explains why it was always so full. Joey and Chandler’s fridge was usually kept empty – unless a scene required something in the fridge, in which case the crew would fill it up. Since the crew didn’t want to do that very often, a camera angle was chosen such that you almost never see the inside of their fridge.
• The episodes had similar titles! When people talk about a television show, they often refer to episodes with the phrase “The one where…”, as in “the one where Hawkeye glues Frank’s boots to the floor”. The writers of Friends noticed this phenomenon, and most of the show’s titles begin with “The One…”. Contrary to both popular belief and barroom trivia, however, not every episode was titled as such. The pilot was named “The Pilot”, the 100th episode was titled “The One Hundredth” and the finale was named “The Last One”.
• The picture frame around the peephole was an accident! One of the most distinctive features of the show’s decor was the empty picture frame that surrounded the peephole on the back of Monica’s door. In the very early days of the show, there was a mirror in the frame, but a clumsy crew member accidentally broke it! The cast and crew decided that they liked the look of the frame, so it was left where it was.
• Their apartment numbers changed! In the first episodes, the apartment numbers of Chandler\Joey’s and Monica\Rachel’s apartments were #4 and #5, respectively. The show’s producers quickly realized that those numbers didn’t match the view from Monica’s balcony, so the numbers were quietly changed to #19 and #20.
• The show wasn’t always filmed in front of a live audience! Friends was almost always filmed in front of a live audience. However, there were no audiences during the filming of “cliffhanger episodes” (which is common in the industry, so that audience members can’t sell spoilers to Entertainment Weekly magazine). What’s not so common was that Tom Selleck always received a boisterous standing ovation from the crowd any time he walked on the set, so the scenes where Selleck walks on camera for the first time almost always had to be re-shot without an audience!

Just about everyone in the English-speaking world has heard of talk show host Jerry Springer. But there’s a lot about Mr. Springer that you might not know:

He was born in a Tube station! Jerry’s parents were German Jews that fled to London to escape the Nazi regime. During WWII, many London Underground stations were used as bomb shelters for civilians. Jerry’s parents were no exception, and it therefore wasn’t all that remarkable that Jerry Springer was born in an east London Tube station on February 13, 1944.

He once paid a hooker with a check! After being an aide for Robert Kennedy and unsuccessfully running for Congress, Jerry was elected to the Cincinnati city council in 1971. He had to resign in 1974 after police raided a massage parlor in Fort Wright, Kentucky and found a check Springer had written for “services rendered”. He admitted the faux pas, and was re-elected in 1975.

He was routinely mentioned on a 1970s TV sitcom! Jerry became mayor of Cincinnati in 1977. “Mayor Springer” was mentioned in several episodes of WKRP in Cincinnati, but never actually appeared on the show.

His show mirrored Morton Downey Jr.’s show! In 1982, Springer left politics and was hired as a political reporter for Cincinnati’s WLWT-TV, an NBC affiliate. This led to his own talk show, The Jerry Springer Show, which debuted on September 20th, 1991. Much like Morton Downey’s Jr.’s show in the 1980s, Jerry’s first TV show was mostly about serious topics like gun control, homelessness and abortion; the show’s guests included Oliver North and Jessie Jackson. Also like Morton Downey Jr.’s show, as time passed the show’s ratings started to fall, and more and more “outrageous” subjects were brought on.

There’s an opera based on his show! In August of 2001, Jerry Springer: The Opera debuted at the Battersea Arts Centre in the UK. The show was an instant success and was frequently moved to larger and larger venues, eventually settling at the Cambridge Theatre in London’s West End. The libretto of the opera is a bit complex to get into here, but it suffices to say that it contains a lot of foul language and content that would offend churchgoers. It’s so offensive, in fact, that the BBC received over 47,000 complaints when it aired a version of the show in 2005 – the most complaints about any show in British history!