Nicole Kidman Peed On Zac Efron For "The Paperboy," And 16 Other Really Gross BTS Movie Facts
Recently, I rounded up some super gross behind-the-scenes facts about TV shows. Now, I may risk losing my lunch, but I just had to know how many movies were also secretly disgusting BTS.
Here are 17 gross behind-the-scenes facts about popular movies:
Warning: Spoilers ahead!
1.For the scene in The Paperboy where Jack gets stung by a jellyfish, Nicole Kidman peed on Zac Efron for real.
Director Lee Daniels told Vulture, "We just went for it and never thought twice about it, because it made sense for the film. It was what it was. I think that I became more nervous about it in the edit room, and I thought, I’m not actually going to show this, right? Is it vulgar? And I called Nicole and said, 'I don’t know,' and she said, 'Lee, you made me pee on Zac Efron. If you don’t put it in the movie, you need to man up.' And I was like, 'All right, I ain’t gonna pussy out! Okay.'"
Here's the scene:
2.To get in character for Jungle Fever, Halle Berry "didn’t shower or take a bath for like two weeks."
On The Rosie O'Donnell Show, she said, "Nobody said anything to me, but everybody sort of started to keep their distance. It was an experience. That was my attempt at method acting."
3.While filming the prom scene in Carrie, Sissy Spacek wanted the blood on her dress to look consistent from day to day, so, for three days, she slept in the bloody dress in a trailer behind MGM Studios.
Her costar P.J. Soles told Vulture, "I was like, 'You’re amazing that you would wanna sleep in that sticky, icky stuff.' And she was like, 'No, it’s gotta match, I want it to look great.'"
Watch the scene below:
4.While filming The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Gunnar Hansen, who played Leatherface, was forbidden from washing his costume. He wore it for 12 hours a day in heat that reached over 100 degrees.
In a 2000 documentary, Gunnar said, "I was the smelliest element of the set."
5.In The Texas Chain Saw Massacre scene where Grandpa sucks blood from Sally's finger, they were meant to use a fake knife that dispensed fake blood. However, when the prop didn't work, Gunnar cut actor Marilyn Burns's finger, and John Dugan unknowingly sucked on her real blood.
Neither John nor Marilyn knew the truth about the scene for years afterwards.
6.Additionally, when they filmed the final family dinner scene in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the table was set with real rotting animal carcasses. They shot for 26 hours straight in the 100+-degree heat, causing many people to run out for fresh air between takes.
Dorothy Pearl, the makeup artist, was tasked with trying to slow down the rotting by injecting formaldehyde into them. She almost injected it in her own leg when she missed and stabbed herself on accident.
She told the Telegraph, "That meat was old, it was rotten, it was putrid, it was terrible. But I believe that the dire circumstances added to the film. If we’d been comfy, if everybody had their own trailer, I’m not so sure you’d feel the horror in quite the way you do. None of us were happy. We were miserable."
Here's the full scene:
7.The temple set for Apocalypse Now was so stinky and covered with garbage that Janet Sheen, Martin Sheen's wife, told producer Gray Frederickson, "You've got to clean this up. It's a health risk. I won't allow Marty to work here." So, he spoke to production designer Dean Tavoularis, who argued that the dead rats gave it "real atmosphere." Gray also heard another prop department member say, "Wait till he hears about the dead bodies."
8.The Apocalypse Now prop department had been storing the corpses in a tent behind where the cast and crew ate. After they showed the producer, he told them to "get rid of this immediately," but they refused, saying they'd be "very authentic." However, it ended up leading to a whole lot of trouble, as they'd obtained the bodies from a man who turned out to be a grave robber.
Gray Frederickson told the Independent, "The police showed up on our set and took all of our passports. They didn't know we hadn't killed these people because the bodies were unidentified. I was pretty damn worried for a few days. But they got to the truth and put the guy in jail."
Soldiers arrived to take the bodies away.
For the scene, they ended up using living extras hanging from trees.
Here's the scene:
9.For the scene in Poltergeist where Diane falls into the excavated pool, actor JoBeth Williams was swimming through the muck with real skeletons — which she thought were just fake props until years later.
She told Vanity Fair, "I always assumed that the skeletons were made by the prop department. A few years later, I ran into one of the special effects guys, and I said, ‘You guys making all those skeletons, that must have been really amazing.’ He said, ‘Oh, we didn’t make them, those were real.’ I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘Yeah, they were real skeletons.' ... I don’t know where they were bought from, but that really grossed me out. I’m glad I didn’t know that then, because I would’ve really been screaming a lot — for real."
Here's the full scene:
10.About six or seven takes into filming the Django Unchained scene where his character, Calvin, snaps, Leonardo DiCaprio accidentally smashed a glass, and his "hand started really pouring blood all over the table." The glass "disintegrated into his hand," yet he continued without flinching. That's the take that made it into the movie.
Leo told the Hollywood Reporter, "Maybe they thought it was done with special effects. I wanted to keep going. It was more interesting to watch [director Quentin Tarantino's and costar Jamie Foxx's] reaction off-camera than to look at my hand. We did it bloodied and bandaged for the rest of the movie. I’m glad Quentin kept it in."
Watch the scene below:
11.For The Revenant, Leonardo DiCaprio went the method acting route. He told Yahoo, "Whether it’s going in and out of frozen rivers, or sleeping in animal carcasses, or what I ate on set. I certainly don’t eat raw bison liver on a regular basis."
He continued, "When you see the movie, you’ll see my reaction to it, because Alejandro [González Iñárritu, the director] kept it in. It says it all. It was an instinctive reaction."
Here's a clip of the scene where he eats bison:
12.Reflecting on filming Rosemary's Baby in her memoir, What Falls Away, Mia Farrow wrote, "When Roman [Polanski, the director] wanted me to eat raw liver, I ate it, take after take, even though, at the time, I was a committed vegetarian."
13.To prepare for the Gone Girl scene where her character, Amy, slits Desi's throat during sex, Rosamund Pike practiced using a blade on a pig. She told Collider, "I actually went to a butcher and asked them if they wouldn’t mind me just using a box cutter on a pig carcass, just to understand what it would be like. They let me do it, so anyone buying meat that day would have seen me behind the counter, with serious intent, finding out the mechanics of doing that."
She also said, "I always get worried about anything physical, like the action sequences. Neil Patrick Harris and I had to do a violent scene. If you’re going to do something like that, you have to do it with a certain degree of accuracy. I had no idea how much force you needed to slice someone’s throat... That was purely for research purposes."
Here's the scene:
14.For Vampire's Kiss, Nicolas Cage told director Robert Bierman, "The thing I hate most in the world are cockroaches. They are my Room 101. … So let me eat a cockroach." The director readily made it happen, and the actor munched a cockroach on camera.
Robert told the Ringer, "He wanted to eat the most frightening thing for him. I thought, ‘This is terrific!’ I sent my prop people down into the boiler room. … They brought me a box, divided up into little sections with tissue paper. The cockroaches were there lined up for me to cast. I think they’re actually called water bugs — they’re bigger than cockroaches."
Nicolas said, "I really [wanted] to do something that would shock the audience, something you would never forget."
Before shooting the scene, producer Barbara Zitwer made them consult a doctor to ensure Nic wouldn't get sick. The doctor told them, "No. But have him drink some whiskey right after." So, they had the actor wash his mouth out with 100-proof vodka after each take.
They only did two takes, but Nic actually ingested the bug both times. Co-producer Barry Shils lied to an animal rights group and said that they were still alive.
Here's the scene:
15.For the Rescue Dawn scene where the prisoners are given worms for dinner, they used real maggots — and Christian Bale really ate them.
He told Collider, "They were very real. I didn't mind eating the maggots, but I just wanted to make sure about where the maggots had come from. Where did they find those maggots?"
Here's the full scene:
16.For the scene in The Shawshank Redemption where Andy finds a maggot in his food then Brooks feeds it to the baby bird hidden in his pocket, they used real waxworms. However, the animal control inspector on set wouldn't let them feed the bird a living one. So, the crew had to wait around and watch the buckets of waxworms until one died.
Watch the scene here:
17.And finally, while filming the Spawn scene where Clown eats maggot pizza, John Leguizamo said, "Fuck it, I'll eat it! Don't bring out the plastic things, it's not going to have the same effect when you cut to something and they're not moving."
He told CBR, "I ate the maggots and it was disgusting and I only did one take. I said, 'I'm not doing any repeats so you better get this shit right because if I'm out of focus, fuck you, I'm leaving.'"
On Twitter, he said that he "only swallowed a few."
Watch the scene below: