What beliefs did you have about entertainment when you were younger that were totally — and gloriously — wrong?
Here’s why I’m asking: Last week during a meeting, EW.com managing editor Jay Woodruff let it slip that when he watched films like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, he assumed that filmmakers made convicts play the desperados and actually killed them. Editor Tom Conroy then admitted that when he watched a screen couple like Red Dust’s Clark Gable and Jean Harlow (pictured) kiss, he assumed the director had shot the actors separately and then somehow overlaid one head next to the other. (In an alternate theory, presumably for lower budget films, Tom also believed that the actors would put a piece of fabric between their mouths.) Because how could you kiss someone you weren’t really in love with?
As for me, I once found this Sears photo in which I looked exactly like Gretl from The Sound of Music and thought that I’d must’ve been so young when Julie Andrews and I filmed the movie, that that’s why I didn’t remember doing it.
Your turn.
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I used to think that after they shot a wedding for movies or TV, the couple immediately went to the courthouse and got a divorce. I mean, they said the vows, right>
I heard that Prince played all of the instruments on one of his albums- I think it was 1999. I remember being SO confused as to how he played them all.. and yet they all melded together in the songs- I didn’t quite understand studio magic yet!
alm034- I thought the SAME thing! I finally decided that the guy wasn’t a real preacher so the law said the marriage didn’t count.
I believed that the shot films in order. I couldn’t understand how ending of the film could be filmed first.
I also am embarrased that I believed, thanks to 100 Million BC and the flintstones, that man and dinosaur lived at the same time. I am doubly embarrassed to admit I believed this well into my twenties.
I remember thinking that if you died in a movie, you died for real
I also thought Regis and Kathie Lee were married
I believed that the Great Brain books were all true, and that John D Fitzgerald was actually Tom’s brother. I also remember being greatly disappointed that the TV didn’t “pause” when I turned it off.
Whenever the lotto drawings came on TV, my sisters and I always were told (yelled at) to be quiet, so I was convinced the people on TV would be able to hear us and we’d get in trouble with them.
My grandfather is a dead ringer for Walter Matheau, especially when he was younger. I was standing next to him in church one day and heard him singing. I had just watched “Hello Dolly!” and they sounded so similar, I became convinced that he had been an actor when he was younger by with the stage name Walter Mattheau. My mom had to straighten me out once I started telling people that.
I was convinced that all T.V shows were filmed live, including the animated Rugrats. I never could figure out how actors could change clothes and be in new places so quickly let alone their camera crews! Every time I watched a rerun for a show I felt bad that the actors had to do the same thing all over again.
I was eight when my mom finally explained to time zones and how a T.V show could be playing at eight and seven p.m at the same time without the invovlement of time machines.
I thought real life was in black and white until color was invented.
I believed that Britney Spears, Ashley Simpson,Jessica Simpson, and Beyonce Knowles could sing without a recorded vocal track. I am just kidding folks but man, Fabrice Morvan of the former band Milli Vanilli is probably still laughing his a-s off.
I was also convinced that make up artists killed young puppies for the live action version of 101 Dalamations by painting over them to make the dogs look older. It took me years to realise that was impossible. I blame a documentary without sound I half payed attention to while on a tour at some theme park.
My sister and I both thought that any kissing done on-screen was actually being ‘faked’ and the actors were actually kissing each other on the chins. Neither of us could imagine that people who might not be attracted to each other could ever KISS! My word! And I also thought that any scenes with nudity had to be done with the actors in body suits, because who would ever want to get naked for a movie?
I was pretty sure that the songs on the radio were live. That the bands were actually there, playing for that particular station.
I thought that if you put your face right up against the screen and looked down, you could see the actress’ naked body when she was only shown from the shoulders up (I actually tried it during the dressing room scene where the hot cheerleader takes her gear off in “Teen Wolf”).
Thanks to completely misinterpreting a scene from “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman,” I thought that if you got shot, all you had to do was stuff the wound with chewed gum and you’d be fine.
I used to think that commmercials were being filmed live. I also used to think that kissing scenes were faked, because HOW could they kiss someone else besides their spouse? I also thought that anything someone said in an interview was automatically fact-never mind lying.
i believed that macaulay culkin actually died while filming my girl. i understood that he was an actor, but couldn’t figure out why the kid from home alone would sign up to do a movie if he knew he had to die at the end.
I’m pretty sure my sister and I debated whether Jaws was a robot or a submarine. It was definitely closer to a robot, but not really. It was a “mechanical” shark. All I knew at the time was it scared the crap out of me.
My parents always told me my Uncle Al was in the band Dire Straits, because he looked similar to the singer. So, for years, when any of their videos came on I got excited.
i used to think that television shows would “wait” for me while i had to go out with my parents — like stop happening until i turned the tv back on. i think this was particularly true with those on PBS (sesame, mr. rogers) because in those days, they were on a lot, and when i’d come back home and put the tv on, there they would be.
When a person “died” with their eyes open I didn’t think they could be dead and kept waiting for their eyes to close and be officially dead. It confused me.
I thought all TV couples were couples in real life. ha!
I used to think Mr. Rogers could see me because he was always talking directly to you.
I also thought the real world existed in black and white, prior to color “being invented,” and that on-screen pairs like Regis and Kathie Lee were married (ha!). But to actually be original with this posting, when I was a kid I thought that actors in movies or TV who were crying or sad were actually sad and crying about something that happened in real life. I didn’t understand the concept of “fake tears.”
WOW is all I can say..I can’t believe someone else used to think actors put cloth or tape between their mouths before they kissed..I have never admitted that to anyone until now..Thank you Tom
I couldn’t understand how they could film westerns when it was taking place before cameras were invented.
Oh, and John Wayne was dead now because they filmed these when he was young, 150 years ago.
I had no idea the Tonight Show or the Late Show or any of the other late night talks shows were filmed like at 5 in the afternoon.
When I was about 13 and watching an episode of Leno with my mom at 11:30 at night and I saw Leno step out of his studio to broad daylight, I was thoroughly confused.
When I was very little and went to see movies at The Opera House – an actual opera house converted into a movie theater in tiny Abbeville, SC (you can see it in the parade scene in Sleeping with the Enemy) – I thought the actors and monsters were actually performing behind a transparent screen and that they lived in the dark recesses of the theater when they weren’t acting.
In 1977, knowing nothing about the movie Star Wars, I thought my siblings and I were heading into a big screen version of “Battle of the Network Stars”. As the theatre went dark I was expecting to hear Howard Cosell’s voice…but was happily surprised by what I got instead!