Best Picture Trivia

Joaquin Phoenix ad-libbed his scream of "Am I not merciful?" Connie Nielsen wasn't expecting it, and her frightened reaction was genuine.

The equations seen on the classroom chalk boards are actual equations written by the real life John Nash.

In the beginning of the scene introducing Mama Morton to the new inmates, Roxie Hart had a brief conversation with a woman smoking a cigarette. That character was played by long-time Broadway actress Chita Rivera who portrayed Velma Kelly in the original 1975 production of "Chicago".

Andy Serkis and Elijah Wood were each given prop rings by Peter Jackson used in the movie. They both thought they had the only one.

Boxing and kickboxing champion Lucia Rijker, who also played the part of Billie "The Blue Bear" in this movie, was Hilary Swank's boxing coach.

Paul Haggis holds the distinction of being the only person ever to write the screenplay for two consecutive Best Picture winners. He also wrote the previous year's Best Picture winner, Million Dollar Baby (2004).

Leonardo DiCaprio called his one-on-one scene with Jack Nicholson "one of the most memorable moments of my life."

In the novel, Sheriff Bell says of the dope-dealers, "Here a while back in San Antonio they shot and killed a federal judge." Cormac McCarthy set the story in 1980. In 1979, Federal Judge John Howland Wood was shot and killed in San Antonio by Texas free-lance contract killer Charles Harrelson, father of Woody Harrelson (Carson Wells).

The film was shot on location in Jordan. Part of the shoot (one week) was to take place in Kuwait on a U.S. Military Base; however, access was denied.

Director Danny Boyle placed the money to be paid to the 3 lead child actors in a trust that is to be released to them upon their completion of grade school at 16 years of age. The production company has set up for an auto-rikshaw driver to take the kids to school every day until they are 16 years old.

Lionel refuses to let Bertie smoke during their speech sessions, saying "sucking smoke into your lungs will kill you." King George VI, who smoked 20 to 25 cigarettes a day, died from complications of lung cancer surgery on February 6, 1952, at the age of 56.

The film is shot with 22 FPS (frames per second). When played at the standard 24 FPS, the action becomes slightly accelerated. Most silent films were shot with 14 to 24 FPS, which makes many of these films appear "faster" in motion when played on modern projection equipment at 24 FPS. When sound films were introduced, the frame rate was standardized at 24 FPS to make it possible to sync the sound with the images.

In an interview with Piers Morgan, former President Jimmy Carter said that he believes the film was a "great drama", and it deserved to win an Oscar for best film. However, Carter noted that although "ninety percent of the contributions to the ideas, and the consummation of the plan was Canadian", the film "gives almost full credit to the American C.I.A. With that exception, the movie's very good," Carter said, but "the main hero, in my opinion, was Ken Taylor, who was the Canadian ambassador, who orchestrated the entire process."

The tree where Solomon sees several men being lynched was actually used for lynching, and is surrounded by the graves of murdered slaves.

Because the movie was carefully rehearsed and shot in sequence, editing only took two weeks.

The real Walter Robinson said of Michael Keaton, "It is like watching yourself in a mirror, yet having no control of the mirror image."

Naomie Harris had to shoot her entire role in three days, in between her promotional tour of Spectre (2015), due to a visa problem (Harris is British). The scenes spanned 15 years in the character's life and were filmed out of sequence.

Director Guillermo del Toro said about Sally Hawkins, "Not only was she the first choice, she was the only choice. I wrote the movie for Sally, I wrote the movie for Michael [Shannon]... Sally is -- I wanted the character of Elisa to be beautiful, in her own way, not in a way that is like a perfume commercial kind of way. That you could believe that this character, this woman would be sitting next to you on the bus. But at the same time she would have a luminosity, a beauty, almost magical, ethereal."

The pizza scene is drawn from real life: Nick Vallelonga said Tony Lip used to order a whole, unsliced pizza pie, fold it, and eat it. Upon hearing the anecdote, Viggo Mortensen insisted they try to fit it into the movie. Peter Farrelly protested, saying there were enough funny eating scenes, but agreed to try it. When the crew burst out laughing, he agreed to leave the scene in.