If you've already done so, you can watch this and amuse yourself to think about this - the opening shot of the film is an optical illusion. Because the camera and crew would have been seen in the reflection of the mirror had the scene been shot in a conventional manner, there is a body double for Kathleen Turner (only she can be seen from behind in the shot) on the other side of the "mirror," doing the exact opposite of the star's movements, giving the illusion that Turner and Helen Hunt are reflections, when in fact they are the real actors in tableau with a body double sitting in front of them with her back to the camera in front of an empty mirror frame, framing a hole in the wall of the set..
Do you have friend running the NYC Marathon today?
Don't forget to remind them that the first guy who ran one died at the finish line.
For the rest of those the dearly departed who didn't make the cut yesterday for All Saint's Day, take heart;
If you need to ask, according to the old ladies who are saying their decades of rosaries in the back of the church, today is dedicated to praying for the souls of the dead so they can leave purgatory and go to heaven with impeccably clean souls.
November 2, 1920 -
KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania started broadcasting as the first commercially licensed radio station in the United States, on this date
After building a transmitter for the company, Westinghouse employee Frank Conrad listened as colleagues broadcast the US presidential election returns from a shack on the roof of the K Building of the Westinghouse Electric Company "East Pittsburgh Works" in Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania. It was reportedly heard as far away as Canada. By the way, Republican Warren G. Harding (size 13 shoe wearer) won the election that night, on his 55th birthday.
November 2, 1934 -
Ernst Lubitsch charming adaptation of the famous Viennese operetta The Merry Widow starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald premiered on this date.
This was the only film teaming Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald in which they never sang together. Aware that her classical style was poorly matched to his popular vocalizing, Ernst Lubitsch even inserted a joke about the musical mismatch. At one point Chevalier seemed to be serenading MacDonald with a cultured baritone voice, only for Lubitsch to reveal the voice belonged to one of his orderlies.
November 2, 1940 -
Another funny Porky Pig Looney Tunes, The Sour Puss, premiered on this date.
This is the first appearance of the gag where a character commits suicide after saying "Now I've seen everything!" The gag is most commonly used in cartoons directed by Bob Clampett and is often censored when the cartoon is aired on television.
November 2, 1942 -
Another Preston Sturges laugh out loud comedy, The Palm Beach Story, opened on this date. (Sturges, himself, had to shove a handkerchief in his mouth to avoid ruining a take by laughing.)
In the long dolly shot of Joel McCrea and Mary Astor strolling on the pier from Rudy Vallee's yacht, Preston Sturges makes a rare Alfred Hitchcock-style appearance as the chubby, moustachioed leader of the crew toting Claudette Colbert's luggage.
November 2, 1946 -
Walt Disney's 'politically incorrect' feature, the partially- animated film, Song of the South, was released on this date.
Widely regarded as a "pariah" feature of the Walt Disney Company, Song of the South has been primarily disowned by the company since the early 1990s out of fear for the controversy surrounding the film's alleged racist undertones. The classic music, however, can still often be heard throughout the Disney theme parks and other various outlets - unknown to most younger generations who have no association with it.
November 2, 1957 -
The often edited for S & P (I definitely should know) Bugs vs. Daffy Looney Tunes cartoon, Show Biz Bugs, premiered on this date.
The segment when Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck were dancing to Tea for Two was used for the opening scene, (as other Warner Brothers' popular animation stars walked across from right to left behind Bugs and Daffy, during their dance) of the television series Bugs Bunny and Friends on WNEW-TV (Channel 5, was retitled WNYW) in New York for much of the 1970s and into the early 1980s decades.
November 2, 1978 -
The Police release their debut album, Outlandos d'Amour, on this date. The working title, Police Brutality, was changed to make is sound more romantic. The title loosely translates as Outlaws of Love but the term Outlandos is actually a mix of the words for Outlaws and Commandos.
The Police started mading videos right away, starting with some tracks from their first album, Outlandos d'Amour, in 1978. Their earliest videos were mostly performance footage or shots of the band in exotic locations just larking about, but as they got more successful, their video budgets grew and they became more conceptual. When MTV went on the air in 1981, they played many of these videos because they had few to choose from.
November 2, 1989 -
BBC One aired the screaming funny conclusion to the Blackadder Goes Forth series, Goodbyeee starring Rowan Atkinson and Tony Robinson, written by Richard Curtis and Ben Elton, on this date
The decision to set Blackadder in the trenches of World War One did not come from Ben Elton, Richard Curtis or any of the cast or producers. The BBC received an unsolicited script for a new Blackadder series, set in France during WWI, from a young first-time writer. The scripts themselves were rejected, but Elton and Curtis did like the idea of a WWI setting and subsequently wrote Blackadder Goes Forth using this idea.
November 2, 1995 -
Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders guest stars on the Friends episode The One with the Baby on the Bus, on this date.
She sings Angel of the Morning and learns Smelly Cat from Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow).
November 2, 2001 -
The Disney-Pixar computer-animated movie Monsters Inc., opened in general release on this date.
John Goodman and Billy Crystal sometimes recorded their lines in the same room together, an unusual move for animated films, where actors more often work alone. Steve Buscemi and Frank Oz (Randall and his assistant Fungus) also recorded their lines together for the bathroom scene.
November 2, 2003 –
FOX TV premiered Arrested Development starring Jason Bateman, Portia de Rossi, Will Arnett, Michael Cera, Alia Shawkat, Tony Hale, David Cross, Jeffrey Tambor, Jessica Walter, and narrated by Ron Howard, on on this date. Despite acclaim from critics, Arrested Development received low ratings and the series was cancelled in 2006. It returned in 2013 for two seasons on Netflix.
Ron Howard's role as the narrator was accidental. He was merely filling in on the pilot, but his voice just "worked."
Today in History:
November 2, 1913 –
The love god of my 'work wife', former circus performer Burt Lancaster was born on this date.
He was an infamous ladies man in Hollywood, which eventually irritated his wife, Norma, enough for her to leave him.
November 2, 1944 -
Thomas Midgley Jr., an American chemist who developed both leaded gasoline and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), was notoriously known as "the one human responsible for more deaths than any other in history".
As if it was nature's idea to get revenge on him he was left disabled in his bed due to lead poisoning and polio at the age of 51.
Keeping his inventive juices flowing, he designed a complicated system of strings and pulleys on his bed so that he could lift himself up when needed. This invention was the cause of his death at the age of 55 when he was accidentally entangled in the ropes of his bed and died of strangulation.
Talk about double irony.
November 2, 1947 -
In California, industrialist, film producer/director, philanthropist, syphilitic bisexual germaphobe Howard Hughes flew the maiden (and only) flight of the Spruce Goose; the largest fixed-wing aircraft ever built.
The plane was crafted out of 200 tons of plywood. The war ended before the plane was deployed.
November 2, 1948 -
President Harry S.Truman somehow roused himself from his alcoholic stupor and was re-elected in an upset victory over the presumptive winner, Republican Thomas E. Dewey.
The Chicago Tribune had printed a banner headline 'DEWEY WINS!' prematurely. Truman defeated Dewey by 2.2 million popular votes and 114 electoral votes.
November 2, 1957 -
On this date in Levelland, Texas, at least 12 people, including two police officers, had separate encounters with either a large egg-shaped object in the roadway that made their car batteries die or they saw a red flash moving across the sky.
The US Air Force attempted to claim that a severe thunderstorm was responsible, but witnesses all claim there was no storm in the area at the time. The Levelland UFO Case still remains one of the most notable UFO cases in history.
Keep watching the skies!
November 2, 1959 -
Game show contestant Charles Van Doren admitted to a House subcommittee that he'd been given questions and answers prior to appearances on Twenty-One, the NBC game show.
Oops!
November 2, 1963 -
South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother were assassinated in a military coup. Coup leader Duong Van Minh explained that "They had to be killed - Pres. Diem was too much respected among simple, gullible people in the countryside."
A 3rd brother was later tricked into surrendering to US forces and was turned over to coup leaders and killed by firing squad. (President Johnson admitted the CIA's part in the coup.)
Once again, American diplomacy at work.
November 2, 1984 -
Velma Barfield became the first woman executed in the United States since 1962 for the murder of her mother, her boyfriend and two others with rat poison in their food.
That will learn her.
November 2, 1988 -
An Internet Worm was released by Cornell grad student Robert Morris on this date. His ingenious program was meant to explore the Internet harmlessly, but due to a bug, it crashed some 6,000 computers.
Morris parlayed the incident into a career, he is now an associate professor at MIT.
November 2, 2000 -
After the Soyuz spacecraft linked up to the International Space Station (ISS), William Shepherd, Sergei Krikalev, and Yuri Gidzenko boarded the station, turned on the lights and life support systems, and became the first crew to take up long term residence in space.
They would remain confined to two of the station’s three rooms until Space Shuttle Endeavor arrives in early December with giant solar panels to power the station.
And so it goes
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