Cinema's Strangest Moments

Book excerpt: How did Leonardo DiCaprio become a hero on The Beach? Why would the Droids lode control in Star Wars? What persuaded Mad Max to become Hamlet? Who made Long John Silver's parrot dread Treasure Island? When was there a curse on The Exorcist? Where did Harrison Ford's quick-thinking profit Raiders Of The Lost Ark? From the earliest black-and-white flickers to the most recent big-screen blockbusters, the history of filmmaking is littered with remarkable but true tales of the unexpected. Behind the scenes on more then three hundred films, this entertaining survey covers over a hundred years of cinema history. It's a story of disastrous stunts, star temperaments, eccentric animals, Hollywood rivalries, unexplained deaths, casting coups and bizarre locations. Spanning the silents through the Golden Age to today's effects-packed films, Quentin Falk, film critic of the Sunday Mirror and editor of the BAFTA magazine, Academy, revels an astonishing collection of strange-but-true stories.