Summer Snacks

HANG TIME

On the final day of shooting “Air Force One,” director Wolfgang Petersen played a practical joke on star Harrison Ford. Supposed to rappel from plane to plane, the actor was hooked up to a cable 20 feet in the air. After the last shot, the director congratulated the crew, turned out the lights and left the actor hanging. Not to be outdone, Ford pulled his favorite cigar from his pocket and called after the departing crew, “Does anyone have a light?”

BY THE NUMBERS

They cooked 800 hamburgers and used 60 gallons of secret sauce in “Good Burger,” a David-versus-Goliath story pitting two guys who run a neighborhood hamburger stand against a big fast-food competitor. Director Brian Robbins would not divulge the ingredients of the secret sauce.

Some 72,000 pencils were used in the creation of “Hercules,” and 1 million sheets of animation paper were used. The film contains more than 1 million drawings. “Hercules” co-director Ron Clements consumed 1,440 Twizzler licorice sticks during production.

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Mr. Freeze costume in “Batman and Robin” weighed 50 pounds because it contained 2,500 tiny lightbulbs strung together for the special lighting effect. His leisure wear--a furry robe and sleepers decorated with polar bears--weighed nearly as much. With rhinestone eyes festooning each polar bear face, the robe alone weighs in at 45 pounds. Uma Thurman, who plays Poison Ivy, wore a magenta gorilla suit that was made from 450 Santa Claus wigs and dipped with black roots and tips.

Producers of “Leave It to Beaver” auditioned 5,000 boys before selecting 9-year-old Cameron Finley of Garland, Texas as the Beav.

IN SPACE, NO ONE CAN HEAR YOUR SCRIPT

Talk about development hell: At the end of 1980, the idea for Robert Zemeckis’ “Contact” was bought from Carl Sagan by development executive Lynda Obst for PolyGram Pictures chief Peter Guber. From it, she, Sagan and his collaborator and wife, Ann Druyan, developed a 113-page treatment. Guber became a producer and took the project to Warner Bros., where he developed a number of scripts that went nowhere. When he took over the reins at Sony Pictures Entertainment, he tried to take “Contact” with him. Warner Bros. refused, giving it to Obst, who was by then a producer. In the early ‘90s, the studio gave the go-ahead and--five screenplays later--the film is hitting the screen.

THE MARRYING MAN

Australian director P.J. Hogan has a knack for nuptials--he follows “Muriel’s Wedding” with “My Best Friend’s Wedding.” It was written with Julia Roberts in mind by Ron Bass (“Rain Man”), who also did a rewrite on her next film, “Stepmom,” which she and Susan Sarandon will produce.

WEIGHT WATCHERS

Brendan Fraser’s body-fat percentage at the height of his training regimen for “George of the Jungle”: 4%.

Meanwhile, Sylvester Stallone gained 30 pounds for his role in “Cop Land”--nearly as dramatic as the 55 pounds his co-star Robert De Niro put on to play Jake LaMotta in 1980’s “Raging Bull.”

TRIPLE PLAYS

Andy Garcia, Harvey Keitel and Billy Zane are the busiest actors this season. Garcia plays a cop in “Desperate Measures,” a cop-turned-D.A. in “Night Falls on Manhattan,” then switches sides to portray mobster Lucky Luciano in “Hoodlum.” Keitel is a New York cop in “Cop Land,” a judge in “Head Above Water” and an aging TV actor in “Somebody to Love.” Zane’s hat trick comprises “The World and then the Fireworks,” “Titanic” and “Head Above Water.”

GRACE UNDER FIRE

Actors had to don 65-pound spacesuits during much of the shoot for “Event Horizon,” about a rescue mission to the outer reaches of the solar system to salvage a missing prototype spaceship. Laurence Fishburne became so attached to his spacesuit that he named it Doris.

Producers of “The Full Monty” hired 400 women from northern England to scream as the actors, playing working guys desperate for money, strip for an entire town. Shots of whiskey were passed around before actors Robert Carlyle, Tom Wilkinson, Mark Addy, Paul Barber, Steve Huison and Hugo Speer took to the stage.

“The Van,” the last installment of Roddy Doyle’s Barrytown trilogy, is the story of two pals trying to make a go of it with their fish-and-chips van. Director Stephen Frears had the actors climb inside the van, while other actors playing toughs smashed the vehicle with car batteries and tried to push it over. When told that the men inside the van became terrified, Frears replied: “They’re just big babies.”

CANNES GOODS

Help celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Cannes International Film Festival without the expensive air fare. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art will present a three-weekend retrospective of Cannes honorees, including Palme d’Or winners “Viridiana” and “Apocalypse Now,” June 20 through July 5. And on June 18, the museums will host a sneak peak at films that premiered at Cannes this year.

GLUB, GLUB, GLUB

To research “Titanic,” director James Cameron, using two chartered Russian research submersibles, made 12 dives to the floor of the North Atlantic to shoot footage of the Titanic. Cameron will use footage of the wreckage as bookends for the film.

Ocean swells caused crew members to drop their walkie-talkies and pagers into the Caribbean during the filming of “Speed 2: Cruise Control,” rendering the devices useless. At one point, director Jan De Bont’s bullhorn, splashed with saltwater, wouldn’t function properly so the crew fashioned him a new one out of paper plates.

During filming of “Out to Sea,” a Walter Matthau-Jack Lemmon comedy about two con men who board a luxury liner in hopes of meeting rich women, passengers aboard the real-life ship M.S. Westerdam craned their necks in hopes of catching a glimpse of the actors. What they overlooked, however, was Lemmon, who would occasionally slip into the lunch line and eat with the passengers.

CASTING CALLS

Hunk Mel Gibson plays a cab driver in “Conspiracy Theory” (Taxi!), and Julia Roberts plays a Justice Department attorney in the same film. Well, she did crack that Pelican case.

“The Lost World: Jurassic Park” comes with plenty of dinosaurs in all sizes, ranging from computer-generated prehistoric beasts to a mama and papa Tyrannosaurus rex that measured 2 stories high and weighed 6 tons.

Meanwhile, Glenn Close plays the vice president of the United States in “Air Force One.” Nice promotion from first lady (“Mars Attacks”).

And in “Picture Perfect,” Jennifer Aniston plays a woman so busy she has to just pretend she has a boyfriend. As if!

LOCATIONS, LOCATIONS, LOCATIONS

During the month of shooting in the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, the cast and crew of “Con Air” consumed 7,000 bottles of water a week, 200 Popsicles a day and more than 35,000 pounds of ice. Some 150,000 criminals are transported yearly via the real Con Air transport division of the U.S. Marshals Service.

“Mortal Kombat Annihilation,” which was filmed in Jordan, was the first movie ever to incorporate a mixed Jordanian and Israeli crew.

The production offices that were used in San Rafael, Calif., for “Spawn” were the former headquarters of the area unemployment office. People would line up outside the offices to try to file unemployment claims.

ODDS ‘N’ ENDS

Jim Carrey proposed to Lauren Holly on a visit to the set of “A Smile Like Yours.”

England’s upper crust, it seems, is still sensitive about Queen Victoria’s 1864 love affair with servant John Brown. A number agreed to talk with location scouts about shooting “Mrs. Brown” in their homes. When informed about the subject matter, however, they refused to let them in.

“Star Maps” cinematographer Chuy Chavez was denied permission to work in the United States because he had not fulfilled his military obligation in Mexico. The producers did such a good job persuading officials that Chavez was one of Mexico’s leading cinematographers that he now has a 10-year visa.

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Compiled by Robert W. Welkos, Elaine Dutka, Claudia Puig, Richard Cromelin and Kathleen Craughwell