Hand Me the Keys (And ‘The Usual Suspects’ Facts)
You might know that The Usual Suspects title comes from a famous line in Casablanca. But did you know that director Bryan Singer and writer Christopher McQuarrie thought of that title before they had a plot for the movie? They also thought of their movie’s famous poster, with all the main characters standing in a lineup, before they had a story too. They put those pieces together and worked backwards from there. That’s just one of the unusual facts featured in the latest episode of You Think You Know Movies!
The character of Keyser Soze is based on a real murderer; John List, who murdered his family in the early 1970s and lived under an assumed name for decades before he was finally caught. The lineup scene from the poster was supposed to be one of the most serious and intense in the movie, but Bryan Singer ended up using all of the blown takes where the actors laughed at each other. Supposedly, one of the actors (ahem, looking at you Benicio Del Toro) kept farting on the set and cracking the rest of the cast up.
You Think You Know Movies? is a ScreenCrush original series that dives deep into the cinematic worlds of your favorite movies and freeze frames a few tidbits you might not have known. We’ve already tackled Star Wars, The Avengers and Spider-Man, but this time we’re rounding up The Usual Suspects trivia. Watch more installments of ‘You Think You Know Movies?’ below and let us know in the comments what movies we should cover next!