Question: What is Gollum? I thought he was supposed to have once been a hobbit but what happened to him?
Questions about specific movies, TV shows and more
These are questions relating to specific titles. General questions for movies and TV shows are here. Members get e-mailed when any of their questions are answered.
Question: What sort of fabric is Neo's trench coat made of? I would guess wool, but can anyone be more specific?
Answer: It was a custom-length black wool garbardine coat. In an interview with the costume designers, they stated a need for a lighter fabric, but still light and sleek for the actors to wear. About half of Morpheus's crew wear black wool gabardine when they jack into the Matrix. The rest use PVC, leather, or a combination of both.
Question: Where can I find the lyrics to the version of the song, "Hot, Hot, Hot" in the movie?
Answer: Find it here: www.osierra.com/index.php?p=63&c=1.
Question: How did the Thin Man survive the explosion in the first movie? And if he is such an "angel," then why was he attacking Lucy Liu?
Answer: Creepy Thin Man has a talent for surviving otherwise sure deaths, like exploding, crashing in motorcycles, etc. As for attacking Alex, I guess he's just a weird, creepy guy. Maybe he only likes Dylan?
Answer: He was wasn't attacking her, he was defending himself from her attack. When she naturally assumed he was there to kill them. When he killed the bad guy sneaking up behind Alex, she realised he was a good guy.
Question: Why does Obi-Wan freely admit he is a Jedi, when he is supposedly in hiding from Vader? He sure made no secret of his last name.
Answer: It's a very large galaxy - Vader's hardly going to track down some old hermit living out in the middle of nowhere on a backwards planet based purely on a surname that, for all we know, might be quite a common one, and remember that nobody knows him as 'Obi-wan', only as Ben. The only person that he admits to being a Jedi to is Luke, who's not going to go running to the Empire to turn in a man who was a friend of his fathers. Everyone else seems to regard him as a crazy old hermit, not a Jedi Knight or anything like that. Okay, he cuts loose with his sabre in the Mos Eisley cantina, but (a) he's about to leave the planet anyway and (b) it's not as if he had a lot of choice. By the time that Vader might hear about it, he'll be long gone.
Question: Why does Thomas Reynolds want the telecommunications security and privacy act to be passed into law so bad that he has a congressman killed? To advance his career?
Answer: Yes, and to increase the importance of his agency.
Question: At the end, when Mad World is playing and it shows the FAA people talking, is one of them Jon Stewart? He isn't listed in the credits, but I am quite sure of it.
Question: When David is flicking through the channels on the TV, I am sure you can see a guy standing to his left, just on the other side of the curtain. (If you look behind his head, you may be able to see his mouth and nose.) Can anyone tell me if they see this too, or am I wrong?
Answer: There is nobody there. The only thing behind David's head is a poster of an actor.
Question: Why is it that we never see the Blair Witch? Also the cover is very convincing that this is a true story. Is it?
Answer: The Blair Witch does not exist. The reason you didn't see is it is an abstract concept. What you can't see is scarier because you make her up in your own mind. It is a complete hoax of a story. The three actors have been doing many other acting jobs since, especially Heather and Josh.
Question: Does anyone know why Lucy's father, Marlin, took pictures of the mural she painted before he and Doug painted over it with white paint in preparation for the following day? I can't think of any reason he would document that because Lucy was going to paint it again anyways.
Answer: Why wouldn't he want to preserve a record of all his daughter's art works whether she painted over them or not?
Answer: Because she draws something different every day and he wants to keep each one in some way.
Question: There is something I have always wondered about spoofs: Do they actually get permission from the makers of the films they spoof?
Answer: Nope. Parodies aren't usually covered by copyright laws as they are generally considered to be as example of fair usage, provided that it can be demonstrated that the copyrighted material was used in a manner that is considered to be a commentary, ridicule or criticism of that material.
Question: Does anyone know how to build these type of ships, using traditional techniques? And any recommended books to read (i.e. rigging, boat building, etc.)?
Answer: Go to http://www.barkendeavour.com.au/endfox/page1.html and read how a full sized replica of Capt. Cook's ship was built from the original plans in Australia (and see this ship's connection with the movie). There are many such ships sailing the world's oceans. I spent 6 fantastic weeks in (crew sail "in" not "on") HM Barque Endeavour. We left Halifax, Nova Scotia in November, and sailed south to Barbados. So, yes, those people know how to build, and maintain a wooden ship that meets historic museum standards. They even do a certain rope whipping "wrong" because that's the way it was done on the original ship. I was reading the log of one crewmember while lying in his bunk. He described a hand hold he had affixed to the beam above his bunk to help in getting out of the bunk. I reached up, and there it was! Now THAT's attention to detail! Also check out Mystic Seaport to get you started.
Question: I have looked all over the web for the wav of the sound Goofy makes whenever he is falling, which he does at least once in every cartoon he is in. It sounds like 'yah-ha-ha-hooey.' I have never found it, so can someone point me to where I might be able to download it?
Answer: Took about 1 minute to Google this: http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/7451/sounds.html.
Question: It's obviously simple to build a robot that can understand and speak English. Even droids working as short order cooks can speak English, as far back as Episode 2. So why can't R2 talk? He's a friggin' mechanic, he needs to be able to speak with the humans he works for. I know his primary function isn't communication but if 90% of the droids in Star Wars have a speech function surely R2 could have one.
Answer: R2's job is astromech droid and in-flight mechanic, which means that he's supposed to be locked into a fighter most of the time. When that is the case, he can communicate with the pilot through the computer (as seen in Empire Strikes Back, I believe). Since the builders didn't anticipate how much wandering around he would be doing, they didn't see a need to build in a speech function and instead spent that space on extra tools and repair programming. How many astromechs do you see wandering around the Star Wars universe and interacting with people?
Question: Can someone please tell me which season and the name of the episode is the one where Frank buys the two sets of pearl necklaces, (one to give to Margaret and one to give to his wife)?
Answer: Season 3, "Payday" is the episode.
Question: After "Gee, Officer Krupke," they're all going into Doc's candy store, and Snowboy is fiddling with something - what is it?
Answer: A small radio.
Question: Obi-Wan can obviously understand Wookies, since he books passage on the Falcon through Chewie. So why does he never talk to Chewbacca again? It's like they forgot Ben can understand him.
Answer: Just because we don't see him talk to Chewbacca, it doesn't mean that he doesn't off-camera during the trip. The conversations that he has are with either Luke or Han - he could talk to Chewie but, from the storytelling point of view, it would just be extraneous material.
Question: How do the police officers survive the blast that Pyro, sends knocking them off of the porch? They would have extensive burns to their entire body if this were to really happen and not just look like they were rolling around in dirt.
Chosen answer: Pyro probably didn't want to hurt them, just scare them. Pyro controls fire, remember? That's how they didn't get burned by the blasts.
Pyro most likely superheated the oxygen atoms just in front of the officers causing them to explode. He made sure the officers were just far enough away from the blast that the shockwave would only throw them but not kill or burn them.
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Answer: He was indeed a hobbit, probably of the Stoor sub-race. After the finding of the Ring, he fell under its influence and he took it. The Ring kept him alive, prolonging his life far beyond the norm (he's around 500 years old at the time of the films). His physical change is related to the Ring - the precise mechanism is unclear, but it's most likely due to repeated exposure to the wraithworld that parallels our own; wearers of the Ring are transported at least partially into that world, rendering them invisible in ours. The same process happened with the kings who became the Nazgul.
Tailkinker ★