17 Backstage Photos That Will Immediately Improve Your Day
Some celebrities spend their entire careers carefully building an aura of aloofness and mystery --- only for a single dorky photo to come along and shatter that forever. And that's good, because we need periodic reminders that even the most famously stoic or angsty people can turn into total goofballs backstage. Behold the following moments of profound goofiness, such as ...
Bane Photobombing A Wedding
In The Dark Knight Rises, Bane is a Very Serious Character who makes Grandiose Monologues and is Totally Calm and dresses like a Dimestore Napoleon. All of that, however, flies out of the window when he sees a wedding, apparently.
In 2011, one Pittsburgh couple rocked up to their wedding to find a film crew putting up a major set piece for TDKR on the street. As recompense, the bride and groom totally 'jacked one of the bat-tanks lying around, as was their devious plan all along.
"Sure, no way that can go wrong for us!"
Stan Lee Cameos (In Your Erotic Fantasies)
Gird your loins, people. Stan Lee did a nude centerfold.
In 1983, Lee was paying a visit to the Marvel offices when they asked a weird favor of him. They were in the middle of preparing a joke-y issue full of stuff like office pranks, staff members doing superhero things, you know the drill -- would he, they wondered, be into doing a nude centerfold? His clothes were probably in a pile on the floor before they finished asking.
When Lee returned home, however, and remembered what he'd done, he demanded that the centerfold be canned. As a compromise, they did the next best thing and superimposed a massive Hulk over his body. That is not a euphemism.
Here's Steven Spielberg Giving E.T. A Bath
No words could prepare you for this, so let's just jump straight to it:
FACT: If E.T. is in the bath for too long, his skin turns smooth.
If you're having trouble placing the scene in E.T. where Steven Spielberg gives everyone's favorite gonad-faced extra-terrestrial the goddamn loofah-ing of his life, it's not your fault. This comes from a scene where Elliot and E.T. were supposed to share a bath together, which wound up being cut from the final release. Between that and the other deleted scene where E.T. spies on Elliot's mom in the shower, we're thinking this movie originally had a much higher rating.
Terminator 2: (Poor) Judgement Day
Remember that scene in T2 when a naked T-800 walks into a bar? Turns out it was far more embarrassing in reality. So yes, the T-800 is a cybernetic organism comprising living tissue over a metal endoskeleton ... who apparently came gift-wrapped in shorts that could blind any nearby squares with their utter radness.
Andre The Giant And Wilt Chamberlain Make Arnold Look Like A Dwarf
Speaking of Arnie, did you know that there was a sequel to Conan The Barbarian, called Conan The Destroyer? And that it starred Andre the Giant and the NBA's most famous lover, Wilt Chamberlain? It was awful, but the upshot is that it gave us this glimpse into what the world's biggest men do for entertainment: people-lifting contests.
In most rooms, Arnold Schwarzenegger is the biggest guy around. On this set, however, he was like a little meaty puppet that Wilt and Andre could make do whatever they wanted. When the guys went out to dinner one night, Arnold insisted -- over the objections of Andre -- on paying the bill, at which point he found himself hoisted into the air and dropped outside. Arnold was left wondering what happened, Andre paid the bill, and Wilt was probably away carving another few thousand notches into his impressive bedpost.
Sigourney Weaver And Her Little Friend
It's a little baffling that they keep making Alien sequels, prequels, and whatever-quels when the franchise reached its full potential before the first movie even came out:
That is Sigourney Weaver testing the flamethrower she used in Alien at the Shepperton Studios backlot. We don't know how many tries it took her to get it working right, but presumably there were a lot more trees in that lot.
Kill Bill ... With Kindness
It turns out that Kill Bill was originally meant to be marketed not as a rip-roaring rampage of revenge, but as a fun-filled fairground ride of friendship and forgiveness between The Bride and the lady whose haircut she botched.
Or at least that's the impression we get from the backstage photos, which also reveal the shocking fact that Tarantino has no concept of personal space.
"Kung-Fuck off."
Lord Of The Singin' In The Rain
The Lord Of The Rings trilogy was filmed primarily in New Zealand where, contrary to popular belief, it rains an awful, awful lot. This was bad for filming, sure ... but it came with a slight upside.
Yep, that's the Nazgul -- Sauron's becloaked ring-snatchers -- resting it up in a copse and discussing tactics, all whilst camped out under golf umbrellas they clearly stole from their dads. Although we're unlikely to ever get answers, we have to ask whether a) that material shrinks in the rain or something, and b) this umbrella design was specially designed for the characters (as was literally everything else in this film).
Worf Loves Yachts
Star Trek: The Next Generation's Worf has a bit of an image problem: he's a security officer who gets his ass kicked in every episode where he's meant to be security-ing officer-ing the joint up. We're starting to think that's not his real problem, however. Just look at him wistfully imagining himself sailing that water planet they passed. Who could stay angry at that face?
Dolph Lundgren And Grace Jones: Scary On Their Own, Totes Adorbs As A Couple
She was a best-selling new wave singer. He was her muscular bodyguard who once was a Fulbright Scholar ... and then they fell in love. They were Dolph "Ivan Drago" Lundgren and Grace "Grace Jones" Jones.
We're pretty sure any kid they would've had would be elected President of Earth by now.
Before Lundgren got his big break as Ivan Drago in Rocky IV, he was a simple MIT-bound chemical engineering student making ends meet as a bouncer. That's when he was assigned to work security on a Grace Jones show -- the result of which was the '80s-est power couple imaginable, barring those wild fantasies we once had about Ronald Reagan and Ayatollah Khomeini. You're now imagining those two making out, aren't you?
Jaws Sure Was A Joker
We've already mentioned that throughout most of the filming of Jaws, their gigantic animatronic shark was a steaming hunk of junk. On the upside, this gave Robert Shaw the opportunity to get some hangtime with the main man and just, y'know, talk and stuff, in scenes that resemble the wildest version of Woodstock that never happened.
"I don't know, man. Eating people. And the impermeability of human consciousness."
"Same."
Even Spielberg got in on the act.
"Nah, it's nearly lunchtime."
Vigo The Carpathian Cleans Up Nicely
After Ghostbusters II, it's nice to know that Vigo the Carpathian returned after his plans were foiled in order to clean up his mess, like a teen caught spray-painting graffiti on the side of a convenience store. This photo was taken on a big day for Wilhelm von Homburg, the actor behind Vigo, as it was seemingly one of the few moments in his life where he wasn't being a terrifying douchebag.
The Wet Bandits Finally Murder Kevin
In Home Alone, Joe Pesci is out to escalate a simple burglary charge into the worst child murder that the state has ever seen. It's nice to know, however, that when the cameras stopped rolling, he could channel that energy off and relax and not take the psychological pressures home ...
Oh, goddammit. If you couple this with the fact that Pesci actually bit Macaulay Culkin's finger hard enough during rehearsals that he left a scar, it's a miracle that Culkin left that wrap party alive. Unless, of course, he took his work home with him and rigged plastic explosives into the cocktail shrimp as a diversionary tactic.
Here's Ben-Hur On A Goddamn Scooter
In the 1950s, the scooter was just some idiotic fad that people thought would die out in two week. You know what helps? Having celebrities ride your product, a role Charlton Heston threw himself into on the set of Ben-Hur.
The Vespa apparently belonged to director William Wyler, but Heston clearly took quite a liking to it, considering there's about half a dozen photos of the future NRA president playing around with it. It was probably the saddest day of his life when the scooter got a flat tire and he had to put it down.
Orson Welles Giving A Piggyback Ride
You've probably seen this picture floating around the viralsphere starring Mark Hamill riding on Daisy Ridley's back. Well, that's not supposed to be an impression of Yoda -- it's a send-up of the following shot, in which acclaimed director Orson Welles carries also-acclaimed director John Huston around the set of The Other Side Of The Wind like freakin' Hodor. We'll be honest: we have no idea what The Other Side Of The Wind is about, but we're never watching it because there's no way it lives up to this:
Biggie And Diddy Goofing Around In A McDonald's
It's not easy to market a rap album. If you go too family-friendly, you wind up alienating your loyal followers. If you go too hardcore, there isn't a chance in hell that you're going to make the charts. Fortunately, Bad Boy Records impresario Puff Daddy, Notorious B.I.G., and their (way less famous) label-mate Craig Mack had a solution: everybody loves fast food and puns, right?
We Want To Live On The Star Wars Set
Say what you will about George Lucas, but the man knew how to run a fun set. The only thing that makes these pictures better is imagining these aren't behind-the-scenes moments, but scenes cut from the final movie.
Here's Princess Leia handing Luke a cold one before he jets off to destroy the Death Star. Is there an equivalent charge to a DUI in the canon?
Here's Obi-Wan Kenobi celebrating his birthday with Luke and some random tourists who read about this "Tatooine" place on TripAdvisor and just had to check it out:
And here's Princess Leia chilling with another of Jabba's slaves during her downtime (actually, her stunt double) and giving us a whole new dimension/expanded universe on those "gold bikini" fantasies everyone's had.
Between these moments, the drugs, and the we-already-knew-about-it-but-it's-nice-to-have-it-confirmed relationship between Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher, it's a miracle the films ever got made at all.
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