1) What do the following have in common: Hayden Christensen; James Earl Jones; Sebastian Shaw; David Prowse?
Answer: Have all played Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker: Christensen in episodes 2 and 3; James Earl Jones supplying the voice in episodes 4-6: Sebastian Shaw as the man behind the mask in The Revenge of the Jedi (episode 6); Prowse donning the costume in episodes 4-6.
2) How are Malcolm McDowell on the big screen, and Morecambe & Wise and Paddington on the small screen connected to Gene Kelly?
Answer: Through Singin' in the Rain. McDowell sings it as Alex during a rape scene in A Clockwork Orange; Morecambe & Wise and Paddington (separately) performed pastiches of Gene Kelly's routine from the 1952 film.
3) What did Abel Gance, Henry Koster and Sacha Guitry manage that Stanley Kubrick never did?
Answer: Directed films about Napoleon: Gance's 1927 Napoleon; Guitry's in 1954, the same year as Koster's Desireé, starring Brando as Napoleon. For years Kubrick dreamed of making an epic Napoleon biopic from a screenplay by Anthony Burgess, on whose novel A Clockwork Orange was based.
4) What have Nicolas Roeg and Francis Coppola both done that Orson Welles and Ridley Scott both failed to do?
Answer: Made movie adaptations of Heart of Darkness. Roeg directed a made for TV version in 1994, while Coppola's Apocalypse Now was loosely based on Conrad's novella, which Welles planned to adapt for the big screen as his directorial debut before turning his attention to Citizen Kane. Scott abandoned his plan to make a version of Heart of Darkness having learned that Coppola was shooting Apocalypse Now, and chose instead as his directorial debut The Duellists adapted from another Conrad short story.
5) What did Grigori Kozintzev, Arthur Hiller and Welles (just about) manage to do that Terry Gilliam hasn't, so far at least?
Answer: Direct adaptations of Don Quixote, which Kozintsev did in 1957 and Hiller did in his 1972 big screen version of the stage musical Man of La Mancha. Welles shot material for a big screen version and completed a short, quirky TV film in the mid 1950s, while Gilliam's vain struggle to adapt Don Quixote has so far yielded only the 2001 documentary Lost in La Manchawhich details his aborted production starring Jean Rochefort and Johnny Depp.
6) In what sense is Johnny Depp set to become Marlon's fictional brother?
Answer: In the upcoming sequel to Pirates of the Caribbean, Depp's father is due to be played by Keith Richard who has a son called Marlon.
7) Which maverick writer/director's final words were, reportedly: "Did you see Borges"?
Answer: Donald Cammell who died from a self-inflicted gun-shot wound - Jorge Luis Borges is quoted by Turner (Mick Jagger), a gangster reads the Borges Anthology, and a photograph of the writer appears fleetingly in the climactic murder/suicide sequence in Performance, co-directed by Cammell and Nicolas Roeg.
8) What do Mick Jagger and Heath Ledger have in common?
Answer: Both have starred as Ned Kelly, in 1970 and 2003 respectively.
9) Who provides the connection between Zelda Fitzgerald (on the small screen), Mary Shelley and Patricia Hearst?
Answer: All played by Natasha Richardson in: 1993 TV movie Zelda; Gothic (1986); and Patty Hearst (1988).
10) How are Robert De Niro and Peter Boyle connected to Bela Blasko and William Pratt?
Answer: Have all played Frankenstein's monster: De Niro in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; Boyle in Young Frankenstein; Bela Lugosi (born Blasko) starred as the monster in Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, and Boris Karloff (born William Pratt) played the role in James Whale's Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein.
