Did a Case of Mistaken Identity Lead to Al Kapone Being on the Hustle and Flow Soundtrack?

Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about movies and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the movie urban legends featured so far.

MUSIC URBAN LEGEND: A case of mistaken identity led to the inclusion of a number of Al Kapone songs on the soundtrack to Hustle and Flow.

Director Craig Brewer worked with producer John Singleton in finally getting Brewer’s film, Hustle & Flow, out to the masses (Brewer had been trying to get the film out for years) in 2005.

The film, starring Terrence Howard as a hustler deciding to take one last shot at his dream of becoming a rapper, became a surprise box office AND critical hit, making Howard a star and securing the first Academy Award for a rap group for the song, “It’s Hard out Here for a Pimp,” by Three 6 Mafia.

Obviously, the soundtrack for a film like this is very important, and Singleton specifically wanted to work with the Memphis rap group Three 6 Mafia because of his relationship with the group from his 2001 film, Baby Boy.

Brewer is from Memphis, and he was familiar with the rap scene in Memphis, so he was fine with going with Three 6 Mafia, as he was a big fan of theirs. He was also a fan, though, of fellow Memphis rapper Al Kapone.

In any event, when getting ready to get some songs for the soundtrack (including tracks that could be performed by Howard’s character, DJay), Brewer was waiting on a call from DJ Paul, the head of the Three 6 Mafia.

However, DJ Paul had mentioned to Al Kapone about the fact that the film was looking for Memphis rappers (that wasn’t exactly what the film was doing, but I suppose that’s what DJ Paul got out of it), so he gave Kapone the phone number as well, and while Brewer was waiting for Paul’s call, he instead got a call from Kapone.
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Did Michael Bay Really Apologize for Armageddon?

Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about movies and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the movie urban legends featured so far.

MOVIE URBAN LEGEND: Michael Bay apologized for the film Armageddon.

Armageddon came out on July 1st, 1998 as the second of two blockbuster films that year about an asteroid threatening to destroy the Earth (the first was Deep Impact, which came out on May 8th). It was directed by Michael Bay with a screenplay by Jonathan Hensleigh, J. J. Abrams, Tony Gilroy and Shane Salerno. Its primary leads were Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler.

The basic concept of the film was that N.A.S.A. trains a team of the best deep-core oil-drillers in the world to fly to the asteroid, drill into the middle of it, plant a nuclear bomb in the hole and then detonate the nuke, causing the asteroid to split into two pieces, which would then separate and pass by the Earth harmlessly. It was a massive box office success (and the film’s soundtrack was a hit, as well, including the Oscar-nominated #1 hit song “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” by Liv Tyler’s father Steven’s band, Aerosmith).

However, the critics were not so kind to the film. It remains one of the more derided films of the 1990s. Even one of the film’s stars, Ben Affleck, famously mocked the film on the audio commentary of the film’s DVD release (one example by Affleck – “Wouldn’t it be easier for NASA to train astronauts how to drill rather than training drillers to be astronauts?”). Recently, Michael Bay came out with a new film, Pain & Gain, starring Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as bodybuilders who become criminals. During the press tour for his new film last month, Bay made a lot of headlines by supposedly apologizing for the much-maligned Armageddon.

So what’s the deal, did Bay really apologize for the film?

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Did Joe Walsh Use Morse Code to Sneak Hidden Messages Into Some Songs?

Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about music and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the music urban legends featured so far.

MUSIC URBAN LEGEND: Joe Walsh sneaked hidden messages via Morse Code into a couple of his songs.

Joe Walsh is certainly one of the more interesting figures in rock ‘n’ roll.

In fact, he’s often referred to as the Clown Prince Of Rock.

One of his lesser known interests, though, is amateur radio. Walsh is involved with fostering amateur radio enthusiasm in schools, and helps out with the American Radio Relay League with charity auctions and such.

On two of his albums, Walsh actually used Morse code (a staple of the amateur radio set) to put hidden messages into two songs.
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Did Elton John Write a Theme Song for a Sports Team That Folded Before The Song Was Even Released?

Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about music and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the music urban legends featured so far.

MUSIC URBAN LEGEND: Elton John wrote a song for a sports team that was gone before the song was even released.

In 1974, the World Team Tennis league was formed.

Team Tennis was played on a four colored tennis court with teams comprising of at least 2 men and 2 women.

The franchise Philadelphia Freedoms had Billie Jean King on their inaugural squad.

King’s close friend, Elton John, wrote the theme song for the team.

The song, “Philadelphia Freedom,” was released the next year as a single (not as a track on John’s 1975 album, Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy. That would be foolish!)

There was just one little snag.

By the time the song had come out, the team was finished!
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Did Salman Rushdie Secretly Live in Bono’s Guest House in Ireland for Four Years?

Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about music and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the music urban legends featured so far.

MUSIC URBAN LEGEND: Salman Rushdie secretly lived in Bono’s guest house in Ireland for four years.

Salman Rushdie first came to international attention in 1981 with his Booker Prize winning novel, Midnight’s Children.

However, it was his fourth novel, released in 1988, The Satanic Verses, that really made Rushdie a household name.

This time around, though, it wasn’t for his literary skills, but rather for the fact The Satanic Verses was deemed highly offensive to believers of Islam. So offensive that there was a fatwa issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989 ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie. Rushdie went underground for many years.

In 1991, a friend of his took him to a concert U2 was giving to promote the album Achtung Baby.

Rushdie met with Bono, lead singer of the band and the two talked for awhile.

Two years later, when the band was on tour promoting their latest album, Zooropa…

the band performed at Wembley Stadium in England and asked Rushdie to come out on stage with them in a show of solidarity.

Amusingly enough, they brought him out when Bono was dressed as his devil character “MacPhisto.”

In any event, a few years later, an Irish newspaper “broke” a story that Rushdie had been secretly living in Bono’s guest house for four years during the 1990s. Was it true?
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Did MTV Cancel the Reality Show Fear Because a Contestant Died During the Filming of the Series?

Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about TV and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the TV urban legends featured so far.

TV URBAN LEGEND: MTV canceled the TV series Fear because a contestant was killed during filming of an episode.

In 2000, MTV debuted a new “reality” series called Fear, where six young adults would be taken to various “haunted” places at night and forced to perform “dares.” If they perform all the dares given to them, they each receive a sum of money (the first episode it was $3,000 but by the time it was picked up for a series, it was $5,000).

The dares often involved some pretty scary stuff, especially for the era, which was pre-Fear Factor and shows of that ilk.

For instance, in an episode set in a penitentiary, a “dare” was to go into this dark room where many prisoners were raped and murdered and stay there in radio silence for 15 minutes.

Naturally, some folks had a hard time with this situation…

The show, visually, was very well put together (look at this scene from a Season 1 episode…

)

and it soon became a hit for MTV. Two seasons were produced. However, six episodes into the second season the show was canceled, even though it was MTV’s second highest-rated program at the time.

Rumors started up right away that it had been canceled because a contestant had died in one of the episodes (even dumber rumors involved a cast member being possessed by a spirit). What is the truth?
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Were Dr. McCoy’s Medical Instruments Really Just Fancy Salt Shakers?

Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about TV and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the TV urban legends featured so far.

TV URBAN LEGEND: Were Dr. McCoy’s medical instruments on Star Trek really just fancy salt shakers?

Predicting what products and clothes will look like in the future is always an ardurous task, as all we ever have to really go on is our own personal information in the present, and who knows how predictive that is? Like our recent legend about the 1988 ad predicting the future of VCRs in the year 2012. That did not go so well. Heck, if you were to ask almost anyone in 2003 what a typical cell phone would look like ten years later, hardly anyone would guess that they’d actually be bigger than the typical 2003 cell phone! This was the day-to-day challenge that presented itself to Irving A. Feinberg, the property master on the original Star Trek television series.

Read on to learn how Feinberg’s attempts to come up with what salt shakers would look like three hundred years in the future instead resulted in Dr. Leonard McCoy’s surgical tools on the TV series!

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June 13th, 2013 | Posted in TV Legends Revealed | 2 Comments

How Did Quantum Leap Have TWO Actors Nominated For Best Actor in a Drama Emmy Without Dean Stockwell Being One of Them?

Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about TV and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the TV urban legends featured so far.

TV URBAN LEGEND: Harrison Page was nominated for a Best Lead Actor Emmy Award for…Quantum Leap??!

If you look at the opening credits for Quantum Leap, the science fiction series that was about (heck, let me just give you their patented description of the series that appeared before every episode):

Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator and vanished…He woke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on this journey is Al, an observer from his own time, who appears in the form of a hologram that only Sam can see and hear. And so Dr. Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong and hoping each time that his next leap…will be the leap home.

you would see the following actors credited…

And Bakula and Stockwell were both nominated for Emmy Awards (Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, respectively) for four of the five seasons Quantum Leap aired.

However, in 1992, Bakula was nominated for Best Actor for Quantum Leap along with…Harrison Page?!?


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Did Kirstie Alley Once Have a Publicist Provide Mother’s Milk for a Pet Opossum?

Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about TV and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the TV urban legends featured so far.

TV URBAN LEGEND: Kirstie Alley once had a publicist provide mother’s milk for Alley’s pet opossum.

This is one of those stories where the real story is odd enough, but, naturally, people have to make the story sound a lot weirder than it actually was.

The story that gets told frequently is that Kirstie Alley is walking her pet opossum at some event and the the opossum looks sad/gets upset/something or other, so Alley asks a publicist who had recently given birth and had her give the possum some milk from her breast, and the publicist complied.

What ACTUALLY happened?
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Did Michelangelo Have a Prideful Response to People Doubting his Creation of the Pietà?

Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends related to the world of sculpture and whether they are true or false.

SCULPTURE URBAN LEGEND: Michelangelo had an interesting response to people doubting his creation of the Pietà.

La Pietà is one of Michelangelo’s most famous works.

He was commissioned to do the work in 1497 when he was 22 years old. It was completed and displayed in 1499. The marble statue is distinctive for both its striking beauty AND for the manner in which Michelangelo depicts Mary as being much younger than most artists have drawn her.

Before its final (and current) resting place in St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, it was first placed at the nearby Chapel of Santa Petronilla.

Now, according to Giorgio Vasari, when the work was installed, Michelangelo would hear people suggest that the work (which was quite popular right from the get-go) was done by various artists (Vasari specifically mentions Cristoforo “il Gobbo” Solari, but I’ve heard a variety of artists mentioned in the story – it’s likely that different people mentioned different artists).

Like Rodin (who ran into a similar problem with his first major sculpture, as detailed in this legend here), Michelangelo was a fairly unknown artist (he was still a couple of years removed from the work that would make him immensely famous, the statue of David), so it is reasonable enough that people would attribute the work to more famous artist.

Well, Michelangelo was quite irked by this, so he went and did something slightly drastic…
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