1. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Notting Hill
In the very last moments of Roger Mitchell's rom-com
Notting Hill, bumbling British bookstore owner William Thacker, as played by Hugh Grant, can be seen chilling on a bench with his new wife, as played by Julia Roberts. It's almost impossible to kind of notice here that Grant is reading the book
Captain Corelli's Mandolin, which you may or not may know was eventually made into a movie starring Nicolas Cage. The novel, of course, written by Louis de Bernières, has been hailed as a modern classic. Every time I watch this part of the movie... I mean, uh...
every time my mother watches this part of the movie, I was always left wondering why that particular book was chosen. I mean, when you actually watch it, it just seems to be, like, making a point or something, teasing you to question its blatant placement. So, as one does, I set out to discover why
Mandolin had been featured so prominently here, and - low and behold - its inclusion revealed itself to be a kind of bizarre in-joke gone wrong. Apparently director Roger Mitchell was set to direct an adaptation of
Mandolin as his next movie, and slipped in the book as a neat little reference. Unfortunately he had a heart attack and was forced to pull out, which meant that somebody else had to step in. So now there's this sort of in-joke in
Notthing Hill making reference to something that never happened. Which, in a way, makes this little slice of trivia even more interesting. Probably.
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