Trivia / Movie 43

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• All-Star Cast: One of the film's main selling points. The cast has (in order of appearance) Dennis Quaid, Greg Kinnear, Seth MacFarlane, Will Sasso, Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Liev Schreiber, Naomi Watts, Chris Pratt, Anna Faris, Kieran Culkin, Emma Stone, Richard Gere, Jack McBrayer, Kate Bosworth, Aasif Mandvi, Justin Long, John Hodgeman, Kristen Bell, Uma Thurman, Bobby Cannavale, Jason Sudeikis, Leslie Bibb, Katrina Bowden, Chloë Moretz, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Patrick Warburton, Matt Walsh, Johnny Knoxville, Seann William Scott, Gerard Butler, Halle Berry, Stephen Merchant, Snooki, Terrence Howard, Josh Duhamel, and Elizabeth Banks. Julianne Moore, Tony Shalhoub, Bob Odenkirk, and Anton Yelchin star in deleted sketches. The Blu-ray cover was just the film's title with photos of the film's most famous actors on it.
• Awesome, Dear Boy: Played straight with Stephen Merchant, who makes no apologies for the film and stated he signed on mainly to be around Halle Berry.
• Creator Backlash: With the exception of Farrelly, no one involved seems particularly proud of the finished product. At the film's premiere, the only actors who showed up were Seann William Scott, Chloe Moretz, Common, and Jimmy Bennett. Others, like Elizabeth Banks and Kristen Bell were going to attend, but dropped out at the last minute, with one magazine claiming they were "too scared". And if Scott's red carpet interview was any indication, it sounds like the only reason he went was because he was hoping to see Halle Berry. Hugh Jackman even went back in time to tell his younger self to not do this movie; and finally, James Gunn only did his segment because Elizabeth Banks convinced him to, and he didn't even get to edit his segment.
• Deleted Role: Several (see What Could Have Been). Also, Bob Odenkirk directed two segments that didn't make it into the US cut of the final movie, but is nonetheless still listed in the credits.
• Directed by Cast Member: Elizabeth Banks directed one of the segments, though the one she herself appeared in was directed by James Gunn.
• Dueling Movies: Another Anthology Film filled with Vulgar Humor, Vince Offer's InAPPropriate Comedy, came out shortly after this. The few who actually saw both films claim that InAPPropriate Comedy was somehow worse than this.
• Missing Trailer Scene: Several. The trailer shows more footage of The Catch (see above), as well as an entirely new scene involving a man motorboating a dead woman's breasts in the morgue (cut out from the film but occasionally shown at film festivals, the director doesn't show it much anymore after Anton Yelchen's death).
• No Budget: Despite an impressive All-Star Cast, Movie 43 was filmed on a $6 million budget.
• Not Screened for Critics: Though they panned it regardless, with Richard Roeper, in a review on Roger Ebert's website, calling it "the Citizen Kane of awful". He has mentioned in previous reviews that he had a special "memory erasing pill" he saved in case he saw a movie that was REALLY bad; this movie made him take it, and it didn't work.
• Playing Against Type: This may be the only time you'll get to see Naomi Watts dress up like a high school teenager and calling some kid "fuckface".
• Real-Life Relative: Two real life couples (at the time), Chris Pratt and Anna Faris, and Liev Schreiber and Naomi Watts.
• The Shelf of Movie Languishment: The film began production in 2009 and was intended to ready for a 2010 release. Then original distributor Overture Films sold the rights (and later had everything at the studio but the name sold) to Relativity Media, who continued to keep it in-and-out of production (missing a planned Spring 2012 date) until finally releasing it in 2013.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Farrelly wanted George Clooney to do a cameo as himself in a segment where he would be shown to be bad at picking up women. Clooney's response, reportedly, was "No fucking way".
  • Colin Farrell was originally cast as the Leprechaun's brother.
  • Trey Parker and Matt Stone were initially set to direct a segment, but later dropped out.
  • The framing device was initially supposed to involve three teenagers going on a treasure hunt to find the mysterious Movie 43 of the plot and the rest of the segments would be featured as what the characters thought was it but wasn't. It was eventually used in the international version of the film, while the U.S. version used the 'movie producer' version.
  • Sam Rockwell was originally attached to reprise Batman in the superhero segment (which was intended to be a sequel to the short film Robin's Big Date) but pulled out to do Seven Psychopaths instead.
  • Anton Yelchin had a sketch as a necrophiliac mortician, a role that somehow got even more Harsher in Hindsight a few years later when he died in a freak accident. The sketch was later uploaded online a few years after Yelchin had died.

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