Fascinating trivia from John Carpenter’s The Thing

Very often while I watch a movie, I check the Trivia part on IMDb. If it is hard to know if it is properly fact-checked or not, there are so many interesting little things listed on those pages.

As I watched one more time the brilliant The Thing — one of my favourite movies — I found a few gems out of its trivia page:

There is a character name “Mac” and another named “Windows”; since the film was made in 1982, this is purely coincidental.

Nick Nolte turned down the role of MacReady, as did Jeff Bridges. Harrison Ford and Clint Eastwood were both considered. On top of this, a relatively unknown Fred Ward campaigned for the role.

This movie has become part of the culture in Antarctica. It is a long standing tradition in all British Antarctic research stations to watch The Thing (1982) as part of their Midwinter feast and celebration held every June 21.

And the best IMHO:

Sound editor, Colin Mouat achieved the dogs cries in the film by rounding up all the neighborhood dogs, placing them in his house and furtively stalking round the house in a dark trench coat with the collar up whilst tapping on windows and rattling doors to frighten them.

And finally, and I like this one because it goes perfectly with what I wrote reviewing the movie for Letterboxd:

The Norwegian dog in the film was named Jed. He was a half wolf/half malamute breed. Jed was an excellent animal actor, never looking at the camera, the dolly or the crew members.

Excellent animal actor? Try excellent actor.