13 Interesting Facts About The Ocean’s 11 Films

oceans-11

The mention of Ocean’s 11 often has people commenting that the first 1960 version was by far the best of all, but did you know that’s definitely not what George Clooney thinks? Ocean’s 11 is known as one of the best gambling films of all time and if you have some time over the holiday period the following two sequels are worth a watch as well. Here are 13 interesting facts that you may not know about the Oceans trilogy.

George Clooney isn’t a fan of the original 1960s film.

Surprisingly, George Clooney believes that audiences only love the original 1960s film due to the cast members. It’s true that Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy David Jr are all legendary but the plot fascinated people at the time. In a 2001 interview with the Los Angeles Times, he commented that whenever someone says they love the original, he replies, “Have you ever seen it?”

Matt Damon filmed the Ocean’s 13 London scenes on his days off from filming The Bourne Ultimatum.

An inside joke in the third film can be seen when Damon’s character is on a street in London discussing his paranoia when the camera shakes, similar to how it does in the Jason Bourne films. This was a subtle reference to his involvement in The Bourne Ultimatum.

The cast had to accept a lower salary for the first movie in 2001.

As there were so many A-list stars featured in the first film, they all had to accept a lower pay check if they wanted to be involved. They all agreed eventually as they all wanted to be on the film together.

Brad Pitt ate 40 shrimp while filming for the scene where Rusty eats a shrimp cocktail.

It was actually Brad Pitt’s idea that his character should be eating all the time to show that the Ocean squad were pushed for time, meaning they had to grab food whenever they could.

The cast enjoyed gambling together off set.

George Clooney claimed that Matt Damon would win most often while Matt Damon disagreed and thought Brad Pitt was the ultimate winner.

Bruce Willis was originally supposed to play Danny Ocean.

Bruce Willis was originally cast as Danny Ocean but was later replaced by George Clooney due to a conflict of schedules for another role.

There are some key cameos in Ocean’s 11 2001.

Angie Dickson and Henry Silva made major appearances in the 19060s version as well as briefly appearing in the boxing scene in the 2001 movie. Director Steven Soderbergh also made a short appearance when we are first introduced to the character of Don Cheadle.

Director Steven Soderbergh originally planned to shoot the entire Ocean’s 11 movie in black and white.

Matt Damon asked for the Ocean’s 12 script to be changed so that he had a smaller part.

The actor was exhausted from just recently finishing filming for The Bourne Supremacy but the director denied his request. The script was in fact adjusted for Julia Roberts who had just found out she was pregnant with twins.

Brad Pitt liked to play pranks on the rest of the cast.

Before the filming of Ocean’s 12 began, Brad sent a fake email to the rest of the cast explaining that they should only refer to George Clooney by his character name of Danny Ocean or Mr. Ocean.

Sometimes, the director did not want to arrange all the actors so gave them the freedom to organize themselves.

This can be seen at the beginning when Danny Ocean is explaining the details of the scam to the rest of the group and also at the end when they are standing in front of the Bellagio Fountains. The director just advised them to position themselves where they saw fit and gave no specific time frame for the scene.

Don Cheadle was originally not listed in the credits.

This was supposedly because things happened behind the scenes that he was not happy about, so he asked producers not to include his name on the credits. Despite this, he still appeared in both Ocean’s 12 and 13.

There were 2,000 extras involved in the Ocean’s 11 boxing scenes.

 

Similar Posts

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.