3/84Movie theaters in the United States: 16,901
In the Soviet Union: 144,100
8/84Number of the six highest-grossing films that were made by Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, or both: 6
3/87Percentage of feature films made in the United States in 1986 that were shot somewhere other than California: 57
3/87Number of movie tickets sold in 1986: 1,030,000,000
Number of videotapes rented in 1986: 1,040,000,000
8/87Takes required to film Tip O’Neill’s Miller Lite commercial: 79
11/88Parking fees that Universal Studios collected from picketers of The Last Temptation of Christ: $4,500
10/89Amount paid at auction last year for the hat worn by the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz: $33,000
12/89Number of the 3 highest-grossing foreign films shown in the Soviet Union last year that starred Steve Guttenberg: 2
3/89Amount antique dealer Malcolm Willits received from the sale of six secondhand Oscars in the last year: $71,740
3/89Percentage increase in garter belt sales at Frederick’s of Hollywood since the release of Bull Durham: 15
5/89U.S. sales of licensed Roger Rabbit merchandise since the movie’s release last June: $200,000,000
1/90Number of times God was thanked in acceptance speeches at the Academy Awards in 1989: 1
Number of times Michael Ovitz was thanked: 3
2/90Rank of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, among Dan Quayle’s favorite movies: 1
3/90Number of times the phrase “do the right thing” has been used in Congress since Spike Lee’s film was released last June: 67
Number of times the phrase was used in reference to a congressional pay raise: 16
Number of times it was used in reference to racial issues: 1
3/90Number of shades of artificial blood sold by Cinema Secrets, a special-effects company in Burbank, California: 6
4/90Number of times George Steinbrenner has seen the film Patton: 15
7/90Sales of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles merchandise since the film was released in April: $500,000,000
Sales of tickets to the film: $110,000,000
2/91Rank of Abraham Lincoln, among the U.S. presidents most often portrayed in films: 1
2/91Number of false noses used by Gerard Depardieu during the filming of Cyrano de Bergerac: 100
3/91Ratio of the number of profanities uttered by actors to the number uttered by actresses in films released in the 1960s: 10:1
6/91Percentage increase, since Iraq’s defeat, in daily sales at the Frederick’s of Hollywood near Fort Campbell, Kentucky: 300
6/91Value of the jewelry Madonna wore to the Academy Awards last March: $20,000,000
7/92Chances that a teenage American male has seen Wayne’s World at least three times: 1 in 10
7/92Ratio of the membership of the Robert Redford Fan Club to that of the Mr. Ed Fan Club: 1:3
8/92Number of the 3 items looted from the Frederick’s of Hollywood Museum in L.A. last April that have been returned: 2
10/93Rank of High Noon, among Bill Clinton’s favorite movies: 1
3/93Number of bras on display at the Frederick’s of Hollywood Celebrity Lingerie Hall of Fame, in California: 16
Chances that a person who has not seen an Amy Fisher TV movie can cite a reason for the war in Bosnia: 1 in 3
4/93Chances that a film winning the Academy Award for Best Picture was released in the second half of the year: 4 in 5
8/93Days elapsed between the fire at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, and the first TV movie about it: 34
4/94Number of the Best Actor/Actress Oscar nominees since 1986 who played a mentally or physically disabled person: 9
4/94Number of movie deals proposed to Nancy Kerrigan in the week after she was assaulted in January: 35
5/94Number of students enrolled this term in “The Films of Keanu Reeves,” a course offered at a Pasadena arts college: 15
5/94Number of films designated as compulsory viewing for Beijing school children by the Chinese government last fall: 34
8/94Number of writers who contributed to the screenplay of The Flintstones: 32
8/94Chances that an actor who played a Munchkin in The Wizard of Oz is still alive: 1 in 7
1/95Number of boys who have auditioned to play Howard Stern as a child in his autobiographical film, Private Parts: 320
4/95Ratio of the number of G-rated feature films released by U.S. studios in 1988 to the number released last year: 2:5
5/95Price of a floral dress worn by Marilyn Monroe in her last film, from Norma’s Jeans of Maryland: $35,000
8/95Estimated number of killings in True Lies, a film Bob Dole cited in March as among those “most friendly to the family”: 94
Amount of the $21,000 in contributions Bob Dole has received from Time Warner since 1987 that he plans to return: 0
Minutes of airtime C-SPAN devoted in June to a National Press Club discussion of Dole by Siskel and Ebert: 64
10/96Number of Hollywood movies released since last October in which a fictional U.S. president is one of the characters: 4
Number of these in which the first lady is already dead or is killed in the movie: 3
Number of Hollywood’s 100 top-grossing actors who are: 0
11/96Year in which California Rep. Bob Dornan starred in the Hollywood war film The Starfighters: 1964
11/96Number of years Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl has been a member of Greenpeace: 5
3/96Ratio of aerospace jobs lost in California last year to the number of new jobs in the film industry: 1:2
3/96Average age at which an actress won an Academy Award for a leading role during the 1980s: 40
4/96Estimated nightly attendance last April at a Maryland “drive-through theater” re-enactment of the crucifixion: 4,000
4/96Price paid at auction last June for the two fiberglass tablets used in the 1956 film The Ten Commandments: $81,700
6/96Number of pounds John Candy’s Canadian Bacon body double has lost in the two years since Candy’s death: 243
6/96Ratio of the number of biographies of Quentin Tarantino to the number of films he has directed: 3:2.25
10/97Change since June 28 in the number of feet between Mike Tyson and Hannibal Lecter at Hollywood’s wax museum: -68
3/97Average number of 101 Dalmatians products introduced each day since the film’s release last winter: 380
7/97Ratio of the budget of the film Volcano to the property damage caused by the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helen’s: 1:1
7/97Rank of chicken feet among Chinese moviegoers’ favorite snacks: 1
8/97Number of films to be released by the end of the year in which Larry King plays himself: 8
11/98Portion of the $19.98 price of a video of President Kennedy’s 1963 assassination that goes to the Zapruder family: 1/5
Percentage by which Abraham Zapruder underreported his initial profits from the film to the Warren Commission in 1964: 50
12/98Chances that a U.S. film with male Arab or Muslim characters depicts them as greedy, violent, or dishonest: 19 in 20
3/98Ratio of the duration of the sinking of the Titanic to the duration of last year’s film about the incident: 4:5
11/99Number of months that a Christian group has trained a camera on Jerusalem’s Golden Gate, hoping to film Christ’s return: 7
11/99Number of films about Y2K disasters that Hollywood studios are planning to release in the next four months: 0
2/99Percentage by which box-office receipts at theaters running the new Star Wars trailer rose on the day of its appearance: 25
Portion of the audience at New York’s Ziegfeld Theatre that day who left before the feature film began: 1/3
3/02Years by which the average life span of an Oscar-winning screenwriter is shorter than that of one merely nominated: 3.6
5/02Number of times Marlboro cigarettes appear or are mentioned in the film In the Bedroom: 5
Number of product-placement deals the film’s producers made with Marlboro’s manufacturer: 0
8/02Price a Las Vegas filmmaker charges through his website for a film of homeless men fighting each other: $19.95
6/03Ratio of the top weekly fee paid a Munchkin in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz to the weekly fee paid for Toto: 4:5
6/03Last year in which no film, screenplay, or performance relating to mental illness was nominated for an Oscar: 1953
9/03Number of females on the American Film Institute’s list of the fifty greatest movie villains, aliens included: 15
Number on its list of the fifty greatest movie heroes, Lassie included: 7
7/04Average number of “smoking incidents” per hour in major U.S. films in 1950 and 2002, respectively: 10.7, 10.9
7/04Percentage by which average earnings of a major U.S. film with no sex in 2003 exceeded those of one with graphic sex: 120
12/05Number of homeless San Franciscans hired to be extras in a movie with Will Smith as a formerly homeless millionaire: 250
Amount they were paid hourly: $8.62
1/07Annual budget of Miami’s police department, expressed as a percentage of the production cost of the film Miami Vice: 83