Love is in the air...

Love is in the air...

Valentine's Day - from the heart facts about Romance Movies

With Valentine’s day coming up in the calendar, we thought we’d share some unusual cinematic facts about some of the greatest romance movies. Here are some interesting 'did-you-know's' to whisper in the the ear of your Valentine...

Titanic's most famous line was improvised -

When Leonardo DiCaprio climbed onto the bow of the ship in Titanic, he improvised the line, “I'm the king of the world!” Director James Cameron liked the line so much that he kept it in the movie. It became the #100 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest movie quotes.

Cameron Diaz worried that the "hair gel scene" in There’s Something About Mary could ruin her acting career -

she feared that the audience would be too disgusted to laugh. With those concerns in mind, another version of the scene was shot without anything in her hair. Once the viewers at a test screening laughed loudly at the scene with Ted’s product in Mary’s hair, Diaz was okay with it.

The fight scene between Hugh Grant and Colin Firth in Bridget Jones’s Diary was not choreographed -

“No stunt coordinators. No elaborate choreography,” writer Denise Martin recalled. “Just a perfectly realised wimp brawl between two upper-middle-class Englishmen coming to awkward fisticuffs in front of a Greek restaurant.”

Julia Roberts turned down the lead in several big romance movies -

Following her success in the starring role of’ Pretty Woman' Julia Roberts could have cornered the romantic comedy market all by herself, but she turned down roles in 'Sleepless in Seattle', 'Shakespeare in Love' and 'While You Were Sleeping'.

Love Actually's airport opening and closing was shot with hidden cameras -

The footage of passengers being welcomed and embraced by loved ones at Heathrow Airport that opens and closes Love Actually was shot on location with hidden cameras for a week. Writer-director Richard Curtis explained that when something special was caught on camera, a crew member would race out to have people sign a waiver so the moment might be included in the film.
Curtis said that watching the love expressed at the arrival gate of LAX is what inspired him to write the romance in the first place.

Ghost made Demi Moore the highest-paid actress at the time -

She also went on to became a pioneer for other actresses by being the first female lead to demand the same salary, benefits and billing as her male counterparts. After the $200 million domestic gross of Ghost, Demi Moore hit box office gold with a trio of other massive film hits: 1992’s A Few Good Men ($141,340,178), 1993’s Indecent Proposal ($106,614,059), and 1994’s Disclosure ($83,015,089). If you add up all of Demi’s film grosses, it comes out to more than $1 billion. In 1995, she was paid an unprecedented $12.5 million to take her clothes off in the critically scorned Striptease.

The blue door in Notting Hill belonged to writer Richard Curtis

The exterior of Hugh Grant’s apartment in the film was once owned by screenwriter Richard Curtis. The home’s owners painted it black after the movie came out because they were tired of movie tourists, but the current residents have restored it to blue.

Affairs of the heart

We at Olaus Roe have had our own fair share of film and video relating to topics of the heart, albeit of the medical kind rather than the emotional! We have made several animations not just for broadcast but for surgical professionals.

In the a decade ago our camera crew travelled across France as they documented a charity London to Paris bicycle ride organised by Action Medical, many of the riders having raised sponsorship for life-saving heart organisations.

In the latter part of 2023 we filmed with the British Society for Haematology (BSH) and CSL Vifor organised by Bright Event Management. This was a discussion between healthcare professionals hosted by Cardiologist Professor John Cleland.

In this video a an old gentleman recalls how his dental check-up helped him avoid a heart attack.

And here some of our heart and blood pressure graphics produced for a C4 TV programme can be seen along with some of our other science and technology graphics And not just the heart, we can produce animation for any part of the human body in realistic detail or in a graphic style for those of of a queasy disposition!