How Wolverine Was Stolen

Plus how to memorize your lines

Author

Steve
August 27, 2023

Happy Sunday Hollywood tech nerds!

Upcoming in this post:

đŸș How Wolverine Was Stolen

🎙 3 Actors Say How They Memorize Their Lines

🍿 Kernels: 3 links worth making popcorn for

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How Wolverine Was Stolen đŸ€Ż

In 2009, X-Men Origins: Wolverine was about to hit theaters.

But on April Fools, someone pulled a prank that would land them in jail.

On April 1, 2009, X-Men Origins: Wolverine showed up on FileUpload (pirated movie site) and was viewed hundreds of thousands of times.

Everyone was pissed — including Hugh Jackman. The movie that was shared wasn’t even done yet. He said “it’s like seeing a Ferrari without a paint job.”

Fox was even more pissed. They had a $130 million budget for the movie and now a shitty unfinished version of it was going around. They called in the FBI.

They quickly found the culprit: Gilberto Sanchez, a glassmaker and grandfather in New York. He didn’t even try fighting the charge. He said he hated paying for movies and wanted to help other people.

But everyone was asking how does this grandpa get a hold of a pirated movie. “Talk to the Korean,” Gilberto explained. “You keep following your leads and it’ll lead back to the warehouse.” Very cryptic, right.

Well, it turns out Gilberto was eating in Koreatown and someone walked in offering counterfeit DVDs for the new X-Men. Gilberto didn’t believe it was real, but the man showed him. So he paid $5 for the new DVD, watched it, and then uploaded it to FileUpload.

That upload got him 1 year in prison. Meanwhile, X-Men ended up doing fine hitting $374 million in the box office. But that still doesn’t answer the question of how the hell did this random guy in Koreatown get a hold of the movie?

The truth finally came out in 2019.

And it was tied directly to the owner of Fox, Rupert Murdoch.

Rupert was in town during a studio session and told the team he was going out with Hugh Jackman on his yacht during the weekend and wanted a copy of X-Men to watch together. They burned a copy and gave it to him, but forgot to delete it from the servers. Someone (no one knows who) must’ve burned it to a disc and the rest is history.

All because Rupert wanted to watch a movie with Hugh Jackman on his yacht. Happens to the best of us, right?

3 Actors Say How They Memorize Their Lines

Samuel L. Jackson

“During the week, I make flashcards. I pace around my house and drill them like some sort of ballet dancer learning moves largely because I don’t understand a lot of what I’m talking about because I need the muscle memory to be working.”

Jim Parsons (link)

Of course the guy who plays Sheldon drills his lines. What a nerd! 👏

“Your memory definitely degrades over time. It takes you a much longer time when you get older and you have to start earlier. I used to be able to do it the night before. It’s funny everyone asks ‘how do you remember things’. It’s the least important part of acting. The way you remember them is you feel them and understand them. So the process of understanding your character and what the scene is about is what helps you find your voice in the script. I have no memory for any numbers, my phone number, my address, I wouldn’t remember.”

Jodie Foster (link)

Well, that’s a tad worrisome if she really doesn’t know her address. 😂

“My everyday memory is not something I get paid to use. My paid-for-play memory is sharp as a tack. I’m from the school where if I read it 3 times, I know it. I don’t say the lines until the first time I rehearse them in front of the camera. Once you start movement, it’s easy to remember where you are when you say something. Shooting movies isn’t like doing a play where you need to remember something beginning to end everyday. A piece and a third a day, it’s a piece of cake.

Samuel L. Jackson (link)

Of course Samuel L. Jackson makes it sound so easy.

Kernels (3 links worth making popcorn for)

Here’s a round-up of cool links about Hollywood and technology:

Christopher Nolan says how to make a GOOD No-budget film. (link)

Samuel L. Jackson says memorizing scripts is “totally simple.” (link)

Bloopers in shows/movies that made the final cut: (link)