Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  THE SALESMAN

  If The Godfather had a shot at becoming a good movie, it was a very long shot indeed. Robert Evans, Paramount’s vice president in charge of production, wasn’t sure he wanted Francis Ford Coppola for the director’s job, and Coppola was willing to do it only if he got a big enough budget to direct the film that he wanted to direct: a period piece, shot on location in the United States and Sicily, and faithful to the novel.

  If you could boil Coppola’s entire career down to the single moment that put him on the path to his future successes, it must have been the meeting he had with Evans and Stanley Jaffe, the president of Paramount, to win final approval to direct The Godfather. When producer Albert Ruddy picked Coppola up at the airport to take him to the meeting, he peppered the young director with all the arguments the studio heads were going to need to hear: He could finish the picture on time, he could keep within the budget, etc.

  Coppola considered all this and then decided to go his own way.

  REVERSAL OF FORTUNE

  Rather than talk about schedules and finances, as soon as the meeting began, Coppola launched into a vivid and passionate description of the characters and the story as he thought they should be portrayed. “Ten minutes into the meeting he was up on the f*#$%ing table, giving one of the great sales jobs of all time for the film as he saw it,” Ruddy told Harlan Lebo in The Godfather Legacy. “That was the first time I had ever seen the Francis the world got to know—a bigger-than-life character. They couldn’t believe what they were hearing—it was phenomenal.”

  The average bank teller loses about $250 every year.

  Evans and Jaffe were floored. “Francis made Billy Graham look like Don Knotts,” Evans remembered. On the strength of that one meeting with Coppola, Evans and Jaffe abandoned the idea of a “quickie mobster flick,” increased The Godfather’s budget to $6 million (it would later grow to $6.5 million), and announced that it would be Paramount’s “big picture of 1971.”

  CASTING CALL

  Getting Paramount to take The Godfather seriously would come at a price—now that the studio had so much money tied up in the film, it was determined to oversee every big decision. Take casting: Even when he was writing the novel, Mario Puzo had pictured Marlon Brando playing the Godfather, Don Corleone, and Coppola agreed that he was perfect for the part. Though he was widely considered one of the world’s best actors, Brando had been in a rut for more than a decade; he had appeared in one money-losing film after another and had a reputation for being the most difficult actor in Hollywood. When he made his directorial debut in the 1961 film One-Eyed Jacks, his antics caused so many delays that production costs doubled and the film lost a bundle of money.

  Paramount had produced One Eyed Jacks, and it wasn’t about to make the same mistake again. “As long as I’m president of the studio,” Jaffe told Coppola, “Marlon Brando will not be in this picture, and I will no longer allow you to discuss it.” The studio wanted someone like Anthony Quinn to play the part; Ernest Borgnine was the Mafia’s top pick for the job (according to FBI wiretaps). Rudy Vallee wanted the job; so did Danny Thomas. Mario Puzo remembered reading in the newspaper that Thomas wanted the part so badly that he was willing to buy Paramount to get it. The thought of that happening put Puzo into such a panic that he wrote Brando a letter begging him to take the part.

  I’LL MAKE HIM AN OFFER HE CAN’T ACCEPT

  Coppola was as determined to get Brando as Puzo was. He pushed Jaffe so hard, in fact, that Jaffe finally put him off by agreeing to “consider” Brando, but only if the World’s Greatest Actor agreed to three conditions that Jaffe was certain he would never accept: Brando had to agree to work for much less money than usual, he had to pay for any production delays he caused out of his own pocket, and he had to submit to a screen test, something he knew Brando would see as a slap in the face.

  The Hollywood sign weighs 450,000 lb., an average of 50,000 lb. per letter.

  MAKING THE MAN

  Coppola gave in—what choice did he have? While all this was going on, Brando read both the book and the script and became interested in playing the part. Coppola didn’t tell him about Jaffe’s conditions; Coppola just asked if he could come over and film a “makeup test.” Brando agreed.

  At their meeting, Brando told Coppola he thought the Godfather should look “like a bulldog.” He stuffed his cheeks with tissues, slouched a little, and feigned a tired expression on his face. Then he started mumbling dialog. That may not sound like much, but with these and other subtle techniques, the 47-year-old actor turned himself into an old Mafia don. The change was so complete that when Coppola brought Brando’s test back to Paramount, Ruddy and the other studio executives didn’t even realize it was him. The “makeup test” closed the deal—Brando not only could play Don Corleone, the executives decided, he had to play him.

  GET SHORTY

  Coppola also had someone in mind to play the character of the Don’s youngest son, Michael Corleone. He’d recently seen a play called Does the Tiger Wear a Necktie?, a story about a psychotic killer, and he was convinced that the star of the play, 31-year-old Al Pacino, was just the guy for the part. Pacino was beginning to make a name for himself on Broadway, but he was still largely unknown to movie audiences.

  Paramount wouldn’t hear of it. Pacino was a nobody, the studio complained. The part of Michael Corleone was as big a part as Brando’s, and studio wanted someone with star power to fill it. Pacino was too short, they argued. (He’s about 5'6" tall). The son of Sicilian immigrants, Pacino looked “too Italian” to play the son of a Sicilian mobster, the executives argued. Dustin Hoffman was interested, and names like Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Ryan O’Neal, and even Robert Redford were also being tossed around. O’Neal and Redford didn’t look anything like Italians, but they were big stars. Paramount figured they could pass as “northern Italians.”

  So how did Pacino land the role? Part III is on page 508.

  Q: What is a paleoscatologist? A: An archeologist who studies ancient poop.

  BATHROOMIO READERUS

  Most people know that the Latin name Homo sapiens refers to human beings. But few know how names like that came to be. Here’s the Storius completicus.

  MAKING SENSE OF LIFE

  For centuries, scientists struggled with the task of classifying and naming the more than two million species of plants and animals on Earth. Beginning with the ancient Greeks, many attempts were made, but each naming system was too complicated for the average person to use.

  But in 1735, a Swedish botanist named Carl Linnaeus finally accomplished it. In his pamphlet Systema Naturae, he introduced the basics of taxonomy—a system that grouped and identified organisms according to their physical similarities and differences. His work has required alterations through the centuries to keep up with new discoveries, but it still forms the framework of the system used worldwide today.

  DIVIDE AND ORGANIZE

  Taxonomy divides all life on Earth into seven categories, called taxa, meaning “divisions,” beginning with the most general kingdoms. From there it divides all living things into smaller and smaller groups, right down to the most specific—species. The seven taxa: kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. (An easy mnemonic device to remember them: King Phillip Came Over For Good Soup.)

  Kingdoms: There are six kingdoms of life: Bacteria, Archaea, Protista, Fungi, Plantae, and Animalia. The first four are all microscopic organisms; the last two comprise all plants and animals.

  Every member of a kingdom shares only very basic physical characteristics. In the Animalia kingdom, every member is, among other things, made up of more than one cell, and reproduces sexually (requiring two individuals to make offspring). That’s a very wide and diverse group, including such animals as lizards, humans…and sponges. All members of the Bacteria kingdom, on the other hand, are single-celled and reproduce asexually (each individual can reproduce by itself).

  Tool trivia: The side of a hammer is called a “
cheek.”

  Phylum: Each kingdom is made up of several phyla. All organisms in one phylum share a basic physical design. For example, the phylum Chordata, which is in the kingdom Animalia, consists only of animals that, among other characteristics, have a notochord—a backbone—at some point in their development. This includes lizards and humans…but not sponges, which have no backbone. (Sponges are so unique that they have their own phylum, Porifera.)

  Class: Each phylum is divided into different classes, with members having more noticeable similarities. All members of the class Aves (birds), for instance, have feathers. And all members of the class Mammalia have hair.

  Order: Classes break down into orders. This is where animals such as primates and rodents are separated.

  Family: Families are yet again more alike. Dogs and cats are in the same order, Carnivora (the carnivores), but they are in different families, Canidae and Felidae.

  Genus: Genera consist of organisms that are now very much alike. Example: Cats are all part of the same family, but lions, tigers, and housecats are in different genera.

  Species: The last stop in the taxa line is species, and it has very detailed criteria. Members of the same species of animal, for example, must be able to breed and produce offspring that can breed. (Horses and donkeys can breed, but their offspring—mules—cannot. So horses and donkeys are different species.)

  THE NAME GAME

  Linnaeus furthered his contribution to taxonomy with the publication of his Species Plantarum in 1753. A guide to all the known plants in the world, it introduced “binomial nomenclature,” a Latin-based two-name system.

  Botanists were already using Latin names for plants, but they were often ridiculously long: Solanum caule inermi herbaceo, foliis pinnatis incisis, for instance, meant the “solanum with the smooth stem which is herbaceous and has incised pinnate leaves.” In other words: the tomato. Linnaeus knew his scientific naming method would have to be simpler than that to be universally accepted, so he shortened it to a two-name system for each species. (Today the tomato is known as Lycopersicon esculentum.) Linnaeus continued to use Latin because it was already the language of science, and because it was a “dead” language (no longer used by any culture), there was less chance it would be changed over time. His system was quickly adopted by the scientific community.

  What, nobody eats pie anymore? 99% of the pumpkins sold in the U.S. end up as jack-o-lanterns.

  THE RULES OF THE NAME

  The rules for naming new species can be complex, but there are a few basic guidelines:

  • The first word in a scientific name, such as Homo, is the name of the genus and is always capitalized. The second, such as sapiens, is the name of the species and is always lowercase.

  • Once a name has been recognized officially, it cannot be used for any other species.

  • Many species names are followed by an “L,” such as Rosa canina L (the briar rose, or “dog rose” in Latin). The “L” stands for “Linnaeus,” since he named so many species while devising the system of taxonomy. Though other scientists have species named after them, his is the only name designated by a single initial.

  CHANGING TAXONOMY

  Linnaeus’s system has been revised several times through the years:

  • Linnaeus originally designated only two kingdoms: Plantae and Animalia—plants and animals. What set them apart? Animals ate and could move; plants didn’t eat and couldn’t move. That worked for the visible world—but what about the microscopic world? Microscopes were still primitive in the mid-1700s. As they improved and more and more microorganisms were discovered, it became apparent that many didn’t fit into either category. Some moved but didn’t eat; some ate but didn’t move. And although this was known as early as the 1800s, the system didn’t officially change until 1969, when five kingdoms were accepted. (The sixth, Archaea, was added in the late ’70s.)

  • Linnaeus believed that all species were fixed, and created his system accordingly. But the discovery of evolution and later, breakthroughs in DNA studies, have revealed much more about the relationships of organisms—and created new problems for scientists. For example, the lungfish and the salmon have always been in the same class—Pisces—and the cow has always been in the class Mammalia. But the lungfish and the cow, it was recently learned, are more closely related genetically than the lungfish and the salmon. So how do you classify them? (Scientists are still working it out.)

  1 lb. of coffee makes about 50 cups of coffee; 1 lb. of tea leaves makes about 300 cups of tea.

  • According to Linnaeus’s rules, every name had to be in Latin and, in some way, describe the species it refers to. (Canis latrans, for example, is the coyote, meaning “barking dog” in Latin.) But this rule no longer holds. Any language can now be used, as long as the name is put into a Latin-like form. Greek words, proper names, and even sly jokes have found their way into taxonomy. For instance, Arthurdactylus conandoylensis, an extinct reptile of South America, was named after Arthur Conan Doyle in honor of his novel The Lost World. Some modern examples: a wasp named Preseucoila imallshookupis (for Elvis), three species of wasp called Polemistus chewbacca, Polemistus vaderi, and Polemistus yoda, and a trilobyte with an hourglass-shaped head named Norasaphus monroeae (for Marilyn Monroe).

  DECLASSIFIED

  • Linnaeus is known by four different names: Carl Linnaeus, Carolus Linnaeus, Carl von Linné, and Carl Linné. The confusion stems from the Swedish custom of taking a Latin name when registering at a university. Carl’s father, Nils Ingemarsson, made up the name “Linnaeus” when he was a student, and Carl used it as well. Carl later changed it to “von Linné” when he was knighted in 1761.

  • Linnaeus originally named humans Homo diurnis, or “man of the day.” He later changed it to Homo sapiens, or “wise man.”

  • System Naturae introduced a controversial method of plant classification: the “sexual system,” which organized the plant world according to the number a plant’s stamens (male parts) and pistils (female parts). This caused an outcry, with one rival, Johann Siegesbeck, calling the work “loathsome harlotry.” (Linnaeus would later name a small European weed Siegesbeckia.)

  Spongebob Squarepants creator Steve Hillenburg studied marine biology in college.

  RANDOM ORIGINS

  You know what these are…but do you know where they came from?

  WALLPAPER

  It wasn’t long after the Chinese invented paper more than 2,000 years ago that they began gluing pieces of it to the walls of their homes. Wallpaper was also popular in medieval Europe, where it was a cheap alternative to tapestries and murals. But these early examples were only imitations of the items they replaced, depicting scenes similar to those woven into tapestries and painted in murals. It wasn’t until about 1688 that wallpaper as we know it came into being: that was when Jean Papillon, a French engraver, invented the first paper with repeating patterns that matched on every side when the sheets were pasted next to each other.

  TUXEDO RENTALS

  Charles Pond made his living entertaining at London parties in the 1890s. He couldn’t afford a formal suit of his own, so he borrowed them from his friend Alfred Moss, who ran a clothing store. Eventually Moss got tired of Pond’s mooching and started charging him a small fee to rent a suit overnight. Today, Moss Bros. is the largest formalwear rental chain in the U.K.

  ORGAN TRANSPLANTS

  On June 17, 1950, an Illinois surgeon named Dr. Richard Lawler removed a kidney from a donor who’d been declared brain dead moments earlier and transplanted it into a 44-year-old woman named Ruth Tucker. Kidney dialysis had only recently been invented and was not yet widely available; for most people, failing kidneys were still a death sentence. A transplant wasn’t very promising either—doctors still hadn’t figured out how to stop the human body from rejecting transplanted organs. Lawler went ahead with the surgery anyway. The transplanted kidney did fail three months after the surgery, but not before taking strain off of Tucker’s remaining
kidney, which began functioning normally again. Tucker lived another five years before dying of heart disease; Dr. Lawler never performed another transplant. “I just wanted to get it started,” he explained years later. (The first successful organ transplant, between two identical twins for whom rejection was not an issue, followed in 1954.)

  Lights on, nobody home: Only 55% of Americans know that the sun is a star.

  GPS (GLOBAL POSITIONING SYSTEM)

  Not long after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, a team of American scientists monitoring the satellite’s radio transmissions noticed that the frequency of its signal increased as it approached and decreased as it travelled away from them—a classic example of the “Doppler” effect. They realized they could use this information to pinpoint Sputnik’s precise location in space; conversely, if they knew the satellite’s location, they could use it to determine their own location on Earth. This principle served as the basis for the U.S. military’s NAVSTAR GPS system, which became operational in 1993. The U.S. intended to restrict the system to military use, but when the Soviets shot down a Korean Airlines flight in 1983 after it wandered into Soviet airspace, President Ronald Reagan announced that the system would be made available for public use.

  DETECTIVE STORIES

  In 1841 Edgar Allan Poe wrote a short story titled “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” the first of three tales featuring the exploits of a French detective named Auguste Dupin. Why a Frenchman? Because detective work as a profession was barely 30 years old, and France, where it was invented, was still the only country that had detectives. “Each of [Poe’s stories] is a root from which a whole literature has developed,” Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle later acknowledged. “Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it?”