20 Meta Facts About the Most Meta Movies
![20 Meta Facts About the Most Meta Movies](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/6/6/858366_320x180.jpg)
Today, the word “meta” is associated with the dumb dreams of billionaire weirdos who have already ruined social life, and now want to ruin it even more. But the prefix meta actually comes from the Greek word for “above” or “beyond”, as in the phrase “dude, we don’t care about ancient Greek, just give us the facts.” Sheesh, alright, we will – before that, let us go over the basics: meta-movies are movies about movies. In our current, originality-stifling, nostalgia-ridden times, we’re used to this, as we cannot watch a single rom-com or horror movie without some character calling attention to the rules of their universe, as in that Age of Ultron scene where Hawkeye said “boy, Phase Four sure is getting boring and overstuffed, uh?”. Well, something like that.
At the risk of repeating the point, though, things weren’t always like this. Youngsters with their Soundcloud rappers and climate anxiety will not get this, but we remember back when Pulp Fiction was praised (and criticized) with phrases such as “postmodern pastiche,” which was just fancy academia to say it was a movie built on references to other movies. At least in the realm of cinema, this was considered a novel idea. Yet Pulp Fiction wasn’t alone, as we will see in this Pictofact, nor was it a novel idea, as we will also check out. In fact, one could say fiction is always already meta-fiction, and that even the modern dream of stories about “external” themes or realities is already sustained by its own references to other similar works. So as we prepare “20 Insane Facts About Derridean Deconstruction (Because No, It Isn’t ‘Postmodern Marxism’),” enjoy this Pictofact on 20 awesome meta-facts about classic meta-movies.
Scream
![Meta Movies Scream Ghostface is not based on Edvard Munch's The Scream. The mask was widely sold long before Wes Craven's movie, and the designer has said it was spooky figures from 1930s Max Fleischer cartoons. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/8/7/858387.jpg)
More: How 'Scream's Mask Was Inspired By 1930s Cartoons (Not That Munch Painting)
Scream
![Meta Movies Scream The movie was inspired by a real serial killer. Danny Rolling, the Gainesville Ripper, also had daddy issues, stalked out college campuses, and posed his victims to maximize the shock factor. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/8/2/858382.jpg)
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
![Meta Movies The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent Young Nicolas Cage was based on a crazy interview he gave. Initially meant to look like his Con-Air character, young Cage was based on his shirt-removing, karate- chopping, high-octane 1990 interview with Terry Wogan while promoting Wild at Heart. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/8/5/858385.jpg)
Source: Screen Rant, NicolasCageOnFire/YouTube
Spaceballs
![Meta Movies SPACEBALL SPACEBALLS THE CEREAL 1 THE FLAME THROWER A CHILDRENS TOY' Spaceballs SPICEDALL 100 M The movie had George Lucas' blessing. Still, Lucas asked Mel Brooks not to sell merchandise, as it would look too much like Star Wars merch- so Brooks wrote the merchandising scene instead. CRACKED.COM HARE DE -](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/8/8/858388.jpg)
Spaceballs
![Meta Movies Spaceballs Nobody liked the costumes. John Candy was frustrated he couldn't move Barf's ears and tail himself, and had to rely on puppeteers. Yogurt' makeup gave Mel Brooks a severe allergic reaction. And Pizza the Hutt's costume included actual melted cheese, which gave the actor serious burns. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/8/6/858386.jpg)
Source: Looper
More: 15 Wild Behind-The-Scenes Moments From 80's Comedies
Being John Malkovich
![Meta Movies Being John Malkovich It just had to be John Malkovich. Charlie Kaufman didn't personally know Malkovich or anything, he just liked how the name sounded. And yet he wouldn't budge on his choice, even shooting down the studio's idea of turning the movie into Being Tom Cruise. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/7/7/858377.jpg)
Source: Screen Rant
Being John Malkovich
![Meta Movies Being John Malkovich Malkovich asked for Charlie Sheen himself. Malkovich's best friend was Kevin Bacon in Charlie Kaufman's original screenplay. But Malkovich said it was Sheen he'd actually turn to when in distress. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/7/8/858378.jpg)
Source: Screen Rant
Stranger Than Fiction
![Meta Movies Stranger Than Fiction Will Ferrell could actually hear the narration. Rather than having someone off-camera feeding him the lines he was supposed to react to, Ferrell was fitted with an earpiece so he could hear the actual narration recorded by Emma Thompson. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/8/3/858383.jpg)
Source: The Oklahoman
Wes Craven's New Nightmare
![Meta Movies Wes Craven's New Nightmare The movie was originally even more meta. Wes Craven's original plan featured himself playing himself, going crazy as Freddy was after him, and only able to stop him with a new Nightmare script. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/8/1/858381.jpg)
Source: Screen Rant
Wes Craven's New Nightmare
![Meta Movies Wes Craven's New Nightmare Reality itself got meta during shooting. The script featured earthquakes, and those scenes were actually shot. But then an actual earthquake hit California, and they included footage from the real-life disaster in the movie. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/8/4/858384.jpg)
Source: Wikipedia
Funny Games
![Meta Movies Funny Games The movie is intended to call out its own viewers. Director Michael Haneke wrote that the film's meta- observations on its own violence was to make a point about violence in the media-and how you just enjoy it passively like a douchebag. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/8/0/858380.jpg)
Source: Wikipedia
F for Fake
![Meta Movies F for Fake The movie was born out of a pile-up of fakery. While working on a movie about a forger, Orson Welles found out that the forger's biographer was a forger himself, having written a fake biography of Howard Hughes (who had inspired Welles' own Citizen Kane). CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/7/0/858370.jpg)
Source: Wikipedia
A Cock and Bull Story
![Meta Movies A Cock and Bull Story This is a meta movie about adapting a meta novel. The movie is so meta, it uses musical cues from the mother of meta movies, Fellini's 8 1/2. It also features a cameo by British media mogul Tony Wilson, whom lead actor Steve Coogan had played in 2002. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/7/9/858379.jpg)
Source: IMDb
The Cabin in the Woods
![Meta Movies The Cabin in the Woods The merman was the most difficult creature to make. They tried several methods, the final one entailing its actor laying still on the floor for 12 hours. They'd wake him up and tell him, it's time to kill. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/7/6/858376.jpg)
Source: Ranker
The Cabin in the Woods
![Meta Movies R The Cabin in the Woods The marketing was deliberately misleading. Marketing campaigns for quirky, unusual movies often drop the ball, but that wasn't the case here. Trailers sold the movie as straightforward horror, so moviegoers went in totally unspoiled. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/7/1/858371.jpg)
Source: Screen Rant
Last Action Hero
![Meta Movies Last Action Hero The writers hated the movie. Zak Penn and Adam Leff wrote a send up of the movies Arnold Schwarzenegger or Shane Black made. Then Black rewrote it, and Schwarzenegger starred in it with Penn and Leff disliking the result. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/7/4/858374.jpg)
Source: We Minored in Film
Last Action Hero
![Meta Movies Last Action Hero Charles Dance was a replacement for Alan Rickman. As Benedict was a similar character to Hans Gruber, Alan Rickman was approached about the part, but turned it down. Dance wore a t-shirt to set which read, I'm a cheaper Alan Rickman. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/7/5/858375.jpg)
Source: HuffPost
22 Jump Street
![Meta Movies 22 Jump Street The awkward fight was unscripted. Jillian Bell just went and tried to kiss Jonah Hill during the fight, and Hill's shocked reaction was real. Не tried to get cues from the directors just out of frame, but they were just giggling and loving it. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/7/2/858372.jpg)
Source: Film School Rejects
22 Jump Street
![Meta Movies 22 Jump Street 23 JUMP STREET MEDICAL SCHOOL NOVE SIT The credits montage could have been even more epic. Directors Lord and Miller thought of having Cate Blanchett appear as a follow-up to the carte blanche joke, but she was busy with other movies. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/7/3/858373.jpg)
Source: Film School Rejects
8½
![Meta Movies 8 1/2 The title is a meta-reference to Federico Fellini's work. This classic Italian movie about the making of itself was indeed Fellini's eighth-and-a-half film (sort of): he had directed six others, co-directed another one, and made two segments for anthology films. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/6/9/858369.jpg)
Source: Wikipedia