Hi—last year, we did a fundraiser for charity, and I promised that we’d “never do something like this more than 1-2 times a year, at most.” We are now at that time. My cousin Victoria is in the midst of a truly awful situation with her daughter Eden, and she needs help. This is not a cause that will be fulfilled on its own. If you enjoy Trivia Factorial and that this newsletter costs no money to play along with, please consider, in lieu of paying for this newsletter, clicking the below button to learn more about Eden’s situation and contribute to her cause.
Below are six trivia questions. If you’d like to participate, you can either reply to this e-mail or submit your answers via Google Forms by using the button below. You can find our rules and guidelines by following this link.
1) The investigations led by high school students Peter Maldonado and Sam Ecklund into various low-level pranks form the basis of WHAT Netflix mockumentary that aired from 2017 to 2018?
2) The “Battle of the Palouse” refers to an athletic rivalry between Washington State University and WHAT other university, located in a city that is just a few miles away from Washington State University (and not the approximately 5200 miles that one might initially expect)?
3) It happened to Rome several times (including in the years 455 and 1527), to Constantinople in 1204, and to Fran Tarkenton at least 570 times. WHAT is it?
4) Girl with Balloon, Show Me the Monet, Girl with a Pierced Eardrum, Love is in the Bin, and the documentary film Exit Through the Gift Shop are all works by WHAT pseudonymous artist?
5) Kung Fu Records, an independent record label that was founded in 1996 by Joe Escalante and Warren Fitzgerald, has preleased albums by several punk-rock groups. Its best-selling release was the demo album Buddha by WHAT group that was recently reunited with vocalist and guitarist Tom DeLonge?
6) Someone spraypainted over the title of this newsletter and now no one can read it! We’ll get someone to clean that up, but in the meantime, WHAT is the theme of this newsletter?
Trivia Newsletter CLXI Recap
The following note was included in the prelude of this newsletter:
NOTE: The answer to each of Questions #1 through #6 is the title of a film that was nominated for (and may or may not have won) the Academy Award for Best Picture.
1) “[He] is a man of an angel's wit and singular learning. I know not his fellow[,] [f]or where is the man of that gentleness, lowliness and affability? And, as time requireth, a man of marvelous mirth and pastimes, and sometime of as sad gravity. [BLANK],” wrote Robert Whittington in 1520 of the author of the work Utopia. WHAT phrase has been replaced by the [BLANK] in Whittington’s quote?
This is “A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS,” about Thomas More. Your (slight) hint here if you didn’t know it outright was that the quote is about a person who is adaptable to different times.
Paul Scofield played More in the Broadway production of A Man for All Seasons, winning the Tony for Leading Actor in a Play for it, and then won an Oscar for Best Actor for playing the same role in the 1966 film, making him one of eleven people to win an Oscar and a Tony for the same role. NAME ANY of the ten other people to do the same. That answer is at the end of this newsletter.1
2) On the same day in 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down decisions in the cases McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky and Van Orden v. Perry, each by a vote of 5 to 4. In McCreary County, a certain display was found to be unconstitutional, and in Van Orden, a different display of the same subject was found to be constitutional. Displays of WHAT, specifically, were at stake in the two cases?
This is THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. So what made the case turn out one way in McCreary County and the other way in Van Orden? Become the first person to ever read a law review article by finding out here.
3) “The first time I didn't feel it, but this time I feel it. And I can't deny the fact that you like me...right now...you like me! Thank you!” These words were spoken in 1985 by Sally Field upon winning her second Academy Award for Best Actress (for Places in the Heart), and while regularly quoted, they are often not quoted kindly nor are they quoted accurately. Field’s mention of “the first time” in the quote is a reference to her titular role in WHAT 1979 film?
This is NORMA RAE. Here is a video showing part of that speech. It’s only a few seconds long. Take a look:
Because it was very important for society to punish a woman for daring to show a modicum of enthusiasm for a few seconds during the pinnacle of her professional career, everyone decided to pretend that Field said “You like me! You really like me!” and then mock her for years:
4) NAME the short story written by F. Scott Fitzgerald that is sometimes published as a collection that includes the phrase “and Other Jazz Age Stories” in its title. You could swear, curse the fates, but when it comes to the end, you have to know that the story is based upon a Mark Twain quote “to the effect that it was a pity that the best part of life came at the beginning and the worst part at the end.”
This is “THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON.” The question borrowed from a line in the film: “You can be as mad as a mad dog at the way things went. You could swear, curse the fates, but when it comes to the end, you have to let go.” At least, the Internet tells me that this is a line in the film, but I haven’t seen it. Maybe I’ll see it when I’m younger.
5) Neil Simon, Bill Withers, Malia Obama, Post Malone, Calvin Coolidge, Geraldo Rivera, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and (arguably) the United States each share WHAT six-word distinction; or, WHAT same name is the name of an autobiography by Ron Kovic?
These folks were, and that autobiography is, BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY. Here is, uh, a brief discussion of the pros and cons of a Fourth of July birthday that I found on Reddit.
6) NAME any of the sixteen films that could complete the theme suggested by the answers to Questions #1 through #5. Don’t answer yet! Here’s a hint so you can have a better chance: Two of those sixteen films won Best Picture; coincidentally, they did so in consecutive years.
This was a tough theme! Consider this newsletter my attempt at an off-speed pitch to try to draw a strikeout after throwing several consecutive fastballs.
Perhaps you don’t often check out our leaderboard via the link below. If you did, you’d see that one of our readers has gotten every single Question #6 correct since February 9th (that’s you, BJS!) and another has a similar streak since March 23rd (congratulations to ACH for that distinction). In the twenty newsletters between May 22nd and August 21st (what our leaderboard will call “Series 8”), four of you got all twenty iterations of Question #6 correct—the two aforementioned folks, MRS, and RY, that’s you! Congratulations to our high fliers and to all of the folks who submit answers; your participation is always deeply appreciated. We figured, though, that we’d start Series 9 with a steeper challenge.
The theme was that each of the films that answered Questions #1 through #5 contained one of the seven coordinating conjunctions (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so), in the order of the acronym that is most commonly shared to help folks memorize those conjunctions, FANBOYS. Thus, our first answer was A Man for All Seasons, since “for” is in that title, and our second answer was The Ten Commandments, since “and” is in that title. Having to know FANBOYS is tough, but it’s come up in LearnedLeague on two separate occasions, and more pertinently, in an edition of our newsletter last year. That means that you had to name a Best Picture nominee with “so” anywhere in its title. The consecutive Best Picture winners were The Sound of Music and, well, A Man for All Seasons, which would have been an acceptable answer. Dangerous Liaisons, Dead Poets Society, The Social Network, and Bohemian Rhapsody were some of the other possibilities for a correct answer.
A clue for you was that we used the coordinating conjunction we were looking for in each of the questions—this is why I made that strange grammatical edit within the quotation in Question #1, and why Questions #3 and #4 have arguably awkward uses of “nor” and “but.” There is no Best Picture nominee that contains “yet,” which is why Question #6 told you “Don’t answer yet!”
Your last clue was that the newsletter title, “Male Cinephiles,” was meant to make you think of FANBOYS, in the event that you already know that mnemonic.
Question #6 Leaderboard
The Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link.
The ten others to win an Oscar and Tony for the same role (we’ve listed the roles in parentheses) are José Ferrer (Cyrano de Bergerac), Shirley Booth (Lola Delaney, from Come Back, Little Sheba), Yul Brynner (King Mungkot, from The King and I), Anne Bancroft (Annie Sullivan), Rex Harrison (Henry Higgins from, My Fair Lady), Jack Albertson (John Cleary, from The Subject Was Roses), Joel Grey (the Master of Ceremonies, from Cabaret), Lila Kedrova (Madame Hortense, from Zorba the Greek and Zorba), Helen Mirren (Queen Elizabeth II), and Viola Davis (Rose Maxson, Fences).