Students compete to show off film knowledge

Movie Trivia Contest

Fifty students tried out for last Wednesday’s movie trivia contest,… Movie Trivia Contest

Fifty students tried out for last Wednesday’s movie trivia contest, and 16 were selected to participate, but only one walked out with a 15-gigabyte iPod.

In four preliminary rounds, three to four contestants, in front of a panel of judges, buzzed in to shout out the answers to movie trivia questions, which targeted information ranging from basic film knowledge to completely obscure facts. Audrey Hepburn’s name, in a question about “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” merited a quick response, while no one could name Mickey Rourke as “The Cook” in the 2002 meth-amphetamine film “Spun.”

The contest kicked off with the question, “In ‘Pulp Fiction,’ what did John Travolta say a Big Mac is called in France?”

Immediately, a contestant buzzed in with the answer, “Le Big Mac.”

Just a few questions later, a question concerning the license plate on the DeLorean driven in “Back to the Future” stumped the contestants, before the announcer revealed the dual meaning of the answer, “Outta Time.”

The questions spanned the history of the motion picture, with trivia ranging from silent films to 2003’s “Kill Bill,” which, along with other Quentin Tarantino films, was the subject of many questions.

Competitors anticipated the answers to many trivia bits, buzzing in before the entire question was read to gain two points. But in a number of instances, they were fooled by the tricky phrasing of the question and lost two points for each incorrect response to an unfinished question. If the students waited until the end of the question, they received or lost one point.

While a contestant blurted out “Psycho” immediately, in response to “What 1960 thriller was shot in black-and-white?” none of the four finalists could name Tippi Hedren as the lead character in “The Birds.” No finalist knew that “Johnson” was the last name of each townsperson in Mel Brooks’ “Blazing Saddles,” and answers for the first black person to win an Oscar included Denzel Washington, Sidney Poitier, and “I forgot his name,” instead of Hattie McDaniel, in “Gone With The Wind.”

Pitt Program Council film director Matt Foreman wrote 90 percent of the questions, with help from his friends and advisor. He organized the event for its third session, after Hanaan Sarhan founded the competition two years ago. The film committee budget covered the expenses of the prizes, with help from the Pitt bookstore in the form of the DVD player won by the second place contestant.

“We have a connection at Target that hooks us up, because the University gives them a lot of business,” Foreman said, referring to the DVD packages awarded to the third- and fourth-place contestants.