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Life imitates art.
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00:00Coincidences are funny things. Cinema is most commonly a reflection of life itself,
00:05holding up a mirror to the defining life events that make us human,
00:09no matter what a movie's subject matter might be. But occasionally, films have beaten real life to
00:13the punch by accidentally foreshadowing it, from world-famous tragedies to events so bizarrely
00:19specific that the predictions are extremely difficult to ignore. Now of course, it's all
00:23pretty much coincidental, bar one or two cleverly educated guesses, but it's tough not to be stunned
00:28by how life appeared to imitate art with such an eyebrow-raising level of accuracy.
00:33So I'm Ellie with WhatCulture here with movies that eerily predicted things in real life.
00:37Liam Neeson losing his wife, Love Actually. In Richard Curtis's iconic ensemble rom-com,
00:43Liam Neeson plays widow Daniel, who is struggling to cope with the recent death of his wife while
00:48raising his stepson Sam alone. Daniel ultimately deems himself confined to celibacy, but at the
00:54film's end, he gets smitten with the mother of one of Sam's classmates. In 2009, some six years
00:59after the film's release, the film took on an unexpected relevance for Neeson, as his wife of
01:0415 years, Natasha Richardson, died unexpectedly following a skiing accident. The actor returned
01:10to shoot a short film sequel to Love Actually for Red Nose Day 2017, which he said caused him to
01:16reflect
01:16once again on his wife's untimely passing. Quote,
01:19"...plenty of times I've thought about this film and my own life. Love Actually, that's the way it is.
01:25That's the tapestry of life." Jack Nicholson's surprising parentage, Chinatown.
01:30The big twist in Roman Polanski's terrific film noir is that Catherine Cross is not merely the
01:34sister of female lead Evelyn, but also her daughter. As it turns out, Evelyn was raped by her grotesque
01:40land mogul father Noah Cross, resulting in the birth of Catherine. This pays off horrifically in the
01:45film's final moments as Evelyn is shot dead by the police and the villainous Noah gains custody of
01:50Catherine. Weirdly enough, Catherine's deeply icky parentage foreshadowed the film's star learning the
01:55surprising truth of his own birth, just as Chinatown was due to release. Time magazine called Nicholson
02:01to fact-check some information for a feature about the actor, where he was informed that the woman he
02:06believed to be his sister was actually his mother. A 37-year-old Nicholson initially denied the claim,
02:12but later learned from other family members that it was true. His mother got pregnant with him at
02:16just 16 years of age, to an unknown father, prompting June's mother to raise the child so
02:21June could pursue a dancing career. Thankfully, the circumstances of the actor's existence don't
02:26quite match Chinatown down to the grossest details, but the shared subject matter between life and art
02:31is nevertheless fascinating. The Beltway sniper attacks. Phone booth.
02:36Joel Schumacher's cult classic thriller stars Colin Farrell as a man who answers a ringing phone,
02:41only to find himself held hostage by the caller, who has a sniper rifle trained on him.
02:46Phone booth was shot at the end of 2000, but didn't end up being released in cinemas until
02:50the spring of 2003, due to the film's unexpected relevance to real-life events.
02:55From February to October 2002, John Alan Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo terrorize Maryland, Virginia,
03:02and DC by killing 17 random people with high-powered sniper rifles. By modifying their car to contain a
03:09sniper's nest in the trunk, the pair could surreptitiously shoot people through a small
03:13hole in the trunk without alerting suspicion. Six weeks after phone booth's September 2002
03:18premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, the pair were finally brought to justice,
03:23the publicity around which caused Fox to push the film back almost six months from its planned
03:28November release. Unsurprisingly, though, the press was still all too eager to compare the movie to
03:33real life when it finally landed in cinemas. Christopher Reeves' Paralysis Above Suspicion
03:39HBO's 1995 erotic thriller Above Suspicion stars Christopher Reeves as Dempsey Cain, a police officer
03:47who ends up paralysed from the waist down after being shot in the spine during a botched bust.
03:52Just six days after the film premiered on May 21, 1995, Reeves sustained a cervical spine injury after
03:59being thrown off his horse, instantly paralysing him from the neck down. The depressing irony of life
04:05imitating art notwithstanding, Reeves' injury received widespread media attention and only further
04:10fuelled the much-discussed Superman curse that actors who play the Man of Steel on screen tend to
04:16suffer major misfortunes afterwards. Sadly, Reeves passed away nine years later at the mere age of 52,
04:23though to many remains the most iconic and faithful screen adaptation of the beloved superheroes.
04:27The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal and the rise of fake news, wag the dog.
04:33Barry Levinson's political satire documents a sex scandal involving the President of the United States
04:38and the attempts of a topspin doctor and Hollywood producer to create a fictional war to distract from
04:44the POTUS's transgression. A month after the film's December 1997 release, allegations came to light of
04:51President Bill Clinton's improper sexual conduct with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, inciting a
04:57relentless media frenzy and leading to his eventual impeachment at the end of 1998.
05:03However, just a week after the scandal broke, Clinton's administration bombed a Sudanese
05:07pharmaceutical factory, which they claimed was being used to manufacture a dangerous nerve agent.
05:13The bombing was widely interpreted to be a wag the dog moment to distract from Clinton's personal
05:18foibles, while it was later confirmed that the intel on the facility wasn't solid. The film can also be
05:24said to have predicted the recent rise of misinformation, fake news, as evidenced by
05:29various political campaigns spreading misinformation through social media. In 2017,
05:34it was reported that Levinson and Robert De Niro were developing a wag the dog TV series which will
05:38examine the original premise through the lens of contemporary politics and technologies.
05:45Richard Donner's iconic 1976 horror classic follows an American ambassador coming to learn that the
05:51son he's been raising, Damien, is the Antichrist. One of the film's many memorable death scenes sees
05:57photographer Keith Jennings end up decapitated by a sheet of glass. Jennings' grisly demise
06:03unfortunately foreshadowed the similarly gnarly death of one of The Omen's crew members less than two
06:08months after the horror film was released. Two of the movie's special effects artists,
06:13John Richardson and Liz Moore, were involved in a car crash while in the Netherlands working on their
06:19next project. Richardson survived and went on to win an Oscar in 1987 for his work on Aliens,
06:25but Moore wasn't quite so lucky, being decapitated in the crash. But that's not where the creepiness ends.
06:31The crash took place on Friday the 13th of August, and the name of the nearby Dutch town? Omen.
06:37Ooh, spooky. Madeleine McCann's disappearance, Gone Baby Gone.
06:42Ben Affleck's terrific adaptation of the classic crime novel explores the mysterious disappearance of
06:47three-year-old Amanda McCready, resulting in a media frenzy as investigators try to recover the missing
06:53child. Gone Baby Gone was shot in the summer of 2006, and the film's marketing campaign ramped up
06:59just as four-year-old British citizen Madeleine McCann went missing in Portugal in May 2007.
07:05The eerie physical similarities between the movies Missing Child and McCann were noted by countless
07:11media outlets, not to mention the fact that Amanda McCready's actress had almost the same first name.
07:16Furthermore, the film's story depicts Amanda's mother as heavily negligent towards her child,
07:21reflecting the McCanns themselves being investigated for negligence after leaving their young daughter
07:26unattended prior to her abduction. The Tate murders Rosemary's Baby.
07:31Roman Polanski's unforgettable 1968 horror masterpiece follows a pregnant young woman,
07:37Rosemary, who eventually comes to learn that she was preyed upon by a satanic coven who drugged her and
07:42allowed the devil to rape her, leading to her birthing the Antichrist. Several plot elements
07:46foreshadowed events in Polanski's own life, namely the murder of his pregnant wife Sharon Tate,
07:52barely a year after the film's release by members of the Manson family. Elsewhere,
07:56Polanski and Tate relocated shortly before their pregnancy, just as Rosemary and her husband did.
08:01There were even theories at the time that Polanski struck a deal with the devil,
08:05sacrificing his wife and unborn son in exchange for a prosperous filmmaking career.
08:10I mean, that's utterly ridiculous, isn't it?
08:12The Decline of Detroit – Robocop 1 and 2 The masterful 1987 action satire Robocop takes place in
08:19a dystopian future Detroit, where financial ruin and high crime rates have turned the city into a
08:25barren cesspool. As a result, the government is forced to get in bed with a corporation,
08:30OCP, giving them complete control of Detroit's police force and allowing them to effectively
08:35gentrify the city's most run-down areas into a desirable new neighbourhood, Delta City.
08:40The latter plot point is further explored in Robocop 2, where Detroit ultimately ends up
08:45going bankrupt. In fairness, Detroit wasn't exactly in sterling shape prior to Robocop's release,
08:51but its decline picked up significantly in the years following. 1991 saw crime rates for the city peak,
08:57tourism dropped off dramatically, unemployment rose, and urban blight reached unprecedented levels.
09:03Granted, the city of Detroit never partnered up with a conglomerate in a desperate bid to better
09:07itself, but in Robocop, that's ultimately a heightened expression of Detroit's destitution.
09:12Still no Robocops, though. The Three Mile Island Accident – The China Syndrome
09:17This Oscar-nominated 1979 thriller follows news reporter Kimberly Wells and her cameraman,
09:23Richard Adams, as they witness safety cover-ups at a nuclear power plant that only narrowly avoids
09:28a meltdown. Just 12 days after the film hit cinemas, the Three Mile Island Accident occurred,
09:34where a Pennsylvania nuclear reactor sustained a partial meltdown caused by operational failures
09:40and human error. And to this day, there continues to be suspicion about how much of the catastrophe's
09:45true effects were actually made public. To their credit, Columbia Pictures removed the film from
09:50some regional markets so as not to appear to be crassly exploiting the tragedy, though the incident
09:55unquestionably helped boost its box office.
09:57So now I'm working with the Paige.
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