"From Dusk Till Dawn" looked like a box office misfire for hot young filmmakers Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez when it was released 20 years ago this week (on January 19, 1996). But like the strip-club vampires who ambush the fugitive Gecko brothers, "Dawn" has proven surprisingly resistant to death.Despite its modest ticket sales, the bloody film became a cult hit that spawned a theatrically-released making-of documentary ("Full Tilt Boogie"), two straight-to-video sequels, and a horror series on Rodriguez's El Rey cable channel that will soon begin its third season. More important, it gave George Clooney his first big break in movies after his TV success on "ER." It also marked the first full-length collaboration between Tarantino and Rodriguez, and gave Salma Hayek the most iconic scene of her career, as a snake-wielding table dancer/queen of the vampires.
In honor of the film turning 20 years old this week, here are 10 things you need to know about this entertaining vampire flick.
1. "Dusk" was actually Tarantino's first paid screenwriting gig. It was commissioned in 1990 by makeup artist Roberto Kurtzman as a calling-card project that would show off his monster-movie makeup skills. For his effort, Tarantino received $1500 -- and Kurtzman's invaluable assistance, when Tarantino made his directing debut the following year with "Reservoir Dogs," in the notorious ear-slicing scene.2. The Gecko brothers' reptilian name should have been a tip-off that Clooney's Seth and Tarantino's Richie would be fighting vampires. After all, they're named after the bloodsucker-battling Frog brothers (Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander) in "The Lost Boys."
3. Earl McGraw, the Texas ranger played by Michael Parks (above), may not live long in "Dusk," but Tarantino and Rodriguez brought him back in "Kill Bill, Vol. 1" and "Death Proof."4. Scott Fuller's (Ernest Liu) "Precinct 13" T-shirt is an homage to horror director John Carpenter, a Rodriguez idol, whose early film "Assault on Precinct 13" is also the story of a siege.
5. Rodriguez shot many of the interior scenes in an abandoned Lawry spice factory in Los Angeles.
6. In an early draft of Tarantino's script, the vampire queen's name was Blonde Death. But when Hayek landed the part, the screenwriter renamed the character Santanico Pandemonium, after "Satanico Pandemonium," a 1975 Mexican horror film he remembered seeing on the shelves during his video-store clerk days.7. Producers initially didn't want Hayek for "Dusk," according to co-star and Rodriguez mainstay Danny Trejo; her breakthrough role in Rodriguez's "Desperado" didn't hit screens until just after "Dusk" wrapped shooting. In fact, Hayek didn't want the part either because she had a phobia about snakes. But when Rodriguez told her he was considering giving Madonna the role of the boa-wearing dancer, Hayek went to a therapist for two months to overcome her fear.
8. Rodriguez came up with an ingenious way of keeping the ratings board from branding the ultraviolent film with an NC-17 rating: He made the vampires' blood green. Apparently, buckets of gore are okay as long as they're not red.9. The film reportedly cost between $15 and $20 million to make. It earned back just $25.8 million in American theaters.
10. Clooney won the MTV Movie Award that year for Best Breakthrough Performance. Tarantino, however, was nominated for a Razzie for Worst Supporting Actor. He lost to Marlon Brando, for his flamboyant turn in "The Island of Dr. Moreau."
Anyone who thinks the Oscars are trivial, that they're just about privileged people who live in a bubble giving each other golden trophies, wasn't paying attention this week.
Why does it even matter? Because black people, like everyone else, want to see people like themselves on screen and hear their own stories told. Because people of color also buy more movie tickets per capita than white people do, so you'd think Hollywood would try to do more to cater to its customer base. Because the success of black stars like 
Special chutzpah points go to supporting Actor nominee 
Lee's behavior seems paradoxical, and not just because the filmmaker won an honorary Oscar last November for his groundbreaking body of work -- meaning that, had he shown up on February 28, there would actually be one black honoree recognized at the ceremony. But also because last year, when questioned about #OscarsSoWhite, 
No one calling for a boycott has been able to explain that; nor has anyone who is calling for host Chris Rock to step down. Even 
Under Boone Isaacs, the Academy has been working to diversify its membership for the past four years. And on Thursday came the news that 
Forget it, Jake, it's January.
But even the hit holdover movies, including "
Sorry, millennials, but it's true. Aside from "
Or "
Capitalizing on its 12 Academy Award nominations and its Oscar buzz, "Revenant" added several hundred IMAX and premium-large-format venues this weekend, whose mega-screen ticket surcharges should have resulted in a $20 to $25 million weekend. But not even Oscar attention, extra screens, surcharges, and proven box office draw DiCaprio could keep the film from losing 50 percent of last weekend's business.
At last, an Oscar shocker that has nothing to do with the racial makeup of 
Well, maybe. The movie did win a number of Critics Choice Awards earlier this month. The Broadcast Film Critics Association gave "Big Short" Best Comedy, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actor in a Comedy (for 
The Academy does like movies that address serious topics of historical importance. It likes them even more when they're hits, and to date, "Short" has racked up a respectable $57.5 million. (That's less than half of what "Revenant" [above] has earned, but it's still about double the earnings of fellow nominees "Spotlight" and "
Still, when the (blue) chips are down, is "The Big Short" really the kind of movie that the Academy wants to elevate above all others? After all, "Spotlight" is about heroic reporters taking on a powerful institution and uncovering terrible crimes. "Revenant," "
The math doesn't add up.
Really, the makers of "Panda 3" should be pretty happy with the movie's estimated $41.0 million take, even though that opening is on the lower-end of expectations. After all, it is a third installment and it comes nearly five years after the last one (an eternity for the kid-movie audience). That it did as well as it did -- debuting at No. 1, claiming the third-biggest January opening ever -- is a tribute to the strength of the franchise, the film's positive reviews, and the weakness of the competition. It's still the lowest opening of the three "Kung Fu Panda" movies, but the first two opened in the summer, not in the dead of January.
Imitating the successes of Januaries past was also a problem for 
Plus, "Jane" is competing not just with other horse operas, but also with all the Oscar-nominated movies that are dominating the art-houses because -- all together now -- it's January. And those movies are doing reasonably well. In fact, none of the holdovers in the top 15 slots on the chart lost more than 39 percent of last week's business. The fact that there wasn't a huge East Coast blizzard or NFL playoffs this weekend certainly helped, but still, such strong legs are a sign of good health for the box office overall.
"You talkin' to me?"
1. The script, by 
3. Before the studio signed De Niro, 
5. At the time, De Niro was still unknown enough to be anonymous as a cab driver. But one passenger, another actor, recognized him as the star who'd just won an Academy Award for his "Godfather" role and told De Niro he was sorry for him, since it was clear that even a recent Oscar-winning actor still had to support himself as a cabbie.
7. Travis was even more racist in Schrader's original draft than in the finished film. Initially, all of his shooting victims were African-Americans. But the filmmakers decided to make them white, lest the movie spark racial rioting.
9. For the role of Betsy, the campaign worker Travis tries to date, Scorsese initially sought a 
11. One inspiration for Iris was a real-life teen prostitute whom Schrader interviewed. He had Foster meet her, but the actress recalled years later that the two girls had nothing to say to each other. Still, the teen got a walk-on part in the movie as Iris' friend, whom Travis nearly hits with his taxi.
13. 
15. Scorsese (above) gave himself a cameo as one of Travis' passengers, the one who threatens to kill his own wife. He took the part only because the actor he'd cast, George Memmoli, had suffered an accident on another film set and was suddenly unavailable.
17. The most famous bit of improvised dialogue in "Taxi Driver" is De Niro's "You talkin' to me?" monologue in front of his mirror. There are a number of stories about where De Niro found the iconic line. One story is that he was imitating an underground comedian from the New York club scene. Another is that the phrase was part of a common Actors Studio acting exercise. But the best story came from E Street Band saxophonist Clarence Clemons, who taught De Niro how to look like he was playing the sax in Scorsese's 1977 musical "New York, New York." Clemons claimed De Niro told him he got the line from Clemons' boss, Bruce Springsteen, who supposedly used it as part of his own stage patter at the time.
19. The climactic shoot-out sequence was filmed over the course of three months inside a condemned New York apartment building. The famous overhead tracking shot at the end was accomplished by chainsawing a path in the floor of the apartment above, which made the crumbling building even more rickety and dangerous. Among those who helped Scorsese compose the sequence in the editing room was his pal, 
21. For the film's epilogue, when Travis becomes a media hero, Schrader said he was inspired by the fate of Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, who nearly assassinated President Gerald Ford and, as a result, landed on the cover of Newsweek. Little did he imagine that another would-be presidential assassin would one day cite "Taxi Driver" in turn as his inspiration. In fact, after Hinckley shot Reagan, Schrader said the FBI interrogated him, asking the filmmaker if he knew of any conspiracy that might link Hinckley and others who identified too much with Travis Bickle.
23. "Taxi Driver" cost just $1.3 million to make. It earned back $28.3 million at the U.S. box office.
Predicting the Oscar winners this year is a little like predicting the winners of the early presidential caucuses and primaries -- that's how wide open the field is in some categories, particularly Best Director.
And Best Supporting Actor? The SAGs gave the prize to 
The "Big Short" director may impress his fellow guild members, not just with his accomplishment, but also with his growth as a filmmaker (this is a long way from Will Ferrell running around in his underwear). If he wins, his movie will have won the Producers Guild (a near-certain predictor of the Oscar winner for Best Picture), the Eddie, and the DGA prize, and it'll be a near-lock for Best Picture and Best Director at the Academy Awards.
"Spotlight" is a conventional, visually subtle movie, lacking the apparent directorial flash of its rivals. Nonetheless, McCarthy's peers may recognize his achievement here, both in directing his A-list actors to give award-worthy performances and in telling a weighty story drawn from recent history. A DGA win would be a huge boost for the movie, which has been nominated by just about every awards group but has picked up major prizes only from SAG, the Critics Choice Awards, and the National Society of Film Critics. It might also be enough to halt "Big Short" in its tracks.
"The Revenant" still leads the Oscar pack with 12 nominations, not to mention its Best Drama victory at the Golden Globes. The Mexican director is clearly a favorite at both the DGA and the Academy, having won directing prizes from both last year for "
"Max Max" marks the first DGA nomination in the 70-year-old's distinguished career. His film won the top prize at the National Board of Review and the Eddies, as well as a Best Stunt Ensemble award at the SAGs. "Max" has 10 Oscar nominations, more than any rival except "The Revenant." A DGA win would still move "Max" to the front of the pack.
He's the Idris Elba of the DGA race, since he's not nominated for an Oscar. (The fifth Academy nominee is "Room" director Lenny Abrahamson, who's this year's Benh Zeitlin; like the "Beasts of the Southern Wild" director, he should consider himself fortunate just to be nominated.) He does stand a good chance at winning a DGA prize for "The Martian" -- he's 78, he's legendary, and he's been nominated for three previous DGA awards but has never won (he's never won a directing Oscar, either).
For a guy who starred in only three movies, 
3. Dean began acting as a kid on the farm. As he recalled later, "Studying cows, pigs and chickens can help an actor develop his character. There are a lot of things I learned from animals. One was that they couldn't hiss or boo me."
5. In 1951, Dean moved to New York, where he found work on Broadway and TV. Liz Sheridan (pictured), famous decades later for playing Jerry's mom on "Seinfeld," claims she dated and even got engaged to Dean during his time in New York. In 2000, she wrote a memoir called, "Dizzy & Jimmy: My Life With James Dean: A Love Story."
7. Dean famously enjoyed car racing, so much so that "Giant" director George Stevens banned him from the sport during the shoot. In a public service announcement Dean filmed two months before his death via a car crash, he urged young drivers to practice highway safety, saying, "The life you save might be mine."
9. Dean and fellow Method actor Paul Newman (pictured) often competed for the same roles; they even screen-tested together for "East of Eden." Among the roles Dean was attached to at the time of his death were boxer Rocky Graziano in "Somebody Up There Likes Me," Billy the Kid in "The Left-Handed Gun," and Brick in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." Newman ended up playing all those roles, and they made him famous.
11. Dean was not nominated for the movie he's most remembered for, "Rebel Without a Cause."
Sure, it's hard to guess which movies will be big enough draws to pull people away from their living rooms on Super Bowl weekend. But the studios were wrong about nearly every new offering this weekend, and so were the box office analysts.
Sparks, the novelist whose tearjerking romances have been adapted into such hits as "
So, why did "Pride" fail to crack the top five, debuting with just an estimated $5.2 million, less than half of what experts predicted? Audiences didn't think much of it, giving it an underwhelming B- CinemaScore. And critics didn't think much of it either, with its 41 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. James isn't really a box office draw; the success of "Cinderella" owes less to the "Downton Abbey" alumna than to Disney's brand and marketing. Period horror also hasn't been as big a draw lately as studios had hoped -- (cough) "
Which brings us to the other factor: maybe the idea of female-oriented counterprogramming on Super Bowl weekend is outdated. Aside from "Dear John," "Warm Bodies," and 2008's "
It's hard to think of a movie less suitable for Valentine's Day than "
1. Hopkins wasn't the first actor to play Hannibal Lecter; that honor went to 
4. After Hackman dropped out, Orion Pictures hired 
7. Hopkins also took credit for having Lecter dress in white. He thought it would look more clinical, and therefore more frightening. Part of his inspiration came from his own fear of dentists.
10. Paradoxically, despite all he brought to the character, Hopkins said he didn't feel the role was a challenge because it was all there on the page in Ted Tally's screenplay.
13. Harris based Jack Crawford on real-life FBI serial-killer profiler Jack Douglas. To develop his performance as Crawford, 
16. The skull that appears on the moth on the "Silence" promotional poster is not the actual figure from a death's-head hawk moth. It's a tiny reproduction of the 1951 photograph titled "In Voluptas Mors," created by Salvador Dalí and Philippe Halsman. It's a picture of seven naked women lying in a pattern to form the shape of a skull.
19. Clarice's monologue about the lambs was supposed to be accompanied by a flashback sequence of her childhood on the ranch, which the filmmakers were prepared to shoot in Montana, thousands of miles away from the Pittsburgh sets where most of "Silence" was shot.
22. The film cost a reported $19 million to make. It earned back $131 million in North America and another $142 million abroad.
25. Despite the back-to-back successes at the box office, and at the Oscars for "Dances With Wolves" and "Silence," Orion went bankrupt by the end of 1991. Nonetheless, the studio drummed up $200,000 in early 1992 for what turned out to be the film's wildly successful awards campaign.
How unpredictable is 
But does that mean "Revenant" is going to win Best Picture? Not necessarily, though the signs are encouraging. It has 12 nominations, more than any other contender. Besides the DGA, it won the Golden Globe for Best Drama. Star 
"Big Short" was the only other Best Picture contender even nominated for SAG's Best Ensemble award. It won the American Cinema Editor's ACE Eddie award for Best Editing (tied with "
That said, "Big Short" and "Spotlight" are more consensus-appeal movies than "Revenant." At Rotten Tomatoes, "Revenant" has a lot more negative reviews (50) than the other two films (29 for "Big Short," nine for "Spotlight"). And despite "Revenant's" multiple Academy Award nominations, its failure to win any of the guild awards except the DGA suggests that its support among the Hollywood craftspeople who make up the bulk of the Academy is broad but not very deep.