“Pirates of the Caribbean” stars just shared the most incredible memories of the first film, especially the snacks!
It’s hard to believe, but it’s been fourteen years since Pirates of the Caribbean first hit theaters. What followed was one of the best and yet weirdest culture obsessions we’ve had in a while. Suddenly pirates were cool again! Who would have guessed? The latest installment in the series, Dead Men Tell No Tales, is out now. To celebrate, The Hollywood Reporter gathered some totally strange anecdotes about filming from the original cast. They interviewed actors Jack Davenport (Commodore James Norrington), Lee Arenberg (Pintel, the pirate who gets into shenanigans with Ragetti), and David Bailie (the silent pirate Cotton).
And what they revealed about filming was pretty crazy!
This makes sense when you think about it. Pirates of the Caribbean is a huge franchise. Besides that, according to the Hollywood Reporter, it’s shot on location. And that includes the scenes with massive ships, which are actually shot out in the ocean. There’s also so many actors in the movies, and countless crew members. There are bound to be some wild stories!
For starters, they had a 2 million dollar snack budget!
Davenport says that he once asked one of the caterers how much he spent on snacks, since there was a lot of them. The caterer said that it was technically unlimited, but it came out to roughly 2 million dollars! While this sounds nuts, you have to remember, food is the best morale booster. How many times have you felt cranky, and then were immediately cheered up by a good snack? Now multiply that by however many people were working on Pirates. Yep, snacks are pretty important!
Apparently, 240 cellphones were lost at sea during the third movie.
Their producer, Eric McLeod, once made a speech where he counted the extraordinary lengths they had gone to make the movie. He counted 700 cellphones, 240 which had met watery graves. 170,000 meals for the crew, enough rope to go around the earth five times, and enough gas to go around the earth 120 times. On top of that the actors revealed that every time they shot a scene on the ships, everything had to be ferried out. Actors, crew, equipment, and even the makeup trailer! Let’s hope they didn’t have to do too many re-dos!
Commodore Norrington was actually the one who “felt a little faint.”
Fans will remember Kiera Knightly’s famous running joke about “feeling a bit faint” in her corset. One time in the movie she actually fainted, the other time she faked it. Turns out that actor James Davenport was the one fainting in real life! He revealed in the interview that he actually fainted a few times on set. Which makes sense when you think about all the layers he was wearing in the Caribbean heat!
Everyone had to go to “pirate school”!
Of course all the actors in the franchise are talented. That doesn’t mean they know how to sword fight, sail, or fire cannons convincingly though. That’s where pirate school came in. They learned how to do all of those things under the careful guidance of Bob Anderson. If his name sounds familiar he’s the sword expert who fought light sabers as Darth Vader in Star Wars!
These anecdotes are all so cool and interesting. And they’re just making us even more excited for Dead Men Tell No Tales! It goes without saying, but we can’t wait to hear all the weird stories – or tales, if you will – that will come from that movie.
