Real Genius (1985) on Netflix

Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Real Genius (1985)

Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.

• Producer Brian Grazer remembers Val Kilmer bringing candy bars and performing tricks at his audition for Chris Knight. Kilmer remembered it differently: "The character wasn't polite, so when I shook Grazer's hand and he said, 'Hi, I'm the producer,' I said, 'I'm sorry. You look like you're 12 years old. I like to work with men.'"
• SPOILER

  To fill a house with popcorn for the climax, the production popped popcorn continuously for three months, treated it with fire retardant so it would not combust and covered it so birds would not eat it and be poisoned, then shipped it to a subdivision under construction in Canyon Country, northwest of Los Angeles.
• To promote the film, the studio held what it billed as "the world's first computer press conference", with Coolidge and Grazer answering journalists' questions over computer terminals relayed through the CompuServe online service.
• SPOILER

  The MythBusters episode "Car vs. Rain", broadcast on 17 June 2009, tested whether the film's final scene was possible. They popped a single foil-wrapped kernel with a ten-watt laser, then used induction heating on a scaled-down model house because no sufficiently large laser was available.
• The solid xenon-halogen laser that Chris builds in the film, while in the realm of science fiction, was based on a theory of the time, and through consultant Martin A. Gundersen, who played the math professor, Real Genius was later cited in an academic publication about the science behind such a laser.