Up All Night! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Al Pacino

'Insomnia' was a 2002 psychological thriller directed by Christopher Nolan and featured Al Pacino, Robin Williams and Hilary Swank. The film took place in the very appropriately named town of Nightmute, a settlement in an area of Alaska where the sun shines right around the clock at certain times of the year. Unfortunately for California-based detective Will Dormer, played by Pacino, it was indeed the season of perpetual sunlight and this contributed to his increasingly severe case of sleeplessness. The film highlights how his cognitive functions start to degenerate and how a poor decision made in the foggy outback of the town is just as much to blame for his insomnia as the constant light.

By the time that Pacino featured in this film, the best of his career was behind him having previously starred in 'The Godfather' (1972) and 'The Godfather Part II' (1974). Pacino had also already picked up a Best Actor Oscar for his role as a blind ex-military man in 'Scent of a Woman' (1992). Robin Williams, Pacino's supporting actor in 'Insomnia', puts in a solid performance as the culprit of the crime that led to Pacino's character, who was being investigated by LAPD's internal affairs, being sent to Alaska.

Answer: The Machinist

Christian Bale's filmic representation of insomnia in 'The Machinist' was most shocking in terms of his body image; a woefully underweight state induced by long term lack of sleep. Bale's character, Trevor Reznik, worked as a machine operator but his increasingly fatigued mental state decreased his job competence and this culminated in multiple industrial accidents occurring due to his negligence, or at least blamed on him due to his weird ways.

The remainder of the film sucks the audience into Reznik's hazy view of reality; the director entering our minds and messing with our psychology - what is real and what isn't?

Answer: A Nightmare on Elm Street

'A Nightmare on Elm Street' was a 1984 film directed by the man responsible for bringing the 'Scream' franchise to our cinemas, Wes Craven. The film featured Robert Englund as the rather frightening Freddy Krueger as well as Johnny Depp, who made his debut in this horror, who played a student named Glen Lantz. 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' was just the beginning of a new horror franchise which spanned the entertainment media, including television and comic books; a remake of 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' was released more than a quarter of a century after the original, hitting the cinema in 2010.

Freddy Krueger terrorised a group of students whilst they slept, ostensibly in their dreams, or rather, their nightmares. When they awoke from the horrific world of Mr Krueger however, they found that what had taken place in their nightmares had physical manifestations in "reality". Would never falling asleep free them from Freddy's terror or will he never be escaped from?

Answer: Edward Norton

If Helena Bonham Carter is spotted in a film's cast list it is a safe bet that the film will be "out there". David Fincher's 1999 film 'Fight Club', based on Chuck Palahniuk's novel of the same name, is no exception to this; indeed it is very much "out there".

At the time that 'Fight Club' was released, Edward Norton was arguably at his peak having been nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1996 ('Primal Fear') and nominated for the Best Actor Oscar in 1998 ('American History X'). Norton plays the central character who officially, and rather unusually, has no name assigned to him (though Jack is sometimes used for identification). Norton's character suffers from insomnia and in an attempt to cure it he starts to attend various support groups.

There he meets a fellow "tourist" called Marla Singer (Bonham Carter) and they proceed to have a rather strange relationship. The film introduces us to Brad Pitt's character, Tyler Durden, a soap salesman and film projectionist who Norton's unnamed character latches on to. All that can be said without spoiling the film is that Brad Pitt can also be considered the central character; insomnia has a funny habit of presenting two concurrent realities, an awake state and an asleep state.

These states do however start to blur, a concept summed up nicely by a quote by Norton's character, "when you have insomnia, you're never really asleep... and you're never really awake". [Quote from Wikiquote]

Answer: Yes

'Night at the Museum' is a conceptually excellent film that really captures the imagination. It stars Ben Stiller, an overnight security guard at the American Museum of Natural History, a museum that really does "bring history to life". The film centres around the relationship that Stiller's character has with his family and the relationship he has with the overnight "residents" of the museum, in particular to save the museum from losing an important item due to theft.

The 2009 sequel 'Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian', which also stars Ben Stiller, expands upon this idea of nocturnal animated history but the focus moves from New York City to the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.

Answer: Lost in Translation

'Lost in Translation', directed by Sofia Coppola, was released in 2003 and was very well received at the box office (taking approximately $120 million) for a film with a relatively small budget of $4 million. The film stars Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson whose characters are staying at the same Tokyo hotel.

The two characters begin to bond over a shared feeling of discontent and they eventually decide to sample the offerings of Tokyo by night. Some of the themes of this film are insomnia, generational differences (Murray's character being quite a bit older than Johansson's) and cultural differences (two Americans in the Far East).

It is a film that doesn't really go anywhere in terms of plot but it is worth watching all the same as Tokyo provides an amazing backdrop.

Answer: Finance

In addition to Quinto, Spacey and Tucci, the film starred Paul Bettany, Jeremy Irons and Demi Moore. They were all involved in a financial decision related to the offload or retention of soon-to-be worthless assets; the firm's CEO, John Tuld (Irons), favoured knowingly selling off bad assets, the consequence of which would be the collapse of many of the buyers' businesses. On the other hand, one of the firm's most senior traders, Sam Rogers (Spacey), held reservations about this surely unethical toxic offload but realised the implications of holding on to worthless assets.

The firm had just one night to come to a decision, them or us.

Answer: Radio show host

Robin Williams played the part of Gabriel Noone, a radio show host broadcasting to the night owls of New York City, in the 2006 Patrick Stettner film 'The Night Listener'. The main focus of the film is a long-distance relationship he enters into with a boy from Wisconsin and his adoptive mother. Noone had recently split up with his partner, Jess (played by Bobby Cannavale), but they were still in contact with each other. Jess came to doubt the veracity of the various claims made by the Wisconsinites and even believed the boy and his adoptive mother to be the same person. Essentially, Gabriel believed the pair whilst Jess thought that the so called mother was making up the existence of an ailing child in order to gain sympathy - Münchausen syndrome by proxy but with a fake proxy. Gabriel Noone travelled to Wisconsin in order to find out the truth. What would he find upon arrival? Is the boy real or just a lonely and psychologically unstable woman's fabrication?

Answer: Tod Browning

Tod Browning's 1931 film 'Dracula' was an adaptation of a stage play which in turn was an adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel. Kentucky-born Browning was, in the nicest possible way, a bit of an oddball but it was this fact along with his outsider nature that made his horror films memorable.

Count Dracula is one of the most famous characters in all of literature; a vampire from deepest, darkest Transylvania who travels to England and terrorises the locals. Dracula was played by Bela Lugosi in the 1931 film version and he became associated with the character to such an extent that he couldn't break free from the horror genre thereafter. For me though, the best performance in this film comes from Dwight Frye, another actor who struggled to break free from the shackles of horror, who played a solicitor turned lunatic called Renfield. Frye played the lunatic very well, too well in fact, and his acting abilities in this genre saw him land a part in another 1931 classic, 'Frankenstein'.

Answer: New York City

As subjective as these matters are, the 1976 Martin Scorsese-directed film 'Taxi Driver' is often considered to be one of the greatest films of all time. New York City is the setting for countless films and considering that New York taxi drivers, in their trademark yellow cabs, are known the world over, the city seems the perfect setting for a film whose plot depends upon driving the streets.

The main character, Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), suffered from insomnia and so in order to pass the lonely hours of the night he got in to the New York City taxi business.

Whilst in the job, Bickle met a variety of people and took a particular liking to Betsy, a political campaigner played by Cybill Shepherd. In what has to be one of the weirdest ever on-screen dates, Travis took Betsy to watch a film which was rather explicit in nature, in fact it was pornographic. Needless to say this didn't go down well and their relationship struggled from thereon.

The rest of the film deals with crime, guns and prostitution, aspects of nightly life that Bickle observed through his windscreen.