42 Fun Facts About Cast Away

In Cast Away, which holiday dinner is Chuck Noland called away from to catch his doomed flight?

Christmas: Chuck leaves the family table for a work emergency, hands Kelly a small box to open on New Year's Eve and calls 'I'll be right back', a promise that takes him years to keep.

When Chuck's friends hold a funeral for him in Cast Away, Stan puts CDs by which singer in the coffin?

Elvis Presley: Chuck is a devoted fan, and with no body to bury, his friends filled the coffin with a cell phone, a beeper, some photos and the CDs.

At the 2001 Critics' Choice Awards, Cast Away's Wilson was named Best what?

Inanimate Object: the critics gave the ball its own prize, and it earns its place in the script too, since it gives a man alone on an island a reason to talk out loud.

Where does Chuck live with his girlfriend Kelly?

Memphis, Tennessee: the city is FedEx's real home base, and the company lent the crew its own facilities there for the scenes of Chuck's return.

Who plays Kelly Frears in Cast Away?

Helen Hunt: she had two hits in cinemas at once in December 2000, and Cast Away opened by knocking the other, What Women Want, off the top of the US box office.

What does Kelly give Chuck before he leaves on the fateful flight?

Her grandfather's pocket watch: he had used it on the Southern Pacific railroad, and the photo of Kelly inside is Chuck's one reminder of home on the island, which he keeps for himself afterwards.

Where was Chuck being sent to resolve a FedEx problem when the plane went down?

Malaysia: Chuck is called there from the family dinner table, but his cargo jet strays so far off course in a Pacific storm that search ships spend weeks looking and never find his island.

Early in Cast Away, Chuck Noland lectures FedEx workers about the clock in which foreign city?

Moscow: Chuck tells the Russian staff that 'we live or we die by the clock', a creed the story then turns on him by stranding him where clocks and schedules count for little.

In Cast Away, whose body washes ashore on the island and is buried by Chuck?

One of the pilots: Albert Miller is the only other person from the flight Chuck ever sees again, and back home the company mourned all five people on board.

In Cast Away, which washed-up package does Chuck deliberately leave unopened?

The one painted with angel wings: Chuck carries it off the island and finally delivers it by hand, leaving a note that says the package saved his life.

In Cast Away, how does Wilson the volleyball get his face?

A bloody handprint: Chuck cuts his hand failing to light a fire, hurls the ball away in a rage, then draws a face in the print, and with his new companion watching, his next attempt at fire works.

What tool does Chuck use to knock out his rotten tooth?

An ice skate blade and a rock: the tooth was already aching before he boarded the flight, and with no dentist within reach he does the job himself, using skates from a washed-up parcel.

How long is Chuck Noland stranded on his island in Cast Away?

Four years: a title card jumps ahead to a gaunt, bearded Chuck spearing fish with ease, while back home his friends have long since held his funeral.

In Cast Away, what washes ashore and gives Chuck the sail he needs to escape?

Part of a portable toilet: the two plastic walls wash up just as Chuck has run out of hope, and he says afterwards that the tide 'gave me a sail'.

How does Chuck lose Wilson in Cast Away?

He drifts off the raft: Chuck swims after the ball until he is too exhausted to go on, then throws away his oars and leaves himself to the sea.

In Cast Away, who is Jerry Lovett, the man who takes Chuck aside at his FedEx homecoming?

Kelly's husband: with Chuck declared dead she had married and had a daughter, and Jerry is left to tell him that she could not face coming to greet him.

In Cast Away, what has Kelly kept all this time and hands back when Chuck visits?

His car: he had handed her the keys at the airport before boarding, and she never gave it up, so Chuck drives away from her house in it.

Cast Away's final scene finds Chuck at a crossroads in which state?

Texas: the sculptor whose parcel he has just returned stops to give him directions, and as she drives off he spots her logo on the truck and smiles down the road she took.

In Cast Away, which washed-up FedEx cargo does Chuck turn into rope for his escape raft?

Videotapes: Chuck unspools them to lash the logs together, part of the film's running reversal in which parcels that looked useless on a desert island end up keeping him alive.

Cast Away's island scenes were filmed on Monuriki, part of which Pacific country?

Fiji: uninhabited Monuriki is one of the last homes of an endangered crested iguana, and it has been a tourist attraction ever since the film came out.

Why did Cast Away shut down for a year?

Tom Hanks had to lose weight: he shed more than 50 pounds and grew out his hair and beard, while the director used the break to make a whole other film.

Which film did Robert Zemeckis make with Cast Away's crew during its year-long break in shooting?

What Lies Beneath: making the Harrison Ford chiller kept the same crew together through the long pause, and it reached cinemas five months before Cast Away did.

What does Tom Hanks say nearly killed him while making Cast Away?

An infected cut on his leg: Hanks took it for a sore until a doctor put him straight into hospital, warning that the infection could poison his blood, and filming stopped while he healed.

In early drafts of Cast Away, how did Chuck get off the island?

He was rescued by chance: Robert Zemeckis agreed to direct only once the script made Chuck choose between dying on the island and risking the sea himself.

Cast Away's screenwriter William Broyles Jr. had already co-written which earlier Tom Hanks film?

Apollo 13: the castaway idea was Hanks's own, and he and Broyles began working it up while making the space drama, years before a director signed on.

How did screenwriter William Broyles Jr. research Cast Away?

He marooned himself on an island: by Mexico's Sea of Cortez he struggled to make fire and crack coconuts, and in his loneliness began talking to a ball that had washed up.

Cast Away's Wilson happens to share a name with which member of Tom Hanks's family?

His wife: she is the actress Rita Wilson, but the ball was not named for her, only for the maker's logo printed across it.

Apart from Tom Hanks's Best Actor nod, Cast Away's only Oscar nomination came in which category?

Best Sound: the nomination suits a film whose long island stretch plays with no music at all, leaving the surf, the wind and one man's voice to carry it.

Who composed Cast Away's minimal score and won a Grammy for its end-credits theme?

Alan Silvestri: the film plays without a note of his music for its first two-thirds, a silence meant to deepen Chuck's isolation until he is off the island.

Which real-life company founder plays himself welcoming Chuck home in Cast Away?

Fred Smith: the founder of FedEx delivers the welcome-home speech himself, telling the crowd that one of the 'sons' the company had mourned has been returned.

FedEx paid nothing to appear in Cast Away, but what in the script made it hesitate?

A company plane crashing: FedEx had never had a fatal crash and was wary of planting the idea, but decided the story's can-do spirit outweighed it and lent planes, trucks and uniforms.

Which 2004 film reunited Cast Away's star, director and screenwriter?

The Polar Express: after carrying most of Cast Away alone, Tom Hanks played six parts in one film here, the Conductor and Santa Claus among them, through motion capture.

Cast Away was the third-highest-grossing film of 2000 worldwide, behind which two?

Mission: Impossible 2 and Gladiator: both earned more around the world, yet in North America alone Cast Away out-earned each of them.

Tom Hanks missed out on the Oscar for Cast Away, but which best-actor prize did he win for it?

A Golden Globe: he took the drama prize for carrying about two-thirds of the film alone on screen, much of it without a word of dialogue.

In FedEx's 2003 Super Bowl spoof of Cast Away, what was inside the parcel the castaway had kept unopened?

A satellite phone and GPS: the parcel also held a fishing rod, a water purifier and seeds, all waved away as 'just silly stuff', though the phone alone could have got him rescued years sooner.

An ABC executive's idea for a Cast Away-style TV series eventually became which show?

Lost: ABC chief Lloyd Braun's pitch in 2003 met what he called 'deafening silence', and the first script, titled Nowhere, was dropped before J.J. Abrams was called in.

Which NASCAR driver won at Dover in 2001 with a replica of Cast Away's Wilson riding beside him?

Dale Earnhardt Jr.: he had joked over the team radio that he felt like Tom Hanks out there all alone and should get a volleyball, so his crew painted one and hid it in the cockpit.

In Madagascar (2005), Alex the Lion echoes Cast Away by talking to which makeshift companion?

A basketball named Spalding: stranded on the beach, Alex snaps 'Shut up, Spalding!' at a decorated ball, which takes its name from the maker's label just as Chuck's friend did.

Which jam band introduced its song 'Wilson' with a Cast Away clip at Madison Square Garden in 2002?

Phish: the 'Tom Hanks' who then walked on stage fooled reporters as well as the crowd, but he was really the brother of the band's keyboardist.

Cast Away reunited Tom Hanks and Robert Zemeckis; which film had they made together first?

Forrest Gump: about a year after finishing it, Hanks sent Zemeckis an early draft of his castaway story, and the two kept tinkering with it for years before a frame was shot.

On the map Kelly kept in Cast Away, Chuck's island lay about 600 miles south of which islands?

The Cook Islands: Kelly never threw the search files away, and her map marks both where the ship finally found him and the grids where rescuers hunted in vain for weeks.

Whose hit does a jubilant Chuck sing as he feeds his first fire in Cast Away?

The Doors: once the flame finally catches he belts out their 'Light My Fire' while piling wood on the blaze, then shouts 'Look what I have created! I have made fire!'