109 Fun Facts About Early 2000s

Which social network, launched in August 2003, was known for customisable profiles and musicians' pages?

MySpace was bought by News Corp for $580 million in 2005, two years after launch, then lost its users to younger rivals and was sold again in 2011 for about $35 million.

Which film won the first ever Oscar for Best Animated Feature, awarded in March 2002?

Shrek won the brand-new award at the 74th Academy Awards. Chris Farley had recorded most of the ogre's lines before he died in 1997, and Mike Myers then redid the part in a Scottish accent.

Who had a hit song in 2002 with 'Complicated'?

Avril Lavigne was 16 when Arista boss Antonio Reid signed her after a 15-minute audition; 'Complicated', her debut single, went on to earn two Grammy nominations.

What major global sporting event did Sydney, Australia, host in the year 2000?

The Summer Olympics opened in Sydney with Cathy Freeman lighting the cauldron; later in the Games she won the 400 metres in the same stadium, in front of more than 110,000 people.

Which company dominated the pre-smartphone mobile market with durable devices like the 3310?

Nokia began in 1865 as a pulp mill in Finland and later made rubber goods and cables before turning to phones; its 3310, announced in September 2000, became a byword for toughness.

Which social network, founded in 2004, was at first open only to Harvard students?

Facebook opened as 'The facebook' in February 2004; about 1,200 Harvard students signed up within 24 hours, and more than half the undergraduates had joined within a month.

Which of these EU members kept its own currency when euro notes and coins arrived in 2002?

The United Kingdom kept the pound under an opt-out written into the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, while twelve countries swapped francs, marks, lire and more for euro cash on 1 January 2002.

Which film won all eleven of its nominations at the 2004 Oscars, tying the record?

Return of the King won all eleven, matching the totals of Ben-Hur and Titanic; Peter Jackson had filmed the whole trilogy back to back in New Zealand in one long shoot.

Which company entered the console market with the original Xbox in November 2001?

Microsoft built the Xbox because Bill Gates feared a rival's next console would draw people away from Windows PCs; the name is short for 'DirectX Box', after the company's graphics software.

Which portable media player, unveiled on 23 October 2001, promised '1,000 songs in your pocket'?

The iPod got its name from copywriter Vinnie Chieco, who saw the white prototype and thought of the line 'Open the pod bay doors, HAL' from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Which singing competition premiered on Fox on 11 June 2002 and ran there for fifteen seasons?

American Idol was turned down by US networks until Rupert Murdoch's daughter Elisabeth, who had seen Britain's Pop Idol, urged him to buy it for Fox; ABC revived the show in 2018.

Wikipedia was founded in 2001 by Larry Sanger and which entrepreneur?

Jimmy Wales paid for it through his web company Bomis, as a quick side project to Nupedia, an expert-reviewed encyclopedia that had approved only about two dozen articles.

Which file-sharing service shut down in July 2001 after lawsuits from record labels and the band Metallica?

Napster drew Metallica's lawsuit after an unfinished demo of the band's song 'I Disappear' spread on the service and reached radio before its release; a court injunction forced the network offline in July 2001.

Which early social network, founded by Jonathan Abrams in 2002, signed up three million users within months of going live?

Friendster turned down a $30 million buyout offer in 2003, then lost its lead and was sold in 2009 for $26.4 million to a Malaysian company that relaunched it as a gaming site.

YouTube's three founders had all previously worked at which company?

PayPal made Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim wealthy when eBay bought it; they started YouTube in February 2005 and sold it the following year for $1.65 billion.

Which company went public in August 2004 at $85 a share, raising about $1.67 billion?

Google's founders had tried to sell their search engine to Excite for $1 million in 1999 and were turned down; five years later the flotation valued the company at more than $23 billion.

Which game came built into the 3310, the famously tough mobile phone launched in 2000?

Snake II shipped on the 3310 beside Pairs II, Space Impact and Bantumi; engineer Taneli Armanto had written the first phone Snake in 1997 after a Tetris-style game he planned ran into rights problems.

Which ultra-thin Motorola clamshell phone, model V3, became a must-have after its 2004 launch?

The Razr was launched as an exclusive, high-priced fashion phone, but price cuts turned it into a mass-market hit: Motorola had shipped 50 million by July 2006.

Which brand of handheld, later famous for its thumb keyboards, began in 1999 as a two-way email pager?

BlackBerry got its name because the tiny keys looked like the drupelets of the fruit; the first model, the 850, was an email pager, and a version that made calls did not arrive until 2002.

Which console, launched in 2000, could also show DVD films and went on to sell about 160 million units?

PlayStation 2 launched at $299 and played DVD films out of the box, which gave Sony a selling point beyond games; it stayed in production until 2013, six years after the PlayStation 3 arrived.

Which console of the early 2000s used miniature discs instead of full-size DVDs, so it could not show films?

GameCube games came on small proprietary discs with their own copy protection, so the standard console could not play DVD films; Panasonic sold a hybrid in Japan, the Q, that could.

Concorde was retired in 2003, three years after which airline's Flight 4590 crashed?

Air France Flight 4590, leaving Paris, ran over a metal strip that had fallen from another jet onto the runway; a burst tyre ruptured a fuel tank, and all 109 people aboard and four on the ground were killed.

Which 2001 invention, unveiled after months of speculation, grew out of Dean Kamen's stair-climbing wheelchair, the iBOT?

The Segway reused the balancing technology of the iBOT; investor John Doerr said it would be bigger than the Internet, yet by September 2006 only about 23,500 had been sold.

The Human Genome Project was declared complete in April 2003, 50 years after scientists first described what?

DNA's double helix was described by Watson and Crick in April 1953; fifty years on, the genome project finished more than two years ahead of schedule and under its $3 billion budget.

Which Mars rover landed in January 2004 for a planned three-month mission and kept working until 2018?

Opportunity outlasted its 90-sol plan by more than 14 years and drove over 45 km, until a planet-wide dust storm in June 2018 cut off its solar power; its twin Spirit had fallen silent in 2010.

SpaceShipOne won which $10 million prize in 2004 by reaching space twice within two weeks?

Ansari X was modelled on the Orteig Prize that Charles Lindbergh won in 1927; SpaceShipOne was retired as soon as it had won and went on show at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.

Which company's December 2001 collapse, then the largest US bankruptcy, brought down auditor Arthur Andersen?

Enron had been named America's most innovative company by Fortune six years running; then its hidden debts came to light and its shares fell from about $90 to under $1.

Which stock index lost 78% of its value between March 2000 and October 2002 as the dot-com bubble burst?

The Nasdaq Composite, heavy with technology shares, fell from a record close of 5,048 on 10 March 2000 and did not set a new closing high until April 2015.

The Osbournes grew out of the family's appearance on which other MTV show?

Cribs featured the Osbournes' home in one of its first episodes, and the response led MTV to give the family a series of their own; it began in March 2002 and became the channel's most-viewed show.

The survivors in Lost, which premiered in 2004, were passengers on which fictional airline's Flight 815?

Oceanic Flight 815's crash made Lost's pilot one of the costliest ever filmed, at $10–14 million; ABC chairman Lloyd Braun, who had backed it, was fired before the show reached the air.

Which director landed Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone from a shortlist that included Steven Spielberg and Rob Reiner?

Chris Columbus won the job with a two-hour pitch after Steven Spielberg dropped out; the author's own first choice had been Terry Gilliam.

Which 2001 film led the 74th Academy Awards with thirteen nominations but lost Best Picture to A Beautiful Mind?

The Fellowship of the Ring won four of its thirteen nominations. Peter Jackson had pitched the story to New Line as two films, and studio boss Bob Shaye told him to make three.

Which Pixar film became the best-selling DVD of all time, with over 40 million copies sold by 2006?

Finding Nemo grew out of director Andrew Stanton's childhood trips to the dentist, where he imagined the fish in the tank had come from the ocean and wanted to go home.

Where did Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl hold its world premiere?

Disneyland Resort in Anaheim is home to the ride that inspired the film, so the premiere was held there in June 2003; the writers had added the curse to tie the story to the attraction.

Dan Brown's 2003 bestseller The Da Vinci Code opens with a murder in which museum?

The Louvre is where curator Jacques Saunière is shot in the novel's opening pages; the museum later let the 2006 film shoot scenes on its premises.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq opened with a bombing campaign on Baghdad known by what phrase?

The air campaign was branded 'shock and awe', after a 1996 US doctrine of rapid dominance; the invasion lasted just over a month, and Saddam Hussein was captured that December.

The December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami came from an earthquake off which island?

Sumatra's Aceh province was among the worst hit; waves up to 30 metres high killed about 228,000 people in 14 countries, and the Indian Ocean had no tsunami warning system until one went live in 2006.

Which agency's director, Michael Brown, resigned two weeks after Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005?

FEMA chief Michael Brown quit on 12 September 2005, ten days after President Bush told him 'Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job' as criticism of the relief effort grew.

The 2003 SARS outbreak went global after an infected doctor from Guangdong checked into a hotel in which city?

Hong Kong's Metropole Hotel was where Dr Liu Jianlun took room 911 in February 2003; other guests then carried SARS to Hanoi, Toronto and Singapore.

The shuttle Columbia broke up on re-entry in 2003 after what struck its wing during launch?

A piece of insulating foam broke off the fuel tank 82 seconds into launch and damaged the wing; engineers asked for images of the damage, but managers judged the strike no safety risk.

Whose 'wardrobe malfunction' at the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show led the FCC to fine CBS $550,000?

Janet Jackson's exposure during her duet with Justin Timberlake drew nearly 540,000 complaints to the FCC, but its record $550,000 fine on CBS was later thrown out by an appeals court.

Which dot-com, known for its sock-puppet mascot, shut down in November 2000 just nine months after going public?

Pets.com aired a Super Bowl advert in January 2000 and floated the next month at $11 a share; by November the shares were below a dollar and the company was closing down.

The Crazy Frog's 2005 worldwide hit was a cover of 'Axel F', the theme from which film?

'Axel F' was Harold Faltermeyer's synth theme for the 1984 Eddie Murphy film Beverly Hills Cop; Swedish animator Erik Wernquist's 'Annoying Thing' frog used Daniel Malmedahl's engine impression.

Skype, released in 2003, was built by Niklas Zennström, Janus Friis and four developers from which country?

Estonia supplied the coders: the same programmers, among them Jaan Tallinn, had earlier written the file-sharing program Kazaa, and Skype reused its peer-to-peer design to carry calls.

Gmail launched on April 1, 2004 offering how much storage, a huge amount at the time?

Gmail's 1 gigabyte was more than 100 times what most free webmail services offered, so many took the April 1 announcement for a joke; engineer Paul Buchheit had begun the project in 2001.

Firefox was created in 2002 under which codename before its 1.0 release in November 2004?

The browser debuted as Phoenix 0.1 in September 2002, was renamed Firebird in 2003 after a trademark dispute, and became Firefox in February 2004 ahead of its November 1.0 release.

Windows XP was developed under a codename taken from which ski resort?

Whistler, the British Columbia ski resort, lent its name to Windows XP, and the theme stuck: the next version, Vista, was codenamed Longhorn after a bar at the same resort.

Grand Theft Auto III, released in 2001, is set in which fictional metropolis?

Liberty City is loosely based on New York, so after the September 11 attacks Rockstar delayed the game by three weeks and repainted its police cars, which had resembled the NYPD's.

Which boy band's album No Strings Attached sold a record 2.4 million US copies in its first week in 2000?

NSYNC chose the title as a nod to puppets cut loose, after a legal fight freed the band from manager Lou Pearlman; the first-week record stood for 15 years, until Adele's 25.

Which hip-hop duo won Album of the Year at the 2004 Grammys with the double album Speakerboxxx/The Love Below?

OutKast also topped the charts with a song urging dancers to 'shake it like a Polaroid picture', which led Polaroid to warn that shaking its photos could actually damage them.

Which rapper discovered 50 Cent's 2002 mixtape and signed him to his own label?

Eminem signed him to Shady Records in a $1 million deal, two years after 50 Cent had survived being shot nine times and been dropped by Columbia.

Which White Stripes single from the 2003 album Elephant became a global sports anthem?

Seven Nation Army takes its title from Jack White's childhood mishearing of 'Salvation Army', and its famous bass line is really a guitar dropped an octave by a pedal.

Which band's 2004 rock opera American Idiot was turned into a Broadway musical in 2010?

Green Day's album reached Broadway in April 2010 and won two Tony Awards; singer Billie Joe Armstrong even joined the cast at times to play St Jimmy.

Who won the first season of Survivor in 2000, and was later jailed for not declaring the prize money?

Richard Hatch won the jury vote 4–3 before 51.7 million viewers; after his 2006 tax conviction he was sentenced to 51 months, a term lengthened for obstruction of justice.

Which sitcom's finale, 'The Last One', drew 52.5 million US viewers on 6 May 2004?

Friends ended with its six stars each earning $1 million an episode, a deal they won by negotiating as a group; the finale was the most-watched entertainment telecast in six years.

Which online store, launched on April 28, 2003, sold more than a million songs in its first week?

The iTunes Music Store was the only legal catalogue with songs from all five major labels, after Steve Jobs won each of them over in 2002; at first it worked only on Macs.

Which 2004 handheld was first pitched by its maker as an experimental 'third pillar' beside its existing systems?

Nintendo DS was announced in January 2004 as an experiment, not a replacement for the Game Boy Advance; it went on to sell 154 million units and became the Game Boy line's successor in all but name.

Which country stunned hosts Portugal 1–0 to win the Euro 2004 final?

Greece, rank outsiders, beat hosts Portugal 2–1 in the opening match and 1–0 in the Lisbon final on 4 July 2004 with an Angelos Charisteas header, having knocked out holders France in the quarter-finals.

Which space station, the first modular one ever built, was deorbited in March 2001?

Mir was brought down on purpose once Russia's commitments to the International Space Station left no money to run it; a private venture, MirCorp, had flown one last crew in 2000 in the hope of saving it.

Which Hollywood action star became governor of California after voters recalled Gray Davis in 2003?

Arnold Schwarzenegger won a recall ballot that listed 135 candidates, and the Republican replaced Democrat Gray Davis as governor.

Which actress became the first African-American woman to win the Best Actress Oscar, for 2001's Monster's Ball?

Halle Berry won for her portrayal of a struggling widow, decades after Dorothy Dandridge became the first African-American woman nominated for the award.

Which baseball team ended the 86-year 'Curse of the Bambino' by winning the 2004 World Series?

Boston Red Sox fans had waited since 1918, and a graffitied 'Reverse The Curse' road sign in the city was left in place until the title came.

Which country won the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea, with Ronaldo scoring both goals in the final?

Brazil beat Germany 2–0 for a fifth World Cup title, with Ronaldo striking in the 67th and 79th minutes.

Which Saturday Night Live writer wrote the screenplay for the 2004 teen comedy Mean Girls?

Tina Fey got the idea from Rosalind Wiseman's self-help book Queen Bees and Wannabes, then pitched it to producer Lorne Michaels as a film.

Which Will Wright computer game, released in 2000, let players build homes and run the lives of virtual people?

The Sims was the best-selling computer game of 2000 in the United States, and by 2002 it had passed Myst as the best-selling PC game to that point.

Which cyclist's cancer foundation launched a yellow silicone wristband in 2004 that sold by the million?

Lance Armstrong set up the foundation in 1997 as a cancer survivor, and the Nike-developed Livestrong bracelet had sold 80 million by 2013.

Which Destiny's Child singer released the 2003 solo debut album Dangerously in Love?

Beyoncé Knowles won five Grammys for the album in 2004, tying the record for the most won by a woman at a single ceremony.

Which socialite moved to an Arkansas farm town with Nicole Richie for the 2003 reality series The Simple Life?

Paris Hilton and Richie gave up their cellphones and credit cards to live with the Leding family in Altus for a month.

Which singer-pianist's debut album Come Away with Me won Album of the Year at the 2003 Grammy Awards?

Norah Jones had already sold 3 million copies in the US by the night of the ceremony, and the Blue Note release was later certified Diamond.

Which California rock band's debut Hybrid Theory was the best-selling album of 2001 in the United States?

Linkin Park sold 4.8 million copies of it in the US that year, and it was still selling about 100,000 copies a week in early 2002.

Which That '70s Show actor created and hosted the celebrity hidden-camera prank series Punk'd from 2003?

Ashton Kutcher first planned a show pranking ordinary people, but a fake dead body stunt at a Las Vegas hotel in 2002 ended in a $10 million lawsuit.

Which Miyazaki film was the first hand-drawn, non-English-language winner of the Best Animated Feature Oscar?

Spirited Away also shared the Golden Bear at the 2002 Berlin film festival, and heavy campaigning by Disney lifted its profile in America.

Which American businessman flew to the International Space Station in 2001 as the first paying space tourist?

Dennis Tito paid a reported $20 million for nearly eight days in orbit, over the objections of NASA's administrator at the time.

Which Japanese car, introduced worldwide in 2000, was the first mass-produced petrol-electric hybrid?

Toyota Prius sales began in Japan in 1997, though in America it was the second hybrid on sale, after the two-seat Honda Insight.

Which country became the first new sovereign state of the 21st century in May 2002?

East Timor, officially Timor-Leste, chose its path in a UN-supervised referendum in August 1999, held under an agreement between Indonesia and Portugal.

Which Fox teen drama, launched in 2003, follows troubled teenager Ryan Atwood into wealthy Newport Beach?

The O.C. takes its title from Orange County, the Southern California setting, and ran for four seasons and 92 episodes.

Which Ricky Gervais mockumentary, first shown on BBC Two in 2001, is set at a paper company's branch in Slough?

The Office drew low ratings at first, yet it became one of the most successful British comedy exports, with Gervais starring as manager David Brent.

Which 'virtual band' of cartoon musicians did Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett launch with a 2001 debut album?

Gorillaz are fronted by the fictional 2-D, Murdoc Niccals, Noodle and Russel Hobbs, and that debut sold over 7 million copies worldwide.

Which talk-show host fronted the original primetime US run of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire until 2002?

Regis Philbin closed the original series with a retrospective in June 2002; producers felt a daily version taping four episodes in a day was not feasible for him.

Which quiz show, adapted from a British hit, did Anne Robinson host in NBC primetime from April 2001?

Weakest Link lasted little more than a year on the network, which cancelled it in 2002 with ten episodes still unaired.

Which Bungie shooter starring the supersoldier Master Chief was the Xbox's big launch game in 2001?

Halo is set in the 26th century, and with no online service yet, players had to link consoles at LAN parties to reach its 16-player limit.

Which Blizzard online role-playing game, released in November 2004, is set on the fictional planet Azeroth?

World of Warcraft arrived for the tenth anniversary of the Warcraft series and picks up about four years after Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne.

Which console, discontinued in March 2001, was the last home system Sega made before becoming a games publisher?

Dreamcast sales faded as anticipation built for the PlayStation 2, and Sega stopped after 9.13 million consoles and more than 600 games.

Which file-sharing protocol did programmer Bram Cohen design in 2001 to pull downloads from many sources at once?

BitTorrent spread so quickly that one study found it accounted for a third of all internet traffic in 2004.

Which fashion-doll line, launched by MGA Entertainment in 2001, took a large bite out of Barbie's market?

Bratz fared poorly at their May 2001 debut but took off that Christmas, and by 2006 an analyst put them at about 40% of the fashion-doll market.

Which low-carb diet's namesake company filed for bankruptcy in 2005, after its craze of 2003 and 2004 cooled?

Atkins dieting was blamed for pasta sales falling 8.2 percent in 2003, yet the company built on it filed for Chapter 11 in July 2005.

Which lifestyle mogul served five months in federal prison after a conviction tied to her ImClone stock sale?

Martha Stewart had avoided a loss of $45,673 by selling her shares in December 2001, and she walked out of prison in March 2005.

Which driver won five consecutive Formula One world titles with Ferrari from 2000 to 2004?

Michael Schumacher gave Ferrari its first drivers' title since 1979, and he finished his career with seven world championships and 91 race victories.

Which quiz and personality-test website, founded in 1999 as Emode, was merged into Monster.com in May 2004?

Tickle survived the dot-com crash of 2000 and turned profitable in early 2002, yet its new owner shut the site down for good at the end of 2008.

Which US state is home to Preston, the small town where the 2004 cult comedy Napoleon Dynamite is set?

Idaho is where director Jared Hess grew up, one of six boys in Preston, and he shot the film on location there in July 2003.

Which Yann Martel novel strands a boy on a Pacific lifeboat with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker?

Life of Pi keeps its hero adrift for 227 days, and the tiger's human name came from a clerical error that swapped it with his captor's.

Which England player's extra-time drop goal in the final minute won the 2003 Rugby World Cup final?

Jonny Wilkinson struck it with his right foot to seal a 20–17 victory, having kicked two drop goals earlier in the tournament to put England top of their pool.

Which Indonesian island gave its name to the tiny 'hobbit' human species unearthed in Liang Bua cave in 2003?

Flores yielded a skeleton about 1.1 metres tall, found by a team that was really looking for traces of the first human migration to Australia.

Which accountant won the 2003 World Series of Poker Main Event after qualifying through an $86 online satellite?

Chris Moneymaker was the first world champion to qualify at an online poker site, and the boom that followed was dubbed the Moneymaker effect.

Which speed skater won 2002 Winter Olympic gold from last place when every rival ahead crashed on the final corner?

Steven Bradbury was a 50:1 outsider, and his win made him the first athlete from the Southern Hemisphere to take a Winter Olympic gold medal.

Which director made Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the 2000 wuxia film that grossed $128 million in America?

Ang Lee shifted a usually male-centred genre toward its women, and the result became the highest-grossing foreign-produced film in American history.

Which Shanghai Sharks center did the Houston Rockets select first overall in the 2002 NBA draft?

Yao Ming became the first international player chosen first overall without having played US college basketball.

Which artist's 2000 single It Wasn't Me has a man asking a friend what to do after being caught cheating?

Shaggy plays the friend handing out the advice while RikRok voices the man in trouble, and the single reached number one in the UK and Australia in 2001.

Which band's debut single Mr. Brightside recounts its singer's real jealousy over a cheating girlfriend?

The Killers frontman Brandon Flowers based it on walking into a Las Vegas bar and finding his girlfriend with another man; it was one of the first songs the band wrote.

Which band's 2003 hit Stacy's Mom was inspired by a boyhood friend's crush on the songwriter's grandmother?

Fountains of Wayne cast model Rachel Hunter as the mother in the video; bassist Adam Schlesinger wrote the song, though the credit is shared with singer Chris Collingwood.

In Wheatus's 2000 hit Teenage Dirtbag, the narrator's crush unexpectedly invites him to see which metal band?

Iron Maiden albums were among those writer Brendan B. Brown carried around aged 10, and the single spent four weeks at number one in Australia.

The spoken bridge of Britney Spears's 2000 hit Oops!... I Did It Again references which blockbuster film?

Titanic supplies the Heart of the Ocean, the blue diamond that an astronaut hands the singer in the video as a symbol of his love.

O-Zone's Dragostea din tei, a Eurodance number one across Europe in 2004, is sung in which language?

Romanian had never travelled so far in pop: the Moldovan group's song, whose title means The Love from the Linden Tree, topped charts from France to Spain.

Which singer's song Thank You supplies the sampled vocals that open the 2000 rap hit Stan?

Dido is heard over a sample of rain as the track begins, and she also appears in the video as the title character's pregnant girlfriend.

Which singer's 2002 single Family Portrait draws on her own struggle through her parents' divorce?

Pink co-wrote it with Scott Storch and told the story through her eyes as a child, and she said parents sent letters thanking her for the song.

Jennifer Lopez's 2002 single Jenny from the Block pays homage to her roots in which New York City borough?

The Bronx is honoured in the music as well as the words: the bridge samples Boogie Down Productions' South Bronx, while the lyrics insist fame has not changed her.

OutKast's 2000 single Ms. Jackson was inspired partly by André 3000's relationship with which singer and her mother?

Erykah Badu has said her mother loved the song, which topped the US Billboard Hot 100 for a week in February 2001.

In the 2000 film Cast Away, Tom Hanks plays a troubleshooter for which delivery company before being stranded?

FedEx employee Chuck Noland spends four years alone on the island with a volleyball named after its maker, Wilson Sporting Goods.

Which city is the setting for Sofia Coppola's 2003 film Lost in Translation, starring Bill Murray as a fading actor?

Tokyo charmed Coppola on earlier visits, and her script about a star in town to promote Suntory whiskey won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.