40 Fun Facts About Mask (1985 Film)

Which actor, later nominated for an award for Pulp Fiction, played teenager Rocky Dennis in the 1985 film Mask?

Eric Stoltz was born in 1961, the same year as the real Rocky, and his performance earned a Golden Globe nomination for best supporting actor.

The 1985 film Mask, with Cher as a biker mother, won its only Academy Award in which category?

Best Makeup went to Michael Westmore and Zoltan Elek for Rocky's face. Westmore became best known for Star Trek, and his career also included creating make-up kits for CIA spies overseas.

For playing Rusty Dennis in the 1985 film Mask, Cher shared the Best Actress prize at which film festival?

Cannes split its Best Actress award between Cher and Norma Aleandro of The Official Story, in a year when Mask was also in the running for the festival's top prize.

The actor who played Rocky in Mask was originally the lead of which 1985 blockbuster, then replaced weeks into filming?

Back to the Future shot for five weeks with him as Marty McFly before Michael J. Fox took over, because he was playing the comedy as something far more serious.

Denied an Oscar nomination for Mask, Cher presented at the 1986 ceremony in a spidery black outfit by which designer?

Bob Mackie made the feathered headdress and bare-midriff ensemble, later nicknamed her Oscar revenge dress, and Cher joked while presenting about how a serious actress should dress.

Cher, overlooked by the Academy for the 1985 film Mask, soon won the Best Actress Oscar for which 1987 romantic comedy?

Moonstruck brought Cher the Oscar that Mask had not, and Billboard later ranked the role first among film performances by musicians.

Which future star of The Golden Girls played Rocky's grandmother, Evelyn, in the 1985 film Mask?

Estelle Getty began playing the elderly Sophia later that same year, although she was really a year younger than Bea Arthur, who played her daughter.

In the 1985 film Mask, what does Rocky Dennis collect and trade with his best friend Ben?

Baseball cards are a passion Rocky also shares with his grandparents, and at the end his biker family leave some 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers cards at his grave.

Which sci-fi series built a 1997 episode around a disfigured outcast who idolises Cher after watching her in Mask?

The X-Files episode The Post-Modern Prometheus ends with Mulder and Scully taking the creature, known as the Great Mutato, to a Cher concert.

Which director of The Last Picture Show and Paper Moon made the 1985 film Mask?

Peter Bogdanovich shot Mask with László Kovács, the cinematographer he worked with more often than any other, on what was his first feature in about four years.

Which actor, later the Stranger who narrates The Big Lebowski, plays Rusty's biker boyfriend Gar in the 1985 film Mask?

Sam Elliott's Gar is a father figure to Rocky, and the character was based on Bernie Tullis, who became the real Rusty's third husband.

Which future Jurassic Park star played Diana, the blind girl Rocky falls for at summer camp, in the 1985 film Mask?

Laura Dern won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association's New Generation Award after Mask, a year before she starred in Blue Velvet.

Craniodiaphyseal dysplasia, Rocky's rare bone disorder in the 1985 film Mask, is commonly known by which nickname?

Lionitis causes calcium to build up in the skull, gradually disfiguring the face; in the few cases on record, most patients died in childhood.

The 1985 film Mask is set among bikers in which Los Angeles County city in the San Gabriel Valley?

Azusa is where the film places Rusty and Rocky, although the real Rocky was born in Glendora, the next city to the east.

In the 1985 film Mask, where do Rocky and his best friend Ben dream of taking a motorcycle trip?

Across Europe is the route Rocky marks with tacks on a wall map, and the plan collapses when Ben has to move away.

In the 1985 film Mask, what does Rocky hand the blind Diana to show her what billowy clouds are like?

Cotton balls stand in for clouds, and Rocky then explains colours by temperature: a warm rock for red and pink, a frozen one for icy blue.

In the 1985 film Mask, where does the junior high principal, Mr. Simms, first want to send Rocky?

A special education school was his plan because he assumed Rocky was intellectually disabled; Rusty faces him down, and Rocky later graduates with prizes in three subjects.

How does Rocky Dennis die at the end of the 1985 film Mask, hours after his biker family come to visit?

In his sleep is how Rusty finds him the next morning, after the school phones to ask why he is absent, and she later pins his travel map back on the wall.

Which Hollywood studio released the 1985 film Mask and clashed with its director over the soundtrack?

Universal Pictures previewed the finished film at its studios in February 1985 for the campers and staff of the summer camp where scenes had been shot.

Which rocker's songs filled the 1985 theatrical release of Mask, though Rusty Dennis said her son barely knew of him?

Bob Seger's music was put in while the director was away for the Christmas holiday in 1984, and none of it appeared on the film's soundtrack album.

The director of the 1985 film Mask sued the studio for $19 million, claiming it had violated which contractual right?

Final cut was the privilege he said the studio breached by changing the music without his approval; he withdrew the suit at the urging of a Directors Guild committee.

In the 1985 film Mask, Rusty and her boyfriend Gar ride with which motorcycle gang?

The Turks act as Rocky's extended family in the film, and the real Rocky's home was likewise a gathering place for his mother's biker friends.

In the 1985 film Mask, Rocky wins over his history class with a lively retelling of which ancient conflict?

The Trojan War retelling helps turn wary classmates into friends, and Rocky is soon tutoring some of them for three dollars an hour.

Camp scenes in Mask were shot at Camp Bloomfield, a real camp for blind children near which California city?

Malibu's Camp Bloomfield, in the Santa Monica Mountains, hosted blind and visually impaired children free of charge from 1958 until the Woolsey fire destroyed it in 2018.

At summer camp in the 1985 film Mask, Rocky and Diana share a first kiss at a dance themed on which holiday?

New Year's Eve is the theme of the camp dance; when camp ends, Diana's parents are horrified by Rocky's appearance and forbid her to spend time with him.

Which piece of Rocky's schoolwork is heard in voice-over as his biker family visit his grave at the end of Mask?

A poem that Rocky wrote for English class is recited in his own voice while Rusty, Gar and the others leave flowers at his headstone.

In the 1985 film Mask, what does Rocky leave around the house during a party to push Rusty to get clean?

Rehab pamphlets set off a furious argument between mother and son, and Rocky takes a summer job as a camp counsellor's aide partly to get away from home.

After camp in the 1985 film Mask, Rocky takes a bus to find Diana at what kind of place near Griffith Park?

Riding stables are where Rocky learns that her parents kept his calls and messages from her and are sending her away to a boarding school.

When the real Rocky Dennis of Mask died in 1978, his body was donated for genetic research to which university?

UCLA's medical centre had diagnosed him as a small child, when doctors expected him to die before his seventh birthday; he lived to sixteen.

Anna Hamilton Phelan, who wrote the 1985 film Mask, earned an Oscar nomination for which 1988 Sigourney Weaver drama?

Gorillas in the Mist came to her from the head of the studio that released Mask, which was her first screenplay and began as a draft in a writing workshop.

Cher came to the 1985 film Mask after an Oscar nomination for which 1983 drama starring Meryl Streep?

Silkwood brought Cher a supporting actress nomination and a Golden Globe win; Mask then became her first critical and commercial success in a leading role.

László Kovács, cinematographer of the biker-themed 1985 film Mask, made his breakthrough shooting which 1969 road movie?

Easy Rider nearly went without him: after shooting several B-movie biker films he was reluctant, until Dennis Hopper talked him round.

An eye doctor said the real Rocky Dennis of Mask, legally blind at six, would never learn to do what?

Read is exactly what he then did: his mother handed him a book and he read it aloud on the spot, and he later finished junior high as an honours student.

The real Rocky Dennis, whose life inspired the film Mask, turned down which treatment that might have extended his life?

Plastic surgery could have corrected his face and perhaps lengthened his life, but he asked his mother who he would see in the mirror afterwards.

Rocky Dennis, the teenager portrayed in the 1985 film Mask, shared which given first name with his father?

Roy Lee Dennis was his full name; his parents divorced, and the bikers who gathered at the family home became a second support system.

Which mostly silent, intimidating member of Rocky's biker family in the 1985 film Mask is played by Dennis Burkley?

Dozer rarely speaks because of a severe speech impediment; Burkley later voiced Principal Moss on the animated series King of the Hill.

In 2008 the screenwriter of the 1985 film Mask reworked the story for the Pasadena Playhouse as what kind of show?

A stage musical of Mask opened there with a score by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, the hit-making pair behind You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'.

Richard Dysart, Rocky's grandfather Abe in the film Mask, later won an Emmy as a senior partner in which legal drama?

L.A. Law cast him as Leland McKenzie from 1986, and he won the Emmy in 1992 on his fourth nomination in a row.

Andrew Robinson, who plays Dr. Vinton in the 1985 film Mask, is best known as the Scorpio killer in which thriller?

Dirty Harry's director said he chose Robinson because he had the face of a choir boy, and the role left him typecast in psychopath parts.

After Rocky's death, the real Rusty Dennis portrayed by Cher in Mask moved to San Francisco and took up which religion?

Buddhism followed a painful stretch in which her marriage to Bernie Tullis broke down after only six weeks, both of them still grieving for Rocky.