Bringing Out the Dead
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40 free Bringing Out the Dead trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Bringing Out the Dead follows a burned-out Manhattan paramedic through three sleepless nights on the ambulance, haunted by the patients he could not save. It flopped in 1999 and has been gathering admirers ever since, including its own star, who counts it among his best work. This quiz covers the whole ride: the story and its ghosts, the partners who share the front seat, the actors behind even the smallest roles, the people who wrote, scored and cut the film, the songs on the radio and the odd footnotes of its release. It is pitched for fans of the film and of 1990s American cinema. Some questions only need a good memory for faces; others reward anyone who has read the novel or stayed for the credits.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Bringing Out the Dead was the last title released in North America on which home video format?
LaserDisc
LaserDisc bowed out with this film: the disc reached North American shops in October 2000, almost a year after the cinema release.
Q 02Which Oscar-winning actor plays burned-out paramedic Frank Pierce in Bringing Out the Dead?
Nicolas Cage
Nicolas Cage later singled the film out as one of the best he ever made, even though it had flopped at the box office.
Q 03Which director of Bringing Out the Dead is also heard as the voice of the male ambulance dispatcher?
Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese barks the radio calls himself, and he said making the film exorcised ten years of ambulances taking his parents to hospital.
Q 04The title of Bringing Out the Dead is a joking reference to a plague scene in which comedy film?
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Monty Python and the Holy Grail has a collector touring a plague town for corpses; the novelist chose the title with a sense of humor.
Q 05Bringing Out the Dead reunited the director and writer of which film about a sleepless loner?
Taxi Driver
Taxi Driver came 23 years earlier, and the new film has been described as a pitch-black comic take on it, with an ambulance in place of the cab.
Q 06Which salsa star plays Noel, the addict forever being hauled to hospital, in Bringing Out the Dead?
Marc Anthony
Marc Anthony, the top-selling salsa artist of all time, is also heard singing on the film's soundtrack.
Q 07In Bringing Out the Dead, which singer's album plays while paramedics revive the dying Mr. Burke?
Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra fills the room because the paramedic asks the family to put on something the old man liked, which also gives them a job to do.
Q 08Which Raging Bull screenwriter adapted the paramedic novel Bringing Out the Dead for the screen?
Paul Schrader
Paul Schrader was the only writer the director wanted, and he added a closing scene of forgiveness that is not in the book.
Q 09In Bringing Out the Dead, Frank Pierce is haunted by which homeless teenager he failed to save?
Rose
Rose appears to him on street corners all over the city, and only in the final scene does her ghost grant the forgiveness he craves.
Q 10Which actress, then married to the film's leading man, plays Mary Burke in Bringing Out the Dead?
Patricia Arquette
Patricia Arquette had married her co-star in 1995, and he filed for divorce a few months after the film came out.
Q 11Which Big Lebowski star plays Larry, the food-obsessed first partner, in Bringing Out the Dead?
John Goodman
John Goodman plays the partner in the best shape of the three: to him it is only a job, and his main worry is his next meal.
Q 12Which Pulp Fiction actor plays Marcus, the gospel-preaching paramedic, in Bringing Out the Dead?
Ving Rhames
Ving Rhames plays him as a believer who presents a save as a miracle, then crashes the ambulance into a parked car and laughs it off.
Q 13Which Saving Private Ryan actor plays Wolls, the violent third partner, in Bringing Out the Dead?
Tom Sizemore
Tom Sizemore plays a paramilitary type who knows exactly what to do at a scene but, in the director's words, freaks out from time to time.
Q 21Which studio released Bringing Out the Dead in America while Touchstone handled it overseas?
Paramount
Paramount saw the film open in fourth place in America, and its total takings covered only about half of the $32 million budget.
Q 22Which Chicago critic gave Bringing Out the Dead a perfect four stars despite its weak box office?
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert called it an antidote to the immature intoxication with violence he saw in Fight Club, and ranked it with its director's best.
Q 23Which Snake Eyes director recommended his star for the lead role in Bringing Out the Dead?
Brian De Palma
Brian De Palma said the actor was great to work with, which confirmed a choice first inspired by the star's face and eyes.
Q 14Bringing Out the Dead is set in which Manhattan neighborhood beside Times Square?
Hell's Kitchen
Hell's Kitchen was home turf for the novel's author, who was born in a hospital there and worked its streets as a paramedic for nine years.
Q 15Which former Manhattan paramedic wrote the debut novel that became Bringing Out the Dead?
Joe Connelly
Joe Connelly spent nine years on the ambulances, and his autobiographical first novel was an immediate bestseller.
Q 16In Bringing Out the Dead, what is the street name of the heroin behind a run of overdoses?
Red Death
Red Death first shows up as two vials rolling out of a shooting victim's sleeve, and later it floors a man in a nightclub.
Q 17In Bringing Out the Dead, which drug does Frank Pierce inject to revive an overdosed clubgoer?
Narcan
Narcan blocks the effects of opioids within minutes, so the man sits up just as Marcus finishes leading the crowd in prayer.
Q 18In Bringing Out the Dead, what does a young woman deliver when Frank and Marcus answer a call?
Twins
Twins are rushed to hospital but only one survives, and the loss sends Frank to the bottle before the shift is over.
Q 19In Bringing Out the Dead, what does Tom Wolls use to beat Noel before Frank Pierce steps in?
A baseball bat
A baseball bat is his weapon once the two paramedics have chased Noel down; Frank snaps out of a hallucination in time to save him.
Q 20In Bringing Out the Dead, the drug dealer Cy Coates is found impaled on what after a shooting?
A railing
A railing spears him high above the street, and when rescuers cut it away Cy becomes the first patient Frank has saved in months.
Q 24Which filmmaker, an uncle of the star of Bringing Out the Dead, introduced him to the director?
Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola set up the meeting a few years earlier, and the director came away thinking the polite young actor would be good company on a set.
Q 25Which composer of The Magnificent Seven wrote the original score for Bringing Out the Dead?
Elmer Bernstein
Elmer Bernstein had already worked with the director on Cape Fear and The Age of Innocence, making this their third film together.
Q 26Which Oscar-winning editor of Bringing Out the Dead said it was wrongly sold as a car-chase movie?
Thelma Schoonmaker
Thelma Schoonmaker called it the one film by her longtime director that has not had its due, and said its real subject is compassion.
Q 27Which producer gave the director the unpublished novel that became the film Bringing Out the Dead?
Scott Rudin
Scott Rudin handed over the galleys, and the director replied at once that only one screenwriter could turn the book into a script.
Q 28The emergency-room set for Bringing Out the Dead was built inside which famous Manhattan hospital?
Bellevue
Bellevue, the oldest public hospital in the United States, lent the production space on its ground floor to build the set.
Q 29In Bringing Out the Dead, what is the name of the high-rise drug den run by the dealer Cy Coates?
The Oasis
The Oasis is where Mary goes when she cannot stand any more pain; Frank follows her in and ends up swallowing the dealer's pills himself.
Q 30Which New Zealand actor from Once Were Warriors plays the dealer Cy Coates in Bringing Out the Dead?
Cliff Curtis
Cliff Curtis also appeared in Three Kings that year, and much later played Tonowari in the Avatar films.