Heathers Trivia
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This Heathers trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers and covers the 1988 black comedy from every angle: Veronica Sawyer and J.D., the three Heathers of Westerburg High, the drain-cleaner 'hangover cure', Kurt and Ram, the pep-rally bomb and the very different ending the studio refused to shoot. It also digs into the making of the film — Daniel Waters' dream of a Stanley Kubrick version, the stars who turned it down, a 15-year-old Winona Ryder begging for the part, Shannen Doherty's red hair — and its afterlife as a box-office flop turned cult classic, an Off-Broadway and West End musical, and a short-lived TV reboot. Early questions suit anyone who has seen the film once; later ones reward fans who know the fictional band behind the film's pop hit and where the funeral scenes were shot. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries before publishing.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who plays Veronica Sawyer in the 1988 film Heathers?
Winona Ryder
Winona Ryder took the part against her agent, who got down on her knees and begged her not to, warning that she would never work again; the two later parted ways.
Q 02Who plays Jason 'J.D.' Dean in Heathers?
Christian Slater
Christian Slater walked out of his audition convinced he had blown it and, by his own account, had a big tantrum and threw the script in the garbage; he was cast anyway.
Q 03Which future superstar, then an unknown acting student, read the part of J.D. at an early Heathers script reading?
Brad Pitt
Brad Pitt came up to the writer afterwards and said, "I know I'm not anybody, but for what it's worth, that was brilliant"; the writer only later learned who the kid was.
Q 04What is the name of the high school in Heathers?
Westerburg
Westerburg sits in the Midwest on screen but was shot entirely in Los Angeles, stitched together from three campuses: one supplied the gym, another the front steps of the final scene.
Q 05Heathers writer Daniel Waters is the older brother of the director of which later high-school comedy?
Mean Girls
Mean Girls was directed by Mark Waters, and in 2014 the brothers worked together, Mark directing Daniel's script for Vampire Academy.
Q 06Which actress plays queen bee Heather Chandler?
Kim Walker
Kim Walker was a late pick: the director had begged another young actress's mother to let her daughter play the part, and only then did the casting director suggest the inexperienced newcomer.
Q 07In Heathers, what does J.D. serve Heather Chandler as a 'hangover cure', killing her?
Drain cleaner
Drain cleaner: Veronica had mixed milk and orange juice just to make her sick, but J.D. filled a second mug with the toxic stuff and let Veronica pick up the wrong one.
Q 08In Heathers, how do Veronica and J.D. cover up Heather Chandler's death?
They forge a suicide note
They forge a suicide note in her handwriting, and the school reads it as the cry of a troubled soul, making its tyrant more worshipped in death than she ever was alive.
Q 09In Heathers, what does J.D. tell Veronica his bullets are before they ambush two football players?
Tranquilizers
Tranquilizers, he says, promising the boys will only be knocked out and humiliated; Veronica learns the bullets are real when the first one drops dead.
Q 10In Heathers, the staged deaths of Kurt and Ram lead the town to mourn the two jocks as victims of what?
Homophobia
Homophobia: the scene is staged so the two bullies appear to have been secret lovers who could not face the world, and overnight they are remembered as sensitive, misunderstood martyrs.
Q 11Writer Daniel Waters first imagined Veronica in Heathers as a female version of which movie antihero?
Travis Bickle
Travis Bickle of Taxi Driver was the model: in early drafts Veronica was nearly as twisted as J.D., until the casting of a sympathetic young star made her the audience's stand-in.
Q 12In Heathers, what do students think J.D.'s petition is asking for?
A band for the prom
A band for the prom is all the students think they are signing for; J.D. means their names to explain away what he has planned for the pep rally.
Q 13How does J.D. die at the end of Heathers?
He blows himself up
Q 21Why did Shannen Doherty reportedly leave the first cast screening of Heathers in tears?
She had expected a drama
She had expected a drama: by her co-stars' account she ran out sobbing that no one had told her it was a comedy, though Doherty herself admits only to a few tears.
Q 22What did Lisanne Falk, who plays Heather McNamara, lie about at her Heathers audition?
Her age
Her age: a former child model of 23, she said she was 18 or 19, and the filmmakers gasped when she mentioned at her celebration dinner that she lived with her boyfriend.
Q 23Heathers was sold abroad under which title, a nod to a 1987 thriller hit?
Lethal Attraction
He blows himself up on the school steps: Veronica has already shot him and the bomb under the gym has failed, so he follows her outside with another strapped to his chest.
Q 14At the very end of Heathers, whom does Veronica invite to spend prom night watching movies?
Martha
Martha Dunnstock, the school's most bullied girl, gets the invitation; it closes the gentler ending the studio insisted on after rejecting the writer's far bleaker one.
Q 15How did Daniel Waters's original script for Heathers end, before the studio demanded a change?
With a prom in heaven
With a prom in heaven: the first script ended in a fatal blast and an afterlife dance, and the studio refused to finance a satire in which the teenagers really died.
Q 16Which director did screenwriter Daniel Waters originally want for Heathers?
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick had made his horror film and his science-fiction film, Waters reasoned, so why not a teen film; he wrote a three-hour script and truly believed the director would say yes.
Q 17The director of Heathers used which war film as his visual guide for the lunchtime-poll scene in the cafeteria?
Full Metal Jacket
Full Metal Jacket was the director's visual guide, above all in the first cafeteria sequence, where the lunchtime poll plays like the barracks scene that opens the war film.
Q 18Who directed Heathers, in his feature debut?
Michael Lehmann
Michael Lehmann was just out of film school, known for a scabrous student short, when mutual friends handed him a 200-page script he assumed could never get made.
Q 19Which actress turned down the queen-bee role in Heathers because her parents disapproved of the script?
Heather Graham
Heather Graham, then 16 or 17, gave a great reading, but her parents found the script offensive; the director begged her mother, insisting the filmmakers were not tools of Satan.
Q 20When Shannen Doherty refused to go blonde like the other Heathers, what did the producers settle for?
Red hair
Red hair was the compromise: Doherty says bleaching would have destroyed her hair, so everyone settled on making her a redhead instead.
Lethal Attraction was the export title, a bid to borrow some heat from Fatal Attraction after the film had flopped at home.
Q 24Where did Heathers, a flop in US cinemas, later find its cult audience?
On home video
On home video: its distributor was going bankrupt and barely advertised the release, which took about $1.1 million, so it was on video that the flop became a cult favourite.
Q 25Which song does Sly and the Family Stone sing over the end credits of Heathers?
Que Sera, Sera
Que Sera, Sera also opens the film, in a version by Syd Straw, so a comedy about murder starts and finishes on the same shrug.
Q 26In Heathers, which fictional band has a hit with "Teenage Suicide (Don't Do It)"?
Big Fun
Big Fun, the film's made-up band, got its song to order: the plot needs a hit on the radio for J.D. to shoot at, so one was written and recorded for the film.
Q 27Betty Finn in Heathers is played by Renée Estevez, whose father is which actor?
Martin Sheen
Martin Sheen was born Ramón Estévez and took a stage name; his daughter Renée, like her brother Emilio, kept the family's real one.
Q 28Which prize did Daniel Waters win for the Heathers screenplay?
The Edgar Allan Poe Award
The Edgar Allan Poe Award comes from the Mystery Writers of America, who judged a high-school comedy about faked suicides the best crime screenplay of its year.
Q 29In Heathers, Heather Chandler drags Veronica to a frat party at which university?
Remington University
Remington University is where a disgusted Veronica throws up on Heather's shoes and is promised social ruin by Monday, the threat that sets the killings in motion.
Q 30In Heathers, how does J.D. answer two jocks who bully him at lunch?
He fires blanks at them
He fires blanks at them across the lunch table, a stunt that scares the school's bullies and is exactly what first draws Veronica to him.