Miss Congeniality Trivia
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50 free Miss Congeniality trivia questions with answers. Miss Congeniality turned Sandra Bullock into an FBI agent in a swimsuit and became one of the most rewatched comedies of 2000. This quiz covers the whole story: Gracie Hart's disastrous Russian-mob sting, Victor Melling's makeover in the hangar, Miss New Jersey's water-glass talent act, the Citizen's bomb threat, the tiara that explodes over the San Antonio stage, and the moment Cheryl from Rhode Island names her Miss Congeniality. The 2005 sequel, Armed and Fabulous, gets its share too, from Regina King's Sam Fuller and the Las Vegas kidnapping to the Tina Turner drag act and Nick Offerman as a Steele brother. Easy questions ask which state Gracie represents; the hard ones want the Austin hotel that doubled for the St. Regis and the Swedish singer whose soundtrack song got a Golden Globe nod. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the films and cast, and each question carries the sentence that supports it.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Miss Congeniality opened three days before Christmas 2000, the same day as which Tom Hanks film?
Cast Away
Cast Away. It topped the box office that weekend while Miss Congeniality opened fifth, yet Sandra Bullock's comedy played on into the spring and took more than four times its $45 million budget worldwide.
Q 02Donald Petrie, who directed Miss Congeniality, went on to make which Matthew McConaughey romantic comedy?
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. Petrie made it in 2003 and sat out Miss Congeniality 2, just as he had earlier left the sequel to his hit Grumpy Old Men to another director.
Q 03Early in Miss Congeniality, Gracie claims 'official business' to jump the queue at which chain?
Starbucks
Starbucks. Flashing her FBI credentials, she pushes to the counter and reels off a coffee order for her whole office, down to two blueberry scones and a compilation CD.
Q 04Under what alias does Agent Gracie Hart enter the pageant in Miss Congeniality?
Gracie Lou Freebush
Gracie Lou Freebush. She invents the name herself while refusing the job, as the sort of bimbo who 'wants world peace', and her partner remembers it when he has her pageant ID made.
Q 05Which state does Gracie Hart represent at the pageant in Miss Congeniality?
New Jersey
New Jersey. The slot was free because the real Miss New Jersey was about to be thrown out over an adult film, which left a pageant coach just two days to make Gracie pass for a contestant.
Q 06What is the fictional pageant in Miss Congeniality called?
Miss United States
Miss United States. Its anthem, 'She's beauty and she's grace, she's Miss United States', was composed by the screenwriter's son when he was five years old.
Q 07In which Texas city is the pageant in Miss Congeniality held?
San Antonio
San Antonio. The preliminaries are staged in front of the Alamo, where Gracie leaps off the stage to tackle a man she takes for a gunman, who was only trying to light a cigarette.
Q 08In Miss Congeniality, what is the alias of the domestic terrorist whose threat sends the FBI to the pageant?
The Citizen
The Citizen. His riddling letter seems to point at the pageant, but he is caught in a shack in Nevada before the final, and the threat turns out to be a copycat's work.
Q 09Which British actor plays Victor Melling, the pageant coach who grooms Gracie in Miss Congeniality?
Michael Caine
Michael Caine. His Victor Melling is a fallen star of pageant coaching, shunned after a contestant told a magazine he had harangued her 'to within an inch of her sanity'.
Q 10Which actor plays Eric Matthews, Gracie's FBI partner, in Miss Congeniality?
Benjamin Bratt
Benjamin Bratt. Matt Dillon came close to the part, and Hugh Jackman read for it too, later admitting that he could not keep up with Sandra Bullock in the audition.
Q 11Which actress plays former beauty queen Kathy Morningside in Miss Congeniality?
Candice Bergen
Candice Bergen. Her Kathy Morningside bristles whenever the event is called a beauty pageant, insisting that it is a 'scholarship program'; Gracie later throws the phrase back at her.
Q 12Which Star Trek star plays pageant host Stan Fields in Miss Congeniality?
William Shatner
William Shatner. He performs the pageant's anthem himself, on screen and on the soundtrack album, and his Stan Fields grumbles afterwards that the blast came right in the middle of his big number.
Q 13Which Ghostbusters star plays Harry McDonald, Gracie's FBI boss, in Miss Congeniality?
Ernie Hudson
Q 21In Miss Congeniality, why does the bomber want the pageant winner killed on stage?
Revenge for being fired
Revenge for being fired. After years in charge of the show, the culprit had learned that the network wanted 'a newer, hotter show' without her, and decided to give it one.
Q 22In Miss Congeniality's 1982 prologue, what does young Gracie do to the boy she likes when he rejects her?
Punches him
Punches him on the nose and calls him a wimp. She had just seen off his bully, and he complained that now everyone would think he needed a girl to fight for him.
Q 23In Miss Congeniality, Gracie's opening sting goes wrong against mobsters of which nationality?
Russian
Ernie Hudson. His assistant director benches Gracie after a botched sting, then pulls the whole team out of the pageant, so she hands in her badge and gun to stay on alone.
Q 14In Miss Congeniality, Gracie's awkward friend, played by Heather Burns, is Miss which state?
Rhode Island
Rhode Island. Pressed by Gracie for a criminal past, its contestant confesses only to stealing red underwear from a department store, because her mother called them 'Satan's panties'.
Q 15In Miss Congeniality, which state's contestant, Karen Krantz, comes out on live television after missing the final five?
New York
New York. Karen Krantz seizes the microphone to tell 'all the lesbians' that if she can make the top ten so can they, then shouts her love to her girlfriend as she is hustled away.
Q 16What is Gracie's official talent in the Miss Congeniality pageant?
The glass harp
The glass harp, a row of tuned water glasses she had not played since high school. She performs it at the preliminaries, but on finals night she finds thirsty contestants drinking her instrument.
Q 17In Miss Congeniality, where is the bomb hidden on the night of the final?
In the crown
In the crown. Gracie fights the new winner for the tiara on live television and hurls it up into the scenery, where it explodes and sets the stage alight.
Q 18Which contestant wins the pageant in Miss Congeniality?
Cheryl Frasier
Cheryl Frasier. At the farewell breakfast the next morning she is the one who presents Gracie with the title of Miss Congeniality, for saving the contestants' lives.
Q 19In the Miss Congeniality final, Gracie is stunned to be named what?
Runner-up
Runner-up. The FBI had only asked the pageant to fix her a place in the top five, and by finals night the Bureau had pulled out altogether, so second place was all her own work.
Q 20In Miss Congeniality, pageant assistant Frank Tobin is secretly whose son?
Kathy Morningside's
Kathy Morningside's. He had dropped her surname to bury a record that included assault and a weapons charge, which is why the FBI's first check on Frank Tobin came back clean.
Russian. Gracie breaks cover to save a mob boss who is choking on a peanut, a fellow agent is shot in the confusion, and she is taken out of the field.
Q 24Although its pageant is set elsewhere in Texas, much of Miss Congeniality was shot in which city?
Austin
Austin. Its old municipal airport had closed the year before, so the film shot in the disused hangars, which went on to become Austin Studios.
Q 25Asked to describe her perfect date, a Miss Congeniality contestant names which day, 'not too hot, not too cold'?
April 25th
April 25th, because 'all you need is a light jacket'. She has taken 'date' to mean a day on the calendar; later, over pizza, she gives the romantic-dinner answer she had meant to give.
Q 26In Miss Congeniality, Gracie taunts Eric with a playground-style chant that begins 'You think I'm' what?
Gorgeous
Gorgeous. She first chants 'You think I'm gorgeous, you want to kiss me' after Eric admits her evening gown convinced him, and revives the chant at the end when he finally asks her to dinner.
Q 27Watching Gracie walk in Miss Congeniality, Victor says he hasn't seen a walk like it since which film?
Jurassic Park
Jurassic Park. His cure is to make her 'glide', hips rolling and chin level with the floor, until she snaps 'I'm gliding here!' in the middle of the lesson.
Q 28In Miss Congeniality, Gracie tells pageant viewers to remember which word when fighting off an attacker?
SING
SING: solar plexus, instep, nose, groin. She demonstrates each blow on her partner Eric on live television, and in the sequel a fan writes to say the routine saw off a real attacker.
Q 29Miss Congeniality brought Sandra Bullock her second Golden Globe nomination for a comedy; which film brought the first?
While You Were Sleeping
While You Were Sleeping, five years earlier. She lost both times, the second to Renée Zellweger for Nurse Betty, and finally took home a Globe in 2010 for The Blind Side.
Q 30In Miss Congeniality, Victor complains that other coaches got Southern belles while he got whom?
Dirty Harriet
Dirty Harriet, his swipe at Gracie's gun-toting manners. By his own account he only got the job because every other coach worth having already had a contestant.