Raf

No Way Out Gene Hackman Crimson Tide

Reacher

The executive producer of The Elephant Man was Mel Brooks. Hilarious and Frankenstein were clues.

Oh

[Deleted. Misunderstood the info]

Did he replace someone?

The Elephant Man is not The Producer's only black and white movie. He is an EGOT. which means he has an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Tony Tony Tony... He was married at the time of the Elephant Man to an actress who had previously won an Oscar. He is almost 5% of the way there on becoming one of his most famous characters. There's a movie mentioned in the clues that appears irrelevant, until you know who The Producer is. Then it's like, ok, he had nothing to do with that movie, but yeah, it's still a clue. Syntax, by the way, includes placing the right words in the right order, with proper punctuation and capitalization. Incidentally, not all syntax errors are syntax errors. Some are huge hints.

The clue about the wife is genuinely challenging. Two of the others are so obvious you will SYH when you realize it. No clues in this post.

Spencer Tracy?

Hitchcock had nothing to do with the Elephant Man. The Producer's wife did. She's a costar. They said she did not need to audition. In fairness, she was already an Oscar winner. MUCH later, the Producer became an EGOT winner. There's a grammatical/syntax error I am making repeatedly that gives the answer away.

The Producer was actually considered for the role of Sam Loomis in Halloween, which no doubt would have created even further confusion. Sam Loomis was played by Donald Pleasence, perhaps better known [but not to me] as Blofeld in You Only Live Twice. Coincidentally, he also played Victor Frankenstein and Baron Frankenstein in a comedy called "Frankenstein's Great Aunt Tilly." Incidentally, not all syntax errors are syntax errors. Some are huge hints.

Those guesses are hilarious. No, it was not John Merrick or John Landis. Yes, that was a hint.

These abrasive posters... are they the ones who accuse those who disagree with them of having massive egos, seeing the word through sh!t-colored glasses, or being responsible for Satan's takeover of America because they don't support your favorite political party or candidate? Or is your disdain for the guy who says "knock that off, GSC has rules and you're violating them"? Just checking.

Please save criticism of Mike's positions for another thread. It's off topic here.

Posters disagree with Raf = righteous indignation. Posters agree with Raf = circle jerk. And I'm the hypocrite. Ok. P.S. the issue you raised was fully addressed in detail.

The executive producer of The Elephant Man (1980), a heartbreaking black n white drama based on a true story, held a screening for studio executives near the end of production. Studio execs shared some ideas to make the movie better, to which the producer responded something to the effect of: I screened the movie for you as a courtesy. "Do not misconstrue this as our soliciting the input of raging primitives." The executive producer left his name off the credits of the movie because he thought including his name would confuse audiences. Who was he?

Mike gives me too much credit for rules that I had nothing to do with establishing. He also glossed over my role in making this place so inhospitable to him when he first arrived. For which I don't think I ever apologized. Nor will I. The Raf who did those things had a completely different worldview at the time. An apology would be meaningless. Nonetheless, thank you, Mike. [P.S. As much as many here would no doubt like for Mike to get lost, no one to my knowledge has asked moderators to ban him].

Since you brought it up here I will clarify it here, though it's really not on topic here... ALWAYS is an adverb. It modifies a verb. Not a noun. To say something ALWAYS happens is to say whenever you have a occurrence or circumstance, A, you will have a corresponding occurrence, B. So let's say A is "atheist admits he doesn't know something about how life appeared on the planet. Given A, it is a rhetorical certainty that some believer somewhere will come out and say "You're just saying I don't know because you refuse to admit the answer is God. CHECKMATE!" The more people involved in the conversation, the more that rhetorical certainty becomes a mathematical certainty. Note that the ALWAYS applies to occurrence B, something that always HAPPENS, verb. It does not modify the noun "believers" or "Christians." It does not say ALL CHRISTIANS DO THIS. Because that would be silly. Lots of Christians don't do that. But lots do. And there will always be someone who does. You can count on it. So by applying the ALWAYS to believers instead of to the occurrence of a believer saying what some believer always says, you completely changed the meaning of my comment. Now, you could have handled this by saying "you shouldn't say always. Not all believers do that." And I would have replied "That's not what I meant to say, but I can see where you might think that. Let me edit the post to add clarity." And it would have been over. Instead, you said... let's see... "you obviously have no clue to what other people think until you ask then shut-up and listen." Those were your words. "Shut up." After demanding to be treated with a respect you were not willing to show. "I grow tired" you said before accusing me of something YOU READ INTO my post that I never said. I specifically attributed that behavior to "the Ken Hamms of the world." Are you a Ken Hamm? No? Then lean in close... I WASN'T TALKING ABOUT YOU. Despite your rampage, I still managed to see your point and I went back to the original post and added some modifiers to make it even more clear [as if limiting it to the Ken Hamms of the world wasn't enough] that I was only talking about some people and not a single person on GSC, much less all Christians everywhere. Now, if you had asked instead of joining the Let's Pile On Raf cult, we could have resolved this a lot more amicably. Let's assume we can all do that moving on. [Added later] By the way, there is such a thing as hyperbole. Most people in casual conversations recognize that always doesn't mean always and they never take it literally because there are always exceptions. It's like when people say Raf always hides pro-Christian posts when 99.99 percent of their pro-Christian posts are still on the site. Obviously they mean I delete MANY pro-Christian posts. Not that they have ANY examples that don't flagrant violate gsc rules. That one's literal, by the way. Not any examples of any post anywhere on this site that was moved or moderated strictly for espousing a Christian point of view. It always rains whenever I wash my car. ALWAYS? A watched pot never boils. NEVER? You are on a message board, not an English mayor's doctoral dissertation. You would never jump down someone's throat in person for saying always when he meant often. That's not what happened here. But if it were, there would be nothing abnormal about it except the overwrought response.

Touche! Repeatedly would have been the better word!

Oh, Nathan, you got here just in time. See Allan? Allan, say hi. So anyway, Allan has been given multiple warnings for [checks notes] more than four years to knock off the politics, but he keeps coming back and posting politics, only to get more warnings. With me so far? Cool, so Allan, who by the way is Christian, got another "one more time and that's it" warning in January, and he came onto a thread in the atheism forum two months later to complain that I'm an atheist (the post is still there), which would be FINE if the thread were about me being an atheist, but it wasn't. So we asked [not demanded. Just asked] him to stay on topic and his reply was to post a video. About politics. And still he wasn't banned. Nope. He was invited to talk it out, let's work this out, we don't want you to leave, but you're constantly violating the no politics rule, man. But he declined to have a real discussion. So naturally, we... warned him again. Now he's here to talk about how intolerant I am. He's HERE. Not banned, still. Not restricted. Not on moderator approval. Still posting freely. About how intolerant I am. Should be good.

Ask Mike and Oldiesman what they think now. And Allan! You're still here? Aren't you Christian?

Montpellier, Vermont

Guilty. Sometimes. I get annoyed when we leave the topic and make it about people. It's also bothersome when there's, to put it politely, a reading comprehension issue. Over the last few days I've nearly bitten my tongue clean off over distortions of my posts that could be resolved in nanoseconds with just a single working brain cell. The doctrinal section, the entire Matters of Faith section, is NOT a "Christians only" safe space, nor is it a "Christian hunting season is open" space. Some people just can't handle the fact that atheists post here and that Christianity gets no special treatment [even in light of an entire subsection where Christianity gets special treatment]. NOTE: CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM OF MY POSTING IS WELCOME HERE. PLEASE DM IF YOU WANT TO DISCUSS MY MODERATING.

Thank you. And likewise. I think what I was trying to get at was that I no longer consider praying to be doing something about a situation. Whether someone does the right thing because they feel moved by God or because they feel no One else is coming to the rescue, the right thing gets done. I rejoice in that.

The article you cited has a section called "Skeptical Explanations" that appears to answer your question quite neatly without any help from me.