You Don't Have To Be Famous To Pass A Movie Quiz

 by: Brian Fong

Q. I run a movie review web site and I'm thinking about putting up a movie quiz. Do you have any tips for me?

A. What a great idea! What better place for a movie quiz than a movie review site. When you are thinking about what type of movie quiz to develop, try to think a bit outside of the box. While the temptation is strong to take the easy way out by asking the "no brainer" questions like "Which movie won best Picture in 2003?", you're likely to find that you won't draw very many quiz participants.

A good movie quiz is challenging in the same way that a good crossword puzzle is. Opt for questions that will make people think hard, or actually have to search the Internet for the answer. For example, how many people would know the answer to this question off the top of their head?

"What famous rock star was paid to come and watch the Beatles perform when he was a young boy?"

The answer? I'm not going to tell you. But I'll tell you this, you can find out on the Internet.

Now if you can come up with killer movie quiz questions like that one, and maybe offer a cash prize to each month's winner (be sure to change the questions each month), then your movie review site is going to get a great reputation as a butt-kicking movie quiz site as well.

I guess you could consider having a different movie quiz for different skill levels. You could take it all the way down to simple kid's movie quiz for the youngsters in your audience. Be careful about collecting names and addresses of children 13 and younger though, th U.S. Government frowns on that practice even if it's for something as innocent as a movie quiz.

I hope that I've given you a start in the right direction. If you put some thought into it, I'm sure you'll come up with a movie quiz that could win an Oscar!