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I enjoy film and good TV sometimes as well, and from time to time I'll ask a few questions here.

It was recently suggested that Rob Lowe said "I won't work for (Orion Pictures) again for all the money in the world" in 1984. Is that what happened? seemed like a "trivia question".

That's going to be somewhat subjective; one person's trivia is another person's fundamentally interesting information.

I said that

A decision to never work for a movie studio again at the beginning of an actor's career is a monumental decision, and to announce it so publicly has consequences.

Maybe there are some guidelines that can be helpful for judging if a given question is likely to be seen as trivial or not here. For the purposes of asking questions here, are events in actors' lives and what they say about their careers fundamentally less interesting than events in movies and what the characters the actors play say?

I'm simply asking for assistance with question-asking, thanks!

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Triviality is indeed partially subjective and obviously relative. But that is the problem right there: you can always find perspectives from which trivia is significant. The point is that 'trivia' on this platform is quite accurately (and increasingly) defined according to the needs and intentions of (the users of) this platform.

Have you read through the 'on topic' page of the Help section yet?
It states the following is off-topic:

Unimportant trivia that does not add to the understanding or appreciation of the title.

When a question is (being) closed for this reason, it adds:

We're not trying to duplicate IMDB. Please try to explain why your question is relevant for understanding the work beyond banal minutiae.

I think these offer very substantial grounds for deciding for oneself whether or not the question they have posted or are about to post can be considered on-topic.

🠗 In short: 🠗

Ask yourself:

  • Does the (right) answer to my question lead to a better understanding of the title of the film/series?
  • Could I easily find the information I'm looking for on IMDB/Wikipedia/through a quick internet search?

If the answer is 'yes' to either or both, don't ask it here.
In other cases, the voting system will give you an indication of the germaneness of your question.

In any case, I think your question is on-topic, since the information does not seem readily available using other sources.

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  • Thanks for your answer! The use of "title" in the help section seems to exclude business or production topics that aren't about a specific work, as well as questions about actors and their careers, but those types of questions do get asked, answered and are well received sometimes. I wonder if that help section should be revisited?
    – uhoh
    Commented Feb 14, 2021 at 13:47
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    Easy availability of the information, while often coinciding with irrelevancy, doesn't in itself make a question invalid or even bad, though. That is a very common misunderstanding (admittedly excacerbated by the otherwise useful IMDb comparison). Never did or ever will the existence of Wikipedia or Google make a question off-topic here. The really important point here is, does the question actually show in which way the information is relevant? and yes, this is often a matter of simply phrasing and motivating your question properly.
    – Napoleon Wilson
    Commented Feb 14, 2021 at 21:43

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