Trivia

The title role was written for Tom Hanks.

Eric Stoltz’s character in this film is Ethan Valhere. Stoltz also played a character named Valhere in Say Anything…, also directed by Cameron Crowe.

Jann Wenner, who plays the character Scully, is the publisher of Rolling Stone Magazine, for which writer-director Cameron Crowe once worked.

When Jerry is helping Dorothy move, one of the boxes has the game Risk. In Almost Famous, another Cameron Crowe movie, a box Anita’s boyfriend is carrying when he is helping her move also has the game Risk.

Shortly before the movie’s release, Detroit Lions head coach Wayne Fontes was fired. His brief role was not cut from the final edit of the film.

This was Tom Cruise’s fifth consecutive $100-million-plus film, a new record.

The scene in which Jerry and Ray are talking in the living room for the first time, was completely adlibbed. Director Cameron Crowe wanted to create a genuine “feel” between the two and did so by not having a written dialogue for that particular scene.

Cameron Crowe has stated that Jerry’s memo/mission statement was directly influenced by Jeffrey Katzenberg’s tirade after leaving Disney.

Cameron Crowe wanted his hero, legendary film director Billy Wilder, to play Dicky Fox. Wilder had agreed to think about it, but on the first day of filming, Wilder refused to play the role. So Crowe took Tom Cruise to Wilder’s office to try to convince him, and Wilder still said no. Later, Crowe and Wilder became friends and Crowe wrote a book about Wilder’s life.

Two Paul McCartney instrumentals are used in the movie, “Momma Miss America” (during the airport montage) and “Singalong Junk” (during Jerry and Dorothy’s first kissing scene on the porch), both from the 1970 album “McCartney.” Cameron Crowe received McCartney’s permission without ever having met him, instead sending a tape of the film to the latter’s office. The two would actually meet for the first time five years later in L.A., and the result of that meeting was McCartney composing the title song to Crowe’s movie Vanilla Sky, which earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song.

The long haired at the CopyMat is ex-’Alice In Chains’ guitarist Jerry Cantrell.

Winnie Holzman, creator of My So-Called Life, appears in scenes involving the divorced women’s group. She’s the one who says, “these holidays make me feel more divorced”.

Cameron Crowe’s mother appears among those attending the divorced women’s group. She is the one who says, “I finally got in touch with my anger.”

When Dorothy and Ray drop off Jerry at the airport and look at the family saying goodbye (a mother and child are seeing off the father), the three people shown are the stand-ins for Tom Cruise, Renée Zellweger and Jonathan Lipnicki who worked on the film.

Jonathan Lipnicki showed up on the set one day telling everyone that, “the human head weighs eight pounds”. Cameron Crowe liked it so much he wrote it into the script.

Tom Cruise has said that his character was based in part on Sydney Falco from Sweet Smell of Success (played by Tony Curtis).

Tom Cruise did not remember that Bonnie Hunt was in Rain Man. At first he thought she was joking when she said they had worked together before.

Parker Posey was originally considered for the role of Dorothy Boyd.

Cameron Diaz was considered for the role of Dorothy Boyd.

Cameron Crowe offered the Dorothy Boyd role to Janeane Garofalo, if she could lose weight, but after trimming down, she learned that Renée Zellweger had won the part instead in what was to become a career-launching smash hit.

Jamie Foxx auditioned for the role later given to Cuba Gooding Jr.

Mira Sorvino auditioned for the role of Dorothy Boyd

Courtney Love was considered for the role of Dorothy Boyd.

The stock footage of the airplane taking off is the same stock footage that was used for the airplane take off sequence in Billy Wilder’s film Avanti!.

The song that Couch is playing when Jerry enters his hotel room on the night of the draft is “Something In The Way” by ‘Nirvana’ .

Diane Lane auditioned for the role of Avery Bishop.

Cameo: [Rick Reilly] Sports writer holding a camera behind Jerry after Rod gets up after being “hurt”.

The parts of Dorothy and Jerry were originally written for Winona Ryder and Tom Hanks. Hanks was unable to commit to the project due to his work on That Thing You Do!. Ryder was able to commit, but when screen tests were done with Tom Cruise, they “looked like brother and sister” when standing together.

Director Cameron Crowe was a big fan of The Apartment and used Shirley MacLaine as a model for the kind of woman he wanted for Dorothy Boyd.

Renée Zellweger admitted that the day she was cast in this film, it had been so long since she had worked that when she went to an ATM, she did not have enough of a balance to make a withdrawal.

The baseball field at the end of the film is the same field used in Hook.

The movie’s line “Show me the money!” was voted as the #25 movie quote by the American Film Institute (out of 100).

The song playing when Dorothy and Jerry first have sex is “Haitian Fight Song” by Charles Mingus. This is the answer to Jerry’s question “What IS this music?”.