Trivia: Bob Geldof hates this film. He is quoted as saying "I hated it! I was embarrassed. I didn't know what I was getting into... I thought my acting was terrible. The script was ridiculous. And I hate Pink Floyd. As you may recall I was a punk rocker, so if you want to say something just keep it to three minutes..." He had to be physically restrained by director Alan Parker when he tried to get up and leave during the preview screening of the film at Cannes. In his autobiography "Is That It?" he trashes the film at length, labelling the script as puerile nonsense, and is particularly scathing about the political stance it appears to take. He had a miserable time on the set (reportedly, so did everyone else) and now refuses to even talk about the film or his experiences making it.
Trivia: Richard Gere actually plays the piano - and he composed this piece himself.
Trivia: Director Tyler Perry loves his cast so much that most of them are in all of his films. Besides changing up the main characters, he always finds a spot for his regulars.
Trivia: When James Brolin was offered the role of George Lutz, he was informed that they didn't have a script to give him. James bought a copy of the novel and began to read it. At two o'clock in the morning, while reading a very intense part of the book, a pair of pants that he had hung up earlier fell to the ground causing him to jump in fright. After that, James agreed to do the film.
Trivia: John Lydon aka Johnny Rotten despises this film. He accused it of glamorizing the squalor of Sid and Nancy's life and making heroin addiction seem cool. He has referred to the film as "a f*ck*ng fantasy." Amongst his more scathing quotes : "To me this movie is the lowest form of life. I honestly believe that it celebrates heroin addiction. It definitely glorifies it at the end when that stupid taxi drives off into the sky." "I don't think they ever had the intent to research properly in order to make a seriously accurate movie. It was all just for money, wasn't it? To humiliate somebody's life like that - and very successfully - was very annoying to me." "I went to see it and was utterly appalled. I told [director] Alex Cox, which was the first time I met him, that he should be shot, and he was quite lucky I didn't shoot him. I still hold him in the lowest light. Will the real Sid please stand up?" "As for how I was portrayed... it was so off and ridiculous. It was absurd. Champagne and baked beans for breakfast? Sorry. I don't drink champagne. He didn't even speak like me. He had a Scouse accent." (Lydon is a Londoner.) Alex Cox later admitted that many of Lydon's criticisms of the film were correct and he should have shown the squalor and ugliness of Sid and Nancy's life in a far more realistic manner.
Trivia: Charlie Sheen stayed awake for 2 days to play the guy in the police station, so he could get the right look for the scene.
Trivia: Tina Fey, the woman who plays Ms. Norbury, was also the screenplay writer for the movie.
Trivia: At the climax of the movie when Russell Crowe confronts Senator Collins about his involvement with the death of the senate research aid, he goes outside to leave and is accosted by the assassin, Robert Bingham. Bingham is apparently going to kill Crowe when the police show up in force. Bingham raises his M-16 to shoot Crowe and the police shoot him. In the next scene Crowe is entering the news article in the newspaper's computer. The camera gives us a glimpse of the computer screen. If you pause it and read the story it says that the assassin, Bingham, is found by the police dead at his apartment from an apparent suicide instead of being shot down in a fusillade of police gunfire in front of Senator Collins' office.
Trivia: Director Jason Reitman is the son of Ivan Reitman, director of the original "Ghostbusters" and "Ghostbusters II." As a child, Jason actually had a cameo in "Ghostbusters II" during the birthday party in the beginning. (He's the kid who tells Ray he heard the Ghostbusters were "full of crap").
Trivia: Yvonne Elliman and Barry Dennen, as Mary Magdalene and Pontius Pilate, respectively, are the only cast members who appeared on the concept album, in the original staging of the show on Broadway, and in the feature film.
Trivia: Linda Harrison, who portrayed Nova in the original Planet of the Apes and its sequel Beneath the Planet of the Apes, has a cameo appearance in this movie as one of the people inside the rolling cage as it's being taken into the city. She is seen standing next to Mark Wahlberg, shaking her head when he asks her a question.
Trivia: Kathleen Marshall, who plays the role of Charlotte, is the director Garry Marshall's daughter.
Trivia: Satan is actually played by a woman - the Italian actress Rosalinda Celentano.
Trivia: The name of Truman's boat is the "Santa Maria" - a ship sailed by Christopher Columbus. It is symbolic of going to a new land or a "new" place.
Trivia: When Donnie is about to enter the car with Gretchen near the end of the film, he clutches at his stomach as if in pain, and we see Frank touch his eye after Donnie dies. Both these moments foreshadow pain: a deleted scene of Donnie's death shows a pole impaling his stomach right where he clutched it. And Donnie shoots Frank in the eye.
Trivia: The real Marcus Luttrell appears several times throughout the movie: he spills the coffee and tells the new guy to clean it up; he's in the operation briefing and shakes his head at the rules of engagement being read; and he's on board the Chinook helicopter when it is shot down.
