Dye Hard: For her role as Alice/Jane, Natalie Portman cut and dyed her hair red as well as putting on pink and blonde wigs.
Missing Episode: In the build up to the release of the film, word got out that Natalie Portman had shot fully nude scenes for her role as a stripper. Ultimately cut from the film, it was reported that the nude footage was burned by Mike Nichols.
A line from Larry to Alice - "You women don't understand the territory, because you are the territory."
This exchange between Dan and Anna.
Anna: Why did you swear eternal love when all you wanted was excitement? Love bores you.
Dan: No. It disappoints me.
Reality Subtext: Shortly after the film was released, Jude Law was discovered to have cheated on his wife with their nanny.
Referenced by...: Quite a few musicians have made songs that reference specific scenes and lines from the film.
Panic! at the Disco's "Lying Is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off" and "But It's Better If You Do" from the album A Fever You Can't Sweat Out.
The quotes "He tastes like you, only sweeter" and "I love everything about you that hurts" are used in the Fall Out Boy songs "Thnks fr th Mmrs" and "G.I.N.A.S.F.S" respectively.
Curtis had this to say about the album in a letter to Joy Division's manager, Rob Gretton:
Rob, Judged purely on my own terms, and not to be interpreted as an opinion or reflection of mass media or public taste but a criticism of my own esoteric and elitist mind of which the mysteries of life are very few and beside which the grace of God has deemed to indicate in a vision of life the true nature of all things, plus the fact that everyone else are a sneaky, japing load of tossers, I decree that this LP is a disaster. I K Curtis
Curtis singled out his dislike for "The Eternal", stating that the keyboard parts sounded "like fucking Genesis" (similarly to Peter Hook's negative comparisons between Unknown Pleasures and Pink Floyd).
Creator Breakdown: The album was recorded when Ian Curtis was rapidly approaching the mental nadir that would lead to his suicide, and it shows; Bernard Sumner recalled in 2007 how even though he, Stephen Morris, and Peter Hook weren't playing close attention to Curtis' lyrics at the time and didn't notice just how far he was falling, they could tell something was off about him during production.
"While we were working on Closer, Ian said to me that doing this album felt very strange, because he felt that all his words were writing themselves. He also said that he had this terrible claustrophobic feeling that he was in a whirlpool and being pulled down, drowning."
Hitless Hit Album: The album reached No. 6 on the U.K. album chart, but no singles were taken from it.
Late Export for You: The album was only released in the U.S. in March 1981, nearly a year after its U.K. release. It still made the 1980 Village Voice Pazz & Jop Critic's Poll as an import.
