Trivia / Endless Love

• Breakaway Pop Hit: The 1981 film's soundtrack featured the song of the same name by Lionel Richie and Diana Ross, which was a huge hit, spending nine weeks at #1 on the charts, and is still fondly remembered today (with Luther Vandross and Mariah Carey providing a cover of it in 1994). Even with the 2014 remake, the movie itself is almost completely forgotten.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Tom Cruise auditioned for the role of David in the 1981 film. He ended up with a bit part in what turned out to be his film debut.
• Dawson Casting: In the 1981 adaptation, Martin Hewitt played the 17-year-old David at 23.
• Disowned Adaptation: Scott Spencer hated both film adaptations of the novel. The novel is a very character-driven account of a Stalker with a Crush, and the extremes he goes to in order to be with the object of his obsession, with the contrasts between the two families (his being deeply into left-wing politics, hers being a Bourgeois Bohemian family) being important. The first film starts off as a straightforward romance, then awkwardly shifts more toward the novel's approach in its second half. The second film is straightforward romance through and through. He called the 1981 version "a botched job" and wrote that Franco Zeffirelli "egregiously and ridiculously misunderstood" the novel, saying, "I was frankly surprised that something so tepid and conventional could have been fashioned from my slightly unhinged novel about the glorious destructive violence of erotic obsession," and he thought that the 2014 version was even worse , saying about the script, "It's about one hundred pages, and the only ones that were not dreary were sciatica-inducing."
• Enforced Method Acting: During the lovemaking scene in the 1981 version, director Franco Zeffirelli squeezed Brooke Shields' big toe off camera to provoke a reaction that would look like an orgasm.
• Follow the Leader:
  • The 1981 film definitely seemed like it was trying to piggyback on the success of Ordinary People, likewise an adaptation of an acclaimed novel about a troubled young man from the Chicago area with a middle class upbringing.
  • And the story's similarities to Romeo and Juliet were no doubt a major reason why Franco Zeffirelli, director of Romeo and Juliet (1968), helmed the 1981 version.
• Mid-Development Genre Shift: The early publicity material for the 1981 film, after the creative team had been assembled, but before the lead roles were cast, used the tagline "a story of erotic obsession", which is bit more in-line with the novel (though the obsession is very one-sided there). The casting of 15-year-old Brooke Shields as Jade clearly forced the filmmakers to invoke Adaptational Modesty and play down the erotic angle, and turn it into more of a Teen Drama about Star-Crossed Lovers.
• Real-Life Relative: Brooke Shields' mother appears as one of the nurses in the mental hospital.
• Star-Derailing Role: The 2014 remake harmed the careers of Alex Pettyfer and Gabriella Wilde. Both were rising up and coming talents who, admittedly, were in movies with so-so box office and critical performances. But the remake was the last straw as neither have appeared in a mainstream film afterwards. Pettyfer has stuck to doing independent films and Wilde mostly stuck to TV for the rest of the 2010s, although she did later have a bit part in Wonder Woman 1984.
• Technology Marches On: In the novel, David has to embark on a huge project to locate the Butterfields after learning they left Chicago, in which he spends hours and hours in the library scouring out-of-town phone books, having to do some guesswork based on the types of places where the family members might live, plus other bits of information like Ann Butterfield's maiden name (Ramsey). Nowadays, he'd just need a few minutes of Google searches to do the same thing.
• Typecasting: The male lead in the 1981 version, Martin Hewitt, would spend the rest of his career in the '80s and '90s mostly playing the "bad boy" male part in a romantic couple in any film he appeared in (which by the time the '90s rolled in, were straight-up softcore flicks), ostensibly due to his role in this film.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Shirley Knight (Ann) didn't think much of 16-year-old Brooke Shields' acting skills, and begged Franco Zeffirelli to cast someone else as Jade, suggesting names like Rosanna Arquette, Linda Blair, Bo Derek, Carrie Fisher, Jodie Foster, Melanie Griffith, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kristy McNichol, Michelle Pfeiffer, Meg Ryan or Debra Winger.
  • Timothy Hutton was considered for David, but was deemed "too ordinary-looking".
  • The 2014 film. Before Gabriella Wilde was cast, Emma Roberts was considered for the role of Jade Butterfield, but she turned it down. Sophie Lowe, Sarah Bolger and Olivia Cooke were also potential candidates on the final shortlist.

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