Trivia / Eyes Wide Shut

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• Acting for Two: Leon Vitali, who plays Red Cloak, also played the cult member in the balcony who looks down at Bill. According to Vitali in the documentary Filmworker, he played eight characters in the cult scenes.
• Billing Displacement: Marie Richardson earns fourth billing, but appears only in one scene. A minor case is how the poster bills Cruise, Kidman, and Kubrick, mixing the director with the two main actors (though admittedly Kubrick was, and even today remains, one of the few directors whose style is so distinctive and well-known that it almost counts as a character itself). However, this wasn't just billing, it was actually a mixture of billing and tagline, starting off as billing with Cruise and Kidman and becoming an alliterative tagline with Kubrick.
• California Doubling: London standing in for New York and the English countryside for Long Island.
• Creator Backlash: Disputed. R. Lee Ermey has said that Kubrick confided to him that he thought the film was "a piece of shit" and that he allowed Cruise and Kidman too much creative control, but Kubrick never openly said anything (for obvious reasons), and his producers said he was very pleased with the result. Todd Field, who starred as Nick the piano player, vigorously disputed Ermey's allegation, and Kubrick's daughter Katharina mentioned that "he was proud of most of his films, but he was very proud of Eyes Wide Shut" in a Reddit Q&A. (Really, the very concept of actors having too much creative control in a Stanley Kubrick film is so ludicrous as to make Alien Space Bats look plausible.) The latter point also seems to be refuted in the documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, which was released shortly after his passing. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman speak in a very entranced manner about Stanley (with Cruise providing narration for the documentary), and they sound as though they were just as subservient to and bemused by his perfectionism as anyone.
• Deleted Role: Victoria Eisermann shot some scenes as Victor Ziegler's wife, but they were deleted when Harvey Keitel left the project.
• Executive Meddling: In order to bring the rating down from NC-17 to R, extra people were digitally inserted into the orgy scene via CGI to cover up genitalia. Most releases from the mid-2000s onward don't cover up the genitals.
• Fake American: Nicole Kidman (Australian) and Alan Cumming (Scottish). Reportedly, Cumming's accent was fluent enough to fool Kubrick who was shocked when he discovered the truth. Cumming's only response was, "That's why I'm an actor, Stanley," earning the director's respect.
• Fake Nationality: German-Argentine Sky du Mont as the Hungarian Sandor Szavost.
• Magnum Opus Dissonance: Stanley Kubrick regarded this his finest contribution to cinema, depending on who you ask. This ironically ended up being one of his most contentious films among audiences.
• No Export for You: Stanley Kubrick arranged to have the novella that the film was based upon kept from getting an English language release until after the film's release in order to ensure the film's plot did not get spoiled.
• The Other Marty: Harvey Keitel and Jennifer Jason Leigh originally played Victor Ziegler and Marion Nathanson. After Keitel and Leigh had shot some scenes, Keitel left the production due to his obligations to another project (although according to other reports, he was fired on the set after having a row with Kubrick). His scenes needed to be reshot, but Leigh was not available to reshoot them (due to a scheduling conflict with eXistenZ). Consequently, Sydney Pollack and Marie Richardson were brought in to play the respective roles.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: There's a persistent urban legend surrounding this film that it actually depicts a real group and that Kubrick was murdered for trying to expose it.
• Posthumous Credit: Stanley Kubrick delivered the final cut (without the digitally added people in the orgy sequence) to Warner Brothers just a few days before his death. Apparently Kubrick himself was prepared to insert digital people should his cut not receive an R rating.
• Real-Life Relative:
  • Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, who were married at the time.
  • Stanley Kubrick's daughter Katharina Kubrick and his grandson Alex Hobbs appear as the mother and the kid patient who has his face examined by Bill. Katharina, along with Kubrick's wife Christiane, also worked on the paintings in the Harfords' apartment.
• Scully Box: Leon Vitali wore six-inch-high platforms to look more imposing as the Red Cloak, although he only used it on scenes where the Red Cloak is sitting down.
• Throw It In!: Two musical cases. The choreographer played Jocelyn Pook's "Backwards Priests" on the set rehearsing the masked ball intro. Kubrick incorporated the song into the scene and called Pook to do the original score. Kubrick also allowed Nicole Kidman to listen to some music in order to liven up for nude scenes and liked her choice of Chris Isaak enough to incorporate it into the movie and its advertisements.
• Tuckerization:
  • Bill and Alice's surname "Harford" was named after Harrison Ford, whom Kubrick wanted to cast in the role of Bill.
  • One of the cafes in the film, "Caffe Da Emilio," was named after Kubrick's longtime personal assistant/chaffeur Emilio d'Alessandro, which was confirmed by d'Alessandro in his own memoir, Stanley Kubrick and Me.
  • A real estate agent in the film, "Vitali," was named after Kubrick's longtime assistant Leon Vitali, who also appears in this film as Red Cloak and a bunch of other masked party-goers. Additionally, the newspaper article announcing Mandy's death mentions that she had been working with a fashion designer named "Leon Vitali".
• Voice-Only Cameo: Cate Blanchett provides the voice for the masked woman at the orgy party. This was not confirmed until 2019.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Harrison Ford was Kubrick's first choice for the lead and, in a comment made shortly before his death, reportedly wished that he had gotten Ford.
  • Melissa Joan Hart auditioned for a role in this movie.
  • At one point the film was going to star a different couple: Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger.
  • The film was in Kubrick's head since the 1970's. He initially wanted to make it a Woody Allen vehicle but never went beyond that. Then, as he was a fan of The Jerk, he wanted to make a screwball, sex comedy for Steve Martin, going as far as to meet Martin for the role. But, soon enough, he was able to make the film we see today. Allen was also considered for Victor Ziegler.
  • Julie Benz auditioned for a role but decided against it when she was going to have to do the scene topless.
  • The film was initially conceived as another Kubrick and Michael Herr collaboration, but Herr eventually declined to participate.
  • John le Carré was approached by Kubrick to write the screenplay with him.
• Working Title: According to writer Frederic Raphael, a few of the proposed titles for the film were You and Me and The Female Subject.

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