Trivia / In America

• Ability over Appearance: Christy was written to be 12 or 13 years old but Jim Sheridan ended up casting 10-year-old Sarah Bolger in the role after she impressed him.
• California Doubling: The street fair scene was filmed in Dublin.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: Many reviewers mistakenly listed the film as taking place in The '80s. It seems to be confusing the E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial references, and an early script draft where it was an 80s period piece. Christy uses a very obvious late 90s style camcorder for one, there's a lack of '80s Hair or fashions, and the technology shown is all of the present day.
• Fake American: A few American bit parts are played by Irish actors.
• Fake Irish: Paddy Considine and Samantha Morton are both British, but do pretty good Irish accents. Both do have Irish ancestry, but of course, have to fake the accents.
• Fake Nationality: Mateo is Nigerian, and Djimon Honsou is originally from Benin (which does admittedly border Nigeria).
• In Memoriam: Christy and Ariel's dead little brother Frankie is named after director Jim Sheridan's late brother Frankie, to whom the film is dedicated.
• Never Work with Children or Animals: Subverted. In order to make acting easier on the young Bolger sisters, Jim Sheridan let them call "action" and "cut" in every scene.
• Orphaned Reference:
  • Christy (who is ten) narrates over her parents' sex scene "that's when the baby was conceived". This is a remnant for when she was written to be a preteen and would therefore know a little more than a ten-year-old. She is at least established to be knowledgeable about what transvestites are, so she's possibly Wise Beyond Her Years.
  • The significance of ET is a holdover from when the film was going to be set in the 80s. And indeed, a few reviewers thought the sequence of the characters seeing the movie indicated it was meant to be an 80s period piece (ET was re-released in 2002 to celebrate its 20th anniversary, and could also easily have been shown in any number of New York cinemas dedicated to older films).
• The Pete Best: Sarah Bolger actually never intended to audition for the film. Her sister Emma auditioned for Ariel and then said to Jim Sheridan to meet her sister who was in the car outside. Of course, it should be noted that Sarah was also an actress, having done the film A Love Divided
• Real-Life Relative: As stated many times, the Sullivan sisters are played by real-life sisters.
• Reality Subtext: The dead son Frankie is named after the director's late brother, and the film is dedicated to him.
• Separated-at-Birth Casting: The resemblance between Sarah Bolger and Samantha Morton definitely makes them believable as mother and daughter. Now that Bolger has grown up, she resembles Morton even more.
• Star-Making Role: Sarah Bolger was launched onto things like Stormbreaker, The Spiderwick Chronicles, The Tudors and Once Upon a Time thanks to this film.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The story would originally have taken place in 1982, which is why the characters go to see E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial - Jim Sheridan having based it off his own experiences in America. However, the tight budget meant it had to be set in the present day. The filmmakers lucked out when E.T. was re-released in 2002, to celebrate its twentieth anniversary.
  • Katey Harvey auditioned for the role of Christy.
  • The movie was originally supposed to star Ewan McGregor as Johnny and Kate Winslet as Sarah when the movie was titled East of Harlem.
• Working Title: East of Harlem

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