Trivia / Love & Mercy

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• Ability over Appearance: Paul Dano and John Cusack don't look alike at all, but their performances make it fully believable that they are the same person decades apart. And while neither looks very much like Brian Wilson, they capture his personality extremely well all the same, earning approval from both his friends and Brian himself, as noted below.
• Actor-Shared Background: Like his character Chuck Britz, Mark Linett was an audio engineer who had a longtime association with Brian Wilson.
• Approval of God: Beach Boys co-founder Al Jardine called the film a "great biography" and Brian Wilson also approved of it and Paul Dano and John Cusack's portrayal of him.
• Disowned Adaptation: Eugene Landy's son Evan thought felt that the former was unfairly portrayed in the film.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Paul Dano gained 35 pounds to play Brian Wilson, eating 4,500 calories a day. He claims to have torn a ligament in his knee playing basketball due to the extra weight.
• Hypothetical Casting: According to a 1999 Rolling Stone interview, Melinda Ledbetter had Jeff Bridges in mind to play Brian.
• Saved from Development Hell: A biopic of Brian Wilson's life was first proposed in 1988 with William Hurt as Eugene Landy and Richard Dreyfuss as Brian, but it wasn't until 2014 when Love & Mercy was formally announced.
• What Could Have Been:
  • A third era which focused on Brian's infamous bed period in The '70s was considered, but ultimately discarded, leaving some of his most troubled years to the viewer's imagination. When asked who would have filled the third Wilson role, Pohlad responded that he had considered Philip Seymour Hoffman.
  • The script was a major overhaul of a rejected screenplay written by Michael Alen Lerner. In this version entitled Heroes and Villlains, the film would have focused largely on Wilson's life between 1982 and 1993 with intermittent flashbacks to The '60s, and ending with Wilson completing Smile in 2004.

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