Trivia / Phantom of the Paradise

• Box Office Bomb: On a budget of between $1 and 1.5 million, it opened poorly and disappeared from theaters quickly. After a better-planned re-marketing, it eventually found a modest-sized audience and managed to just barely break even, before gaining Cult Classic status.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Gerrit Graham has talked about the infamous "musical chairs" casting, where William Finley almost wound up with no role to play. The studio considered casting Paul Williams as Winslow Leach, Graham as Swan and Peter Boyle as Beef. Williams turned down the role not only because he did not feel physically well or menacing for the role, but he did not want to use the role as a slam against the recording industry. Boyle was unavailable, Graham took the role of Beef and Finley ultimately took the role of Winslow Leach.
• Colbert Bump: Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk are huge fans, and even fulfilled a lifelong dream of theirs by collaborating with Paul Williams on the album Random Access Memories, thus raising public awareness of the film significantly and helping to introduce a new generation to it.
• Creator's Oddball: Brian De Palma's only musical, and the moments of Slapstick are very out-of-character for his work.
• The Danza: Archie and Jeffrey (two members of Swan's band) are played by Archie Hahn and Jeffrey Comanor. Harold was played by Peter Elbing, but this still counts as he went by the stage name Harold Oblong at the time (And was credited as such for this project.)
• Deleted Scene: Beef's funeral, which was where "The Hell of It" was originally going to be performed. It was never filmed because the "Upholstery"/car bomb sequence took longer to make than was expected, forcing De Palma to get rid of another scene to stay on schedule and budget.
• Dueling Works:
  • From the beginning, it's been something of a fraternal twin with The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Phantom was independently produced, then sold to 20th Century Fox. Anticipating that it would be a huge hit, Fox greenlighted Rocky Horror as its follow-up. Both films opened poorly, and Fox even tried to revive them as a double bill, but they ended up as Cult Classics via widely divergent paths. Still, Rocky Horror is the better-known movie.
  • It was also in theaters the same time as Tommy.
• Early Draft Tie-In: A novelization of the film was written by Bjarne Rostaing. Apparently based on an early draft of the screenplay, the novel excludes the supernatural angle of the film.
• Harpo Does Something Funny: George Memmoli and Gerrit Graham were allowed to improvise most of the scene where Philbin stops Beef from leaving the Paradise, though "I know drug-real from real-real!" was pre-scripted.
• Inspiration for the Work: Brian De Palma got the idea for the film in 1969 when he was shocked to hear "A Day in the Life" by The Beatles as elevator muzac.
• Non-Singing Voice:
  • When Swan is adjusting Winslow Leach's voice, the singer is not William Finley but Paul Williams. This makes it a little in-joke when Swan announces that the voice is "perfect".
  • Gerrit Graham's singing voice was dubbed by Ray Kennedy.
• Playing Against Type: Paul Williams as Swan. Williams' on-screen appearances are usually as much friendlier characters, but moreover, his best known songwriting efforts are tunes such as "Evergreen" and "Rainbow Connection", which are worlds away from the grimmer, even cynical tunes here.
  • For example, here's the chorus of "The Hell of It":
    Good for nothin'
    Bad in bed
    Nobody liked you, you're better off dead
    Goodbye (goodbye), we've all come to say goodbye (goodbye), goodbye (goodbye)
    Born defeated
    Died in vain
    Super-destructive, you were hooked on pain
    And though your music lingers on
    All of us are glad you're gone
    If I could live my life half as worthlessly as you,
    I'm convinced that I'd wind up burning too.
  • This, in fact, is the reason he asked Brian De Palma for the role of Swan in the first place (De Palma originally wanted him to play Winslow).
  • William Finley, having just played the menacing Psycho Psychologist Dr. Emil Breton in De Palma's Sisters, does a 180-degree turn as the awkward Winslow in the first act (though the Phantom gives him ample opportunity to be menacing later on).
• Referenced by...: Of all things, Mobile Suit Gundam Wing. Zechs' mask is based on Winslow's Phantom mask.
  • Gideon Graves, the Big Bad of Scott Pilgrim, is an Expy of Swan.
  • American gothic rock band Faith and the Muse covered "Old Souls" for their album Evidence of Heaven.
• Saved from Development Hell: Brian De Palma planned to make this in the late 1960s.
• Screwed by the Network: As detailed here, 20th Century Fox did a poor job with the original promotion for the film, basically selling it as a rock film, when it's really a Horror Comedy/Musical about the music industry. After a few months, producer Edward Pressman oversaw a new campaign that had some success. Significantly, the film became a big hit in Winnipeg, where the local theater owner totally ignored the studio promotional material and did his own marketing.
• The Shelf of Movie Languishment: The film was originally slated to be released in the Summer of '72. The film was eventually released at Halloween of '74. The reason why the film took so long to be released is probably because of all of the changes that had to be made in the post-production.
• Technology Marches On: If the movie was made today the studio full of massive synthesizers covered with dials, switches, buttons and cables would just have an iMac, keyboard and mixing board.
• Uncredited Role: Rod Serling as the introductory voice-over.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Brian De Palma originally considered the popular group Sha Na Na for the Juicy Fruits. They were very popular at the time, but De Palma found them too difficult to work with and rejected them.
  • The Beach Boys were supposed to play The Beach Bums.
  • Jon Voight was originally considered for Swan. So was Mick Jagger.
  • Sissy Spacek auditioned for Phoenix. She did work on the film as a set dresser to assist her boyfriend, Jack Fisk, who was the film's production designer. According to Spacek, she did her job so poorly that she ruined a day's worth of filming. Betty Buckley also auditioned for the role and while she didn't get the role, De Palma would later cast her in Carrie (1976)..
  • De Palma considered hiring either The Rolling Stones or The Who to portray the different male singing groups in the movie. However, the prices to hire them were too expensive.
  • In early drafts of the screenplay, Swan was called Spectre (making the real-life inspiration for the character blatant) and Dorian (making the source of one of the subplots blatant).
  • At a fan convention for the film, actor Archie Hahn revealed that had the film been more successful, Brian De Palma wanted to do a spin-off film centered on The Juicy Fruits. There was also an idea to promote The Juicy Fruits as a real band in the months leading up to the film's release.
  • Brian De Palma stated in an interview that he has tried to do a Screen-to-Stage Adaptation of the film. He recounted his idea for a fundraiser film where the character of Swan is doing a charity drive for starving children (in-universe) to earn money to the development of the stage adaptation. Unfortunately, the plans fell through. The interview in which this was mentioned is on the Shout!Factory/Scream Factory Blu-Ray release of the film (it plays during the end credits of the interview).
• Working Title: During filming it was called Phantom of the Fillmore, but Bill Graham refused to allow permission to use his concert hall's name in the title. Then it got changed to Phantom, but at almost the last minute, a threat by King Features Syndicate over the similarity to The Phantom forced the addition of "...of the Paradise" to the title.

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