Trivia / Planet Terror

• Acting in the Dark: Rebel Rodriguez had no idea his character died. Alternate versions of other scenes were filmed with him in them for the sake of a different cut where Tony survives.
• Cast the Expert:
  • Felix Sabates, who plays Dr Felix, is Robert Rodriguez's personal physician.
  • Skip Reissig, who plays the strip club owner, is Robert Rodriguez's real estate agent. He was cast because the director realised his own personality was exactly the same as the owner's.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Robert Rodriguez originally considered Jeff Fahey for the role of Sheriff Hague, but then decided that Michael Biehn would be perfect for that part, so he cast him as J.T. Hague.
• The Cast Showoff: Marley Shelton has hyper-flexible wrists. This came in real handy.
• Creator Backlash: Rose McGowan doesn't look fondly on her time on this movie, accusing Robert Rodriguez of betraying her trust by putting a Harvey Weinstein Expy in there that her character kills and then selling the movie to him. The director disputed the latter claims however, providing evidence that the Weinsteins had been involved from the beginning and the film was part of his contract with Miramax, and stating that she had been involved in the script process and she had signed onto it with knowledge of that scene being filmed.
• Creator-Chosen Casting: Robert Rodriguez wrote Cherry Darling for Rose McGowan. Harvey Weinstein didn't want her in the film, but he cast her anyway.
• The Danza: Skip the club owner is played by Skip, Robert Rodriguez' realtor, while Carlos Gallardo plays Deputy Carlos.
• Foiler Footage: Partly to avoid traumatizing his son Rebel Rodriguez with knowledge of his disturbing death scene, Robert Rodriguez shot several scenes with Tony surviving all the way to the end of the movie. Some of this is seen on the DVD, but apparently the only complete edit with this footage is a private copy of the Rodriguez family's.
• Inspiration for the Work: Robert Rodriguez first came up with the idea during the production of The Faculty:
  I remember telling Elijah Wood and Josh Hartnett, all these young actors, that zombie movies were dead and hadn't been around in a while, but that I thought they were going to come back in a big way because they’d been gone for so long. I said, "We've got to be there first". I had [a script] I’d started writing. It was about 30 pages, and I said to them, "There are characters for all of you to play". We got all excited about it, and then I didn't know where to go with it. The introduction was about as far as I'd gotten, and then I got onto other movies. Sure enough, the zombie [movie] invasion happened and they all came back again, and I was like, "Ah, I knew that I should've made my zombie film".
• On-Set Injury: During filming, Rose McGowan suffered an injury to her arm that would later be aggravated on the set of a Red Sonja remake, which would lead to the film being cancelled altogether.
• Playing Against Type: Mildly for Rose McGowan, who is always the Deadpan Snarker. Indeed, she'd just finished five years playing an extremely competent witch who's also a guardian angel in Charmed (1998). Cherry is a ditzy Action Girl. Rose's part in Death Proof is within type.
• Production Posse: Robert Rodriguez had worked with Marley Shelton and Bruce Willis in Sin City, Tom Savini and Michael Parks in From Dusk Till Dawn, and Danny Trejo in Desperado (he only appears in the fake Machete trailer, which is counted as part of Planet Terror on the DVD release).
• Queer Character, Queer Actor: Dakota's lesbian lover is played by the bisexual Fergie.
• Real-Life Relative: Robert Rodriguez's own son Rebel plays Dakota's son Tony. Word of God is that he cast his own child because he found the scene where Dakota leaves him alone with a gun so chilling.
• Screwed by the Network: Robert Rodriguez accused Harvey Weinstein of deliberately slashing the advertising budget to bury the movie out of spite when he learned there was an Expy of him that gets killed by Rose McGowan.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Robert Rodriguez wanted to make the film around the time he was shooting The Faculty, expecting that zombie movies would come back into fashion. After that, he got attached to other projects, and then the zombie craze indeed came in the early 2000s.
  • Lindsay Lohan was rumored for the role of Cherry Darling, but she would later work with Rodriguez in Machete.
  • John Carpenter was going to do the score before Robert Rodriguez decided to do it himself.
• Word of Dante: The vehicles driven by the undead U.S soldiers are emblazoned with "UNIT 31" so maybe that's the name of their regiment. It hasn't been stated otherwise.
• Working Title: Project Terror.

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