Trivia / Sliver

• Breakaway Pop Hit: Many people don't realize that UB40's version of "Can't Help Falling in Love" was recorded for this film's soundtrack.
• Creator Backlash: Joe Eszterhas hates the movie, particularly the film's final line, "Get a life". He vowed never to write such a terrible ending again.
• Focus Group Ending: The original script called for a different ending in which Zeke turns out to be the killer, but was re-shot when it fared poorly with test audiences.
• Hostility on the Set: Sharon Stone and William Baldwin disliked each other and demanded that their scenes be filmed separately whenever possible. During a kissing scene, she bit his tongue with such force that he couldn't talk properly for days.
• On-Set Injury: Cameraman Michael Benson suffered lung injuries after a helicopter crash left him trapped for two days inside a Hawaiian volcano crater. The crew aboard the helicopter was flying over an active volcano to shoot the film's original opening sequence, but the footage was lost in the crash.
• Playing Against Type: A year after playing a murderous, manipulative Depraved Bisexual in Basic Instinct, Sharon Stone was now playing a very sexually repressed Damsel in Distress.
• Production Throwback: One of Jack's books has a cover that mimics the poster design to Dead Calm, one of Phillip Noyce's previous films.
• Troubled Production: Not as bad as some other iterations of this trope, but ...
  • The animosity between Sharon Stone and William Baldwin was so deep that at one point during a kissing scene she bit his tongue so badly he couldn't speak clearly for days afterward.
  • Stone didn't miss a step, by contrast, having an affair with the executive producer that ended his five-month-old marriage.
  • The ending was reshot after a) test audiences were turned off by Carly seemingly willing to cover for Zeke and b) the helicopter being used in that scene crashed into the volcano during filming, resulting in the pilot's license being suspended. All footage of that scene was destroyed, and the ending rewritten so that Jack rather than Zeke turns out to have been the killer.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Robert Evans initially wanted Roman Polański to direct the film. Since Polanski will not return to the United States, Evans planned on having a second unit director shoot some footage of New York, whilst Polanski would direct the film in Paris.
  • Johnny Depp, Harrison Ford, Val Kilmer and River Phoenix turned down the role of Zeke Hawkins.
  • Kurt Russell turned down the role of Jack Lansford.
  • It also had Carly and Zeke marrying. The final scene is of them taking a helicopter flight over a volcano. When he entices her into taking off her seatbelt, telling her "It's more fun this way.", she makes a comment that insinuates that she is fully aware that he's the killer and that if anything happens to her, one of her friends has access to information that will incriminate him.

---