Trivia / The Ninth Gate

• Approval of God:
  • The author of the original novel, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, considered it an excellent film despite being a bit different from his book. Director Roman Polański had actually asked him to work in the film as script consultant, but Reverte declined, prefering the movie to be exclusively Polanski's vision.
  • Reverte also spoke highly of the main cast, especially Johnny Depp and Emmanuelle Seigner. Amusingly, he admitted that his first personal meeting with Depp was rocky, as Depp showed up stoned out of his mind and this deeply offended Reverte, but the writer's opinion gave a 180º turn when he actually got to see Depp on work.
• California Doubling: Due to Polanski's notorious legal problems, the New York scenes were filmed in Paris, with at least one skyscrapper being inserted into the background with special effects. This was averted for most of the other scenes, which were generally shot in the claimed location (though the Portuguese hotel was a Spanish hotel).
• Descended Creator: At Polanski's suggestion, the Ceniza brothers and the workmen dismantling their shop later on are all played by the production manager of the scenes filmed in Spain, José López Rodero. To make them appear like different people, Polanski himself dubbed one of the brothers.
• Development Gag: In the novel, Rochefort is an eerily pale skinned white man. In the movie, his counterpart is an unnamed black man with his hair bleached blonde. In one scene, Corso sarcastically refers to the black man as "the albino".
• Doing It for the Art: Johnny Depp renounced his usual base fee for the chance to work with Roman Polański.
• Dueling Movies: As shown in this video, the movie has a few parallels with Eyes Wide Shut, which came out in the same year.
• Fake Nationality:
  • Swedish Lena Olin as French-born Liana de Saint-Martin Telfer.
  • English Barbara Jefford as the seemingly French or German Baroness Kessler.
  • Long-time American expatriate actor Jack Taylor as the Portuguese Victor Fargas.