Trivia for
Natural Born Killers (1994) More at IMDbPro »

• Michael Madsen was initially considered for the role of Mickey, but Warner Bros wanted somebody less intimidating, and with a softer persona, as they felt this might alleviate the brutality of the character somewhat.
  
  
• During filming, Juliette Lewis actually broke Tom Sizemore's nose when she slammed Scagnetti's face into the wall.
  
  
• The editing of the film took 11 months.
  
  
• During filming, director Oliver Stone would play African tribal music at full blast on the set, as a way of keeping a frantic mood.
  
  
• 18 different film formats are seen in the finished film.
  
  
• This film contains almost 3,000 cuts. Most films have 600-700. Negative cutter Donah Bassett cut 4000 negative images into the film, the most complex job every undertaken by a negative cutter.
  
  
• Tom Sizemore's character's name is Jack Scagnetti. In Reservoir Dogs (1992) (also written by Quentin Tarantino), Vic Vega's parole officer is named Seymour Scagnetti.
  
  
• Another Quentin Tarantino name: Mickey and Mallory kill a cop named Gerald Nash. In Reservoir Dogs (1992), the cop who is tortured and murdered is named Marvin Nash. The actor who played Marvin Nash, Kirk Baltz, plays Roger, a member of the TV crew in Natural Born Killers.
  
  
• The color green is used to indicate the sickness in Mickey's mind and shows up prominently several times during the film: the key lime pie at the diner, the green neon at the drugstore, the green room in the prison.
  
  
• The prison riot was filmed at Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet, Illinois. 80% of the prisoners there are there for violent crimes. For the first two of four weeks on location, the extras were actual inmates with rubber weapons. For the other two weeks, over 200 extras had to be brought in because the Stateville inmates had been placed on lockdown.
  
  
• Every time Mallory engages in sexual or sexually suggestive activities with someone (other than Mickey), she attacks them (e.g. the trucker in the bar, Scagnetti, the gas station attendant).
  
  
• Mallory's mother (Edie McClurg) has blue hair, just like the mother of the psychopath Alex in A Clockwork Orange (1971).
  
  
• When Mickey and Mallory are in the hotel room with the hostage, you can see clips of the chainsaw scene from Scarface (1983) and the tongue-biting scene from Midnight Express (1978), both films written by Oliver Stone. You can also see clips from The Wild Bunch (1969) directed by Sam Peckinpah.
  
  
• The interview between Wayne Gale and Mickey was based upon Geraldo Rivera's interviews with Charles Manson and the infamous Mike Wallace interview with Manuel Noriega.
  
  
• Characters are loosely based on Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugate, a young Nebraska couple who in 1958 embarked on a mass murder spree across the Midwest that horrified the country. The characters in Terrence Malick's Badlands (1973) are also loosely based on Starkweather and Fugate.
  
  
• In late 1994 the film was banned from theatrical distribution in Ireland. However, the Irish Film Centre, which is a membership club and not subject to the same rules as public theaters, booked the film and had it scheduled to screen for a month long run in early 1995. However the film censorship board threatened legal action if the film was shown and it was withdrawn.
  
  
• The Drug Store scene was filmed in an Albuqueruqe building that was a real drug store that had closed just prior to filming. The original fixtures and pharmacy area were still in the store, making set up very easy. The sign above the door was added for the movie and was still there months after filming ended. The building is now a Hobby Lobby. 1000 green fluorescent bulbs were used to light the scene.
  
  
• The guns Mickey uses in the pharmacy are a Beretta 93R and a Wildey Magnum (the same gun is also featured in Death Wish 3 (1985)).
  
  
• This was Quentin Tarantino's second feature length screenplay (his first was True Romance (1993)). The script was rewritten by director Oliver Stone, producer Richard Rutowski and screenwriter David Veloz prior to and during production. The finished film bears little resemblance to Tarintino's original script.
  
  
• In an infamous incident after the film had been released, Oliver Stone and Time Warner were sued by Patsy Byers, with the support of author and film producer John Grisham. In March 1995, 18-year-old Sarah Edmondson and her boyfriend Benjamin Darras (also 18) allegedly dropped acid and watched 'Natural Born Killers'. Later that night, Sarah shot and paralyzed Byers, a store clerk in Ponchatoula, and Benjamin killed cotton gin manager William Savage in Hernando, Mississippi. John Grisham was a personal friend of Savage's, and after the murder, Grisham publicly accused Oliver Stone of being irresponsible in making the film, arguing that filmmakers should be held accountable for their work when it incites violent behavior. Byers decided to take legal action against Stone and the studio, and supported by Grisham, she used a "product liability" claim in the lawsuit, which argued that Stone had incited the teenagers to commit the crime. Initially, the case was dismissed in January 1997, on the grounds that filmmakers and production companies are protected by the First Amendment. However, in May 1998, the Intermediate Louisiana Court of Appeals overturned the lower court's decision, and the case went ahead. The attorneys for Byers' attempted to prove that Stone and Warner were culpable in the murder and in Byers injury because they had purposefully meant to incite violence by "distributing a film they knew, or should have known would cause and inspire people to commit crimes". All of Hollywood eagerly awaited the outcome of the trial, because if Stone was found guilty, it would mean a drastic reexamination of the industry practices and would carry all kinds of far reaching implications as regards the content of movies. However, in a landmark decision, Byers' action was thrown out of court in March 2001, and its dismissal was rubber-stamped by the Louisiana Court of Appeal in June 2002.
  
  
• Took only 56 days to shoot.
  
  
• Trent Reznor watched the film over 50 times to "get in the mood" for mixing the soundtrack.
  
  
• Cameo: [Jane Hamsher] as a demon-like character during a hallucination sequence.
  
  
• Cameo: [Richard Rutowski] a demon during the prison riot
  
  
• Cameo: [Don Murphy] one of the jovial guards who gets shot and killed by Mickey when he begins his escape from prison after the interview with Wayne Gale there.
  
  
• Robert Downey Jr. spent time with Australian TV shock-king Steve Dunleavy to prepare for the role of Wayne Gale, and when he came back with an Australian accent, the filmmakers decided to go with it and Gale became an Australian.
  
  
• Coca-Cola approved the use of the Polar Bear ads for its product in the movie without having a full idea of what the movie was about; when the Board of Directors saw the finished product, they were furious.
  
  
• The story told on "American Maniacs" about Mickey killing a cop after asking him for directions is taken almost verbatim from a story made up by J. Edgar Hoover in the 1930s about bank robbers Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker to try to quash the public's growing favorable opinion of the pair. According to Hoover, Barrow approached an Oklahoma City officer, asked for directions and then blew his head off with a shotgun. The story fell apart, though, when questions were raised as to how, if the officer was alone when he was killed, Hoover could possibly have determined that it was Barrow who killed him, as there were no witnesses to the "murder."
  
  
• According to director Oliver Stone, actor Rodney Dangerfield didn't understand the film during shooting and didn't understand what Stone was trying to do by shooting such a dark subject as a father molesting his daughter in the style of a 1950's sitcom. As such, he found it very difficult to perform his part. Stone was delighted however when the film came out and Dangerfield's performance was hailed as one of the movie's strongest points.
  
  
• Republican Sen. Bob Dole publicly denounced the film for its promotion of violence - even though, as he was later forced to admit, he had never actually seen the film.
  
  
• Acclaimed as the #1 film of the 1990s by Entertainment Weekly.
  
  
• When Jack Scagnetti (Tom Sizemore) goes into Mallory's cell, and throughout this scene, you can read two different paragraphs above the door in the cell, and below Mallory, on the bedside. The one near the door reads: "Come let's away / to prison we two / alone will sing / like birds in a cage." This is from 'King Lear', a play written by 'William Shakespeare', as Lear and his daughter Cordelia are being taken away to prison. The other paragraph reads: "He is coming! He is coming! / Like a bridegroom from his room / Came the hero from his prison / To the scaffold and the doom." These lines are from the poem "The Execution Of Montrose" by William Edmondstoune Aytoun.
  
  
• The car featured in the film is a 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T convertible.
  
  
• When putting together the music for the film, Oliver Stone and soundtrack producer Trent Reznor both wanted to get Snoop Dogg involved, but Warner wouldn't allow it, as Dogg was on trial for murder at the time.
  
  
• In the UK, the film's video release was to be the same week that Thomas Hamilton walked into a primary school in the Scottish town of Dunblane and killed 16 children and a teacher before killing himself, shocking a nation unused to such gun crimes. Warner Brothers immediately went to the British Board of Film Classification to take another look at the certification granted the film. The BBFC however stood by their decision, so Warners took it upon themselves to withhold video release. Thus, when the film had its terrestrial TV premiere on the UK's channel five two years later, it became one of the few films to be broadcast on television without having a video release beforehand.
  
  
• According to an early draft of the script, this movie was originally intended to be directed by Rand Vossler, until Oliver Stone came to the project and Vossler ended up being a co-producer. The story behind this change in directors was chronicled in the book "Killer Instinct" written by producer Jane Hamsher.
  
  
• Premiere voted this movie as one of "The 25 Most Dangerous Movies".
  
  
• The wrestling match that Rodney Dangerfield is watching is from an episode of 'WWF Superstars'. The wrestlers involved are Chris Chavis aka Tatanka (the native American wrestler) and Barry Hardy.
  
  
• On the Swedish DVD of the Directo'rs Cut released by Scanbox, it says "Not suitable for people under 18 years". This is extremely rare in Sweden, since a restricted under-18 rating does not exist.
  
  
• When producers Jane Hamsher and Don Murphy first brought Quentin Tarantino's screenplay to Oliver Stone's attention, Stone's initial idea was to make a lighthearted all-action blockbuster. His previous film, Heaven & Earth (1993), had been a difficult shoot which had failed at the box office, and he saw 'Natural Born Killers' as a way to make a fun movie and play with genre conventions. As he puts it himself in Chaos Rising: The Storm Around 'Natural Born Killers' (2001) (V), he planned to make "something Arnold Schwarzenegger would be proud of." As the project developed however, Stone found the movie getting deeper and deeper, and soon all hopes for a simple action spectacular were gone.
  
  
• The unique look of the film was based upon Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (1967), one of director Oliver Stone's favorite movies. In particular, Stone was influenced by the famous death scene, which used innovative editing techniques provided by multiple cameras shooting from different angles at different speeds. Stone had used similar, although considerably more restrained, techniques in his previous two films JFK (1991) and Heaven & Earth (1993), and would continue to employ these techniques for his next two films, Nixon (1995) and U Turn (1997).
  
  
• Director Oliver Stone calls the frequent cuts to black and white, where dialogue is often repeated with a slightly different intonation, "vertical cutting". Stone explains that the idea behind the technique is to create an outer moment (the color footage) and an inner moment (the black and white footage) at the same time. For example, he explains this in relation to the waitress in the opening scene (O-Lan Jones), who whilst taking Mickey's order in the 'outer' scene is actually flirting with him (or thinking about flirting with him) in the 'inner' scene. Also in the opening scene, when the cowboy ('James Gammon') refers to Mallory as "pussy", there is a flash cut to Mickey covered in blood; this is Mickey's 'inner' moment.
  
  
• For the numerous scenes involving rear projection, the projected footage was shot prior to principal photography, then edited together, and projected live onto the stage, behind the live actors. For example, when Mallory drives past a building and flames are projected onto the wall, this was shot live using footage projected onto the facade of a real building.
  
  
• Oliver Stone wanted Juliette Lewis to bulk up for the role of Mallory so that she looked tougher, but Lewis refused, saying she wanted the character to look like a pushover, not like a female bodybuilder. In the end, Stone agreed, but he insisted she take kick-boxing lessons so that she looked credible when fighting.
  
  
• The title card for the film is an homage to Roger Corman.
  
  
• According to director Oliver Stone, the use of TV commercials was an attempt to illustrate the comforting power such commercials have. Every commercial comes after a horrific moment or a flash cut of a demon, and Stone's idea was that commercials work to sooth people after they have been exposed to something extreme.
  
  
• During Mickey's escape from prison during the tornado, there is a shot where a convict falls under a galloping horse. This was completely genuine, as the stuntman really did loose his footing and fall under the horse. Despite the possibly injuries however, he was fine.
  
  
• The show 'American Maniacs' is based upon "Hard Copy" (1989).
  
  
• CAMEO: Editor Hank Corwin is the headless man in the living room.
  
  
• 150 rattlesnakes were used for the scene in the snake field.
  
  
• The scene where the police beat up Mickey and Mallory at the pharmacy was purposely shot as a spoof of the Rodney King incident.
  
  
• CAMEO: National kickboxing champion Kathy Long is the female police officer who beats up Mickey at the pharmacy.
  
  
• Tommy Lee Jones has said that his over-the-top performance was partly inspired by Molière's play 'Le Bourgeois gentilhomme'; a satirical look at social climbing and the bizarre things people will do to achieve fame.
  
  
• Scagnetti's (Tom Sizemore) story about how his mother was killed was based upon a real life incident involving one of America's first mass murderers, Charles Whitman, who did actually shot people randomly from a tower.
  
  
• In a scene in the mess hall in the prison, a bald white man is staring at a black man, prompting the black man to try to attack him, before being intercepted by Warden McClusky (Tommy Lee Jones). The bald man was a real prisoner, who had been convicted of murdering his wife and children by beating them to death with a lead pipe. Oliver Stone gave him a featured role because he said the man's stoicism terrified him.
  
  
• Whilst shooting the POV scene where Mallory runs into the wire mesh, director of photography Robert Richardson broke his finger, and the replacement cameraman cut his eye.
  
  
• The idea for the image of the headless man came to Oliver Stone in a dream.
  
  
• Oliver Stone's least favorite scene in the film is when Mickey overpowers the prison guards after the interview with Wayne Gale (Robert Downey Jr.) is terminated. Stone feels that the device of having Mickey distract the guards by telling a joke is too unrealistic.
  
  
• Oliver Stone says that his biggest regret about the film is the fact that he had to cut out most of actor Pruitt Taylor Vince's performance as the prison guard Kavanaugh. As filmed, Kavanaugh becomes a comic character, who Mickey uses as a shield whilst moving through the prison, and who ends up being shot 16 times by the time Mickey meets Warden McClusky (Tommy Lee Jones) at the stairs. In the finished version of the film, you don't actually see Kavanaugh being shot at all prior to stairs. Stone says he was forced to cut much of this because the studio insisted that the movie be under two hours. Strangely however, the footage of Kavanaugh was not restored by Stone for his Director's Cut nor was it included as a deleted scene on the DVD.
  
  
• Mallory's line to Scagnetti about him being "so specific" when he asks her to pinch his nipple was improvised by actress Juliette Lewis on set.
  
  
• Entertainment Weekly ranked the film as the 8th most controversial movie ever made.
  
  
• Mickey (Woody Harrelson) calls Mallory (Juliette Lewis) "Mal" - translated to Spanish "Mal" is the common word for "Evil".
  
  
• Cameo: [Oliver Stone] In the opening scene in the café. He is seen reading a newspaper and then vanishes.
  
  
• In a scene where Scangetti is speaking with the warden, he says something about being as big as Jack Ruby. Later, Scangetti is executed on live television, like Lee Harvey Oswald.
  
  

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