Trivia for
Dark City (1998)

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• At the beginning of the film, there is a brief shot of the movie theatre which says "Now Showing, The Evil, Late Show Nightly" and to the right, "Coming Attractions, Book of Dreams" (a previous film by Alex Proyas). At the end of the movie the marquee still says Book of Dreams: 'Welcome to Crateland' (1994) is coming soon, even though the theater and marquee have changed.
  
  
• New Line Cinema forced Alex Proyas to include the opening narration by Kiefer Sutherland, which Proyas objected to, saying it was unnecessary. The narration gives away several key plot twists and consequently many fans of the film prefer to watch it with the sound turned off during the narration until Sutherland looks at his pocket watch.
  
  
• Sets from this film, including rooftops, buildings and others exteriors, were reused when filming The Matrix (1999).
  
  

• There were many deliberate anachronisms to give the viewer a feeling of confusion of the time of the film.
  
  
• Has one of the shortest Average shot lengths (ASL) of any modern narrative production at 1.8 seconds. This means there is a cut almost every 2 seconds.
  
  
• Alex Proyas wrote the part of Mr. Hand especially for Richard O'Brien.
  
  
• The character of Dr. Daniel Schreber (Kiefer Sutherland), was slightly influenced by the White Rabbit from "Alice in Wonderland".
  
  
• In the hospital sequence a loudspeaker announcer requests "Dr. Benway" and "Mr Lee". These are characters from William S. Burroughs' "Naked Lunch".
  
  
• An earlier draft of the script had Dr. Schreber (Kiefer Sutherland) being skinned alive during the finale.
  
  
• Music inspector Bumstead is playing on his accordion in his very first scene in the movie is a Soviet WWII era song "Siniy Platochek" ("Blue scarf").
  
  
• The main character, John Murdoch, shares the name, and the quest, of a Scottish liberal in the 1870s and 1880s. The Scottish Murdoch led a major campaign for Scottish farmers to own their own land.
  
  
• According to the list that Bumstead shows to Emma, the names of Murdoch's victims are Michelle Davies, Alison Montgomery, Samantha Richards, Kathleen O'Shea, Simone Shaunessy and Beth Mulligan.
  
  
• The name of Kiefer Sutherland's character, Daniel Schreber, is the same as that of a man who wrote a book titled "Memoirs of My Nervous Illness" during the heights of a period in which he was institutionalized for schizophrenia. The book has become a standard reading for many psychiatrists and psychologists, and many of the theories of both Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung were based on it (Freud never actually met Schreber, though). "Dark City" borrows heavily from the concept of "fleetingly-improvised men" which are found within Schreber's "Memoirs".
  
  
• Roger Ebert called this movie the Best Film of 1998.
  
  
• Alex Proyas got the idea for the buildings changing and growing while the crew was moving pieces of the set around during filming of The Crow (1994).
  
  
• Mr. Sleep is played by twins, a girl (Satya Gumbert) and her brother (Noah Gumbert). Both were fond of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), and they (and the rest of the cast and crew) were frequently entertained by 'Richard O'Brien (I)' , who played Mr. Hand in this film and Riff Raff in "Rocky Horror", with recitations from that film.
  
  

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