Trivia for
Hard Candy (2005) More at IMDbPro »

• Ellen Page was nearly passed over for the role of Hayley because she had a shaved head from her role in Mouth to Mouth (2005) when she filmed the audition tape she submitted.
  
  
• Filmed in 18 days.
  
  
• The opening scenes at Nighthawks was shot last, with the set of Jeff's house transformed into a coffee shop. The very last scene they shot for the film was the bit where Hailey goes into the bathroom and changes into the T-shirt.
  
  
• The scenes inside Jeff's house were shot mostly in chronological order.
  
  
• The inspiration comes from Japan. Producer David Higgins had read reports of Japanese schoolgirls ambushing men who surfed the Internet for underage dates and later developed the story.
  
  
• The stunt coordinator's house served as the exterior for Jeff's house. The interiors of Jeff's house were inspired by that of producer David Higgins, who planned to shoot the film there if enough money could not be secured to build sets.
  
  
• Sandra Oh agreed to her small part in this film mainly because of her previous working relationship with Ellen Page, a fellow Canadian.
  
  
• When they were filming the scene where Hayley implies that everything Jeff thinks he knows about her is a lie, producers asked if they could include a line where she states that she was actually 18 years old rather than 14. Ellen Page was adamantly against the suggestion because she thought it undermined the premise of the film.
  
  
• Both cast and crew members have denied that the costume choices for the character of Hayley were intended as a reference to the children's story 'Little Red Riding Hood.'
  
  
• Sandra Oh's character was called Mrs. Tokuda in the script. When she arrived on the set, Oh said "I feel like a Judy Tokuda," which the director loved. However, the name had been made up on the spot and could not be cleared by the legal department, so the executive on the set asked for one take where she refers to herself Mrs. Tokuda. Oh didn't want to do the take, but finally relented on the condition that she would only have to do one take. However, she intentionally delivered the line "Tell him Mrs. Tokuda says Hi." in a ridiculous Midwestern accent, making the take unusable. The name Judy Tokuda eventually presented no clearance problems.
  
  
• Sandra Oh's material was all shot in one day.
  
  
• Despite the intense emotional and physical content of most rest of the movie, Ellen Page said that one of the hardest scenes to shoot by far was the scene at Nighthawks, where for take after take she had to eat more tiramisu than she could ever want.
  
  
• Patrick Wilson briefly passed out due to overexertion during filming of the intense surgery scene.
  
  
• The final shot of Hayley with the hoody pulled over her head was taken by the DP Jo Willems without Ellen Page knowing. She didn't know about the shot until she saw the final cut.
  
  
• It is British director David Slade's first feature film, having previously worked mostly with music videos.
  
  
• According to actress Ellen Page, the iconic red hooded shirt used in the movie and on the posters was, in fact, orange. The color was changed in post-production.
  
  
• Some working titles were "Vendetta" and "Snip Snip". "Hard Candy" was finally chosen because it implies both sweetness and spice. The expression is also slang for an under-aged girl, amongst pedophiles who troll the internet.
  
  
• The parking structure scene was shot on the roof of the garage that serves the Arclight Cinemas Hollywood theater complex. When the film was shown in that theater, many patrons were technically watching the scene unfold in the same spaces where their cars were parked.
  
  

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