Trivia for
Charlie Wilson's War (2007) More at IMDbPro »

• A special effects assistant was seriously injured when a hand-held mock-up of a Stinger missile exploded as it was being prepared for use in a scene aboard a helicopter.
  
  
• Emily Blunt filmed her part in two days.
  
  
• Towards the end of the movie, Charlie Wilson is presented with one of the Stingers he helped provide to the Afghanis. In an interview, the real Charlie Wilson said the Stinger is one of his most prized possessions, kept in "a very honored spot in my home."
  
  
• Julia Roberts plays a former beauty queen, and a vintage Miss Texas photo of Mary Nell Hubbard (1958) was used in a scene. Hubbard wouldn't take payment for the photo she provided. She privately joked, "I've gone from a headline to an archive to an artifact." Her daughter gently teased her that she is a body double for Julia Roberts.
  
  
• Though recuperating from heart transplant surgery, the real Charlie Wilson made it to the red carpet premiere of the film.
  
  
• Charlie Wilson said in a USA Today article that he had no qualms about the film, saying "Anything I might have objected to was provable".
  
  
• Charlie Wilson is invited to Joanne Herring's home for a party. In her house, we see a full length painting of her. Except for Julia Roberts's features, this painting is a copy of John Singer Sargent's "Madame X".
  
  
• Charlie Wilson and Joanne Herring were engaged to be married at one point.
  
  
• In addition to the lifestyle portrayed on screen, Charlie Wilson had a DUI Hit-and-Run charge on the Key Bridge, outside Georgetown. He was never indicted; otherwise, he would have been far less successful securing money for his project in Afghanistan. The History Channel documentary about his life suggests that he drank that night (and other nights) to ease the pain he felt for the Afghan people.
  
  
• Charlie Wilson's aides were all beautiful well-endowed women nicknamed "Charlie's Angels". In real life, his chief aide was a man named Charlie Schnabel.
  
  
• Near the end, while Charlie Wilson is standing on the balcony with Gust Avrakotos during a party celebrating the defeat of the Soviet army in Afghanistan, Gust warns Charlie of future problems if he and the other members of Congress do not follow up on giving economic aid to the Afghani's. As Gust finished this warning, Charlie thinks about what he said, and you hear an airliner flying over Washington DC. It is an obvious, ominous reference to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.
  
  
• Early in the movie, the strippers in the limo ask "Has there ever been a [television] show about Washington? I don't think there has." Writer Aaron Sorkin created and wrote "The West Wing" (1999), a television show set in Washington, D.C.
  
  

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