Arlington Road - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of Arlington Road or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to Arlington Road

[russell]

When asking about who called his house, Whit Carver tells Michael that there were two calls made to his house; one being made on a payphone. Because Michael doesn't question the calls, he never realizes (and therefore never gets to hear) that Brooke called him from the payphone and confirmed his suspicions about Oliver and Cheryl being terrorists.

[camila]

The car crash during the climactic chase scene was unplanned; the plan was for the car to duck behind the oncoming bus and complete the left turn. When the collision occurred, the car trunk sprung open, revealing the bright blue sandbags that had been placed there to allow certain stunts. The quick cuts following the collision are necessary to avoid showing the sandbags. Subsequent shots including the car had already been filmed, and show a markedly less-damaged car.

[richard]

Michael Faraday, Jeff Bridges' character, was also the name of a real-life chemist and physicist who did pioneering work in the field of electromagnetism. Michael Faraday is also the name of a street in Reston, Virginia, in which the film takes place.

[sandra]

After the bomb goes off at the end of the movie, a cinema is visible, showing the movie Dirty Work (1998). In that film, two men open a revenge-for-hire business, doing other people's Dirty Work. At the end of this film, Faraday unwittingly does Lang's "Dirty Work" by planting the bomb for him.

[russell]

Conspiracy theorists have pointed to key remaining questions in the Oklahoma bombing as proof that there were likely other accomplices, such as unidentified suspects who rented the van used to carry the bomb, reports of undetonated bombs in the building's remains, suspicious individuals seen in the area days before the bombing, etc. This questioning of the official explanation is similar to what Faraday was trying to tell his students in the class.

[claude]

The main character in the movie Red Nightmare (1962) lives at Arlington Road. This anti-communist short movie is about Soviets infiltrating America. Everybody seems to be plotting against the main character.

[miriam]

Early in the film, when Bridges is showing a bombing slideshow to his class, he describes a bombing incident that occurred in St. Louis, MO at the Federal Roosevelt Building carried out by (fictitious) bomber Ian Scobee. The photo in the slideshow is actually of the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia which occurred in 1996, and Bridge's description of the St. Louis attack is more consistent with the facts of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, including the rented truck and destruction of the daycare center. In fact, no such St. Louis attack ever took place and there was never a Roosevelt Federal Building in St. Louis.

[kyle]

Sixth film appearance of Mason Gamble.

[steve]

Michael tells the kids in his history class that people usually point the finger at one man after a terrorist attack, despite the fact that they don't know the other people who he was conspiring with and they don't know the reasons for his actions. They just want to know a single name, so they can say that he was brought to justice and feel safe again. This is indeed what happens in the film, as Michael is framed for the bombing and nobody stops to question what his role was in the attack nor do they stop to wonder who else was actually responsible.

[norma]

The second "Mad Bomber" movie with Jeff Bridges; the first was Blown Away (1994), opposite Tommy Lee Jones. In both movies Bridges plays a terrorism expert who gets into a fight with the antagonist, and then has to find and stop the bomb. In "Blown Away" he fights the antagonist, who dies in an explosion in his hideout, and Bridges stops the bomb and saves the day. In this film he fights the antagonist but doesn't kill him. He thinks that the bomb is in a van along with his kidnapped kid, but instead it's in the car that he drives into the FBI parking garage. The antagonists succeed.

[brent]

Early on in the movie, Michael tells Whit Carver that his "offer still stands" for Carver to be a guest speaker in his history class. This foreshadows the scene later in the film where it is implied that Oliver Lang pretended to be Michael and called Whit Carver, telling him that he can be a guest speaker in Michael's class.

[addison]

Tim Robbins and Spencer Treat Clark also appeared in Mystic River (2003).

[gabriel]

An alternate ending featured a scene in which Grant Faraday figures out his father's fate based on Oliver Lang's strange behavior toward him. It was cut for time. Due to the ambiguity it caused, they remained with the original ending as shown in the movie.

[terry]

The script for this film, written by Ehren Kruger, was discovered when it won the Nicholl Fellowship Screenwriting competition from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It is only the sixth winner of the competition to actually be produced.