Requiem for a Dream - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[ken]

The "Lux Aeterna" portion of the music composed by Clint Mansell for the Requiem for a Dream soundtrack has often been used since in many other contexts, such as trailers for other films (including The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), The Da Vinci Code (2006), I Am Legend (2007), Man on Fire (2004), Sunshine (2007), etc.), soundtracks for video games (Total Miner: Forge, Assassin's Creed (2007)), and background music for TV programs and advertisements. It is also commonly used as promotional and/or entrance music for many different college and professional sports teams, including: the Notre Dame, Missouri State University, Boston Celtics, and Virginia Commonwealth University basketball teams; the University of Alabama and Bowdoin College football teams, Arsenal Football Club, and the England Rugby Union Team.

[gabriel]

Darren Aronofsky: appears very briefly as one of the visitors in Big Tim's gathering.

[ethel]

The pills Sara Goldfarb takes in the film are actually Synthroid pills taken for thyroid hormone replacement for people with hypothyroidism; this is also true for the pills Marion, Tyrone and Harry take before the party.

[claude]

Mr. Rabinowitz is named after the film's editor Jay Rabinowitz.

[jessica]

(At around 1 hour 30 minutes) Stanley B. Herman improvised the famous "ass-to-ass" line.

[cassandra]

Director Darren Aronofsky described this film as exploring different types of addiction: "The Harry-Tyrone-Marion story is a very traditional heroin story. But putting it side by side with the Sara story, we suddenly say, 'Oh, my God, what is a drug?' The idea that the same inner monologue goes through a person's head when they're trying to quit drugs and cigarettes, as when they're trying to not eat food so they can lose twenty pounds, was really fascinating to me."

[frances]

Darren Aronofsky shot the film like a hip-hop montage (a sequence of extremely short shots) to get the sense of overwhelming addiction and loss of control. An average 100-minute film contains 600 to 700 cuts; this one contains over 2,000.

[maureen]

(At around 1 hour 14 minutes) When Sara Goldfarb is on the subway and is telling strangers that she is going to be on TV, a man tells her, "You are whacked." That man was Darren Aronofsky's father.

[mathew]

(At around 1 hour 3 minutes) The man peeling the orange (and the orange truck) in the scene where the characters go to receive a new shipment of drugs not only indicates their next destination, Florida, but also serves as a nod to the Godfather films, where the presence of oranges indicated disaster.

[caroline]

(At around 2 minutes) In the opening scene, the sounds of a string quartet can be heard tuning up for a performance in the soundtrack. Just before the title rolls down, you hear a conductor tap on his music stand to ready the quartet for a performance. The people tuning up are the Kronos Quartet, who played most of the music for the film. The maestro bringing them to attention is Darren Aronofsky, the director.

[manuel]

(At around 1 hour 30 minutes) The hallucination where Harry falls involved placing a camera on the end of a bungee cord and testing to make sure it could stop within inches of the ground. (It did.)

[stephanie]

In addition to having a camera mounted to her for certain sequences, Ellen Burstyn, spent four hours every morning being fitted with prosthetics, wearing four different necks (both fat and emaciated), two different fat suits (a 40-pound and 20-pound suit), and nine different wigs.

[eli]

Dave Chappelle was offered the role of Tyrone but he turned it down.

[camila]

When prepping for her Oscar campaign, Ellen Burstyn was being persuaded by the producers to campaign as Best Supporting Actress. Shocked by this notion, she rightfully refused. The producers felt she was guaranteed to win if she was placed in the Supporting Actress category. Eventually, Julia Roberts won for Erin Brockovich (2000), a win that caused an uproar with fans.

[cassandra]

(At around 1 hour 35 minutes) In each character's last scene, in reality they turn onto their right side and pull their knees up to their stomach, assuming the fetal position.

[kristina]

Director Darren Aronofsky wanted Giovanni Ribisi for the role of Harry Goldfarb because he had curly blond hair, which Harry had in the novel.

[jamie]

(At around 1 hour 16 minutes) When Marion calls Big Tim, there is a shot of his phone number on a piece of paper. It was not the standard "555-" number used in movies. They were able to get away with this because only six digits of the phone number are visible. However, if you listen carefully, Tyrone does speak all seven digits. But after the scene where Harry is with the doctor, Marion turns over the photograph of her and Harry, revealing the full telephone number.

[michele]

Jared Leto stated in an interview with Rolling Stone that he would shoot up water while hanging around real-life junkies, and he said shooting up anything was intense and he would never do it again.