The Story Behind "Absence of Malice" - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of The Story Behind "Absence of Malice" or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to The Story Behind "Absence of Malice"

[veronica]

Director Sydney Pollack in the DVD doc The Story Behind Absence of Malice (2004) said that the entire movie was filmed on location outside of the studio except for one shot, a re-shoot, for a line of dialogue where Michael Gallagher (Paul Newman) says to Megan Carter (Sally Field) at the end of the movie that he might see her later. This was to fulfill a suggestion by Frank Price, the then studio head of Columbia Pictures, that there needs to be, in the tradition of Hollywood romance, at least a suggestion to audiences and particularly women, that the two leads may be unified romantically in the future. Earlier, test audiences had given negative preview cards to the fact that the lead characters in this picture did not end up together at the film's end.

[tom]

According to writer Kurt Luedtke in the DVD special feature The Story Behind Absence of Malice (2004), the film's story was inspired by the media law legal case of Times v Sullivan [i.e. The New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964)]. Luedtke summarized this case by saying that American libel laws, due to this case precedent, indicate that truth is not always necessary to journalism in situations involving public figures. As such, a newspaper can effectively make a bad mistake and hurt a public figure and the latter cannot always collect damages for it.