Joaquin Phoenix replaced Mark Ruffalo, who had to pull out of the film due to ill health.
This film was shot in Newtown, PA. The scene which takes place in "2 Aldo's Pizzeria" is really a family-run pizzeria called "Mom's Bake at Home Pizza".
The film was shot on the property of an agricultural school, Delaware Valley College, where two areas of corn were already growing at different stages. The corn grown for the film was naturally further behind the other two areas of corn, so it was not a planned element.
The production used a new watering technique to make the corn grow faster which the Delaware Valley agricultural college was then very keen to adopt for themselves.
Mel Gibson didn't realize that his director was playing the vet until the day that they came to shoot their scenes together.
Rather unusually, James Newton Howard started scoring the film before it had been shot, as he was able to work from M. Night Shyamalan's detailed storyboards.
M. Night Shyamalan insisted that the film be marketed without showing Mel Gibson's face, as it is an ensemble piece, and that it didn't refer to The Sixth Sense (1999), as it's an entirely different movie.
Graham Hess was originally written as an older character. Paul Newman was offered the role but turned it down, as did Clint Eastwood.
The artwork done by Bo Hess in the movie was actually done by Salek Shyamalan, director M. Night Shyamalan's daughter.
Composer James Newton Howard was asked to purposely reference classic film scores from similar genres, such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and Psycho (1960). The opening music and main three-note motif is strikingly similar (a probable reference) to both the theme of "Psycho" and the theme of "The Twilight Zone".
The stories of the children's' birth are actually the stories of M. Night Shyamalan's two children.
Only the scenes in the bookstore and the pizza shop were filmed in Newtown (Bucks County), Pennsylvania. The scenes of the house and cornfields were filmed on 40 acres that were leased to the film company by Delaware Valley College (an agriculture college) of Doylestown (Bucks County), Pennsylvania. After filming, the film company donated all the corn grown to the college's vegetable and fruit market. The house was built on the grounds and torn down after filming. Delaware Valley College is acknowledged in the credits at the end of the film. The drugstore scene was filmed in Morrisville (Bucks County), PA.
The scene in which Graham has his last conversation with his wife was scheduled for 12 September 2001, and was filmed after a cast and crew candlelight vigil.
In the part of the "Brazilian Video" the anchorwoman says the video was taped in Passo Fundo city that means "Deep Step", and what the boy's saying all the time is "It's behind that garage".
Just after the DVD is inserted into the player, and immediately after the Touchstone logo, a dark, fuzzy image appears in black and white, very quickly. It is a movie still with Merrill, Morgan and Bo sitting on the couch with the aluminum hats on their heads. The picture is shown even faster when "Play" is selected.
|
