Trivia / Disturbing Behavior

• Alan Smithee: Director David Nutter ultimately didn't do this, but the Executive Meddling he faced caused him to consider having his name taken off the credits.
• Box Office Bomb: Budget: $15 million. Box office: $17.5 million. The small profit doesn't cover marketing costs.
• Dueling Works: The Faculty was released on 25th December, 1998, six months after Disturbing Behavior, on 24th July, 1998. Both are quippy teen riffs on classic Paranoid Thriller material: The Stepford Wives in the earlier movie's case, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers in the later's case, both recycled in high school. Both have antagonistic adults, and both rewrite their source material's very depressing endings so that the good guys win, though the earlier movie's ending is much more bittersweet. However, the effect is dampened by the fact that Disturbing Behavior underperformed at the box office and was badly received.
• Executive Meddling: The film was practically shredded in the editing room, having nearly twenty minutes cut (the theatrical edit is just 84 minutes long) and a different ending put in by the studio over the objections of director David Nutter. Among the scenes cut include numerous story and Character Development scenes whose absence the film greatly suffers for, which perhaps explains the film's tepid reception by critics and at the box office. Fortunately, all of the scenes in question are included on the DVD. The Sci-Fi Channel's edited-for-TV version of the movie often reinstates the deleted scenes, making it something of an unofficial director's cut, though it leaves the theatrical ending.
• Focus Group Ending: The theatrical version ended on a cliffhanger revealing that Gavin, one of the brainwashed Blue Ribbon kids, had survived and is now working as a student teacher at an Inner City School, where it's implied that he will restart the Blue Ribbon program. The original ending, which was deemed by test audiences as too depressing, had Gavin take his former friends hostage on the ferry as they try to escape. They shoot him in self-defense, which breaks him out of his brainwashing before he dies. This was just one of many edits imposed on the film, to the point where the director almost had his name taken off of the credits as a result.
• Playing Against Type: At this point in her career, Katie Holmes was best known for playing sweet tomboy Joey Potter on Dawson's Creek. Here, she's playing one of the town "bad kids".

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