Trivia / High Fidelity

The film:

• Actor Allusion: One scene shows Rob Gordon drenched with rain, pouring his heart out in a phone booth, which is a reference to his role in Say Anything....
• Dawson Casting: Only the flashbacks where John Cusack plays the older teenage version of himself.
• Deleted Scene: There was originally a scene where a vengeful wife offers her cheating husband's collection of extremely rare and valuable records to Rob for fifty dollars. Rob is unwilling to accept the offer, although he does buy a rare Otis Reading for ten dollars, and she throws in the Sex Pistol's "God Save the Queen" for free.
• Disowned Adaptation:
  • When asked, after the film adaptation was released, what High Fidelity was about, Nick Hornby pointedly answered, "London".
  • His tone changed a short time later, and was once quoted praising the film's faithfullness to his novel:
    I never expected it to be so faithful. At times it appears to be a film in which John Cusack reads my book
• Never Trust a Trailer: The US trailer for the film describes Rob as running a "successful business", although the record store is laughably unprofitable and a plot point in the film is that Rob had to borrow five thousand dollars from Laura to keep from going under, which he's unable to pay her back even several months later.
• Real-Life Relative: Laura's best friend Liz in the film is played by Joan Cusack, John Cusack's sister.
• The Red Stapler:
  • The film has been credited with helping spark the Vinyl Revival of the 21st century, reviving interest in vinyl records and independent record stores.
  • The film also boosted the career of British folktronica group the Beta Band, who are featured in a memorable scene where Rob plays a snippet of "Dry the Rain" to sell five copies of their The Three E.P.'s compilation. MTV reported that American sales of the album quadrupled after the film's release.
• Star-Making Role: Perhaps not star-making, but this was Jack Black's breakout role and one of his first which allowed him to stretch his comedic muscles.
• Technology Marches On: Rob makes use of cassette tapes, which have gone the way of the dodo in favor of CDs and then digital. However, he makes most of his money reselling vinyl records, which had a huge resurgence in popularity after the turn of the millennium.
• What Could Have Been: In the original draft of the screenplay that Cusack and his co-writers did, Rob talked to the camera. Cusack then thought that this would mean there would be "too much me", so they rewrote all Rob's monologues to camera as voice-over. When Stephen Frears came on board as director, he made them change it to talking to camera again.
  • Liz Phair was considered for the part of Marie De Salle.

The series:

• Actor-Shared Background: Rob, like Zoë Kravitz, is a biracial woman. We see that her mom is white (her dad's not seen, but he's obviously black from her looks). They both moved to and live in Brooklyn as well.
• Produced by Cast Member: Zoë Kravitz plays Rob, the protagonist, while she also was an executive producer for the show.
• Queer Character, Queer Actor: In the Hulu adaptation, Rob's bisexual, as Zoë Kravitz is.
• Technology Marches On: Vinyl went through a resurgence since the book was published and in 2020 record stores are still a thing by the time of the series. However, the store also carries cassettes, which one minor character finds odd. Simon, the clerk who replaced the Dick character, admits to still using cassettes as they're "weird and warm".

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