Trivia / In the Bedroom

• California Doubling: Averted - the entire movie was shot on location in Maine, and even used products local to the state.
• Deleted Scene: Matt and Ruth taking Frank to see Barry Lyndon (Ruth tells Frank she met Matt at a screening of the movie when it first came out) was meant as Todd Field's Homage to Stanley Kubrick, but he ended up cutting it out of the film.
• Doing It for the Art: Todd Field waived his fee to get the movie made.
• Executive Meddling: Ultimately averted. When Miramax bought the movie at the Sundance Film Festival, Todd Field was worried Harvey Weinstein, notorious for cutting movies down, would do the same to him. Field called up Tom Cruise (with whom he had worked on Eyes Wide Shut) and told him his troubles, so according to Field, Cruise advised him to let Weinstein make cuts to the film and show that version at test screenings; when that version played badly, Field could come back and pressure Weinstein to release his original cut in theaters. It worked.
• Fake American: British actor Tom Wilkinson plays Maine native Matt Fowler.
• Method Acting: Sissy Spacek decorated the house where Ruth lives in.
• Real-Life Relative: Todd Field's son Henry plays the young Frank in a flashback scene.