Trivia / One Hour Photo

• Cast the Runner-Up: Robin Williams was originally cast as the SavMart manager, Bill, but after reading the screenplay for a second time, Williams requested the role of Sy.
• Cut Song: Trent Reznor was asked to write music for the film, but the director chose not to use his songs. Some of them were rewritten and included on the NIN album Still.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Robin Williams dyed his hair and shaved most of his arms, upper chest and hands for this movie.
• Executive Meddling: Romanek intended the film to be much longer, but the studio ordered it to be shortened, and elements rearranged out of concerns about commerciality. The beginning, for example, was moved to the end. Also, several of Sy's narrative monologues were removed, and several scenes were re-shot with fewer lines. The original version also has older musical scores that were not used in the final product. A director's cut is not available to buy but it was shown at the Sundance Film Festival.
• Fake Nationality: Korean-American Paul H. Kim plays Japanese-American Yoshi Araki.
• God Never Said That: There is a common rumor that the inclusion of the Mass Production EVA toy in this film was a creative decision made by Robin Williams. While Robin Williams was genuinely a fan of the series, a DVD commentary on the film by director Mark Romanek (and later, some emails between him and the fansite Eva Monkey) show that Romanek was the one who made the choice to use this toy, not Williams.
• Playing with Character Type: Sy functions as a sort of deconstruction of Robin Williams's character types. Sy, like a lot of his characters, desperately wants love and validation from those around him, but here it's shown as pathetic, creepy, and openly pathological instead of funny and heartwarming, and the lengths he'll go for it are inherently dangerous.
  • In particular, the scene where he calls the hotel to find the family's location come off as a twisted echo of Mrs. Doubtfire when he was creating various characters to fool Miranda and sneaking into the kitchen to spike Stu's food.
  • There's also the nod to Jumanji in his character's surname being "Parrish".
• Technology Marches On: This movie was made at the last possible moment, just as digital photography reached the tipping point that started putting retail-consumer oriented film developers like Sy out of business.
  • It's even lampshaded in the film, when Nina mentions she's thinking about buying one of the new digital cameras and Sy asked her not to, saying he wouldn't want to lose their business. Even sadder in hindsight, when you realize he'd been using their photos to lessen his own loneliness.
  • In addition, this may be one of the things contributing to Sy's rapid mental breakdown. He's smart enough to know that his only way of making a living is quickly becoming obsolete.
• What Could Have Been: The character of Sy was written with Jack Nicholson in mind. He turned it down due to seeing it as largely just a repeat of his role from The Shining.

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