Trivia / The Legend of Billie Jean

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• Breakaway Pop Hit: Pat Benatar's "Invincible". Usually before she performs it at concerts, she says "this is from the worst movie ever made."
• California Doubling: Partially averted. The epilogue in Vermont was filmed in Colorado, however the main parts of the film were shot on location along the Texas coast in the Corpus Christi area.
• Cast Incest: Christian Slater joked that when the film was made, he thought he was destined to marry Helen Slater since they already shared the same last name.
• Creator Backlash: On the DVD commentary, Helen Slater and Yeardley Smith joke about how bad everyone's southern accents are.
  • Also, see above regarding Pat Benatar’s opinion of the film.
• Dawson Casting: Of the principal cast, only Christian Slater was a teenager (15). Everyone else was over 20. Particularly egregious is Yeardley Smith playing a girl who gets her first period during the movie...she was 21 in real life (and her breasts were strapped down to make her look younger). And Martha Gehman (Ophelia) was almost thirty!
• Dyeing for Your Art: Helen Slater got the famous Billie Jean haircut for real, though she didn't do it herself; a hairdresser did (and when she had to come back for re-shoots for some of the pre haircut scenes, she had to wear a wig). Averted with Yeardley Smith however, as she refused to cut her hair (and thus is wearing a wig for Putter's short hair scenes). Christian Slater bleached his hair blond to play Binx too.
• Enforced Method Acting: Janet Smalley, who plays Putter's mother, actually slapped Yeardley Smith for real.
• He Also Did: The sole credited writers Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal did the Romancing the Stone sequel The Jewel Of The Nile, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace,The Beverly Hillbillies, Planet of the Apes (2001), Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Wow.
• Hostility on the Set: Helen Slater was apparently very "temperamental" on set, according to the extras. She would sometimes storm off if she got a take wrong and frequently snapped at people.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: For ages, the film had no DVD release and most people have only seen it from TV airings. It finally got a DVD release in 2011 with Helen Slater and Yeardley Smith reuniting to record the commentary.
• Old Shame: As mentioned above, Pat Benatar is not a fan of this movie. It was even rumored that she held up the DVD release by refusing to allow "Invincible" to appear in the film.
• Separated-at-Birth Casting: In addition to sharing a last name, Helen Slater and Christian Slater had similar hair and eye colors, similar complexions, and similar facial structure. All this, plus the fact that they were relative unknowns at the time, led many moviegoers to believe they were real-life siblings.
• Uncredited Role: Walter Bernstein wrote the original draft of the script, but ended up uncredited after multiple rewrites.
• Wag the Director: The Billie Jean makeover was originally going to involve a near shaved head with colourful eye make-up and lots of glitter. Helen Slater allegedly refused to cut her hair that short or wear the eye make-up, so the compromise was a slightly longer pixie haircut with less striking make-up.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The Working Title was 'Fair is Fair'.
  • A sequence involving a dance rave was filmed but cut from the final piece. (Snippets from the rave scene can be seen in the music video for "Invincible".)
• Write What You Know: Helen Slater notes that Walter Bernstein's experience being blacklisted by Hollywood shows in the film's strong sense of justice.

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