Line #1 Trivia/TheDayOfTheLocust

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1	* BillingDisplacement: Although Creator/DonaldSutherland has top billing in the credits and posters, he doesn't appear until roughly 40 minutes into the film. Similarly, the prominently billed Creator/BurgessMeredith only appears in the first half of the movie. Creator/WilliamAtherton, who plays protagonist Tod Hackett, is billed fourth behind Sutherland, Creator/KarenBlack, and Meredith.
2	* CastTheExpert: Shows up in the film version; who better to cast as the director of the film within a film than an actual veteran film director? And so the director of the Napoleonic drama on which Tod is employed as a set designer is played by veteran B-movie director Creator/WilliamCastle in his last onscreen role.
3	* DawsonCasting:
4	** Faye Greener is 17 years old in the book. In the film, she is played by Creator/KarenBlack, who was more than twice that age.
5	** In the book, Adore Loomis is eight years old. In the film, he is played by Creator/JackieEarleHaley, who was in his early teens at the time.
6	* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
7	** Creator/PeterBogdanovich was offered the chance to direct.
8	** Creator/MalcolmMcDowell was offered the role of Tod Hackett, but turned it down, feeling it was too similar to his Mick Travis character from ''Film/{{If}}'' and ''Film/OLuckyMan''. Creator/DustinHoffman was briefly attached.
9	** Creator/JaneFonda and Creator/GoldieHawn turned down the role of Faye Greener. Creator/CybillShepherd tried out for the role, but Creator/JohnSchlesinger felt she was too old (though the fact Creator/KarenBlack, eleven years her senior, ended up getting the part makes this a bit puzzling).
10	** Creator/JamesCagney turned down the role of Harry Greener.
11	* WorkingTitle: The novel was originally going to be called ''The Cheated''.
12	* WriteWhatYouKnow: Nathanael West had been working as a screenwriter for Creator/ColumbiaPictures for several years when he wrote ''The Day of the Locust'', and many of the characters and settings in the novel are based on his experiences living in a hotel on Hollywood Boulevard, while the abortive sexual encounter between Homer Simpson and Romola Martin in Chapter 8 is based on a similar experience West had when working as a night manager in a Manhattan hotel in the early 1930s.

Context Trivia / TheDayOfTheLocust