Trivia / ABBA: The Movie

• Acting for Two: Or three, actually: Tom Oliver plays ABBA's imposing, sunglasses-wearing bodyguard, a bartender during the "Old West saloon" segment of Ashley's dream sequence, and the taxi driver that drives Ashley back to the radio station after he obtains his interview, and who doesn't think that ABBA are that big of a deal (wearing a mustache for the latter role).
• Acting in the Dark: The reason why ABBA are quite standoff-ish with Ashley when he first tries to talk to them is because they weren't actually told that there would be an actor playing a reporter on the film, so they though that Ashley's actor was just a more-persistent-than-usual reporter. They weren't told until having to film the scenes in which they actually interact with him (such as the dream sequence and Ashley meeting them at the elevator). ABBA's bodyguards weren't told either, so the scenes of them pushing him out of the way are real.
• California Doubling: While most of the film was shot on location in Australia during the band's tour on the country, some scenes still set in Australia had to be shot after ABBA had returned to Sweden. This included the scenes of the band reading news articles about them, the "The Name of the Game" dream sequence, and the scene of Ashley frantically running through the streets to buy ABBA memorabilia, with the streets of Stockholm doubling for the streets of Melbourne and Sydney (this is made more obvious in the latter scene, as Swedish and Australian traffic signs are vastly different). For this, actors Robert Hughes (Ashley) and Tom Oliver (who appears as an bodyguard and as a bartender in the dream sequence) had to fly to Sweden for this shoot.
• Completely Different Title:
  • In Latin America, the film was known as ABBA: El gran show (in Spanish) and ABBA: O Grande Show (in Portuguese), both meaning ABBA: The Great Show.
  • In France, the film was known as Viva ABBA.
• Follow the Leader: The film is clearly ABBA's equivalent of The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night, right down to inserting a fictional character to interact with the real life band (Ashley the reporter here, much like Paul's grandfather in A Hard Day's Night). Björn even seemed to lampshade this when he said that he initially didn't think that films with music stars worked very well, citing The Beatles' films and the film adaptation of Tommy as notable exceptions.
• He Also Did:
  • Robert Hughes, who played Ashley, would later be also known for playing Martin Kelly, the dad on the Australian sitcom Hey Dad..!. Well, that, and a controversy on said show (see Harsher in Hindsight on the YMMV page).
  • Tom Oliver, who had the triple role of playing ABBA's gruff bodyguard, a bartender on a dream sequence, and a chatty moustached taxi driver that Ashley meets, is best known for his long-running role as Lou Carpenter in the Australian soap opera Neighbours.
  • The fitness trainer shown coaching Frida is Richard Norton, one of ABBA's real life bodyguards, who would later go on to have a acting career appearing on many action films, including the Chuck Norris film The Octagon.
• Hide Your Pregnancy: Agnetha Fältskog was pregnant at the time, which is why she was frequently filmed above the neck in close-ups, and wears a loose red bathrobe during the scene of the band reading news articles about them.
• Mid-Development Genre Shift: The film was originally conceived as a home movie, then a television special, then a documentary, before its final form of a rockumentary/concert movie.
• Troubled Production: The film had its hiccups, particularly on the concert segments covering ABBA's tour on Australia, mainly due to the tour itself being marred by problems.
  • Their earliest concerts in the country took place at Sydney Showgrounds, at a time when heavy rainstorms plagued the city - putting everyone involved with the concerts and some 20,000 concertgoers at risk. Rather than scrap the concerts, assistants were sent out with mops to dry the stage every so often. Still, that did not stop Frida taking a nasty fall (though not sustaining any harm) during one gig's performance of "I'm a Marionette". The weather also resulted in technical difficulties - mics and speakers frequently cut out, and this in combination with the crowd noise made the concerts sometimes impossible to hear.
  • Water frequently got inside the film canisters used for the movie, plus the members of the band had to deal with actors they believed were real people trying to pry on their offstage antics due to the flimsy "narrative" being used for the film.
  • At the first concert in Perth, there was an anonymous phone call from someone who claimed that a bomb had been placed inside Perth Entertainment Centre, resulting in a complete evacuation of the venue (though the concert did resume 15 minutes later).
  • The concerts, despite the massive turnouts, still received negative reviews (Benny's thumb obscures the word "dull" when reading an article about Agnetha's bottom during the hotel scene) and many fans were confused about the ambitious pseudo-musical The Girl With the Golden Hair that closed the show each night.
  • On top of this, Agnetha was pregnant with her and Björn's second child (her pregnancy had to be hidden during the film) and her desire for a life of normality made her develop an intense dislike for touring during this time. A bad experience with a flight from New York to Boston during a thunderstorm later on also cemented this and Agnetha's fear of flying, which she wouldn't fully overcome until promotion for her English-language solo album, A, 34 years later.
  • Overall, even though their following 1979-80 world tour mainly went off without a hitch, experiences like this made the band dislike the conditions of touring so much that it marked the end of any more tours. On top of this, Agnetha and Bjorn's marriage was beginning to show its cracks, starting a chain of events that led to the band breaking up.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: Director Lasse Hallström said that the film's screenplay was "conceived on the plane on the way to Australia".

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