Trivia / Casualties of War

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• Box Office Bomb: Budget, $22.5 million. Box office, $18,671,317.
• California Doubling: Thailand for Vietnam.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Sean Penn was Brian De Palma's original choice for Eriksson, but the studio refused to back a picture with Penn as the star due to him frequently getting into trouble for beating up the paparazzi.
• Channel Hop: The film originally went into development at Paramount Pictures, but it was ultimately done for Columbia Pictures.
• Completely Different Title: In Finland, this movie is called "Sodan arvet", which means "Scars of War" in English.
• Deleted Role: Brian De Palma regular Gregg Henry filmed scenes as a JAG prosecutor that were cut from the theatrical print. They were later restored in the extended cut.
• Deleted Scene: One of the deleted scenes included the testimony of the murdered girl's sister, in which she tearfully displayed her dead sister's scarf, a scene made more poignant when Eriksson returns the Vietnamese-American girl's scarf to her at the film's conclusion.
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • For Michael J. Fox's shots, Sean Penn would be telling him that he was just a little television actor and nothing more to get genuine reactions for Brian De Palma.
  • According to John Leguizamo in his autobiography, the scene in which Meserve smacks Diaz took fourteen takes, and Penn really smacked him every time.
• The Other Marty: Stephen Baldwin was cast as Hatcher and shot several scenes before he was replaced with John C. Reilly, who was hired as a background extra.
• Those Two Actors: This is the first of, to date, four films Sean Penn and John C. Reilly have done together (the others being the remake of We're No Angels, State Of Grace, and The Thin Red Line).
• What Could Have Been: John C. Reilly's role was originally only a bit part, but Brian De Palma was so impressed with his performance that he rewrote the script to expand his role and give him more dialogue.

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