Trivia / The Dead Center

• Bonus Material: The iTunes version comes with two audio commentaries (the first with director Billy Senese, and actors Shane Carruth, and Jeremy Childs, and the second has Billy Senese, producers Denis Deck and Jonathan Rogers, and cinematographer Andy Duensing), a few cast interviews, a nearly 40 minute feature that goes back to the various filming locations, two short films, a nearly 4 hour series of episodes called the Midnight Radio Theater, 9 deleted scenes, and a few outtakes. That's pretty impressive, considering the movie itself is only 93 minutes long.
• Deleted Scene:
  • John Doe arriving at the hospital via the usual Hospital Gurney Scene. He's actually still alive despite his stab wounds, and briefly grabs a nurse before he Dies Wide Open. The nurse is so creeped out that she walks away.
  • A longer sequence of John Doe escaping the morgue, involving him shambling down a hallway.
  • Forrester talking to a patient who refuses to take his meds.
  • Forrester and Gray having a brief argument, in which she tells him that while he's passionate about helping people, he needs to focus on objective decision making. He gives her a Precision F-Strike and walks away.
  • Graham getting John Doe's file.
  • Forrester briefly looking at John Doe through the little window on the door, then going to Anne to get his charts, who then asks him where the admittance paperwork is.
  • Forrester walking crossing the street while drunk after work.
  • Gray waking up on a couch at the hospital, and having a brief phone call with her husband about the situation with John Doe.
  • The alternate ending. The demon is Not Quite Dead, despite half of Michael's face being destroyed. He flops around a bit, gets up, stares at Forrester for a couple of seconds, and then just walks away. Forrester is too hurt to stop him.
• Inspiration for the Work: As revealed on the making of documentary, Billy Senese came up with the idea when one of his friends overdosed. They were at the same party, and his friend was found in a room, gasping for air... just like the victims in the movie. He died in the ambulance. Senese started writing about it, and those writing eventually became the movie.
• No Budget: This is an indie movie, and was clearly made and marketed without much money. The motel scenes were filmed in an actual motel, hospital, and cul-de-sac neighborhood, thus saving a lot of money on sets. Oddly enough, the floor above where they filmed actually was an abandoned psychiatric ward, but they didn't use it because renovating it would've been too expensive. Also, the clouded visual distortions they used during the demon attacks were actually the result of putting things like drinking glasses, jars, and ashtrays in front of the camera lens. Their best "filter" was a $2.50 glass they found at Walmart, smeared with black paint and vaseline. The crackling sound came from a bowl of pine cones. The creepy sound the orderly hears through John Doe's door is a recording of a real-life death rattle.
• Production Posse: Billy Senese, Jonathan Rogers, and Jeremy Childs worked together on Intruder, The Suicide Tapes, and others.
• Throw It In!: When returning to the Madison Square Inn for the documentary, it's revealed that the guy standing on the corner and smoking just happened to be in the shot, and they had him take off his shirt to make him look creepier.