Trivia / The Jackal

• California Doubling: WMATA, the agency operating the Washington Metro, does not permit filming of movies involving violence in the subway system. The scene involving a firefight in the Metrorail was done in Montreal, but made to look like it was done in the DC system (except for the somewhat obvious, to a metro fan, differences in station architecture and rolling stock — not the least of which is that the Montreal metro, unlike the Washington metro, has tires.)
  • Filming Location Cameo: Unusually, there are other location scenes earlier in the movie that actually are set in Montreal.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Before Bruce Willis was cast, Richard Gere was offered the role of The Jackal. He turned it down and instead asked if he could play the hero.
• Deleted Scenes: The Jackal originally had an affair with wealthy woman similar to the Madame de Montpellier subplot from the novel, but this was ultimately cut from the finished movie.
• Disowned Adaptation: Frederick Forsyth, who wrote the novel The Day of the Jackal, insisted his name be taken off the credits of this film, which is why it is billed as "based on the screenplay".
• Executive Veto: In his first scenes, Richard Gere has a mustache and goatee, as he wanted to have a different look from his popular image. The studio, however, was unhappy, and so Gere and the director were forced to shoot an extra scene where Gere asks for a razor after accepting the job to explain his clean-shaven appearance in subsequent shots.
• Fake Irish: Richard Gere's performance is notorious among Irish viewers for having one of the worst "Irish" accents ever put to film.
• Fake Nationality: French actress Mathilda May plays the Spanish Isabella Zancona.
• Fake Russian: American Diane Venora as Major Koslova.
• Harpo Does Something Funny: Jack Black improvised his lines in the scene where the Jackal kills him. His instruction was to act stupid and annoy Bruce Willis.
• Hostility on the Set: After the filming of this movie, Bruce Willis and Richard Gere reportedly vowed to never work with each other again.
• Life Imitates Art: The real life assassin and terrorist Carlos "The Jackal" got his nickname from the 1974 film on which this is based due to his ability to elude authorities; Bruce Willis' character in turn may be an Expy for the Jackal, but probably not.
• Playing Against Type: Bruce Willis as The Jackal - it's his first role as a main villain character (The Siege has his character gradually evolve into a bad guy but he isn't the main antagonist, and he later played the Big Bad in the 2014 film The Prince).
• Technology Marches On:
  • The guy selling the Jackal a yacht brags that it has a "cellular phone", and since this is the 90s, all the cellular phones in this film have visible antennas and big keypads.
  • At one point, the Jackal steps into an Internet cafe (a common sight in 90s America, which has declined with the rise of home computing and Internet-capable cell phones), and he has to actually ask if the computers there can connect to the Internet. And when they do, they make the distinct dial-up sound.
• Wag the Director: Bruce Willis asked for the scene where the Jackal kills a gay man to be re-shot, so it was obvious that he was being killed due to the fact that he knew too much (having seen The Jackal on a news report), rather than because he was gay.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Richard Dean Anderson, Alec Baldwin, Jeff Bridges, Gary Busey, Sean Connery, Kevin Costner, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Tommy Lee Jones, Michael Keaton, Matthew McConaughey, Liam Neeson, Ron Perlman, Dennis Quaid, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Steven Seagal, Sylvester Stallone, and Patrick Swayze were considered for Declan Mulqueen.
  • Edward Fox is rumored to have rejected a Remake Cameo.

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