Trivia / The Notebook

• Celebrity Voice Actor: In the Japanese dub, the older Noah and Allie are voiced by film actors Nobuyuki Katsube and Yukari Nozawa.
• Deleted Scenes: Found here. Mostly just extended versions of what was seen in the finished film.
  • A whole scene was cut out that told the backstory about the notebook itself. It's a very nice scene, but it came after the climax and added nothing that wasn't already in there.
• Dyeing for Your Art: The "7 years after" scenes were shot first, and Ryan Gosling grew a beard and gained twenty pounds to portray Noah then. He then lost the weight and shaved the beard for the scenes set before then. He also wore brown eye contacts because he has blue eyes and James Garner, who plays his older self, has brown.
• Fake American: The younger Noah and Allie are played by Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, who are originally from London, Ontario. Averted with their older selves, who are played by Norman, Oklahoma-born James Garner and Cambria, Wisconsin-born Gena Rowlands.
• Hostility on the Set: As described under Troubled Production below, it's a miracle that Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams had great chemistry, as they did not get along well on set. However, unlike some other cases, they were able to patch over their differences enough to become a real-life couple for some time.
• Life Imitates Art: Like Noah and Allie, Gosling and McAdams were a quarreling Opposites Attract couple.
• Method Acting: Ryan Gosling lived in Charlestown, South Carolina for two months to prepare for filming. He spent the time rowing along the Ashley River every morning and building furniture during the day. He also built the kitchen table that features in the movie.
• Real-Life Relative: Gena Rowlands is Nick Cassavetes's mother.
• Romance on the Set: Briefly between Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, ironically after they hadn't initially gotten on.
• Saved from Development Hell: The film rights to the novel were acquired by New Line Cinema in 1996, represented by producer Mark Johnson. Jeremy Leven was hired to write the script, which caught the attention of Steven Spielberg in 1998, who wished to film it with Tom Cruise as Noah Calhoun. Spielberg's commitment to other projects led to Jim Sheridan becoming attached to direct the following year. Filming was to start in 1999 but pushed back over rewrites. Sheridan eventually backed out by October 2000 to work on In America. Martin Campbell entered negotiations to direct in March 2001, before he was replaced by Nick Cassavetes a year later.
• Star-Making Role: Ryan Gosling became a household name after this movie was released. It also compounded the massive boost that Rachel McAdams got from Mean Girls two months prior.
• Throw It In!: The scene where Noah drives up and crashes into the gate of Allie's summer manor was a fluke. They ruined a perfectly good gate, but they managed to get a great shot.
• Troubled Production: It's almost a miracle that the leads managed to have such great chemistry together, given that, according to Nick Cassavetes, they absolutely did not get along on-set. They were frequently yelling at each other, such that at one point Ryan Gosling turned to Cassavetes and asked if he could do a line-reading with somebody other than Rachel McAdams. Fortunately, Cassavetes staged an intervention by bringing Gosling and McAdams into a room where they could air all the grievances they had with each other and work something out. They soon patched over their differences, enough to become a real-life couple for some time.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Early in development, George Clooney was going play Noah, with Paul Newman as the older Noah, but after Clooney watched some Paul Newman movies he went up to Paul and said he didn't look like him.
  • Jessica Biel, Ashley Judd, Britney Spears and Reese Witherspoon auditioned for the role of Allie.

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