Trivia for
Pink Floyd The Wall (1982) More at IMDbPro »

• The Wall tour (in support of the album) originally ran through 1980, in Los Angeles, New York, and Earl's Court (London) (the nature of the material, and the scale of the stage production, prohibited a large-scale tour). When the movie was green-lighted, Pink Floyd performed five more shows at Earl's Court, which were filmed with the intention of being incorporated into the movie but the resulting footage was deemed unsuitable for use. Over the years, numerous suggestions have been made that this footage could be used to make a concert film, but Roger Waters, who owns all rights to the footage, has been working on remastering the concerts off and on in recent years.
  
  
• During "The Thin Ice", Pink (Bob Geldof) can be seen floating in a swimming pool. Geldof (who is infamous for his dislike of baths) couldn't swim, and instead was supported by a plastic body mould in similar manner to that used for the flying sequences in Superman (1978) (some reports claim that it's the one used in Supergirl (1984)
  
  
• The shot of Mother when young Pinky is asking a girl to dance reveals the "mask" on the curtains behind her.
  
  
• Jenny Wright wasn't told that Geldof would be throwing that bottle at her, so her reaction of ducking was totally spontaneous.
  
  
• Scenes for the song "Hey You" were filmed, showing British police in riot gear facing off against a mob. During editing, Roger Waters and Alan Parker watched a rough cut of the film thus far. As they watched, they felt the film becoming more and more depressing, and spur of the moment decided that "Hey You" would be cut. The scene was also cut because it ran too long. Years later, Waters looked for the footage, but believed it to be lost. The scene was found in time for the production of the DVD in 1999 and used, though it was in poor condition; the color had completely faded and 'editing marks' were visible throughout the whole sequence -the audio was completely undamaged. On the DVD, Roger Waters and Alan Parker explain that most of the footage from "Hey You" still exists because it was used in various scenes throughout the rest of the movie, as do several other outtakes and deleted shots (including one of Pink in the soldiers' hospital throwing things at the walls and windows, and some animated shots from "The Wall" show).
  
  
• The poetry that young Pink was caught with during "The Happiest Days of Our Lives" is a combination of the first and second verses of "Money", off Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon". Far from being "absolute rubbish", this album stayed longer on the Billboard chart than any other album: more than 700 weeks.
  
  
• Director Alan Parker walked out on this project many times, probably due to an ego clash with Roger Waters. Waters was annoyed at Parker, who didn't like the way that he wanted to make it a cult film. Pink Floyd's next album "The Final Cut" contains the following lyrics (written by Waters): "Not now John, we've gotta get on with the film show: Hollywood waits at the end of the rainbow. Who cares what it's about, as long as the kids go? So not now John I've gotta get on with the show." Parker refers to this film as "the most expensive student film ever made."
  
  
• The lyrics sung by Pink as he huddled in the bathroom stall later resurfaced in "5:11 A.M. (The Moment of Clarity)" in Waters' solo album: "The Pros and Cons of Hitch-Hiking." The other lyrics would later appear in "Your Possible Pasts" on the follow-up album "The Final Cut," which was the last album Waters recorded as a member of Pink Floyd. Waters originally presented the band with the concepts for both "The Wall" and "Pros and Cons", and the band decided to do "The Wall".
  
  
• "The Final Cut" was originally planned to be a soundtrack of the film. A single with "When the Tigers Broke Free" and "Bring the Boys Back Home" was released in the UK, stating that these songs were taken from the forthcoming album.
  
  
• The scene in which Pink is calling his home from the United States and is very depressed to hear a man's voice, was made by actually placing a call to England through a random, unsuspecting AT&T operator. The conversation was recorded and played over the filmed sequence.
  
  
• During the crowd devotion scenes there was going to be a shot of members of the audience's heads exploding as they wildly cheered, loving every minute of it. Waters decided that it could not be accomplished without making it comic.
  
  
• The war movie on the television in Pink's hotel room is the classic WWII film _Dam Busters, The (1954)_.
  
  
• Song changes from album: - When the Tigers Broke Free - added - In the Flesh? - extended/re-recorded - The Thin Ice - extended/re-mixed - Another Brick in the Wall 1 - unchanged - The Happiest Days of Our Lives - re-mixed - Another Brick in the Wall 2 - re-mixed - Mother - re-recorded/lyrics changed - Goodbye Blue Sky - re-mixed - Empty Spaces - deleted, in favor of: - What Shall We Do Now? - added - Young Lust - unchanged - One of My Turns - unchanged - Don't Leave Me Now - changed - Another Brick in the Wall 3- re-recorded - Goodbye Cruel World - unchanged - Hey You - not included - Nobody Home - unchanged - Is There Anybody Out There? - classical guitar re-recorded - Vera - unchanged - Bring the Boys Back Home - extended - Comfortably Numb - bass line different from album - The Show Must Go On - not included - In the Flesh - re-recorded - Run Like Hell - shortened - Waiting for the Worms - shortened - Stop - re-recorded - The Trial - unchanged - Outside the Wall - re-recorded
  
  
• The song, "What Shall We Do Now?" was originally written and recorded for the Wall album, but cut for time constraints in favor of "Empty Spaces" (which is a shorter rewrite of the first half of WSWDN). This was included in the original lyric notes from the album because the change was made just prior to the final edit. It was used on the Wall live tour in 1980-81.
  
  
• The music heard playing during the opening credits is "The Little Boy that Santa Forgot" performed by Vera Lynn. Notably, the song is about a fatherless boy. Featured on the album, the song "Vera" is referring to another classic by Vera Lynn called "We'll meet again." Its lyrics include: "We'll meet again, / Don't know where, Don't know when, / But I know / We'll meet again / Some sunny day."
  
  
• Bob Geldof has only one line in the entire movie that isn't a lyric by Pink Floyd: "Next time, fuckers!"
  
  
• Bob Geldof is terrified of blood and found the razor blade scene extremely difficult to film. He was only supposed to shave his eyebrows. Feeling himself seized by the role, he improvised the scene and shaved his entire body. This scene was inspired by Pink Floyd founder Syd Barrett (as was much of the album), who became mentally ill and left the band in the late-'60s. According to the band, Barrett once left a crowded dinner party, went home, shaved his head and went back acting as though it was the most normal thing in the world. Some of the people who were close to Syd during his decline had to leave the theater during the scene because they found it so disturbing.
  
  
• The Pink Floyd song performed by Pink in the movie ("In The Flesh?") was actually sung by Bob Geldof. This was done to the dismay of Roger Waters, who felt Geldof's voice was too distinctly Irish.
  
  
• In his autobiography "Is That It?", Bob Geldof tells the story of how he was first told about the project by his agent while riding in a taxi, and how he didn't want to do it because he didn't like the music of Pink Floyd. Roger Waters knows this story, not because he read it in Geldof's book, but because the taxi driver was actually Roger Waters' brother.
  
  
• Cameo: [Roger Waters] A wedding guest
  
  
• Roger Waters took the plaque from the church of the men killed in Anzio, Italy as a keep sake, while Art Director Gerald Scarfe took the lamps from Pink's hotel room, because he thought they would look nice in his house.
  
  
• The crowd at the fascist concert were Neo-Nazis. They could have been Pink Floyd fans, but they were selected because of their white supremacy and not because they were fans.
  
  
• According to Bob Geldof's autobiography, (which also mentions the Supergirl body mould), when filming the scene where the groupie starts sucking Pink's fingers (before he smashes up the room in "One of My Turns"), Jenny Wright couldn't get the scene right. She asked director Alan Parker what her motivation was for the scene, and he replied, "money". She got it right on the next take.
  
  
• Cameo: [Joanne Whalley] One of Pink's groupies
  
  
• Cameo: [Michael Ensign] Hotel Manager
  
  
• Roger Waters originally conceived the Wall film as a starring vehicle for himself; his lackluster screen test led to the casting of, ironically, another musician with no prior acting experience, Bob Geldof.
  
  
• Despite the line "Soundtrack available on Columbia Records and Tapes" in the credits (on UK prints of the movie and subsequent VHS editions this reads "Soundtrack available on Harvest Records and Tapes", Harvest Records being the band's long time British record label) no (official) soundtrack ever surfaced, because the soundtrack would have been very similar to the Wall album. In fact, the song "When The Tigers Broke Free" was unavailable on a (non-bootleg) Pink Floyd album until the Echoes compilation was issued in 2001. Instead, additional material which would have been included on the proposed soundtrack album was released in 1983 as a new album, "The Final Cut". In 2003, a special CD edition of this album was released which included "When The Tigers Broke Free".
  
  
• Many of the extras in the "Run Like Hell" and "Waiting For The Worms" sequences were actual neo-Nazis cast for realism. Gerald Scarfe became frightened that things were getting out of control when, on one day during filming, several of them showed up with the double-hammer insignia shaved into the sides of their heads. Later, a fascist group did spring up in the late-80s dubbed the 'Hammerskins' with this logo as their insignia, much to the dismay of Scarfe, Parker, and Waters, whose intentions were to make the portrayal anti-fascist.
  
  
• In the scene where Pink is arranging the contents of his smashed up room there are several shots of a B&W photo showing a guy in a raincoat. This is Johnny Fingers - the keyboard player in the Boomtown Rats, Bob Geldof's band.
  
  
• The concert sounds you hear at the beginning of the the bathroom scene, is the actual intro done during the tour of "The Wall". This very intro and 'monologue' is heard on the "Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live" released in 2000
  
  
• A few animated shots were Gerald Scarfe's designs for earlier Pink Floyd concerts, including the dog biting meat off a fish hook from the "Animals" tour (this can be seen twice very briefly in the "Follow the Worms" sequence), and the "leaf-man" animation from "Wish You Were Here" (which is seen in "The Trial" sequence).
  
  
• The Speak 'n' Spell in the song "Mother" spells out T E Y N S H E M.
  
  
• When the camera shows the crowd at the concert during In The Flesh, one of audience members is wearing a shirt bearing the words "Bob Geldof".
  
  
• According to Bob Geldof's autobiography "Is that it?" the tear that rolls down his cheek in the "One of my turn" song sequence with the groupie in his room/trailer is real.
  
  
• First feature of Joanne Whalley.
  
  
• Bob Geldof managed to cut open his hand badly during the scene in which his character destroys his hotel room. To the astonishment of the crew, Geldof refused medical attention until director Alan Parker had the scene wrapped up.
  
  
• In the opening sequence, In The Flesh, while the police are searching and arresting the kids, an ad for 7-UP featuring Major League Baseball Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt is prominently shown.
  
  

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