Trivia for
Secret Window (2004) More at IMDbPro »

• Ving Rhames was offered a role but turned it down due to a scheduling conflict.
  
  
• James Newton Howard was going to compose with Hans Zimmer, but when he was replaced, Zimmer bowed out as well. Philip Glass and Geoff Zanelli came into the project instead.
  
  
• The movie's premiere date was moved up a month to ride the coat-tails of Johnny Depp's success in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) which earned him a SAG award and an Oscar nomination.
  
  
• Stephen King traded the rights to this film in order to get the rights to "Kingdom Hospital" (2004).
  
  
• Johnny Depp's line, "This is not my beautiful house. This is not my beautiful wife. Anymore.", is taken from the Talking Heads' song "Once in a Lifetime".
  
  
• While Johnny Depp is looking to a mirror, you faintly hear him whisper, "When Sister Veronica found out about the windows she withdrew the school from the competition". This is a line from Rosemary Woodhouse's first dream in Rosemary's Baby (1968).
  
  
• John Turturro decided to star in the movie because his son, a big fan of Stephen King, convinced him to.
  
  
• Mort looking head on into the mirror and seeing the reflection of the back of his head is a reference to the paintings of Belgian surrealist painter Magritte. He often depicted a mysterious man in a bowler hat not unlike the hat that Shooter wears.
  
  
• When Depp's character drops the hat on his desk, a copy of Hunter S. Thompson's "The Rum Diary" is visible on the table. Johnny Depp is slated to play Paul Kemp in a motion picture version of the book.
  
  
• B-roll footage from The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) was used for one of Mort's intense dreams.
  
  
• Johnny Depp's character's name is Morton Rainey. Toward the end of the movie, this character puchases three items at the grocer's. One of the items is a box of MORTON's salt whose moto is: "When it rains it pours." Thus Morton Rainey.
  
  
• Shooter's license plate number is CTO 27Q.
  
  
• The DVD Audio Commentry with David Koepp was recorded on March 4th 2004... the film hadn't even been released in cinemas yet.
  
  
• There are two Sweeney Todds in this film - Johnny Depp who played the murderous barber in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) and Len Cariou who originated the role on Broadway.
  
  
• When Mort Rainey is looking in the mirror and sees his own back (the way the viewer is watching Mort), it is very reminiscent to a painting by René Magritte - "La Reproduction Interdite" (English: "Reproduction Prohibited").
  
  
• In the scene where Johnny Depp bursts in on Maria Bello and Timothy Hutton in the Motel; David Koepp wanted Bello and Hutton to look shocked and scared - he made them both lie in the bed for 15 minutes before Depp rushed in. The production crew set up large speakers that blared static noise when the script called for them to be scared. The lights in the room were also rigged to go on when Johnny Depp opened the door, startling the actors further. No one knew exactly how to act.
  
  
• The popular mystery magazine "Ellery Queen" (1975) is mentioned prominently. Timothy Hutton's late father, Jim Hutton played the title character in the 1970's television series of the same name.
  
  
• Timothy Hutton previously appeared in The Dark Half (1993), which was also about a writer with an insane alter ego, and was also based on a Stephen King novel.
  
  

• SPOILER: When Mort's conscience is revealing the real situation to him at the end of the movie, Mort begins to yell, "Rah! Rah! Rah!" Johnny Depp took this from his son, who was pre-verbal and expressed his confusion by saying "Rah!" Depp felt that Mort would be so confused at that point that he would not know what to say to convey what was happening that he would become pre-verbal again.
  
  

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