Stranger Than Fiction
Short description
Harold Crick is a tax auditor whose days run like clockwork, down to each toothbrush stroke and the number of steps he takes to the bus. That orderly life comes apart when he begins hearing a woman's voice describing everything he does, including his private thoughts, and only he can hear it. The voice belongs to Karen Eiffel, a novelist struggling to finish what may be her best book, unaware that the man she is writing about is real. Her plan for the story is to kill off her main character, and as Harold pieces this together he sets out to change the ending, while a publisher's assistant keeps watch over the blocked author.
Marc Forster directed the film, the fourth of thirteen features in his career by the facts' count, following Stay and preceding The Kite Runner. Zach Helm wrote the screenplay, and Lindsay Doran produced. Will Ferrell plays Harold, with Maggie Gyllenhaal as Ana Pascal, the tax client he is auditing; Dustin Hoffman appears as Professor Jules Hilbert, Emma Thompson as Karen Eiffel, and Queen Latifah as Penny Escher. The production, made across the United States and the United Kingdom, cost about 30 million dollars and returned roughly 54 million worldwide.
Audiences received it warmly: on IMDb it holds 7.5 from about 245,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.3 from over 2,600. A critics' rating of 7.2 from 176 reviews places it in similar territory to those audience scores. The credited cast of 72 and crew of 85 indicate a mid-sized production, and the modest commercial result relative to its budget suggests a film that found its audience gradually rather than through a wide opening.
What's left behind the scenes
- When Harold is asked to multiply the numbers 67 and 453, he gives the correct answer of 30351, but then corrects himself and gives the wrong answer – 31305.
- The surnames of all the characters are the surnames of famous scientists, artists, mathematicians, engineers, philosophers, etc. In particular, the surname of the main character (Crick) coincides with the surname of one of the scientists who discovered the structure of DNA, the surname of the writer is Eiffel, the surname of the anarchist pastry chef is Pascal, and so on.
- The film that Harold and Ana watch the night before Harold’s fateful encounter with the bus is “A Man and a Woman”.
- The film that Harold watches in the cinema is “Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life” (1983).
- The apple in Harold Crick’s mouth is a reference to the painting by Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte, “The Son of Man”.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
