The Number 23
First it takes hold of your mind...then it takes hold of your life.
Production
Budget
$30 000 000
Revenue
$77 566 815
Director
Scenario
Fernley Phillips
Composer
Producer
Beau Flynn
Actors
Jim Carrey
Walter Sparrow / Fingerling
Virginia Madsen
Agatha Sparrow / Fabrizia
Logan Lerman
Robin Sparrow
Danny Huston
Isaac French / Dr. Miles Phoenix
Lynn Collins
Suicide Blonde / Mrs. Dobkins / Young Fingerling's Mother
Rhona Mitra
Laura Tollins
Mark Pellegrino
Kyle Finch
Ed Lauter
Father Sebastian
Short description
Walter Sparrow, an animal control officer, receives a novel called The Number 23 from his wife, Agatha, as a birthday gift. As he reads, he finds striking parallels between the book's detective protagonist, Fingerling, and his own life, and he becomes fixated on the number 23, which seems to appear everywhere around him. His growing obsession begins to affect his family and the people close to him, and the line between the novel and reality becomes difficult to keep apart.
The film was directed by Joel Schumacher, the eighteenth of the twenty-one features he directed in chronological order, following The Phantom of the Opera and preceding Blood Creek. Fernley Phillips wrote the screenplay, and Beau Flynn and Tripp Vinson produced. Jim Carrey plays Walter and Fingerling, with Virginia Madsen as Agatha, Logan Lerman as the couple's son Robin, Danny Huston as Isaac French, Lynn Collins and Rhona Mitra in supporting roles. Among twenty credited cast members, Carrey carries the dual part at the center of the story.
Made for a budget of thirty million dollars, the film took in about seventy-eight million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds 6.4 out of 10 from roughly 221,000 votes, and on TMDB it has 6.4 out of 10 from 3,636 votes. A critics' rating of 3.7 out of 10 from 189 reviews places it below the audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- In the spiral of genetic “instructions” of DNA, unexplained “failures” for science – irregularities in structure – appear every 23 angstroms.
- The symbol for vanadium, the 23rd element on the periodic table, is V (that is, Roman numeral 5, or in other words 2+3).
- Elizabeth Shue was invited for the lead female role, but the actress had to decline due to pregnancy.
- On October 23, 2002, approximately 800 spectators and actors of the musical “Nord-Ost” were taken hostage in Moscow.
- The film's title in Russia contains exactly 23 letters: “The Fatal Number Twenty-Three.”
- Harmonic convergence (the simultaneous completion of several cosmic, galactic, and terrestrial cycles, leading to an 'energy surge,' and described by José Argüelles in 'The Mayan Factor') occurs on Earth every 23,000 years.
- There are 23 letters in the Latin alphabet. The number of letters in the short form of the ancient Hebrew alphabet is also 23 (22=21+0, i.e., 23 – Ein Soph, Emptiness that contains everything).
- The license plate numbers of Danny Huston and Jim Carrey's characters consist of the numbers 23, 23: “023 5HJ” (023 is the first part of the number, 5+8(H-the eighth letter of the alphabet)+10(J-the tenth letter)=23)) and “906 8TC” (9+6+8=23, 20(T-the twentieth letter)+3(C-the third letter)) respectively.
- A hedgehog's body temperature is 23 degrees.
- The first human landing on the Moon took place in the Sea of Tranquility, at 23 degrees east longitude, and the second – in the Ocean of Storms, at 23 degrees west. The landings were carried out by the Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 spacecraft (11+12=23).
- In US popular culture, the number 23 has a cult following. Writer William Burroughs specifically researched several cases of disasters in which the number 23 held special significance. Legendary basketball player Michael Jordan wore number 23, and his father was killed on July 23rd.
- In a number of countries, the film was intentionally released on March 23rd.
- For many years, the largest number of reports of encounters between people and aliens has fallen on April 23rd, and the number of 'outsiders' who have sown the seeds of life on planet Earth, according to ufologists, is 23 aliens.
- The golden ratio of the number 60 (the number of minutes in an hour and seconds in a minute) yields the numbers 37 and 23. Thus, 23 minutes is the inverse golden ratio of an hour, and 23 seconds is the inverse golden ratio of a minute.
- The film about the magic number 23 became Joel Schumacher's 23rd film.
- Telegraph code 23 means “Connection Lost”.
- In the scene with the fall from the window, Jim Carrey's character exits the left building, and the girl flies out of the right building. A few scenes later, it is visible that the girl jumps headfirst, not backwards.
- Jim Carrey happily supported the project as he himself is obsessed with the magic of the number 23.
- There are 23 species of crocodiles in the world.
- The cycle of human physical biorhythms is 23 days long. Exactly as long, according to Tantrics, as the male sexual cycle lasts.
- The Earth's axis completes a full circle in space in approximately 23,000 Earth years, and its inclination to the plane of the planet's orbit is slightly more than 23 degrees.
- In mathematics, there are exactly 2 numbers that cannot be represented as the sum of 8 non-negative cubes – the numbers 23 and 239!
- When Walter runs to his wife in the bookstore, the camera moves forward towards him, and the sign on the right shows the numbers 599 (5+9+9=23).
- The Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurred at 23 minutes past the hour.
- Filming began on January 16, 2006.
- Asteroid researchers note that the minimum rotational period of an asteroid around its own axis must be 2.3 hours – otherwise, the small planet will simply be torn apart.
- The dog owner's name at the beginning of the film is NED (English: N-14 E-5 D-4 14+5+4=23).
- A human has 23 pairs of chromosomes.
- There are 23 objects on the Moon created by the USSR.
- The human hand has 23 joints.
- The doctor tells the main character that '23' is the number of the devil. When Walter escapes in the middle of the night to a hotel, he chooses 'KING EDWARD HOTEL', where the letters 'O' and 'T' are burnt out in the word 'HOTEL' = 'HEL' (Hell).
- John Dillinger robbed 26 banks, but only took money from 23 of them. He was shot dead in a Chicago theater located at 2323 Clark Street. Another criminal star, Arthur Flegenheimer, better known as Dutch Schultz, died on October 23, 1935. A year before his death, Schultz paid for the contract killing of a rival gangster, Coll, nicknamed “Mad Dog” – he was shot at the age of 23. On the day of Schultz’s death, Crompier, the king of Harlem criminals, was wounded and, at the time of his arrest, told the police a cryptic phrase: “It seems to be one of those coincidences.” Schultz’s killer, Charlie Workman, served 23 years and was then released on parole.
- The film is full of allusions to both the number 23 itself, and to numbers that add up to or subtract to equal it. For example, Agatha Sparrow's office number is 318. 31–8=23, the film's action begins on the hero's birthday, February 3rd (i.e. 2/3 – considering Americans put the month first, then the day), Laura Tollins died at the age of 23, and so on.
- The greatest English-language writer, William Shakespeare, was born on April 23, 1564, and died on April 23, 1616. Most of his works are known to us from his first collected works, published in 1623 (the same year his wife Anne died). Another interesting detail: in 1610, when the first edition of the now canonical King James Bible appeared, Shakespeare was 46 (23+23) years old. The 46th word of Psalm 46 in it was 'shake,' and the 46th word from the end of the Psalm was 'spear...' History repeated itself in the recent past: Kurt Cobain was born in 1967 (1+9+6+7=23), and died in 1994 (1+9+9+4=23).
- During nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll, the Americans detonated 23 atomic bombs.
- A fire broke out on the recently flooded space station "Mir-23," which is where the problems of the Russian spacecraft began, on February 23, 1997. The fire destroyed 23 canisters of oxygen. Everything has always been complicated with the Soviet space program: the first "Soyuz" spacecraft went into the sky on April 23, 1967, and on September 23 of the same year transmitted the first photographs of Earth to Mission Control, and the first orbital station was launched on April 23, 1971.
- The brightest star in the sky, Sirius, is 23 times brighter than the Sun.
- Every 23rd wave crashing on the shore is twice the size of an average wave.
- A complete cycle of blood circulation, that is, the time it takes for blood to circulate throughout the human body, is equal to 23 seconds.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
