50 Fun Facts About Eyes Wide Shut

Which word, also the title of an opera, gets Bill Harford through the mansion gates in Eyes Wide Shut?

Fidelio, Beethoven's only opera, is named for the disguise a wife takes to free her jailed husband. A tale of marital loyalty opens the door to a night of temptation.

Which Australian star secretly dubbed the masked woman who warns Bill Harford at the mansion in Eyes Wide Shut?

Cate Blanchett recorded the lines after Kubrick's death because the actress on screen could not manage a convincing American accent. Cruise and Kidman suggested her, and it stayed quiet until 2019.

Stanley Kubrick coined the surname Harford in Eyes Wide Shut as a nod to which Hollywood leading man?

Harrison Ford was the type Kubrick pictured for Bill, so he folded the star's name into Harford. The part itself went to Tom Cruise.

Eyes Wide Shut, planned as a three-month job, holds which Guinness World Record?

Longest continuous film shoot is the record: more than 15 months in all, with 46 weeks of it unbroken. One shot of Tom Cruise walking through a door ran to 95 takes.

Eyes Wide Shut swaps the novella's Carnival season for which holiday, even though the film opened in summer?

Christmas trees stand in nearly every set except the mansion, and their lights gave Kubrick a glow to film by. One critic called it the Christmas movie of 1999.

Which English stately home supplied interiors for the masked ritual in Eyes Wide Shut?

Highclere Castle, later television's Downton Abbey, shared the job with two other houses: Elveden Hall gave more interiors and Mentmore Towers the exterior. On screen the three merge into one estate called Somerton.

In Eyes Wide Shut, Alice Harford stuns her husband by confessing a vacation fantasy about which stranger?

A naval officer she merely saw on vacation was enough for Alice to consider leaving Bill and their daughter. Her confession is what sends him wandering the city all night.

How was a recorded Orthodox liturgy treated to create the eerie chant over the masked ritual in Eyes Wide Shut?

Played backwards, a Romanian church service became a track called Backwards Priests, which a choreographer used in rehearsal. Kubrick heard it and phoned the composer to ask for more.

Eyes Wide Shut ended a twelve-year silence from Stanley Kubrick, who had last released which film?

Full Metal Jacket came out in 1987, and Kubrick then spent years researching a Holocaust film called Aryan Papers. He dropped it once Schindler's List covered similar ground.

Which Oscar-winning director took over as Victor Ziegler in Eyes Wide Shut after the first actor walked away?

Sydney Pollack, who won his Oscars for Out of Africa, replaced Harvey Keitel after Keitel's scenes as Ziegler were already filmed. He had directed Tom Cruise in The Firm a few years earlier.

In Eyes Wide Shut, Victor Ziegler calls Bill Harford upstairs during the party to treat a young woman for what?

A drug overdose has felled Mandy in Ziegler's bathroom, and Bill stabilises her. Later he reads in a newspaper that another one has killed her.

Stanley Kubrick's reported fear of what kept Eyes Wide Shut in Britain, with Manhattan rebuilt on soundstages?

Flying was out for Kubrick even though he had earned a pilot's licence as a young man. Only some background footage was filmed in the real New York and projected behind Tom Cruise.

Stanley Kubrick died of what cause days after screening his cut of Eyes Wide Shut for Cruise and Kidman?

A heart attack killed Kubrick in his sleep at 70, at his Hertfordshire manor. The film opened four months later, after editors had finished the remaining technical work without him.

What are Bill and Alice Harford smoking when their talk turns to jealousy and unfulfilled desire in Eyes Wide Shut?

Marijuana loosens Alice's tongue the night after Ziegler's party, and Bill's claim that women are naturally faithful sets her off. Her answer is the confession that drives the plot.

Which Manhattan neighbourhood did Stanley Kubrick rebuild in detail on a British studio lot for Eyes Wide Shut?

Greenwich Village was rebuilt down to its newspaper vending machines after designers were sent to Manhattan to measure the street widths. A real London street, Hatton Garden, doubled for one more block.

Which European capital is the setting of the 1926 novella that Eyes Wide Shut transplants to modern New York?

Vienna in the early 1900s is home to the novella's couple, a physician and his wife. Kubrick bought the film rights in the 1960s and waited three decades to make it.

Eyes Wide Shut adapts a 1926 novella by which dramatist, who had qualified in medicine before turning to writing?

Arthur Schnitzler called the story Traumnovelle, and it first ran as a magazine serial in the mid-1920s. English editions carry the title Dream Story.

Which London store stood in for a famous New York one in the closing scene of Eyes Wide Shut?

Hamleys, the Regent Street toy shop founded in 1760, plays New York's FAO Schwarz in the last scene, in which the Harfords take their daughter shopping and decide how to carry on.

Which singer's CD did Nicole Kidman bring to the Eyes Wide Shut set, landing one of his songs in the film?

Chris Isaak's Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing reached the film because Kubrick let a nervous Kidman choose music for her nude scenes. He liked it enough to put it in the trailer too.

Which comedian did Stanley Kubrick picture in the lead when he first imagined Eyes Wide Shut as a sex comedy?

Steve Martin and Woody Allen were both on Kubrick's mind in the 1970s, when he saw the story as a wild, sombre comedy. Tom Hanks and Bill Murray made his list in the 1980s.

In Eyes Wide Shut, pianist Nick Nightingale says he must perform his late-night mansion gigs under what condition?

Blindfolded at the keyboard, Nick never sees his employers, yet he promises Bill that beautiful women will be there. The next day a hotel clerk says two men took him away.

Where does Bill Harford find the mask that went missing from his rented costume near the end of Eyes Wide Shut?

On his pillow, beside his sleeping wife, lies the mask he wore to the mansion. The sight breaks him, and he tells Alice everything.

Where had Bill Harford first known pianist Nick Nightingale before their reunion at Ziegler's party in Eyes Wide Shut?

Medical school is where the two were classmates, until Nick dropped out and turned to playing piano for a living. Ziegler later claims Nick is safely back home in Seattle.

Which name, shared with a style of carnival mask, belongs to the prostitute Bill Harford meets in Eyes Wide Shut?

Domino is a small eye mask worn with a black cloak at carnival, and masks decorate her apartment too. In the novella the same character is called Mizzi.

What nationality is the older guest who tries to seduce Alice at Ziegler's party in Eyes Wide Shut?

Hungarian and persistent, Szavost works on Alice while two young models try the same on Bill elsewhere in the house. Bill is pulled away by an emergency upstairs.

Which actress filmed her scenes as Marion in Eyes Wide Shut, then was replaced when retakes clashed with another film?

Jennifer Jason Leigh was busy on David Cronenberg's eXistenZ when Kubrick wanted her back, so Marie Richardson replayed the grieving daughter who declares her love for Bill.

Which actor, later an Oscar-nominated filmmaker, plays pianist Nick Nightingale in Eyes Wide Shut?

Todd Field, later the director of In the Bedroom and Tár, got the part because Kubrick admired him in the indie film Ruby in Paradise. He counted Kubrick as a mentor when he moved behind the camera.

Which Scottish actor auditioned six times to play the flirtatious hotel desk clerk in Eyes Wide Shut?

Alan Cumming went through six auditions for a small role, the clerk who tells Bill that two men led Nick Nightingale away.

Which teenage star of the late 1990s plays the costume dealer's daughter in Eyes Wide Shut?

Leelee Sobieski, also seen in Deep Impact and Never Been Kissed, plays the girl Milich catches with two older men in his shop at night. By the next day he is offering her services to Bill.

Which 1990s sitcom star plays Carl, the fiancé of the grieving Marion, in Eyes Wide Shut?

Thomas Gibson, the Greg of Dharma & Greg, had made his film debut beside Cruise and Kidman in Far and Away before Kubrick cast him as Carl. He later led Criminal Minds for more than a decade.

The theatrical poster for Eyes Wide Shut shows Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman kissing, framed inside what object?

A mirror from the Harfords' apartment set frames the kiss on the final poster, designed by Kubrick's wife and stepdaughter. Their first idea, the stars' faces turned into masks, was rejected.

In Eyes Wide Shut, where does Bill Harford go to confirm that a dead woman in the newspaper is his masked rescuer?

The morgue is where Bill identifies Mandy, the woman he treated at Ziegler's party, as his rescuer. The scene was filmed inside a disused bacon factory in St Albans.

At the mansion in Eyes Wide Shut, the red-cloaked master of ceremonies exposes Bill Harford by demanding what?

A second password never existed: Ziegler later admits the demand was a trap to expose Bill as an outsider. A masked woman then offers herself in his place.

Which British studio housed the New York street sets of Eyes Wide Shut?

Pinewood Studios, long the home of the James Bond films, also held the interiors of the Harfords' apartment. Real London filled in the rest, with a hospital and a hotel both passing for Manhattan.

How was the orgy sequence of Eyes Wide Shut altered to secure an R rating for American theaters?

Added digital figures stand in front of the explicit action in the American cut, which dodged an adults-only NC-17. The unaltered version reached US home video only in 2007.

Which spy-comedy hero did Roger Ebert invoke to mock an early censored draft of the Eyes Wide Shut orgy scene?

Austin Powers hides nudity behind conveniently placed objects for laughs, and Ebert thought the draft looked the same. He argued the scene should never have been altered at all.

Whose fatal plane crash filled the news on the weekend Eyes Wide Shut opened in American theaters?

John F. Kennedy Jr. died when the plane he was piloting went down off Martha's Vineyard on the film's opening night. Nicole Kidman later recalled how dark that weekend felt.

Kubrick wanted a real married couple for Eyes Wide Shut; which pair did he weigh up before Cruise and Kidman?

Baldwin and Basinger were on his list, as were Bruce Willis and Demi Moore. Kubrick then had Cruise and Kidman agree to take no other work until he was finished.

Which studio's chief approved Eyes Wide Shut and urged Stanley Kubrick to cast a movie star this time?

Warner Bros. kept Kubrick's secrets so faithfully that its own press kits for the film carried no production notes. Its chiefs watched the director's cut in New York days before Kubrick died.

Which ailment did Tom Cruise develop during the long Eyes Wide Shut production and keep secret from Stanley Kubrick?

An ulcer was one cost of a production in which scenes were routinely filmed more than 70 times. Cruise never told Kubrick, and the crew were reported to be exhausted too.

Which screenwriter co-wrote Eyes Wide Shut and then published a memoir about Stanley Kubrick?

Frederic Raphael, an Oscar winner for Darling, called his memoir Eyes Wide Open and published it the year the film came out. Kubrick had hired him in 1994 to move the story to New York.

Which composer wrote the lilting waltz, long mislabelled as part of a jazz suite, that opens Eyes Wide Shut?

Shostakovich wrote it for his Suite for Variety Orchestra, which a publisher's error passed off as a jazz suite for years. The film uses a recording conducted by Riccardo Chailly.

Which avant-garde composer, already heard in 2001: A Space Odyssey, wrote the recurring piano motif in Eyes Wide Shut?

György Ligeti's Musica ricercata supplies the motif, heard at the film's pivotal moments. Kubrick had first chosen a Wagner song for the job and dropped it as too beautiful.

Which composer, hired after a choreographer rehearsed to her music, wrote the original score of Eyes Wide Shut?

Jocelyn Pook wrote about 24 minutes of music, mostly for strings, and played the viola on it herself. Her score earned a Golden Globe nomination.

Which Hindu scripture was removed from the orgy-scene music of Eyes Wide Shut after protests and a studio apology?

The Bhagavad Gita was recited in the original cut until a Hindu group in South Africa objected. The studio apologised and had the same singer record a replacement.

Which French film magazine placed Eyes Wide Shut first in its annual top ten for the year of release?

Cahiers du Cinéma put the film at the head of its list. France's critics' syndicate also named it best foreign film, and it earned a César nomination in the same category.

In the 1926 novella behind Eyes Wide Shut, which country's name gets the husband into the secret masked party?

Denmark is where the wife had been tempted on holiday, so the word echoes her confession. One critic noted that the film's replacement works the opposite way.

Eyes Wide Shut topped the American box office on release, yet which grade did audiences polled by CinemaScore give?

D− sits one step above the bottom of CinemaScore's scale, which runs from A+ to F. One complaint was that the marketing had promised a sexy film that the picture did not deliver.

Which banking dynasty built Mentmore Towers, the mansion whose exterior became Somerton in Eyes Wide Shut?

The Rothschilds had Mentmore built in the 1850s, a link that later fed conspiracy theories about the film. A painting named after the house hangs in the Harfords' apartment.

Which longtime assistant to Stanley Kubrick, once Lord Bullingdon in Barry Lyndon, plays Red Cloak in Eyes Wide Shut?

Leon Vitali was Kubrick's personal assistant from The Shining onward and doubled as casting director on this film. His masked character presides over the ritual at the mansion.