The Usual Suspects is one of my favourite movies of all time. Sadly I did not watch this film on the big screen when it was released in 1995, but I still remember watching it for the first time in 1996. At that time I was a student at Technicon Pretoria. I watched it on M-Net in my Technicon hostel’s TV room.
The plot of The Usual Suspects centers around a group of criminals who are brought together for a heist and are subsequently pursued by a mysterious criminal mastermind known as Keyser Soze. The film has a complex and non-linear narrative structure that keeps the audience guessing until the final twist reveal. The film’s twist ending has been praised as one of the greatest in cinematic history.
The film was directed by Bryan Singer and features performances by Gabriel Byrne, Benicio Del Toro, Kevin Pollak, Stephen Baldwin, Kevin Spacey, Chazz Palminteri, Pete Postlethwaite, Giancarlo Esposito, Dan Heday and Suzy Amis.
I’ve rewatched it at least 10 times after that first time, and I have to admit that it has aged pretty damn well. There’s probably a lot that you don’t know about The Usual Suspects, but today my aim is to change that.
Here are 17 Interesting Facts You Didn’t Know About The Usual Suspects
1. The Usual Suspects was shot in 25 days on an estimated budget of $6 million.
2. The Usual Suspects won 2 Academy Awards in 1996. Kevin Spacey won the Best Supporting Actor award and Christopher McQuarrie won the Best Screenplay (directly written for screen) award.
3. The line-up scene wasn’t supposed to be a funny scene, but the actors kept cracking each other up and started trying to get the Gabriel Byrne to break. This annoyed Singer, who tried to get them to get serious. That didn’t work, so he used one of the takes where the actors are messing around.
4. In The Usual Suspects, Kevin Spacey’s character explains that his nickname is “Verbal” because he talks too much. In the DVD commentary, Bryan Singer points out that the nickname is a clue, since Keyser Soze is said to have a Turkish mother and a German father. According to Singer, in a mix of German and Turkish, “Keyser Soze” can be roughly translated as “King Blabbermouth.”
5. The line “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist” was improvised by Kevin Spacey. The line has since become one of the most memorable quotes from The Usual Suspects. This quote from the French poet Charles Baudelaire also appears in the 1999 film End of Days (which also features performances by Gabriel Byrne and Kevin Pollak).
6. Michael Biehn was asked to audition for the role of McManus but passed on the offer because he found the script too confusing. The role went to Stephen Baldwin who was the second choice. Biehn later admitted that he had made a huge mistake.
7. Christopher McQuarrie reputedly got the idea for The Usual Suspects whilst standing in a cinema line-up. He wrote nine drafts of the screenplay over a period of five months. All of the characters’ names stem from the staff members of the law firm and the detective agency that Christopher McQuarrie worked at when he was young.
8. Kobayashi Porcelain is not a real company. But places like Amazon sell products with that logo, including mugs.
9. The character of Keyser Soze is based on a real-life criminal from Turkey with the nickname “The Devil”. He was a ruthless drug lord who was known for his extreme violence, including torture and murder. He was a master of disguises and often operated under different identities and aliases.
Keyser Soze was known to have committed a number of murders in the Istanbul area, and was also suspected of involvement in a number of international drug-trafficking operations. He finally disappeared in the early 1990s and his whereabouts remain unknown.
10. The name Keyser Söze (First, last or full name) is said 75 times throughout The Usual Suspects while the name Dean Keaton (First, last or full name) is said 68 times.
11. The number of F-words used in The Usual Suspects varies depending on the version of the film. In the original theatrical release, the F-word is used approximately 34 times. In the unrated version, it is used approximately 42 times.
12. Al Pacino was offered the chance to take on the role of Agent Kujan, the U.S. Customs official who is trying to unravel what happened. However, he had just starred in Heat and decided he didn’t want to play another cop-type figure. Later, Pacino would say not taking the role was the biggest regret of his career.
13. Redfoot flicks his cigarette at McManus, and it was supposed to hit him in the check. Cigarettes aren’t the most accurate projectile, though. The cigarette hit Stephen Baldwin in the face, and his genuine reaction is in The Usual Suspects.
14. Legendary film critic Roger Ebert gave The Usual Suspects one-and-a-half stars. He famously wrote, “To the degree that I do understand, I don’t care.”
15. The Usual Suspects title is a reference to a phrase used by police to describe a group of habitual criminals who are suspects in multiple crimes. It actually taken from a line in the 1942 film Casablanca.
16. During an appearance on The Colbert Report in 2005, Kevin Spacey shared that Bryan Singer successfully persuaded all the principal actors that they were Keyser Soze. When the initial screening took place for the cast, Gabriel Byrne was so shocked to discover he wasn’t Keyser Soze that he angrily walked out into the parking lot, engaging in a heated argument with Singer for half an hour.
17. Reportedly, Benicio Del Toro’s peculiar dialect in the movie was so difficult to comprehend that, during a particular scene, Stephen Baldwin forgot his cue as he struggled to understand Del Toro’s dialogue.
Well, there you have it, 17 Interesting Facts You Didn’t Know About The Usual Suspects. If I’ve left out something important, feel free to comment below.
If you haven’t checked the film, you should. Check out the film’s trailer below:
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