Where to watch Memento (2000)

Trivia & production notes

• Jonathan Nolan pitched the story for Memento to his brother Christopher during a cross-country road trip from Chicago to Los Angeles in 1996, when Christopher was relocating to the West Coast.
• The character John G. was named as a homage to Jonathan Nolan's Georgetown University screenwriting professor, John Glavin.
• Christopher Nolan came up with the idea to tell the film backwards only after receiving Jonathan's initial draft, and he rewrote the script by first composing it linearly and then reordering it to check its logic.
• Brad Pitt was initially cast to play Leonard but passed on the role due to scheduling conflicts.
• Guy Pearce was chosen for Leonard partly because after Brad Pitt passed, Nolan decided to avoid pursuing A-list stars and instead cast an affordable quality actor.
• Guy Pearce called Christopher Nolan personally to discuss the role of Leonard, which impressed Nolan and contributed to Pearce being cast.
• Carrie-Anne Moss was suggested for the role of Natalie after Jennifer Todd was impressed by her performance as Trinity in The Matrix.
• Filming took place over just 25 days from September 7 to October 8, 1999, and all three principal actors performed together only on the first day of shooting.
• The opening scene where Leonard kills Teddy required Nolan to create a complex optical effect in which a backwards-running shot had to be reversed to play forwards again.
• A week before filming began, a train company placed several dozen train carriages outside the derelict building location, forcing the production to move to an oil refinery near Long Beach.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Memento (film), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.