Where to watch Vanilla Sky (2001)

Trivia & production notes

• Cameron Crowe decided to direct Vanilla Sky after completing Almost Famous because he wanted to keep his filmmaking team together, comparing the Spanish film Open Your Eyes to a great song for their band to cover.
• Tom Cruise optioned the remake rights to Open Your Eyes after seeing it at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival and personally invited Cameron Crowe to his house to screen the film.
• The film's title references Claude Monet's painting The Seine at Argenteuil from 1873, which appears in the movie.
• Cameron Crowe drew the film's tone from an acoustic ballad called By Way of Sorrow by Julie Miller and a quote from an early Elvis Presley interview about feeling lonely in a crowded room.
• The crew filmed the iconic deserted Times Square scene on November 12, 2000, in the early morning hours with large sections of traffic blocked off around the landmark.
• Tom Cruise participated in rehearsals with the Steadicam operator and crane operator to understand the technical limitations before filming the Times Square sequence.
• Filming took place over six weeks in late 2000, primarily in New York City locations including Central Park, the Upper West Side, SoHo, and Brooklyn before moving to Paramount Studios in Los Angeles.
• Cameron Crowe intentionally kept shots of the World Trade Center in the film after the September 11 attacks as a tribute.
• Cinematographer John Toll maintained grounded cinematography despite the film's distorted reality to keep the audience discovering the truth about reality alongside the protagonist.
• The 2015 Blu-ray release includes an alternative ending with expanded scenes, additional dialogue, and alternative takes that provide more clarity on the film's conclusion while reaching the same outcome.

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