Blue Velvet/Trivia


 * Mean Character, Nice Actor: Dennis Hopper as Frank Booth. Really, he was actually funnier, friendlier and nicer than his monstrous character. See the DVD extra and you'll know.
 * Ironically, when Dennis Hopper first read the script, he purportedly called up David Lynch and said, "David, you have to let me play Frank! BECAUSE I AM FRANK!"
 * Throw It In: The light that Dean Stockwell as Ben uses as a 'microphone' was a work light that happened to be on the set. Without having been asked to, Stockwell picked it up and started miming with it, and Lynch was so struck by the effect that he left it in the film.
 * What Could Have Been: As Blue Velvet was conceived as a comeback film after the failure of Dune, David Lynch has opined publicly over the years that the film would never have been made had he taken up George Lucas' offer to direct Return of the Jedi instead of doing Dune.
 * Frank's tank was originally meant to be filled with Helium. Dennis Hopper, the guy who played Frank, turned out to be an experienced drug user and claimed to have insight into Booth's choice of drug, which was most definitely not helium. According to Hopper, the drug in question was amyl nitrite, an angina medication that is used as a recreational inhalant in the disco club scene.
 * Reflecting on the role some years later, Hopper lamented having made this change, saying that Frank would have been far more bizarre and frightening if, instead of using the gas to get high, he carried the tank around for no other reason than to alter his voice.
 * Lynch filmed a four-hour movie, which was cut down to one hour fifty-nine minutes by the studio. There's a whole two hours and one minutes worth of missing footage.
 * Sandy was originally to be played by John Hughes's muse Molly Ringwald, but she turned down the role, fearing it would taint her family-friendly image.
 * Val Kilmer was offered the role of Jeffrey but turned it down, saying that the script he read "was straight-out, hardcore pornography before page 30". Kilmer stated that, if he had been given a copy of the script that Lynch eventually filmed, he would have gladly taken the part.