All The Tropes

Carrie/Trivia

< Carrie
Revision as of 17:54, 4 January 2015 by Ecclytennysmithylove (talk | contribs)


  • Ability Over Appearance: Sissy Spacek was widely thought to be too pretty for the title role, the character in the book being described as chunky, mousy-haired and covered in pimples with Spacek being a tall thin redhead with clear skin. But Spacek's Oscar nomination speaks for itself. The character was then rewritten slightly, saying that she would be pretty if she made an effort to tidy herself up a bit.
  • Billing Displacement: John Travolta, who was then the star of Welcome Back, Kotter, got second billing on the posters behind Sissy Spacek, even though Billy was, at best, the seventh most important character. Home video releases continue this tradition now that Travolta is a Hollywood icon.
  • Creator Backlash: Before he finished writing, Stephen King threw the entire manuscript in the trash, disappointed with how it was turning out. His wife Tabitha read it, loved it, and pushed for him to continue writing. The rest is history. He still regards the book as one of his weaker efforts, without the polish of his later novels.
    • According to his own account, he had originally been challenged to write something with which women could identify. He wrote the shower scene, didn't like it and threw it out; his wife, who had trouble with her periods, rescued it. The shower scene was what amazed every woman at Doubleday. Harlan Ellison said:

“…that opening sequence in which the telekinetic, Carrie White, gets her first menstrual experience before the eyes of a covey of teenage shrikes, and more than the light bulb in the locker room exploded. Xeroxes of the manuscript were run off; they were disseminated widely in-house; women editors passed them on to female secretaries, who took them home and gave them to their friends. That first scene bit hard…It was Jungian archetype goosed with ten million volts of emotional power. It was the commonly-shared horrible memory of half the population, reinterpreted.”

    • (He also used the word "trope" in this essay, which you'll find in his book Harlan Ellison's Watching.)
  • Creator Preferred Adaptation: King believes that DePalma's film adaptation is a superior work to his novel.
  • Dawson Casting: Both the 1976 and 2002 versions employ this.
  • Dyeing for Your Art: Portia Doubleday, a natural blonde, became brunette to play Chris in the 2013 film.
  • Fake American:
    • The 2002 version, having been shot in Vancouver, was so jam-packed with Canadians-playing-Americans that it would be simpler to list the actors who weren't Canadian: the Americans Angela Bettis, Patricia Clarkson, Rena Sofer and David Keith, and the Australian Emilie de Ravin.
    • The 2013 version has English actress Gabriella Wilde as Sue, along with the Australian Alex Russell.
  • Hey, It's That Guy!/Retroactive Recognition:
  • Hey, It's That Voice!: Both the original movie and the TV remake were dubbed in Japan and both versions has very interesting casting choices, since many of the voice actors worked in many classics of the Mecha genre as protagonists:
  • Method Acting:
    • In the 1976 version, Sissy Spacek deliberately isolated herself from her castmates during filming.
    • In the 2013 version, Chloe Grace Moretz sewed her own dresses, and spent hours on end locked in a closet in order to simulate what Carrie's mother put her through.
  • Production Posse: Brian De Palma, John Travolta and Nancy Allen reunited five years later for the film Blow Out.
  • Real Life Relative:
    • Amy Irving and her mother Priscilla Pointer played Sue and her mother respectively.
    • The song that plays during Carrie and Tommy's dance at the prom is sung by Katie Irving, Amy's sister and Priscilla's other daughter.
  • Technology Marches On: In the 2002 version a teenage girl using her cell phone to make a call in lieu of texting and mentions of e-mail being used as communication between two teenage girls horribly dates the movie that was at one time intended to be an update.
  • What Could Have Been:
    • The production of the original film experienced a literal example of Special Effect Failure, detailed in the special features on the DVD. The finale was supposed to involve Carrie calling down a meteor shower on her house, destroying it. Indeed, the interior scenes, showing the rocks coming through the ceiling, had already been shot. However, when they shot the exterior of the house burning down, the rig that was supposed to drop the stones malfunctioned. The production didn't have enough money left to redo the shot, so they simply filmed it sans meteors.
    • The original film was cast in a joint session with the casting of Star Wars, which creates some very interesting casting possibilities. John Travolta as Luke Skywalker? Nancy Allen or Sissy Spacek as Princess Leia? And the obvious one, Carrie Fisher as Carrie White? (Allegedly, that was the role that she was originally auditioning for before she was cast as Princess Leia.)
    • Bernard Herrmann was the first choice to score the film but died during production. Pino Donaggio replaced him.
    • For the 2012 remake, Shailene Woodley was offered the role of Carrie, but turned it down, while Haley Bennett, Dakota Fanning, Emily Browning, Lily Collins and Bella Heathcote all auditioned. Jodie Foster was also considered to play Margaret.
  1. ↑ Ideas, people.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Carrie/Trivia?oldid=1223339"