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• Hey, It's That Guy!: John Cazale appears as one of Harry's colleagues/rivals in the surveillance business. This is one of the five feature films he'd acted in his whole career. Every one of them nominated for Best Picture.
• Playing Against Type: Harrison Ford going for a much less heroic & charming role and more of a creepy villainous one, though this film did precede his more well known roles.
  • Hackman, too. Caul is exceptionally skilled in his field but is a far cry from the kind of badasses Hackman usually plays. Coppola noted in the DVD commentary that Hackman, generally gregarious and relaxed, had a lot of trouble playing the nervous, reclusive Caul.
• Reclusive Artist: Harry doesn’t work well with public relations, and his fellow surveillance experts certainly see him as an example of this trope.
• What Could Have Been: It was originally envisioned as an horror film and would have starred Marlon Brando.
• Write What You Know: Coppola considers this his most personal movie, largely because he incorporated so much of his personality into Harry Caul. Like Harry, Coppola suffered from polio as a child which temporarily left him paralyzed. He was also obsessed with gadgetry from an early age and bugged his parents' phone when a teenager. Harry's ardent Catholicism and prudishness tally with many descriptions of Coppola.