Did You Know?
Kurt Vonnegut Jr., author of the book this film was adapted from, was a Prisoner of War in World War 2. He was captured during the Battle of the Bulge while a battalion scout with the 106 Infantry Division on December 22, 1944, and used these experiences in his novel when Billy Pilgrim is captured by the Germans and sent to a POW camp.
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In an early scene when Billy's mother is visiting him in the hospital, she is talking about Billy's Dresden experience to Elliot Rosewater - the title character from Kurt Vonnegut's 1965 novel, "God Bless You Mr. Rosewater", and a character who was later portrayed by Ken Hudson Campbell in 'Breakfast of Champions'.
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Dirk Benedict auditioned for the part of Robert Pilgrim but director George Roy Hill preferred Perry King.
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Sharon Gans was only six years older than Perry King, who played her son, and seven years older than Holly Near, who played her daughter.
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Although Vonnegut's renown refrain, "So it goes", appears over 100 times in his novel, it does not occur, even once, in the movie version.
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The character of Howard Campbell Jr. appears in the film and speaks to the American P.O.W.s before the bombing of Dresden. Vonnegut wrote an entire novel about this character called "Mother Night", later made into a film by Keith Gordon starring Nick Nolte as this same character.
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The music of the movie that the Pilgrim family watches in the drive-in is Rimksy-Korsakov's Sheherazade.
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Michael Sacks, who plays Billy Pilgrim, is eleven months older than his on-screen daughter, played by Holly Near, and he is actually four months younger than Perry King, who plays his son.
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