Trivia for
Diner (1982) More at IMDbPro »

• Michael Tucker, who plays "Bagel", was born and raised in Baltimore and talks in his native accent in the film.
  
  
• Director Trademark: [Barry Levinson] After his appearance here, Ralph Tabakin (TV Customer) appeared in every Levinson picture through Liberty Heights (1999).
  
  
• The diner used in the movie was moved further downtown in Baltimore, and by 2002 was an on-the-job training school for at-risk youth.
  
  
• It is claimed that James Spader is a dancing extra for a few seconds in the opening dance.
  
  
• All of the scenes in the diner were filmed last after the cast got to know each other. The dialog in those scenes is a combination of scripted and improvisational.
  
  
• Barry Levinson claims that the infamous football quiz that Eddie forces his fiancée to pass is based on something that one of his male cousins did in real life.
  
  
• Elyse's face is hidden through the entire movie.
  
  
• MGM was reluctant to release the film, which they believed would be a commercial flop. But when they found out that critic Pauline Kael had written a glowing review in the New Yorker, they immediately released it.
  
  
• Paul Reiser had not planned on auditioning for the film. He accompanied a friend who was auditioning, and while in the waiting room, he was persuaded to come back to audition himself.
  
  
• Kevin Bacon was sick on the day of his screen test to play Fenwick. But he had previously decided that his character would probably be half-drunk during the entire movie, so he went ahead and auditioned and got the part.
  
  
• Barry Levinson had the main actors arrive in Baltimore a week before filming began to get to know each other and build rapport. Predictably, the young male actors went out on the town to clubs and tried to pick up women. Sometimes they would use bogus stories about what they were doing in Baltimore. Tim Daly says he came up with the most popular one, that they were engineers working on a rotating rooftop restaurant.
  
  
• While many have speculated about which character actually represented Barry Levinson himself, the answer is none -- Barry says that each of the main characters represent a small part of his youth.
  
  
• Ellen Barkin said in 2000 that her character Beth remains the closest to how she felt in real life of any role she had ever played.
  
  
• At times during filming when friction between actors got out of hand, Levinson ushered them into a small trailer that the cast nicknamed the "comraderie camper".
  
  
• The diner used was real, operational and open for business during filming. Because there were so many night scenes, the filmmakers kept the kitchen running 24/7, and often the cast would see the sunrise as they finished the day's work quaffing beer.
  
  
• Just like his character Shrevie, Daniel Stern (a Maryland native) was the only main actor who was married when Diner was filming, and thus missed out on much of the nightclub action with the other guys.
  
  

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