Trivia for
Be Kind Rewind (2008) More at IMDbPro »

• Michel Gondry was inspired to make this film after making Block Party (2005) which took place on one city block. Dave Chappelle was interested in playing Mike and came up with ideas of remaking Driving Miss Daisy (1989), Rush Hour 2 (2001) and Boyz n the Hood (1991).
  
  
• During the first scene within the "Be Kind Rewind" video store, a music video can be seen playing on the television behind the check-out counter. It's the music video for "Ma Maison" by French rock group Oui Oui, which Michel Gondry directed. Gondry was also the drummer for Oui Oui when they were still together between 1983 and 1992.
  
  
• In keeping with the spirit of the film, director Michel Gondry "sweded" a version of this movie's trailer featuring only himself on screen.
  
  
• Kirsten Dunst was in talks to play the role that became Alma but she dropped out for unknown reasons.
  
  
• The reason for Jack Black's hilarious version of the Ghost Busters (1984) theme song was simply because the legal department didn't have the rights to Ray Parker Jr.'s song yet.
  
  
• Cameo: [Elizabeth Berkley] During the scene in the library where Jerry and Mike are "sweding" Ghost Busters (1984), she is one of the girls standing in the library watching in confusion.
  
  
• The term "Sweded" was created due to the Swedish government's stance on file-sharing. While many media corporations have succeeded in having files of their copyrighted works removed from Internet web sites, Sweden has treated such file sharing as a form of free speech, and a right of consumers. There is even a Swedish pro-piracy political party.
  
  
• Director Michel Gondry insisted on using the inhabitants of Passaic, New Jersey, where the film was shot and is set, as extras and some as prominent actors throughout the film. The scene where the inhabitants get to see "Fats Waller was Born in Passaic" (the biopic and only non-Sweded production) playing on the video store window actually featured the inhabitants watching the movie they had worked long and hard on for the very first time.
  
  
• In the scene where Alma puts the movie selections of several store patrons into a black trash bag and picks two at random (settling a dispute about which titles to "swede"), Jerry says "Without civilization, life is nasty, brutish... and short!" This is an almost verbatim quote from Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, one of the most important works in political philosophy.
  
  

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