When asked about his inspiration for 'The Crow', James O' Barr
says: "Basically, when I was 18, my fiancé was killed by a drunk driver.
I was really hurt, frustrated, and angry. I thought that by putting some of this anger and
hate down on paper that I could purge it from my system. But, in fact, all I was doing was
intensifying it--I was focusing on all this negativity. As I worked on it, things just got
worse and worse, darker and darker. So, it really didn't have the desired effect - I was
probably more fucked up afterwards than before I started."
Eric Mabius
(who plays The Crow in the third film, Salvation) auditioned for the role of FunBoy in
the original. The part went to Michael Massee
who wound up shooting the gun that killed Brandon Lee.
After Eric Draven
falls from the loft's window, a close up of his face, after he hits the ground, reveals
blood running from his mouth and eyes in the same places as where the dark lines of the
make up is put on.
When Albrecht
is pointing his gun at Eric by the sidewalk
outside Gideons, he is distracted by
looters, notably one with long blonde hair stealing a T.V. set. This is in fact James O'Barr, author of the original comic book series.
One of the bad guys at Top
Dollar's meeting is one of the screenwriters, David
Schow. He is the guy who gets pulled under the table.
A scene was written in which Eric
ties a spent shell in his hair after killing an enemy, but it did not appear in the film.
However, you can see the shell in his hair if you look close enough. This symbolism was
taken straight from the original Crow comics.
The shell tying idea was removed from the final cut of the film as it kept hitting Brandon in the face during filming.
The scene of Skank
getting smokes and road beers at a convenience store was edited. The shop is robbed by two
youths, who shoot Skank in his shoulder as
he runs out after seeing T-Bird take off in
the car. This is the reason why he is messed up to a greater degree than a simple
collision with a car can account for.
During rumours that 'The Crow'
set was cursed, many accidents happened. A carpenter was severely burned after the crane
in which he was riding struck high-power lines; then a disgruntled sculptor who had worked
on the set drove his car through the studio's plaster shop, doing extensive damage. Later,
another crew member slipped and drove a screwdriver through his hand and a lorry full of
equipment mysteriously went on fire.
Even the T.V series, The
Crow: Stairway to Heaven, could not escape the curse of tragedy. Veteran
stunt co-ordinator Marc Akerstream was killed while working on an explosive stunt
involving a rowboat near a shoreline. Everything was working fine but when the stunt
exploded a piece of debris shot up into the air, cleared a tree and struck Akerstream on
the head. He was flown to a nearby hospital, where he later died.
'The Crow' nearly never made
it to the big screen. The final cut of the film had been finished and was at a lab to made
into the first print. But while it was at the lab, The Northridge earthquake, measuring
6.2 on the Richter scale, struck, bursting the water mains of the lab and sending prints
of 'The Crow' to the floor. They were all
lost to water damage but luckily the negative survived and was reprinted.
In Brandon's
last on-camera interview, he quotes from the novel The Sheltering Sky
("Because we do not know when we will die, we get to think of life as an
inexhaustible well..."). This quote was also used on Brandon
and Eliza's wedding invitations and is also
written in part on Brandon's grave.
Brandon Lee
was asked to play the role of his father in the documentary film 'Dragon - The Bruce Lee Story' but he turned it down. His sister, Shannon,
has a small singing role in the film.
Brandon
celebrated his last birthday on the set of The Crow.
He was thrown a party and given a cake and heaps of Hagen Daas. Unfortunately he wasn't
able to eat any of it as he was trying to slim down his figure for the role of Eric Draven.
