Movie Trivia for 21 Grams
Memorable Movie Quotes
Paul Rivers: [quoting a poem] The earth turned to bring us closer. It turned on itself and in us, until it finally brought us together in this dream.
Reverend John: Jesus didn’t come to free us from pain. He came to give us the strength to bear it.
Paul Rivers: How many lives do we live? How many times do we die? They say we all lose 21 grams… at the exact moment of our death. Everyone. And how much fits into 21 grams? How much is lost? When do we lose 21 grams? How much goes with them? How much is gained? How much is gained? Twenty-one grams. The weight of a stack of five nickels. The weight of a hummingbird. A chocolate bar. How much did 21 grams weigh?
Marianne Jordan: Life has to go on Jack. With or without God.
Paul Rivers: There are so many things that have to happen for two people to meet.
Trivia
The film was shot almost completely with hand-held cameras.
The poem by the Venezuelan writer that Paul (‘Sean Penn’ ) quotes when he’s in the restaurant with Cristina (Naomi Watts) is “La Tierra Giró para Acercarnos” by Eugenio Montejo.
During the scene where Jack Jordan tries to hang himself, the over-weight prisoner who saves him has a large tattoo of the name “Maria Eladia” on his chest. This is Alejandro González Iñárritu’s wife, to whom the film is dedicated.
The title comes from the work of Dr. Duncan MacDougall of Haverhill, Massachusetts in the early twentieth century. MacDougall weighed dying subjects, in experiments of extremely dubious scientific value, believing that he was proving that the soul was material and measurable. His results in fact varied wildly, but 21 grams has come to be believed as the accepted measure of a soul’s weight.
Naomi Watts accepted the role without reading the script first.
When Paul finds the photos of Cristina and her husband in a book, the book he is looking at is “Cruising Paradise”, a collection of 40 stories about solitude and loss by playwright-actor Sam Shepard.
Goofs
When Jack falls onto the ground clutching his head after Paul has fired off several shots into the dirt, you can briefly see an ear plug in Jack’s ear.
Christina crosses the street as traffic is stopped at a green light.
When Cristina Peck wants to give blood to help Paul Rivers, a nurse uses a blood collection system called Vacutainer to collect her blood. This system uses the power of vacuum to collect blood. To do this a vein has to be pricked with the needle and then a tube must be pricked too with the other side of the needle then the vacuum does the rest. In the film we see that the tube is already pricked to the needle, so it wouldn’t work.
Months after the operation, after sleeping with Cristina, Paul still has a “hospital shave” on his chest.
On one occasion when in Church, there is a close view of Jack, standing for a hymn. The audio is congregational singing. Jack is not singing, but the black guy to his right is singing enthusiastically, but not anything like what the rest of the church is singing.
When Cristina is getting her car and tells the valet, “I don’t need a fuckin’ taxi,” her lips do not move.
When Paul goes in for his heart transplant, a close-up shows a needle being used to give him an injection into an IV port. The IV port shown is a “needle-less” type and does not work with needled syringes.
When the Private Investigator gives Paul the revolver, he flips it open to show that it is loaded. He then spins the cylinder and we hear a ratcheting sound. When a revolver is open, there is no ratchet mechanism connected to the cylinder…it rotates freely and silently.
When the doctor is listening to Paul’s heart, he has his stethoscope in backwards. The ear pieces are supposed to face forward, but his are obviously facing backwards. In that position, not only would they hurt his ears, they would also hinder his ability to listen to the heart.
When Michael is calling Cristina as he’s walking home with the girls, there’s a noisy leaf-blower running which he’s having to shout over into his phone. Later on we see Cristina repeatedly listening to the voice mail message he left, yet there’s no leaf-blower noise.
When Christina Peck is in the hospital learning the fate of her husband and daughters, the doctor tells her that they all entered the hospital in critical condition. That would require them to have been transported to the hospital in an ambulance. In another scene, Marianne Jordan and Reverend John decide to drive past the scene of the accident to determine whether or not there were fatalities. On the street a body bag is visible. This would indicate that there was a death at the scene of the accident invalidating the doctor’s statement that all three entered the hospital in critical condition.
Box Office Info In USA
Budget $20,000,000
Opening Weekend: $274,454 (USA) (23 November 2003) (8 Screens) Gross $16,248,701
Filming Locations
Memphis, Tennessee, USA
Tennessee, USA
New Mexico, USA
Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
Grants, New Mexico, USA
Milan, New Mexico, USA (hotel and police station)
Moriarty, New Mexico, USA
Zia Pueblo, New Mexico, USA