Trivia for
The Thomas Crown Affair (1999) More at IMDbPro »

• Faye Dunaway, who played the psychologist in this movie, played the insurance investigator in the 1968 original.
  
  
• The dark green Shelby Mustang that Crown drives on Martinique was originally intended to be used for Arnold Schwarzenegger's character in Last Action Hero (1993), another John McTiernan film, and was retrieved from the director's garage for this film.
  
  
• The tractor in the background after the glider lands, belongs to director John McTiernan.
  
  
• The idea of unusual heat in the museum rendering thermal cameras useless came from director John McTiernan's earlier movie Predator (1987). In that movie, McTiernan's actual thermal cameras began to fail when the jungle temperature broke 90 degrees Fahrenheit.
  
  
• Director John McTiernan decided to change the heist from a bank robbery, as was seen in the Steve McQueen version, to an art heist. as seen in this version. McTiernan felt that at the time the film was released, audiences would be less forgiving of Thomas Crown if he staged two armed bank robberies for fun than if he staged an unarmed art heist.
  
  
• The scene of Crown racing a catamaran replaced a similar scene in the original script (and the original movie) that was set at a polo match. Director John McTiernan deemed a polo match to be too much of a cliche, and wanted a scene that conveyed more action and excitement, and not just wealth.
  
  
• The final heist consisted of men wearing bowler hats, trench coats, and carrying briefcases, to confuse the surveillance team. This was similar to The Heist (1989) (TV), another Pierce Brosnan film, where a heist at a horse track involved multiple men wearing Hawaiian shirts and straw hats.
  
  
• One of the songs played by the band in the ballroom scene is "Windmills of Your Mind," a song written for the original film, The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), that became a big hit in the late 1960s.
  
  
• This is the first of two remakes that John McTiernan made from Norman Jewison movies. The other one is Rollerball (2002).
  
  
• Thomas Crown's suite of offices was actually the corporate headquarters of Lucent Technologies, and one of the boats in the race is identified as Lucent.
  
  
• Pierce Brosnan performed his own stunts during the boat crash scene.
  
  
• At the time of filming, Pierce Brosnan was not a golfer, and thus he had to take lessons for a couple weeks to make his scene hitting out of a sand trap look believable.
  
  
• The Claude Monet paintings used in the film, "San Giorgio Maggiore at dusk" and "Wheatstacks", are, of course, reproductions and were supplied by "Troubetzkoy Paintings" in New York, USA. What's more, the originals are not owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. "San Giorgio Maggiore at dusk" is owned by the Bridgestone Museum of Art in Tokyo, Japan and is currently (2003) on display in the National Museum and Art Gallery, Cardiff, Wales. "Wheatstacks" is at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The painting Crown admires and calls "his haystacks" is Vincent van Gogh's "Noon: Rest From Work (After Millet)", the original of which is in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, France.
  
  
• The catamaran that Thomas Crown is seen racing in Long Island Sound is a D-Type Catamaran. The earliest Class D catamarans were designed and built by individual amateur designers as early as 1963. Richard Karcher, Watchung, NJ built either USD#1 or #2 at the time. His "D" boats were sailed on Barnegat Bay in New Jersey for several years on an experimental basis. Richard also designed and manufactured several other types limited production catamarans at the time, one of which was considered as the official Olympic Class Catamaran and participated in the trial in England. Due to the vast amount of power that this design represented, no "production" versions were ever produced and interest and research into this Class waned. Years later in the 1980s interest in this extremely fast and highly unstable yacht design was revived by California based aeronautical engineers who tried to break inshore multi-hull speed records. Today there are only a handful of them left in the world.
  
  
• The final conversation between Detective McCann and Banning in which he essentially excuses her from the investigation so she can chase down Thomas Crown was not in the original script, but added about halfway through filming.
  
  
• When we first see Thomas Crown's bedroom, briefly visible on his dresser is an autographed and personalized black and white photo from supermodel Cindy Crawford.
  
  
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art refused permission for their interior to be used in the film, so the filmmakers used the New York Public Library, a few blocks, away for many interior scenes, and a sound stage for the rest. The exterior of the Metropolitan was shown several times, with permission from the city of New York.
  
  
• Despite the fact that the museum is never mentioned by name, in one of the first scenes a proctor is seen wearing a blazer with "Metropolitan Museum" clearly visible on it. It is also noted on the crate carrying the 'trojan horse'.
  
  
• Robert D. Novak, a political columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and co-star (or frequent guest star) of such political talk shows as "Crossfire" (1982) and "The McLaughlin Group" (1982), has a cameo appearance as a museum proctor.
  
  
• The suit designer who appears in Thomas Crown's office is Gino Campagna, who has been featured on CNN's Richard Quest's segment. He also the designer responsible for the look of the clothes in the film
  
  
• The fire protection system used in the film's finale is not actually used in real museums.
  
  
• In the elevator after the boardroom meeting, Thomas Crown and his subordinates quote from the 'Leonard Cohen' song "The Stranger Song": "Ah, you hate to see another tired man lay down his hand like he was giving up the holy game of poker."
  
  
• Rene Russo performed the first nude scenes of her career in this movie.
  
  
• When Crown sees Catherine off after they meet at the museum (when he donates the painting) he gives the limo two taps on the hood to signal the driver. This was Pierce Brosnan's trademark send-off to Fred (Blake Clark), the driver, in his breakthrough role, "Remington Steele" (1982).
  
  
• Crown's watch is a Jaeger-Lecoultre Reverso, but the logo doesn't appear because Pierce Brosnan has an exclusive deal with Omega watches.
  
  
• The six wheeled Jeep seen on Martinique was built for this film.
  
  
• The house used as Crown's Caribbean get-away is owned by one of the 30 original families who settled in Martinique in the 1600s.
  
  
• The scene in which Catherine 'lassos' her towel around Thomas' neck took 16 takes to get it just right. Weights were added to the towel to get it to work correctly.
  
  
• In the scene where Catherine sees Anna in Thomas' bedroom, Pierce Brosnan was instructed to physically hold onto Rene Russo, so that she would have to struggle to get away from him. Russo did not know that Brosnan was going to hold on to her.
  
  
• The painting that is seen several times in the film depicting a man in a suit with an apple covering his face is "Son of Man," by René Magritte.
  
  
• The film originally showed Crown breaking the backing of the Claude Monet painting in order to fit it into his briefcase. However, John McTiernan later decided that audiences might be put off if they saw him in some way damage the painting, so he edited the scene so that it only showed Crown putting the folded painting into his briefcase, and figured most people wouldn't catch on to the fact that the briefcase was half the size of the painting.
  
  
• The line, "You're not boring, I'll give you that," was ad-libbed by Rene Russo.
  
  
• Cinematographer Tom Priestley Jr. replaced Ericson Core eight days into shooting.
  
  
• When Thomas Crown is signing the sale contract in the boardroom, it can clearly be seen from the movement of the pen that he is signing "pierce" and not "thomas".
  
  
• The glider used in the film is a Schempp-Hirth Duo Discus, a German high performance two seater. However, it is physically impossible to reach from the rear seat to the front in flight. So this was arranged in studio. The glider was actually flown by Thomas Knauff, a famous glider pilot from USA. In the original film from 1968 there are similar scenes in another glider, a Schweizer 1-23, an American high performance glider from that time.
  
  
• When Crown first enters the museum there is a banner advertising an exhibition called "Japan", however the Kanji (Chinese characters) in Japanese say "konbu", which means seaweed.
  
  
• The second painting that comes up missing and is given to Catherine Banning at the heliport is "Banks of the Seine at Argenteuil" by Edouard Manet, 1874 and the real painting resides on long term loan to the Courtauld Institute Gallery in England. It is never explained in the movie how it was taken but hints do exist in the original draft of the script.
  
  

Related Links