Billy Elliot - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of Billy Elliot or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to Billy Elliot

[charlie]

The musical version of this movie, which hit the West End in 2005 to rave reviews and numerous awards and nominations, reportedly cost £5.5 million to make: around £3 million more than the movie version. Furthermore, the Broadway production cost $18 million to make, over three times as much as this movie's budget. All three were a financial success.

[eli]

Jamie Bell and Dame Julie Walters appeared in Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool (2017).

[sylvia]

Billy's mother died on December 2, 1983.

[frederick]

While the idea for this movie took screenwriter Lee Hall over a year to consider, once he committed fully to it, he was able to write the first draft of the screenplay in just three weeks.

[frederick]

Producer Jon Finn had a deep connection to the story as all the family on his mothers side worked in the pits in the area where the film was shot. He was the first member of his family to leave home and go to college.

[addison]

Cinematographer Brian Tufano deliberately shot the mining village in a claustrophobic manner to emphasize how close-knit the community was, and how frustrating it could be for a creative talent like Billy. For the dance scenes, however, he opened up the field of focus to show how liberating dance was for our young hero.

[toni]

The original title was "Dancer". When it was shown at the Cannes Film Festival, Dancer in the Dark (2000) won the Palmes D'Or, prompting confusion. Universal Pictures called the director, producers, and screenwriter up and congratulated them. They then realized they had to change the name, and settled ("rather lamely", joked the writer) on "Billy Elliot".

[manuel]

A January 2020 New York Times article about the latest touring production of Matthew Bourne's "Swan Lake" profiled four male dancers in the show. Three of the four men (who were between the ages of 22 and 34 when the article was published) mentioned the movie Billy Elliot as a major influence on their interests in dance and their decisions to become dancers; and the article noted that none of the men "experienced much prejudice when they began to dance, perhaps because of what [the former Guardian dance critic Judith] Mackrell called 'the Billy Elliot effect.'"

[tamara]

Jamie Bell has been dancing since he was six years old.

[terry]

Jamie Bell is the only one of the four principals to actually come from the area where this movie is set.

[sara]

Jamie Bell was going through puberty at the time of filming. Some of his dialogue had to be post-synched as his voice had broken. And the opening scene in which he jumps up and down on a bed to T. Rex's "Cosmic Dancer" was shot over a lengthy period of time. For the latter takes, Bell had acquired hair on his legs and had to have them shaved.

[clayton]

This movie takes place from 1984 to 1985, and in 1999.

[jessie]

Inspired in part by The Stars Look Down (1940), a movie based on the novel by A.J. Cronin, which chronicled various injustices in a mining community in North Eastern England. The movie starred Sir Michael Redgrave, Emlyn Williams, and Margaret Lockwood and some of the action was set in Tynecastle, a fictionalized Newcastle upon Tyne, where this movie's Screenwriter Lee Hall was born.

[riley]

Jamie Bell took ballet and other dance classes while in secondary school, which caused him to often be ridiculed by his peers. He used some of these experiences as inspiration while playing Billy Elliot.

[nora]

Partly inspired by Royal Ballet dancer Philip Marsden, whom screenwriter Lee Hall met while researching the script. Marsden is from the North of England, and his family had a militant mining background.