Two Supreme Court Justices have been killed. Now a college professor, who clerked for one of the two men and who is also having an affair with one of his students, is given a brief by her that states who probably wanted to see these two men dead. He then gives it to one of his friends, who works for the FBI. When the FBI director reads it, he is fascinated by it. One of the president's men who read it is afraid that if it ever got out, the president could be smeared. So he advises the president to tell the director to drop it, which he does. But later the professor and the girl were out and he was drunk and when he refused to give her the keys, she stepped out of the car. When he started it, it blew up. She then discovers that her place has been burglarized and what was taken were her computer and her disks. Obviously, her brief has someone agitated. She then turns to her boyfriend's friend at the FBI. He agrees to come meet her but before he does, someone shoots him and takes his ...
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Paul Rudd named his daughter after Julia Roberts character Darby.
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John Grisham wrote the part of Darby Shaw with Julia Roberts in mind. Roberts read the book once it was finished, and agreed to the role without even seeing a script.
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Filmed in sequence.
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For the scenes inside the White House, the sets created for Dave (1993) were used.
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The characters that Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington play in the film, become lovers in Grisham's novel. Although Roberts was interested in bringing that romance to the screen, Washington disagreed, and felt that the target audiences did not want to see an interracial romance. Thus, the romance never takes place in the film.
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Director Alan J. Pakula pulled a prank on the set, involving the then-couple Julia Roberts and Lyle Lovett. Roberts was filming a scene where she is supposed to talk on the phone with the character played by John Heard. Pakula sent Heard's lines to Lovett (who was touring and away from where the film was being made), allowing him to speak to his wife. Roberts played the scene normally, though she didn't recognized the voice over the phone. It was only after Pakula yelled "Cut!" that she learned that it was Lovett who was acting with her.
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The rights to "The Pelican Brief" were bought before the book was written. When John Grisham released a sample from the book, the movie rights were purchased on the spot.
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The Georgetown Law library scenes were filmed on location, in the main reading room and one of the study rooms on the third floor. In addition, the scenes at the Registrar's Office and the Career Services Office, and of Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts talking in an open area outside of those offices, were all shot in the main building of the Law Center (McDonough Hall). You can see Georgetown Law security officers as extras, in the background of those scenes.
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The President questions Coal's idea of addressing the nation while wearing a cardigan sweater; this is based on a real-life incident in which then-president Jimmy Carter addressed the nation in a cardigan during the height of the fuel shortages in the 1970s.
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F. Denton Voyles is the FBI Director in most of John Grisham's books which involve the FBI.
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Darby and Callahan discuss Bowers v. Hardwick, a real Supreme Court case that ultimately upheld a state's right to make homosexual activity illegal. Darby passionately argues that the Supreme Court was wrong. In 2003, the Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas that such laws were unconstitutional.
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To research his role as reporter Gray Grantham, Denzel Washington spent time with Washington Post editors and reporters.
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There were scenes filmed of Verheek (John Heard) in D.C., showing his colleagues 'The Pelican Brief'. These were cut from the final film, but a brief glimpse of them is still visible in the theatrical trailer.
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The two main stars, Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington, do not appear on screen together until an hour and 8 minutes into the movie.
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FBI Director Denton Voyles also appeared in the John Grisham adaptation The Firm (1993), in which he was played by Steven Hill.
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Supreme Court Justices are protected by a separate police department, and by the U.S. Marshal Service, not by the FBI, as indicated in the beginning of the story.
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Both Sam Shepard and John Heard died in July 2017. Their deaths were just 6 days apart.
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Although the Tulane Law School has moved to a new building since this film was released, the room where Julia Roberts and Sam Shepard meet for class early in the movie is still a classroom: Jones Hall Room 102.
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The suspenseful underscoring played during the bank/parking garage scene (with chaotic piano track) is reused in "Apollo 13" (1995) when the crew attempts to build a filter. James Horner is the composer for both films.
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Denzel Washington's character, Gray Grantham, is a white guy in the novel.
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The Region 1 and Region 4 DVD release was a flip sided disc that contained the movie split into two parts. You had to eject the disc and turn it over to continue watching. When the Blu-ray disc was released on February 10th, 2009 it was the first time since its VHS release that somebody could watch the movie straight through without stopping it.
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One of three movies that feature Julia Roberts and Sam Shepard in the same cast. The other two movies are Steel Magnolias (1989) and August: Osage County (2013).
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One of two John Grisham adaptations released in 1993. The other was, of course, The Firm, directed by Sydney Pollack. Pollack was an executive producer for Alan Pakula's previous film, Presumed Innocent.
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John Grisham typically signs over the rights to his books and does not participate in film production decisions. In Pelican Brief, he campaigned to get Julia Roberts the role of Darby Shaw.
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Director Voyles' greeting to Darby Shaw, "So you're the little lady that started this great brouhaha", is likely an allusion to President Lincoln's famous (apocryphal) greeting to Harriet Beecher Stowe (who wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin"): "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war".
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The production "inherited" its set of Panavision E-Series anamorphic lenses from Natural Born Killers (1994), after that film's director, Oliver Stone, decided to shoot in standard 1.85:1 instead.
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Julia Roberts spent time at Tulane Law School to prepare for her role and attended a class or two. Several of the students seen during the classroom scene are actual Tulane Law students from the class of 1994.
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Julia Roberts who won the Best Actress Oscar for Erin Brockovich (2000) presented her co-star in this film, Denzel Washington his Best Actor Oscar for Training Day (2001) the following year.
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The cast includes two Oscar winners: Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington; and four Oscar nominees: John Lithgow, Stanley Tucci, Hume Cronyn, and Sam Shepard.
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Tony Goldwyn, who plays the White House chief of staff, Fletcher Coal, went on to play the President of the United States in the television show Scandal (2012).
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Gray Grantham and Smith Keen secretly meet at the house of George and Martha Washington in Mount Vernon, Virginia. Denzel Washington was born in Mount Vernon, New York.
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Denzel Washington and John Lithgow starred in Ricochet (1991).
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The first of three films, based on novels by John Grisham, in which Anthony Heald appears. The other two are The Client (1994) and A Time at Kill (1996).
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Darby's friend in law school, Alice, is played by Cynthia Nixon. Cynthia is best known for her role as Miranda Hobbs in the Sex and the City TV series and movies. Miranda is a lawyer.
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One of three films directed by Alan J. Pakula and starring Hume Cronyn. They also collaborated in The Parallax View (1974) and Rollover (1981).
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John Lithgow and Cynthia Nixon both appeared in The Manhattan Project (1986).
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Denzel Washington and John Lithgow previously appeared in Ricochet (1991).
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Victor Mattiece, the main villain, never appears in the film.
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The scene where Washington Herald reporter Gray Grantham (Denzel Washington) speaks to the wife of a dead oil lawyer on her porch very much resembles a scene from All The President's Men, where Washington Post reporters Woodward and Bernstein interview a source on her porch. Alan Pakula directed both films, and both are about Washington-based reporters uncovering a vast conspiracy that reaches into the Oval Office.
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Body count: 7 (with other two deaths mentioned, but not shown: that of the lawyer who supposedly committed suicide, and Curtis Morgan)
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The television show that John Heard's character is watching, when he is shot (and blood splatters on the screen), is Coach (1989), a situation comedy about football. Nine years later, Heard starred in Monday Night Mayhem (2002), a television movie about football.
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When Gray is replaying the Pelican Brief recording, at the end he turns off the recorder according to the sound of Darby not talking anymore. The recorder button is already shown as off and he pushes the play button. This shot should have been shown at the beginning of his recap.
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After Gray finishes taking pictures of "Garcia" through the open window of his car, he puts the camera down on the front seat and gets out of the car to follow "Garcia", but he doesn't wind the window up, leaving his expensive camera at the mercy of any casual thief.
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The recording of Darby's phone call does not match the actual conversation.
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Darby and Gray are in the car after retrieving the video tape from the bank and are being watched by the villain that planted the bomb. After Darby senses the car bomb, they go on the run and rapidly climb up several levels in the parking garage. As they emerge from the staircase the villain that watched them from several levels below, comes racing toward them from the garage level above. It would be impossible to move a car around the garage fast enough to get above them.
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When Darby flees from the scene of Thomas's murder and first enters the hotel room where she's going to hide, you can see the imprint of someone who has been sitting on the foot of the bed (presumably Julia Roberts from the previous shoot of the scene).
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When Darby Shaw and Thomas Callahan are in class Darby's hair changes between shots.
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When Darby and Gray are being chased through the parking garage, the manilla envelope and papers in her hand change position repeatedly between shots.
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Gray tells Smith, his boss, that he's staying at the Marbury hotel in room 833. When he enters his hotel room with his room key, he's entering room 237.
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Gavin Verheek tells Darby by phone that he is staying at the Westin, by the river. Darby later tells him to take the trolley to a place called the Riverwalk. In reality, the Westin was approximately 1 block from the Riverwalk. The nearest stop to the Westin where Gavin could have caught the riverside trolley (streetcar) was at the Riverwalk.
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The scene where Darby enters a bar while fleeing a possible assassin and ends up in a conversation with him while sitting on a dryer is filmed at Checkpoint Charlies in New Orleans. When she runs out of the front door she is on Bourbon Street, approximately fourteen blocks away. Also, they have people blowing fire from a procession (second line). This would never happen as open flames are highly illegal in the French Quarter and are never a part of a second line parade.
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After reading Darby's brief in her hotel room, Gray asks her to tell him her "real name" (she's aliased "Alice"). Her full name was on the title page of the brief he'd just read.
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Jake Weber, who portrayed Curtis "Garcia" Morgan, is mistakenly credited as Charles Morgan. He is repeatedly referred to as Curtis Morgan, in particular when Darby goes to his firm to try to see him for an appointment. In fact, the student in the rehab center remembered his last name but did not remember his first name, and said his first name was "something like Charles, but that's not it."
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Justice Jensen is killed by Khamel using a rope to strangle him. It takes him no more than a second to kill him. It seems highly unlikely that one could strangle a person in just one second. However, the strangulation is not shown, but judging by Khamel's quick yank and the sound Jensen made, it seems likely that he successfully dislocated or crushed a vertebra in his neck, which would quickly cause suffocation.
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(At about 6 min) Khamel is seen driving to Washington in a truck. In an overhead shot, he can be seen driving over the Arlington Memorial Bridge in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Once he reaches the roundabout instead of driving to the right, he continues to drive left, which appears to be heading into oncoming traffic. However, upon closer inspection, it is clear there are two lanes in each direction, and it is possible to turn left at this point and continue on Lincoln Memorial Circle.
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In the videotape the oil and gas lawyer Curtis Morgan leavesfor his wife, he says that he lifted an incriminating memo from the desk of a lawyer at White and Blazovitch dated September 28th. But when Gray Grantham calls around confirming the facts before running the story on the memo, he says it was dated April 11th.
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When Darby is finished with the safe deposit box, she closes and locks its door with her key, removes the key, and leaves the vault. But safe deposit boxes cannot be locked or unlocked with only one key. Two keys are needed. Darby's key would have to be paired with a bank's master key. Usually a bank teller is present to do the 2-key locking procedure.
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As the camera panes over the dead body of Chief Justice Rosenberg, he is still breathing.
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When Khamel is chasing Gray and Darby with a car in the parking garage, while they are on foot, he fails to gain significant ground on them despite seemingly flooring the car and reaching a speed fast enough for the car to explode upon impact.
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During the interview in the final scene of the film, Gray is asked by Edwin Newman whether or not Darby Shaw was a real person or whether she was simply a figment of his imagination. It would not seem too difficult for a major news network to confirm there was at least one person with that name. However, just being able to confirm there was someone named Darby Shaw is not sufficient to report she was the same individual who wrote the brief and thus assisted Grantham in his reporting, and journalism standards preclude the press from reporting facts without confirmation. The only people who knew she wrote the brief were dead or would not comment (ie Grantham, his editor, government officials and people involved in trying to shut her up). Even her closest friend had no idea what she was doing and likely would have been shocked to know she become involved in uncovering who ordered the assassinations. Anyone trying to find her to confirm the story would run into dead ends, which would lead some to become suspicious that she did not exist.
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After the action that follows Darby Shaw retrieving the contents of the safe-deposit box from the bank, Gray Grantham's boss is told that there was a car explosion in the parking lot near the bank, and it involved the car was that rented by Grantham. It would be an amazing coincidence if the assassin chasing Shaw and Grantham just happened to crash into that specific car -- which is in fact what happened. We saw them run from the car and try to use the stairwell door marked G4, but the door would not open. They then run part way down one ramp, only to jump down a further level in the parking lot. Subsequently, you see them entering a stairwell door marked G6, where they ascend the stairs, exiting at a door marked G4 -- the level they started on. They then run away from bad-guy Stump's car, back past Grantham's car, which is clearly shown, with the doors still open. Stump loses control and crashes into the car in which he himself had place the bomb -- which was also shown to have a mercury switch, explaining why the bomb detonated. Action takes place from approx 1h 56m 30s to 2h 0m.
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