Samantha Morton was originally the voice of Samantha. She was on set with Joaquin Phoenix every day. After filming was completed and Spike Jonze began editing the film, he felt something was wrong. With Morton's approval, he decided to reshape the role, and Scarlett Johansson was brought in to replace Morton, with all of the dialogue re-recorded.
Rooney Mara and Joaquin Phoenix, who play a married/divorced couple in the film, later married and had two children.
Amy Adams said that writer/director Spike Jonze locked her and Joaquin Phoenix in a room for an hour or two every day and made them talk to each other. Jonze did this so the actors would get to know each other better. Adams credits this for her and Phoenix's close friendship.
All of the apartment scenes were shot on location. Dutch cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema decided to replace all the windows surrounding the 34th-floor apartment in order to achieve the best possible lighting conditions. He also decided to place large mirrors on the helipad of the skyscraper across the street. This gave him the ability to reflect sunlight back into the apartment.
Most of the city backgrounds, especially those featuring skyscrapers, were actually shot in Shanghai. You can see numerous identifiable skyscrapers, such as the Shanghai World Financial Center. If you look carefully, there are even Chinese signs.
This is the only film Spike Jonze has written and directed entirely from his own original screenplay.
Director Spike Jonze loved the Alien Child role so much that he frequently gave notes to his editor and producer as that character.
Stuck in the editing process with a cut that began at 150 minutes, Spike Jonze asked Steven Soderbergh to edit it on instinct. Soderbergh came back within 24 hours with a 90-minute cut, which helped Jonze make his final 126-minute version.
Charlie Kaufman did some of the screenplay writing on the film without being credited.
Spike Jonze said he met with the design team behind The High Line, an elevated park on Manhattan's West Side, to discuss the futuristic look of Her (2013). He also explained that he was inspired by the colors at Jamba Juice.
In some of the more emotional scenes, Amy Adams would sing songs from famous musicals such as Annie (1982) and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) to cheer herself up. Eventually Joaquin Phoenix would join in and they would sing together. However, they stopped when they saw that Spike Jonze was filming them.
The airplane sculpture displayed in the plaza outside the Pacific Design Center was made entirely in CGI. There is no such sculpture at the real location in West Hollywood.
One of the legacies of Samantha Morton's casting is the name of Theodore's operating system. Both lead female roles take the same name as their lead actresses; Amy from actress Amy Adams and Samantha from Morton, but because she had to be recast at the last minute, the operating system's name remained Samantha.
Her (2013) is dedicated to the memories of actor James Gandolfini, writer Maurice Sendak, cinematographer Harris Savides and musician-film producer Adam Yauch. (All four had worked with director Spike Jonze to some extent over the past 20 years.)
During the setup routine of the Samantha personal assistant operating system, the main character is asked questions about his mother. The answer he tries to give is cut off, the synthesized voice says the process is complete, and the program suddenly ends. This recalls ELIZA, a pioneering artificial intelligence project created in the mid-1960s that mimicked meaningful free-form communication by responding to certain verbal cues in human speech. ELIZA initially stunned the scientific community with how it created this illusion, but it failed when opponents offered metaphors and ELIZA responded without responding. The textbook example: "Human: 'I've been thinking that necessity is the mother of invention.' ELIZA: 'Interesting. Tell me about your mother.'".
Scarlett Johansson said that during the scenes in which Samantha simulates an orgasm, Joaquin Phoenix was "losing it" and tried very hard not to laugh.
Various scenes included fictional video games; these sequences were developed by animation artist David O'Reilly. His work on the film inspired him to develop his own video games and ultimately led to his first film, Mountain.
When Spike Jonze wrote the first draft, he didn't know the film's title and was about to send it to a few people to read via FedEx. He put "Untitled Rick Howard Project" on the cover. Later, "[Spike's] manager sent it to Warner Brothers, and from that moment on, for a year and a half, every email, every contract was about the 'Untitled Rick Howard Project,' and nobody knew who Rick Howard was." Rick Howard is one of four partners in Girl Skateboards alongside Spike Jonze. Spike said he would go to the studio, the security guard would stop him, and he would say, "I'm with Rick Howard." The security guard would say, "You're with Rick Howard? OK go on."
Woody Allen had a major influence on the film's screenplay. "One of the films I watched while writing Her (2013) was Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), because the screenplay is so incredibly written," Jonze explained. "There's a lot of talk about the idea of what the film is about, but mostly the characters move through the story and take you through the story with their decisions. That was really inspiring."
Samantha Morton, who voiced Samantha during production and was replaced by Scarlett Johansson after principal photography was completed, is listed among the film's co-producers.
While Samantha helps Theo rehearse some of the letters, she says, "… but I'm not much of a poet so I think I might have messed them up a bit." This may be a reference to Alan Turing's paper on Computing and Artificial Intelligence, in which he proposed a possible test of a computer's intelligence by asking it questions to answer. As an example, he suggests the following question and answer: Q: Please write me a sonnet on the subject of the Forth Bridge. A: Count me out on this one. I never could write poetry.
The cinematographer has a cameo and can be seen at the beginning of the party scene.
While walking through the streets, a sign reading "brunner," in the iconic Blade Runner (1982) typeface, can be seen behind Theo.
Carey Mulligan was initially cast but was dropped due to scheduling conflicts. Rooney Mara was brought in to replace her.
Chris Cooper shot several scenes, but his role was cut from the final film entirely.
Samantha mentions that a group of operating systems has created a superintelligence based on Alan Watts, who died in the 1970s. In fact, there is an organization called "The Alan Watts Organization" that preserves Watts's legacy. AWO is a subsidiary of the Electronic Library. Alan Wilson Watts, Born: January 6, 1915, Chislehurst; Died: November 16, 1973, Mount Tamalpais.
In the film, Theo is shown looking at a drawing by Maurice Sendak dated 3-5-07. Jonze was working with him at the time.
Chris Cooper, whose part was cut from the film entirely, is thanked at the end of the film. Others include Catherine Keener, Nicole Holofcener, Bennett Miller and Steven Soderbergh. As Mark Harris revealed in New York Magazine's cover story on Her (2013), Jonze asked Soderbergh to prepare his own cut of the film; however, the final edit belonged to Jonze and his editors Eric Zumbrunnen and Jeff Buchanan.
Scarlett Johansson had previously voiced an operating system that dates its male owner in the film Donkey Punch (2006).
It is the only Best Picture Oscar nominee that year that was not nominated in any acting category.
In a 2016 BBC poll of 177 critics worldwide, Her was chosen as the 84th best film since 2000.
It is the only Best Picture Oscar nominee that year that was also nominated for Best Song.
This film was inspired by Spike Jonze's marriage to Sofia Coppola. She made her own film, Lost in Translation, about that experience. The character based on Coppola was played by Scarlett Johanssen in both films.
Comedian Pete Holmes had a role but was cut from the final edit.
The service Theodore works for is called 'Beautiful Handwriting Letters. Com'. Theodore's title is Letter Writer #Six-Twelve.
At no point in the film is anyone seen wearing a belt.
The first of three films pairing Joaquin Phoenix with Rooney Mara; the later films are Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot (2018) and Mary Magdalene (2018).
It was chosen as the closing film of the prestigious New York Film Festival, organized by the Lincoln Center Film Society on October 13, 2013, in NYC.
It is the first Spike Jonze film not composed by his longtime collaborator Carter Burwell.
Her also won Best Film and Best Director for Jonze at the National Board of Review Awards, and the American Film Institute included the film on its list of the ten best films of 2013.
The pen used to sign the divorce papers is a Rapidograph, used for technical drawing and drafting.
Samantha is the name of a text-to-speech setting on Macintosh computers that closely resembles the voice of Siri, Apple's virtual assistant for the iPhone, before iOS7.
Arcade Fire is the eighth famous group to compose a science fiction film score, after: * Queen - Flash Gordon (1980) * Tangerine Dream - Strange Behavior (1981), Kamikaze 89 (1982), Wavelength (1983) and Firestarter (1984) * Toto - Dune (1984) * Underworld - Sunshine (2007) * Daft Punk - Tron: Legacy (2010) * Basement Jaxx - Attack the Block (2011) * M83 - Oblivion (2013).
The live-action cast includes one Oscar winner, Joaquin Phoenix, and two Oscar nominees, Amy Adams and Rooney Mara, while the voice cast includes one Oscar winner, Spike Jonze, and two Oscar nominees, Scarlett Johansson and Kristen Wiig; that means two Oscar winners and four Oscar nominees in total.
In the first panoramic shot of the future Los Angeles skyline, you can clearly see the Westin Bonaventure Hotel with its distinctive 5 towers.
The second of two films Spike Jonze has directed in the last 11 years, the first being Where the Wild Things Are (2009).
May Lindstrom's debut.
The airplane sculpture balanced on its nose recalls many images from Superman mythology. In Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy, "superman" is a concept of creativity, independence and self-determination that reflects the character arcs of both Theodore and Samantha.
People have pointed out the similarities between this film and the 1984 film Electric Dreams (1984). Spike Jonze denied having seen the earlier film.
The DVD also includes an extra film titled "Her: Love in the Modern Age," in which people discuss their experiences of love. One of the speakers is Marc Maron, who appeared with Joaquin Phoenix in 2019's "Joker."
The voices of two former Saturday Night Live (1975) cast members appear in Her (2013), one of them Jonze's "Adaptation" co-star.
In 2010, Spike Jonze directed the short film "I'm Here." That same year, Joaquin Phoenix starred in the unrelated film "I'm Still Here."
Most of the futuristic city scenes were shot in Shanghai, whose skyline was combined with that of Los Angeles to create the film's unique vision of the future.
Portia Doubleday and Rooney Mara appear in the same film for the first time since Youth in Revolt (2009).
Samantha Morton initially voiced Samantha during filming, but after principal photography was completed, director Spike Jonze decided to replace her performance with Scarlett Johansson, who re-recorded all of Samantha's dialogue.