The Hunger

David Bowie actually learned to play the cello for the music scenes.

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One day during shooting, the renowned and dedicated costume designer Milena Canonero disappeared and could not be found anywhere. It turned out she had flown to Rome to buy fabric for a handkerchief David Bowie was to wear. Unable to find fabric she liked in London, Canonero had flown to Rome at her own expense to find the fabric she needed.

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The film is dedicated to the memory of Frank Scott, Tony Scott's brother. Tony's older brother, Sir Ridley Scott, dedicated Blade Runner (1982) to Frank.

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Tony Scott discovered the Bauhaus rock band at a nightclub in London and decided to put them in the film.

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David Bowie said that, to lower his voice for the period in the film when his character ages greatly, he would stand on the George Washington Bridge every night and shout all the punk rock songs he knew.

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David Bowie was reportedly a little afraid of Catherine Deneuve, but he got along easily with Susan Sarandon.

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After the film was made, David Bowie said: "I must say, there's nothing like it on the market. But I'm a little worried that at some points it's perversely bloody."

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Although it is set in New York, almost the entire film was shot in London.

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Tony Scott wanted to shoot the entire film in New York, but he had to shoot most of it in London, England, because the budget was not large enough to shoot the whole film in New York.

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The female vampire Miriam Blaylock (Catherine Deneuve) was six thousand years old. She had been the lover of John Blaylock (David Bowie) for three hundred years.

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In an interview with The Daily Beast in late July 2014, Susan Sarandon revealed that she had a relationship with David Bowie while working on this film.

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Although this is a film about vampires, the word 'vampire' is never spoken.

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Iggy Pop's "Funtime" is prominently featured in one scene. David Bowie performed backing vocals, guitar, synthesizer and piano on the song, and was also its co-writer and producer.

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Director Tony Scott had to actively campaign for Willem Dafoe to appear in a small role.

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While working on this film in London, Susan Sarandon met Rupert Everett, Ian McKellen and Suzanne Bertish for the first time, friendships that lasted for decades. In the DVD commentary for the film, she also said she is still in contact with David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve.

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Cinematographer Hugh Johnson began a relationship with Catherine Deneuve during the film's shoot, and they lived together for about two years.

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It was director Tony Scott's first theatrical feature film.

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Tony Scott stated that Irving Penn's photographs had a major influence on the film's visual style.

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Under MGM studio management, the film's ending was changed to allow for the possibility of sequels and a franchise, as is common in the horror genre, but such a sequel never materialized.

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Alan Parker was Richard Shepherd's first choice to direct, but Parker, after seeing Shepherd's commercials, convinced him to hire Tony Scott.

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The Hunger was a potential contender in the Best Makeup category, but because there was no competition from other films that year, the category was not included in the 1984 Oscars.

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The 19th-century mansion seen in the film was a house located in Mayfair, an affluent district of London.

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In an interview for the 1995 documentary The Celluloid Closet, which examines gay and lesbian portrayals throughout cinema history, Susan Sarandon discussed the love scene between her character, Sarah, and Catherine Deneuve's character, Miriam Blaylock, and said she persuaded the producers to change the scene from Sarah being extremely drunk to taking only a single sip of wine before spilling it: "Of course, you wouldn't have to be drunk to go to bed with Catherine Deneuve, I mean I don't care what your sexual history up until that point had been."

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The film inspired a short-lived TV series of the same name, The Hunger (1997), which ran for about three years. First broadcast fourteen years after the film, the series used the same title and vampire lore but had no plot or character connection to the film.

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There was only one week of shooting in New York, and it was for exterior locations.

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While the book was still a manuscript, producer Richard Shepherd read Whitley Strieber's source novel for the film in 1980 and then acquired the film rights. Even though the novel had been published as a book, Shepherd kept the screenwriters busy writing the screenplay.

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Ann Magnuson, who played the disco girl picked by Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie, was a club musician in the independent band Vulcan Death Grip.

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When John speaks of living forever, Miriam confirms it. As would later be discovered, this was misleading but based in truth, because John did not actually die. Instead, he would join his predecessors in a permanent coma in the attic.

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Beth Ehlers spent six weeks learning the basics of playing the violin for the role of Alice Cavender.

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The film was screened out of competition at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival.

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Music director Howard Blake thought Hans Zimmer would handle the film's score, but Tony Scott turned him down. Ironically, Scott would later hire Zimmer for a number of films, and tried to hire him for Beverly Hills Cop II (1987), but the studio refused.

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Apparently, Sir Ridley Scott was preparing to direct the film but accepted the offer upon hearing that David Bowie was also part of the deal.

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Bauhaus's song "Bela Lugosi's Dead" is heard in the opening title sequence and at the beginning of the film.

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The classical piece "Lakmé" (Viens Malika… Dôme épais le jasmine) by Léo Delibes, featured in this Tony Scott film, would also appear in his brother Sir Ridley Scott's Someone to Watch Over Me (1987), made and released about four years later.

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David Bowie's character asks Catherine Deneuve's Miriam whether Alice, played by Beth Ehlers, a young music student, will be the next "eternal" lover. There could be two meanings to why Bowie's John kills her: trying to stay young, the usual reason, and preventing her from growing up and eventually marrying Miriam.

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David Bowie's character John Blaylock and his performance in this film are said to evoke his characterization in Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), made and released about seven years earlier.

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This was the second film in a very short period in which actress Susan Sarandon appeared in an erotic scene that gained public attention. Sarandon had recently been seen bathing topless with lemons in front of an open window in Louis Malle's Atlantic City (1980); in this film, Sarandon performed a lesbian love scene with French actress Catherine Deneuve.

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In September 2009, Warner Brothers studio announced a remake of this film, with the screenplay this time to be written by source novelist Whitley Strieber, but as of today [October 2023] the remake has not been made.

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The second of three film adaptations of author Whitley Strieber's novels to be made as of October 2023. The first was Wolfen (1981), and the third was Communion (1989).

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The Hunger was the final film of actress Bessie Love, who played Lillybelle.

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Willem Dafoe and John Pankow can be seen near a phone booth. Both appeared two years later in William Friedkin's To Live and Die in L.A. (1985). (Ironically, although he is the first person seen and heard in the phone booth scene, Willem Dafoe is credited as "2nd Phone Booth Youth.").

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The film was made and released about two years after the first publication of Whitley Strieber's source novel of the same name in 1981.

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Makeup artist Antony Clavet, known in the fashion world for his work in Italian Vogue, was brought onto the project after Milena Canonero introduced him to the director.

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Tony Scott's film was often thought to be comparable to one of the films of his brother Sir Ridley Scott. Tony became one of the pioneers of the contemporary Hollywood action film.

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The piece played on the piano is an excerpt from Maurice Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit.

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Performance (1970), the first feature film by directors Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg, was a major influence on this film, Tony Scott's first feature.

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Actress Susan Sarandon had previously appeared in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), while this film's lead actor, Cliff De Young, had previously appeared in its sequel Shock Treatment (1981).

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Two of the cast members were part of the music industry. Cliff De Young was the lead singer of the 1960s rock band Clear Light, while David Bowie was an internationally famous pop superstar.

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Sylvia Kristel wanted to play the role of Miriam, but Tony Scott rejected her candidacy.

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The unseen Dr. Schrader was most likely inspired by Paul Schrader, who in previous years had paved the way for dark neo-noir horror/thriller films with Cat People (1982), which also featured a David Bowie song.

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The film is apparently quite popular among some segments of the gothic subculture.

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This is not the only film in which Catherine Deneuve or Susan Sarandon ends up in a lesbian situation. Deneuve kissed Anne Parillaud in See Here My Love (1978), Laurence Côte in Thieves (1996) and Fanny Ardant in 8 Women (2002); Sarandon did the same with Rae Dawn Chong in Jeff, Who Lives at Home (2011).

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Léo Delibes's "Lakmé" was also used in Tony Scott's True Romance (1993).

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David Bowie and Willem Dafoe also appeared in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988).

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Susan Sarandon and Willem Dafoe share a small scene together. Nearly ten years later they would star together in Light Sleeper (1992).

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For English-speaking audiences, this is the film for which French actress Catherine Deneuve is best known.

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The film was released a year later and is sometimes confused (especially at the time) with another techno neo-noir horror film, Cat People (1982). Catherine Deneuve and that film's star, Nastassja Kinski, are magnificent European actresses who moved alongside British cult icons of the punk movement: musically David Bowie and, cinematically, Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange (1971).

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John Pankow and Willem Dafoe appear as street men by the phone booth whom you will miss in the blink of an eye (one line for Dafoe and two lines for Pankow). Both would go on to share the lead in William Friedkin's To Live and Die in L.A.

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The film's cast includes one Oscar winner, Susan Sarandon, and three Oscar nominees: Catherine Deneuve, Bessie Love and Willem Dafoe.

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