FILM · 1974
The Parallax View
33 archived facts 6 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (33)
- #001
Alan J. Pakula requested an empty banquet room for the final scene in order to heighten the film's nightmarish atmosphere.
- #002
Director Alan J. Pakula described the film as "a kind of American myth based on some of the things that have happened, some of our fantasies about what might happen, and a lot of the fears that most of us have… The Parallax View was a different kind of filmmaking for me."
- #003
Parallax refers to the difference in an object's apparent position when viewed from different vantage points — for example, two people standing some distance apart might see the same tree differently. The idea of looking at the same subject from different perspectives is a recurring theme of the film.
- #004
Warren Beatty campaigned for Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. Kennedy's assassination inspired the story.
- #005
The film is adapted from Loren Singer's 1970 novel of the same name, which follows a reporter's dangerous investigation of the Parallax Corporation, a shadowy organization whose true purpose is political assassination.
- #006
This was Warren Beatty's first film in roughly three years, since $ (1971). In the meantime he had been raising money and campaigning for George McGovern's unsuccessful presidential run.
- #007
It is one of the trilogy of thrillers Alan J. Pakula directed, alongside Klute (1971) and All the President's Men (1976). It was the only one not released by Warner Bros., and the only one that won or was nominated for an Oscar.
- #008
The Reverend Jim Jones liked the film and screened it at the Jonestown settlement in Guyana.
- #009
Principal photography on the film began before the screenplay was finished.
- #010
The opening sequence bore certain similarities to Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 assassination. Kennedy was shot while passing through the kitchen after giving a speech in a hotel ballroom.
- #011
During production, Warren Beatty directed several scenes but received no official credit.
- #012
Joe is offered a job paying $25,000 a year. That amount is equivalent to roughly $160,000 in 2024.
- #013
While preparing the film's first DVD release in 1999, Paramount Home Entertainment wanted to add a technical feature that would disable the "pause," "fast forward" and "mute" buttons on the viewer's remote during the famous Parallax Slide Show sequence, so that the viewer, like Warren Beatty's character, would have to watch the entire sequence uninterrupted. Attempts to implement this proved technologically unworkable, however, and the idea was abandoned.
- #014
A 1966 World Airways Boeing 707-373C is shown on the ground at Burbank Airport, and the cabin scenes are also correct for this aircraft. Registration N372WA, c/n 19179/500. The fictional Globe Airlines appears in World Airways livery, with part of the "WA" registration concealed by a decal (image 5). In 1974 it left World Airways to be converted into a cargo aircraft. It passed through many owners before being destroyed in a fire at an airport in Istanbul in 2005.
- #015
The Griffith Park & Southern Railroad seen in the film first opened in 1948 and was still in operation as of 2025.
- #016
Because of star Warren Beatty's limited availability due to his schedule, the film had to begin shooting even though no completed screenplay existed at the time.
- #017
Before the writers' strike, screenwriter David Giler was hired to do a rewrite. Director Alan J. Pakula spent a great deal of time dealing with the film's rewriting during production.
- #018
The scene featuring Anthony Zerbe and the chimpanzee inspired Al Franken's pong drawings on Saturday Night Live (1975).
- #019
Prof. Nelson Schwartzkopf plays Pong with a monkey.
- #020
The Parallax View is one of several Warren Beatty films on which Robert Towne worked as a writer, alongside Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Heaven Can Wait (1978).
- #021
Paula Prentiss appears only in the first 15-20 minutes of the film.
- #022
The Parallax View is one of three films Hume Cronyn made with director Alan J. Pakula, the other two being Rollover (1981) and The Pelican Brief (1993).
- #023
In the opening scene at the Space Needle, a news cameraman holds a TV camera bearing the KOMO 4 logo. KOMO 4 is a real Seattle TV station (an ABC affiliate) whose broadcast center stands directly across from the Space Needle.
- #024
Although Warren Beatty and Earl Hindman fight in the bar as Joe and Sheriff Red respectively, the person actually skilled in hand-to-hand combat is the woman playing the waitress Gale: Doria Cook-Nelson, who has trained in martial arts for more than forty years.
- #025
The Parallax View was included in the American Film Institute's (AFI) list of 400 nominated films for its 2001 list of the 100 Most Heart-Pounding American Films.
- #026
The test questions Joe Frady finds in the Sheriff's drawer resemble (or are in fact drawn from) the questions of the MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory), a test developed in the 1930s containing more than 500 questions.
- #027
The Parallax View is part of The Criterion Collection as spine number 1,064.
- #028
Walter McGinn, who played Jack Younger (the Parallax recruiter), was known for his critically acclaimed role as FDR's political adviser Louis Howe in Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years (1977). Hume Cronyn, who played newspaper editor and Frady's employer Bill Rintels, also played FDR adviser Louis Howe in Sunrise at Campobello (1960).
- #029
Kelly Thordsen, who played the small town's crooked sheriff, also had a heavy role in The Fearmakers (1958), starring Dana Andrews and directed by Jacques Tourneur.
- #030
Loren Singer's source novel of the same name was first published in 1970.
- #031
In Brazil the film is titled A Trama / The Plot.
- #032
The abbreviation "PEP" stood for "pulmonary embolism pill."
- #033
Parallax is the apparent displacement of an object against its background when viewed from different perspectives or angles. With an analog measuring device such as a car's speedometer, for example, the indicator is not always perfectly aligned; the only truly accurate reading comes from a viewing angle exactly perpendicular to the instrument, and even the slightest deviation from that angle compromises the measurement, creating a parallax error.
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