FILM · 1999 · USA
True Crime
21 archived facts 5 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (21)
- #001
Denis Leary said he has never watched this film and believes his head would explode if he ever saw himself in a scene alongside Clint Eastwood.
- #002
Clint Eastwood's daughter Francesca Eastwood, her mother Frances Fisher, her father Clint Eastwood and his wife Dina Eastwood all appeared in this film.
- #003
The film failed at the box office, recouping less than half of its production cost, and became Clint Eastwood's second worst-performing film of the 1990s after White Hunter Black Heart (1990).
- #004
The person who played Steve Everett's (Clint Eastwood) daughter Kate Everett was Eastwood's real-life daughter Francesca Eastwood.
- #005
The D.A. in the film, Cecilia Nussbaum, is played by Frances Fisher, Clint Eastwood's former partner and Francesca's mother. The couple's relationship ended in 1995, and the two worked together on this film four years later.
- #006
Although the original novel is set in St. Louis, Clint Eastwood decided to move it to his home state of California because he knew the area better.
- #007
When Warner Brothers first optioned the book, they were considering George Clooney for the lead role. Script difficulties delayed production and Clooney moved on to other roles.
- #008
This is Clint Eastwood's 12th film as a producer and his 21st as a director.
- #009
The Oakland Tribune, the newspaper where Steve Everett (Clint Eastwood) works, was a real weekly newspaper published in Oakland, California, by the Bay Area News Group (BANG), a subsidiary of MediaNews Group. Founded in 1874, the "Tribune" grew into an influential daily. With the decline of print media, its parent company Digital First Media announced in March 2016 that from 2016 the Tribune would merge with the company's other East Bay newspapers into a new paper called the East Bay Times.
- #010
This is currently the last time Eastwood has used a 1.85:1 aspect ratio.
- #011
This film was released two years after the publication of Andrew Klavan's source novel of the same name.
- #012
This was the first theatrical film in which Clint's former wife Dina Eastwood appeared as an actress. Eastwood and television journalist Dina Ruiz married in 1996. It was the first of two Eastwood films Dina appeared in; the second was Blood Work (2002).
- #013
Dennis Richmond was a real-life TV reporter and anchor for KTVU, a local East Bay news service. He joined local KTVU Channel 2 in 1968 as a court stenographer and became a news anchor in 1976. Dennis was much loved and was one of the first African-Americans to be the lead anchor of a TV news program in a major market. He retired in 2008 at the age of 65 as the longest-serving news anchor in the history of the SF Bay Area.
- #014
The car used to shoot the final scene in which Steve Everett goes to the Governor's mansion was a Mustang with a Chevy engine from the 1980s, with a cameraman's seat mounted on the front left side of the car. The car was left for several days on Redwood Road in the Oakland Hills.
- #015
Frank Somerville, who played the Afternoon News Anchor, was a long-time anchor on KTVU's morning and afternoon news programs and in fact replaced Dennis Richmond in 2008.
- #016
Dale's (mistaken) eyewitness testimony was crucial in securing the conviction and Frank's death sentence. Michael Jeter, who played Dale, portrayed the death-row inmate Eduard Delacroix in The Green Mile (1999), released the same year as this film.
- #017
Clint Eastwood played a recovering alcoholic in the role of Steve Everett. Eastwood had previously played a heavy drinker in Honkytonk Man (1982).
- #018
This is the second of two Clint Eastwood films featuring Diane Venora, who played Chan Parker in Eastwood's Bird (1988).
- #019
The film's cast includes one Oscar winner, Clint Eastwood, and three Oscar nominees: James Woods, Colman Domingo and Michael McKean.
- #020
Clint Eastwood and Frances Fisher had previously appeared together in Pink Cadillac (1989) and Unforgiven (1992); the latter was also directed by Eastwood.
- #021
Most of the Oakland Tribune newsroom interiors used in the film were actually the newsroom of the Contra Costa Times, a large daily newspaper serving the eastern suburbs of Oakland and owned at the time by Knight Ridder, Inc. The paper later changed hands and became part of the Bay Area News Group after 2006. This comes from an executive at the newspaper during the period when the film was shot. According to an administrative assistant who took part in weekend shoots, Mr. Eastwood had quite a weakness for fair-skinned blondes, and she was one of them. This may be untrue, but employees who witnessed the shoot reported that the film's production crew converted one of the conference rooms into an executive office for filming. It may be a hint as to why the film recouped only half of its production budget. The newspaper had extremely good administrative offices for this purpose, but their large windows showed wooded suburban views and probably would not have convincingly depicted downtown Oakland.
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