Vanilla Sky (2001)
- Cameron Crowe originally wanted a completely different ending for the film, but test audiences preferred the one we see today.
- The original script for Vanilla Sky was written over a decade before production finally began in 2001.
- The incredible score for Vanilla Sky was composed in just a few weeks after the original composer dropped out.
Vanilla Sky is a 2001 American science fiction romantic thriller directed by Cameron Crowe, a remake of the 1997 Spanish film Open Your Eyes. Tom Cruise stars as David Aames, a wealthy, handsome New York publisher whose perfect life is shattered when his jealous former lover Julie, played by Cameron Diaz, drives them both off a bridge in a suicide attempt that kills her and leaves David horribly disfigured. As David's face is reconstructed and his relationship with Sofia, played by Penelope Cruz reprising her role from the original, resumes, the boundaries between reality, dream, and memory become increasingly unstable.
Cameron Crowe's direction built a puzzle-box narrative that deliberately confused the audience alongside David, and the film's twist — involving cryogenic suspension, lucid dreaming, and the nature of consciousness — divided viewers between those who found it brilliantly constructed and those who found it frustratingly opaque. The soundtrack, featuring Radiohead, Sigur Ros, and Paul McCartney, was exceptional. Vanilla Sky earned $203 million worldwide on a $68 million budget.
