Vanilla Sky is a 2001 American science fiction psychological thriller film starring Tom Cruise as a magazine publisher who begins to question reality after being disfigured in a car crash. Written and directed by Cameron Crowe, who also produced with Cruise and Paula Wagner, it is an English-language remake of the 1997 Spanish film Open Your Eyes, which was written by Alejandro Amenábar and Mateo Gil. The supporting cast includes Penélope Cruz (who reprises her role from the original), Kurt Russell, Jason Lee, Noah Taylor, and Cameron Diaz.
Released by Paramount Pictures on December 14, 2001, Vanilla Sky grossed $203 million worldwide against a production budget of $68 million and initially received mixed reviews from critics. Diaz earned Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations, and Paul McCartney's song "Vanilla Sky" was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song. The film later developed a cult following.
Plot
David Aames Jr., the owner of a large publishing company he inherited from his father, is in prison. Wearing a prosthetic mask, David tells his life story to court psychologist Dr. Curtis McCabe. In flashbacks, David leaves the duties of the publisher to his father's trusted associates while living as a playboy in Manhattan. After his best friend, Brian Shelby, introduces him to Sofia Serrano during a party, David and Sofia spend the night together at Sofia's apartment and fall in love, unaware that David's current lover, Julie Gianni, has followed them there.
As David leaves, Julie offers him a ride and soon reveals her jealousy of Sofia. She deliberately crashes the car, killing herself and disfiguring David. Doctors cannot repair his face using plastic surgery, forcing David to wear a prosthetic mask, and the mental and physical scarring from the accident causes him to become withdrawn and depressed. David joins Brian and Sofia at a club, but they all leave after David starts an argument while drunk. After David insults them and they part ways, David passes out on the street outside the club.
The next day, Sofia returns and apologises to David. She takes him home; the two form a relationship, and he slowly begins to recover. After surgeons find a way to repair David's face despite their prior prognosis, he is plagued by bizarre experiences - such as brief flashbacks of his disfigurement and an encounter with a mysterious man at a bar who informs him that David is omnipotent, demonstrated by the entire bar falling silent at David's command. One day, while at Sofia's, David awakens to find himself in bed with Julie, whose face has replaced Sofia's in their photographs. In shock, he suffocates Julie. David is arrested and imprisoned and his facial disfigurement is mysteriously restored.
McCabe conducts several more interviews, which serve to help David to recall the name "Life Extension". Seeing a company with that name on TV, McCabe arranges to take David there under guard. Rebecca Dearborn, a company representative, explains how Life Extension uses cryonic suspension to save those with terminal illnesses until a cure can be found, keeping them in a lucid dream state to otherwise exercise their mind. David realises that he is in cryonic suspension and that the world he inhabits is his lucid dream, which has become a nightmare. He escapes McCabe and the guards while calling for "tech support", and rushes for the building's lobby, which is suddenly empty. An elevator opens, revealing the strange man from the bar. As the elevator climbs to the top of an impossibly tall building, the man explains that he is Tech Support and that David has been in suspension for 150 years.
Unable to face the twin traumas of the loss of his love, Sofia, and his facial injuries, David had opted for Life Extension, to be awakened when technology could repair his face, and left the publishing company in the hands of his father's associates, ultimately overdosing on medication and causing Brian to arrange a three-day memorial for him in his home. As part of the program, David had chosen to experience a lucid dream, in which his life would resume the morning after Sofia left him; however, a glitch in the software had caused other elements of his subconscious to distort his dream.
David and Tech Support emerge on the rooftop, high above the clouds. There, Tech Support tells David that although they have corrected the flaw, he now has a choice of either being returned to the dream or being restored to life, requiring a literal leap of faith off the roof that will wake him from his sleep. David chooses the latter, despite McCabe warning him against it. Before jumping, David envisions Brian and Sofia to say his goodbyes. He leaps from the edge of the building, and his life flashes before him. A female voice invites him to open his eyes, which he does.
Cast
Production Development
After the American debut of Alejandro Amenábar's 1997 Spanish film Abre los ojos (Open Your Eyes) at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, Tom Cruise and his producing partner Paula Wagner optioned the remake rights. Hoping to entice director Cameron Crowe, who collaborated with Cruise on Jerry Maguire, Cruise invited Crowe over to his house to view the film. Cruise has stated:
I've been offered a lot of films to buy and remake, and I never have because I felt it was too connected with the culture of that place, whatever country it was from. But this was a universal story that was still open-ended, that still felt like it needed another chapter to be told.
The title of the film is a reference to depictions of skies in certain paintings by Claude Monet.Mentioned by the director in the commentary track for the DVD release. In addition to Monet's impressionistic artwork, the film's tone was derived from the acoustic ballad "By Way of Sorrow" by Julie Miller and a line from an early interview of Elvis Presley in which he said, "I feel lonely, even in a crowded room."
Filming Principal photography for Vanilla Sky began in late 2000 and lasted six weeks. On November 12, 2000, shooting for the scene of the deserted Times Square in New York took place in the early hours of the day. A large section of traffic was blocked off around Times Square while the scene was shot. "There was a limit on how long the city would let us lock everything up even on an early Sunday morning when much of NYC would be slow getting up," said Steadicam operator Larry McConkey. "Several times we rehearsed with Steadicam and Crane including a mockup of an unmovable guardrail that we had to work the crane arm around. [Cruise] participated in these rehearsals as well so we shared a clear understanding of what my limitations and requirements would be."
Filming lasted for six weeks around the New York City area, which included scenes in Central Park, the Upper West Side, SoHo, and Brooklyn. One prominent location in the area was the Condé Nast Building that served as Aames Publishing and David's office. After filming finished in New York, production moved to Los Angeles, where the remaining interior shots were completed at Paramount Studios. Crowe intentionally left in shots of the World Trade Center after the September 11 attacks as a tribute.
Despite the film's distorted aspects of reality, the style of cinematography remains grounded for much of the film. "I didn't do anything that was overtly obvious, because the story revolves around the main character not knowing whether he's in a state of reality, a dream or a nightmare, so we want it to feel a little ambiguous," said cinematographer John Toll. "We want the audience to make discoveries as [Cruise]'s character does, rather than ahead of him." American Cinematographer magazine wrote a feature story on the lighting designer Lee Rose's work on the film.
Alternate ending The 2015 Blu-ray release offers the option to watch the film with an alternative ending. This ending expands on the details at the end of the film. While it all leads to the same conclusion, there are additional scenes, alternative takes, and alternative dialogue.
After Rebecca describes the lucid dream, David rushes out of the room but does not immediately dash towards the elevator. He meets McCabe in the restroom who tries to convince him that this is all a hoax and a con and that his case is going to trial. David tells him that he's only in his imagination. Much like in the theatrical cut, the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" plays, but this version makes it clear that David hears the music and that he chose it; meanwhile, McCabe tries to convince him there is no music.
At this point, David dashes out of the restroom for the elevator the way he does in the theatrical cut, but the scene in the lobby is expanded: David shoots the police officer who is firing at him and is then surrounded by a SWAT team whom McCabe tries to talk down, but the SWAT team fires at both of them. They black out and wake up in the emptied lobby where McCabe continues to applaud what he believes is a performance while David gets into the elevator with Ventura, who tells him what happened at the end of his real life.
Once they reach the roof, McCabe reenters again and his pleas to David not to believe Ventura become more and more desperate until he collapses onto the ground in despair. David's interaction with Sofia is extended as he tells her he loves her but "can't settle for a dream". He then jumps off the building, screaming "I want to wake up!" as images from his life flash before his eyes. He wakes up in bed and a voice tells him "Open your eyes. You're going to be fine."
Music
Vanilla Sky's score was by Crowe's then wife, Nancy Wilson, who also scored Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous. Wilson spent nine months on the film's music, which was done through experimentation of sound collages. "We were trying to balance out the heaviness of the story with sugary pop-culture music," she said. "We made sound collages of all kinds. We were channeling Brian Wilson to a large extent. I was recording things through hoses, around corners, playing guitars with cello bows, and with [music editor] Carl Kaller, we tried all kinds of wacky stuff. In the murder–sex scene sound collage, Cameron even used Brian Wilson's speaking voice from a Pet Sounds mix session."
Besides the publicly available soundtrack album, Music from Vanilla Sky, the original score was released as a "for your consideration" release for Academy Awards nomination and never released publicly for sale.
The eponymous song from the soundtrack, written and recorded by Paul McCartney, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song. Additional songs featured included Radiohead's song "Everything in Its Right Place", and "Svefn-g-englar" by the Icelandic group Sigur Rós.
Interpretations According to Cameron Crowe's commentary, there are five different interpretations of the ending: "Tech support" is telling the truth: 150 years have passed since David killed himself and subsequent events form a lucid dream. The entire film is a dream, evidenced by a sticker on David’s car that reads "2/30/01" (February 30 does not occur in the Gregorian calendar). The events after the crash are a dream David has while comatose. The entire film is the plot of the book that Brian is writing. The entire film after the crash is a hallucination caused by drugs administered during David’s reconstructive surgery.
Crowe notes that the presence of a "Vanilla Sky" during the morning reunion after the nightclub scene marks the first lucid dream scene, and that everything that follows from then on is a dream.
Reception Box office