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    You’ll Fall Hard for These While You Were Sleeping Secrets

    soreceryBy No Comments8 Mins Read

    Watch: Sandra Bullock Shares Rare Insight Into Raising Her 2 Kids

    Something funny happened while Sandra Bullock was speeding toward worldwide notoriety. 

    “I think I’m the poster child for mass transit throughout the United States,” the actress cracked to E! News back in 1995, “and I take my job with pride.”

    Following her breakout role in Speed that saw her unexpectedly, yet deftly, handling a ready-to-detonate Los Angeles bus, she stepped inside a Chicago toll collector booth for While You Were Sleeping.

    And though her turn as Lucy could have veered toward the creepy—she pretends to be engaged to her comatose commuter crush Peter (Peter Gallagher) after saving his life only to fall hard for his handsome brother Jack (Bill Pullman)—a happy ending ensues. 

    And not just for the fictional characters. 

    “It was the most fun I have ever had on a film,” Bullock reflected to The Washington Post in 2020. “When we got off work, we would all find a local salsa [dancing] place or place to eat. We would slide dance and have Scattergories parties or just do crazy stuff. I go, where did I get the energy?” 

    Ironically, she noted, “I don’t think I ever slept. Everything about that experience was magical.”

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    We Ranked All of Sandra Bullock’s Rom-Coms

    Except one small drawback. 

    As she cracked to E! back in 1995, “Now every time we go out, I’m the designated driver.” 

    Though the 61-year-old’s rom-com career would go on to become practically magic, at the time, “I was so new to the business,” she told The Washington Post. “I was just happy to be there.” 

    Of course, the John Turtletaub-directed vehicle, released on April 21, 1995, was a runaway success, grossing over $182 million worldwide. And while Bullock has since landed at the top of many a call sheet, a few other famous faces had to sleep on the flick first. 

    All aboard for some secrets about While You Were Sleeping. 

    Hollywood Pictures/Kobal/Shutterstock

    1. The original working title of the film was Coma Guy, which was a reference to its screenwriters, with Frederic Lebow telling Buzzfeed UK, “For a year or two, Dan [Sullivan] and I were known in LA as the ‘Coma Guys.'”2. Lebow also revealed the film’s plot was inspired by a joke he once made about his own love life, explaining, “I remember at the time Dan was married, and I was having trouble getting a date. I said something like, ‘I’m such a loser, I couldn’t even get a date with a woman in a coma’. Dan started laughing, and we started picking at that idea.”3. The original version had the woman in a coma with the man pretending to be engaged to her. 

    Hollywood Pictures/Kobal/Shutterstock

    4. The first choice for Lucy? Meg Ryan. “We pitched it to Meg Ryan’s production company hoping we’d get interest from Meg to star in it, Lebow told Buzzfeed UK. “Her development executive said to us, ‘Firstly, why would Meg want to do this movie if she’s in a coma for most of it? And secondly, you guys are creeps! It’s kind of predatory with this guy telling this comatose woman’s family that he’s engaged to her. Why don’t you flip it around—let the woman be the one fabricating the story. Then it’s no longer predatory, it’s funny.'”5. Once Ryan passed, “The person who was initially meant to do the movie was Demi Moore,” Lebow revealed. “They couldn’t agree on a contract, so that fell apart.” He also revealed that Julia Roberts passed on the role: “Lots of big actresses passed on it.”6. While Speed had just come out the year before, WYWS was Sandra Bullock‘s first romantic comedy and was the film that secured her place as one of Hollywood’s top actresses. According to Lebow, Bullock reached out to the studio about starring in the film after reading the script on the set of Speed, with Lebow claiming, “Sandra contacted the studio and said it was just the kind of thing she wanted to do, that she could relate to so much of it, especially the loneliness, the importance of family.”

    Hollywood Pictures/Kobal/Shutterstock

    8. Bill Pullman went from the the nice-guy-who-finishes-second to the leading man in WYWS when he took on the role of Jack. But two other major superstars were considered first.”I know at the time Patrick Swayze was considered for Bill’s part. I think we had Dennis Quaid in mind when writing that part,” Lebow revealed. “But Bill was one of everyone’s first choices. In retrospect, no one could have played it better than him.”9. And when writing the role of comatose dreamboat Peter, the screenwriting duo had 007 in mind: Pierce Brosnan. 

    Mike Weinstein/Hollywood/Kobal/Shutterstock

    11. Peter Gallagher ended up landing the role of Peter and had a trick for acting like he was in a coma: He would actually fall asleep. “If I was going to be in a coma, I was gonna be out; if that was the only thing I had to do, I was gonna try and do it,” he told Vulture. “I was concerned about staying out too late the night before, because maybe I’d be so tired I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep at work. You figure, hey, I didn’t come all this way to pretend.”12. While You Were Sleeping was never intended to be a Christmas movie. “We didn’t set it at Christmas while writing—it evolved into that,” Lebow revealed to Buzzfeed UK. “The studios wanted it set during the holidays as it would be easier to sell.”13. The scene where the paperboy falls off of his bike? It wasn’t in the original script and resulted in a broken wrist for the young actor. 

    Buena Vista/Getty Images

    14. While filming the accident scene on the train tracks, Bullock accidentally dropped Gallagher’s head on a spike. “I think, ‘Oh, now I gotta stay relaxed while my head hits the railroad spike,'” The O.C. star told Vulture. “She looked up, like, “Oh my God, what’s going on?” And boom. She didn’t really hurt me. Just bruised a little bit. At least the train didn’t hit us.”15. According to Gallagher, a lot of changes were made from the original script in regard to his character, explaining, “I can’t remember exactly how it changed, but it wasn’t grounded as well. It was unnecessarily arch.”16. Within three years of WYWS‘ release, both Bullock and Pullman went on to play a parent to Mae Whitman. Bullock played her mother in 1998’s Hope Floats, while Pullman was her dad in the 1996 blockbuster Independence Day. 

    Buena Vista/Getty Images

    17. Fans were actually able to visit the Callahan house, which is located in La Grange, Illinois, and was put on the market in 2018.18. Gallagher ad-libbed, “Do I like Jell-O?” as well as the alphabet part after Peter wakes up, explaining, “Because I was thinking, OK, if I really have amnesia, and I believe it, how the hell do I know anything?”19. Some quick celeb-related cameos: John Travolta‘s sister Margaret plays a nurse at the hospital while Dick Cusack—John Cusack and Joan Cusack‘s father—played Peter’s doctor. 

    Buena Vista/Getty Images

    20. While happy to no longer be the “third” in a love triangle, Pullman admitted to the Los Angeles Times that he had a “huge hot flash” during the first table read with the cast because Jack was “an underwritten role,” calling the character “all whiny and unhappy.”He added, “It was a scary journey. I didn’t know how well they’d receive my forcefulness.” But they did, with Turtletaub saying, “Bill brought a lot to the script from what was already there, and we saw he could clearly bring a lot more that wasn’t there.”21. Did Lucy’s Italian neighbor Joe. Jr. seem a little more New York than Chicago? There’s a reason for that, as Lebow revealed, the movie “was initially based in Brooklyn, but Disney and the director wanted to do it in Chicago.”22. While You Were Sleeping turned out to be the only screenplay Sullivan and Lebow would sell and they would never write another movie together. 

    Mike Weinstein/Hollywood/Kobal/Shutterstock

    23. While You Were Sleeping earned Bullock her first Golden Globe nomination.24. Made for just $18 million, the sleeper hit ended up grossing over $182 million, knocking Bad Boys out of the No. 1 spot, and it still remains one of Bullock’s highest grossing movies.25. Lebow revealed they were approached about a possible sequel, telling Buzzfeed UK, “At the time, they immediately said we had to come up with a follow-up. We said there is nowhere to go. One of the studio people said that if we came up with a good angle for a sequel he’d buy us both a car! We could have written a stupid sequel, but we didn’t think it merited one. It got dropped after that. Maybe other writers could have done it, but they didn’t pursue it.”

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