“What you have to understand is, four days ago he was only my brother in name. And this morning we had pancakes.”
Raymond Babbitt was inspired by real-life savant, Kim Peek, whom Rain Man writer Barry Morrow first met in 1986. When Morrow won an Academy Award for the screenplay in 1989, he gave his Oscar trophy to Ms. Peek. The script was originally written with Dennis Quaid and Randy Quaid in mind. Both Jack Nicholson and Robert De Niro turned down the part of Raymond. The first draft of the script had Raymond as a happy, friendly retarded person, but after an initial reading Dustin Hoffman successfully lobbied for Raymond to be a withdrawn autistic savant. The character of Charlie Babbitt was first written as a 56-year-old and Hoffman wanted Bill Murray to play him. J.T. Walsh was to play the psychiatrist at the end of the movie, but when he couldn’t, on Hoffman’s suggestion director Barry Levinson played the part. Three weeks into the project, Hoffman wanted out, telling Levinson, “Get Richard Dreyfuss, get somebody, Barry, because this is the worst work of my life”. Hoffman received his second Best Actor Oscar for his role. For in-flight viewing, several airlines deleted the sequence when Raymond reels off statistics on airline accidents, saying Qantas had no crashes. In reality, Qantas has had eight crashes, all prior to the making of the film, but they were all propeller-driven planes, not jets. Steven Spielberg seriously considered directing but backed out because his friend George Lucas needed him to start work on the third Indiana Jones movie. After Tom Cruise was seen wearing Ray-Ban sunglasses in the film, sales went up 15%.
