Trivialidades for
The Good Shepherd (2006)

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• Leonardo DiCaprio was originally cast as the younger Edward Wilson but dropped out.
  
  
• Matt Damon's character, Edward Wilson, is partly based upon the founder of the CIA's counterintelligence operations, James Jesus Angelton.
  
  
• Robert De Niro, had been working on this film for ten years as his "pet project."
  
  

• The violinist providing the solo soundtrack near the end of the movie was Lindsay Deutsch, from Los Angeles.
  
  
• Robert De Niro's character, General Bill Sullivan, is partly based on General William "Wild Bill" Donovan. Donovan was head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during the Second World War.
  
  
• Lee Pace's character Richard Hayes shares some similarities, including a similar name, to Allen Dulles' (CIA director from 1953-1961) eventual successor Richard Helms (CIA director from 1966-1973).
  
  
• The character Yuri Modin is loosely based on supposed Soviet defector Anatoliy Golitsyn.
  
  
• Dr. Ibanez (played by Marcos Cohen) bears some similarities, and is probably a reference to Jacobo Arbenz (president of Guatemala from 1951-1954).
  
  
• Joe Pesci appears in one scene as a Mafia boss ("Joseph Palmi") whom, it is implied in the film, is a fictionalized version of Sam Giancana (in one scene it is mentioned that Castro has seized "three of [Palmi's] casinos and thrown him out of [Cuba]", and, in fact, Castro did "nationalize" several Giancana-controlled casinos) whom the CIA recruited for several assassination attempts against Fidel Castro.
  
  
• Robert DeNiro had a deal with Leonardo DiCaprio who was interested in playing the film's protagonist Edward Wilson. De Niro planned to shoot the movie in the fall of 2004 but DiCaprio couldn't do it then because he was making The Departed for Martin Scorsese. The role ultimately went to Matt Damon, who played DiCaprio's antagonist in The Departed. Both movies were nominated for Oscars in 2007.
  
  
• The name Bay of Pigs comes from Bahia de Cochinos, where in all probability "Cochino" refers to a species of Triggerfish, rather than pigs.
  
  
• Eric Roth penned the screenplay in 1994 for Francis Ford Coppola and Columbia Pictures. Coppola left the project because, he said, he could not relate to the characters finding them "unemotional", (although he retained a credit as co-executive producer).
  
  
• Wayne Wang was set to direct but management changes at Columbia ended Wang's involvement and Philip Kaufman was the next person set to direct but he eventually left the project. When it moved to MGM, John Frankenheimer signed on to make the movie and wanted Robert De Niro to star. Unfortunately, Frankenheimer died in 2002 and at the same time De Niro was developing his own spy story.
  
  
• William Hurt's character, Phillip Allen, is partly based on Allen Dulles, as OSS operative and later CIA director during the Bay of Pigs invasion. He left the CIA shortly afterward, though not for any reason of financial impropriety.
  
  
• Two references to "Cardinal" are made in the movie, once in the beginning when the comment that "Cardinal is interested" is made by Ray Brocco and once at the end when Edward Wilson says that "it's a cardinal rule to be generous in a democracy". "Cardinal" was the code name of a high level American spy in the Soviet Union in Tom Clancy's novel The Cardinal in the Kremlin.
  
  
• Joe Pesci's first movie in 8 years.
  
  
• Michael Gambon's character, Dr. Fredricks, is partly inspired by Alan Turing, a British mathematician who helped to crack the German "Enigma" code during World War II, and who is considered one of the founders of modern computer science. In 1952, Turing was expelled from the British secret service after being prosecuted for his homosexual affairs. In 1954, he died after eating a cyanide-laced apple, but it is unknown if he was murdered or committed suicide.
  
  

• SPOILER: Billy Crudup's character, Archy Cummings, is partly based on real life British traitor Kim Philby, who attended Cambridge University, rose through the ranks of British Intelligence, and subsequently was discovered to be a Soviet spy. He later fled to Moscow, where he lived out the rest of his life. The movie reflects this, having Wilson speaking by phone to Cummings who is in the Soviet Union.
  
  
• SPOILER: They give the "real" Valentin liquid LSD which causes him to go crazy ultimately restating that he is, indeed, Valentin Mironov, before committing suicide by jumping through the glass window. This is a reference to an actual event wherein (Frank Olson), a US Army scientist died in a similar way, allegedly as a result of his unwitting participation in CIA conducted LSD experiments called 'MKULTRA'.
  
  

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