Synopsis

Daryl Zero is a brilliant but intensely private private investigator who refuses to meet clients, relying on his assistant, Steve Arlo, to handle personal contact. When a wealthy businessman hires them to investigate a blackmail scheme involving a missing safe-deposit key, Zero uncovers a dangerous history of betrayal and murder. His growing attraction to a suspect threatens both his objectivity and his carefully controlled existence.

Factoids & Trivia

• The film is loosely based on Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story "A Scandal in Bohemia," particularly its use of blackmail and a resourceful woman who challenges the detective's assumptions.

• The role of Daryl Zero was written specifically for Bill Pullman after Jake Kasdan met him while working on *The Accidental Tourist* (1988), directed by Pullman's father, Lawrence Kasdan.

• Although the story is set largely in Portland, Oregon, approximately 95 percent of the movie was filmed there. Only two days of production took place in Los Angeles.

• The movie screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival.

• The soundtrack combines original music by The Greyboy Allstars with songs by Elvis Costello, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Jamiroquai, Heatmiser, Brendan Benson, and others. The accompanying album was released in January 1998.

• Lawrence Kasdan contributed to one unusual visual moment: he filmed the low-angle "rodent-cam" tracking shot moving across the floor of a restaurant.

• A planned television revival was developed for NBC in 2002 as a prequel about Zero and Arlo becoming a team. Alan Cumming played Zero in the pilot, but NBC did not order the series.

• Made on an estimated $5 million budget, the film earned about $2 million in U.S. theaters. Despite its modest theatrical return, it developed a lasting reputation as an offbeat detective comedy.