Across The Universe cast was actually tripping while filming scenes about tripping

Across The Universe was polarizing in its debut, but star Evan Rachel Wood has never turned her back on it. She’s frequently described filming Julie Taymor’s ambitious Beatles musical as the best filming experience of her life, something she reiterated this weekend at a Cinespia screening of the film at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles (via IndieWire). In a pre-taped intro, Wood praised Taymor as a “visionary” and shared a new fun fact about the cult classic—a case of life imitating art during some of the film’s more psychedelic scenes.

Wood revealed, “Anything that takes place in Luna Park’s loft, Doctor Robert’s publisher—the Psychedelic Loft. Yeah. Me, Jim Sturgess, and Joe Anderson, we’re all actually tripping and Julie Taymor didn’t know until after the fact. And when we told her, she said, ‘Oh, that makes sense.’”

In the sequence in question, Bono plays “Dr. Robert,” a Timothy Leary type who preaches transcendental gibberish to an adoring crowd before launching into a version of “I Am The Walrus.” Meanwhile, the tripping attendees flit through the colorful apartment as the film’s protagonists enjoy their first experience with psychedelic drugs—and apparently, the actors were enjoying the experience in real life, too.

According to Wood, that sequence wouldn’t have made it to screens if the studio had their say. Taymor infamously feuded with studio head Joe Roth over the Across The Universe’s runtime, which delayed the film’s release and perhaps overshadowed the project, which was a box office bomb. For better or worse, Taymor’s vision prevailed: “They wanted to remove anything political, anything queer, and anything psychedelic. So pretty much every cool part of this film would have ended up on the cutting room floor if it wasn’t for our amazing, wonderful genius director Julie Taymor,” Wood told the Cinespia crowd. “She’s a true visionary and has a lot of integrity and she stood her ground and got the entire cast to back her up and saying that we would remove our names from this film if they were to gut it in that way. So that’s how you’re able to see it the way it was intended.”

Moviegoers in 2007 may not have appreciated the film “the way it was intended,” but it’s found an audience in the decade-plus since its release. That includes the reported 4,000 in attendance at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. “The fact that you guys are still coming out almost 20 years later in support of it means that we were right,” Wood said. “This film meant so much to everybody that worked on it. Cast and crew. We all poured our hearts and souls into this. We filmed it over the course of almost a year with a lot of preparation beforehand. It was made by Beatles fans for Beatles fans. And it was the most special experience I ever had making a movie.”