Creating the curb stomp required a number of problems to be solved before it could be filmed. One of the main ones involved how director Tony Kaye intended to shoot the scene. According to Far Out Magazine, they decided on crafting a dummy of actor Antonio David Lyons’ head.

“[They] made a dummy of Antonio’s head so that from the wide shot you can see the thing get crunched. It didn’t look anything like the actor. It was just a bouncy head thing so you could stomp on it time and time again.”

It’s a blink if you miss it moment, one that lasts milliseconds as Norton’s character slams his boot down with a sickening crunch. What makes the horror all the more unnerving is the anxiety-laden close-up we get of Lyons just a frame before — one that sees his open mouth hovering above the concrete a split second before his life ends. “To me, the kind of nerve-jangling thing is the close-up of the teeth grazing the curb,” Kaye said of the shot and its necessity. 

Lyons, on the other hand, had some concerns:

“I was a bit sort of concerned about that. I was, like, We’re in Santa Monica. Dogs walk around and piss on this!'”

It’s almost comforting that the worst thing being worried about during one of the film’s most violent scenes was sanitation — which, fair point by Lyons (I wouldn’t recommend going around biting down on the curbs anywhere in Los Angeles). So, instead they also created a faux rubber curb that the actor could put his mouth on without worry of germs, thereby creating one of the most agitating shots in modern cinema: the image of Lyon’s luminous white teeth scraping the concrete.