A Fish Called Wanda Trivias
Archibald Leach is the birth name of actor Cary Grant.
The character Portia, Archie Leach's daughter, is played by Cynthia Cleese, daughter of John Cleese by his first wife Connie Booth.
Wanda was originally supposed to strip-dance around the apartment, but when Curtis read the script, she said it would be funnier if Archie did it instead. Cleese immediately agreed and rewrote the scene as such.
At one point Otto offers to rub out Kevin Delaney, presumably another gangster. Kevin Kline's middle name is Delaney.
Continuing the creative character naming, actor Tom Georgeson plays a character named George Thomason.
During the second assassination attempt, when Michael Palin is disguised as a Rastafarian, the car that he drives has the word sinsemilla painted on its side.
Palin's father had a serious stutter, and he drew from that to create Ken's stutter in the film.
In 1989 Ole Bentzen, a Danish doctor, allegedly died of a heart attack from laughing at a scene in the film. His son claimed he remembered the time he dared the whole family to put cauliflowers up their noses.
No animals were hurt during filming. Not even the fish.
Stephen Fry has a cameo appearance.
This movie led Cleese to his only Academy Award Nomination
The movie started with two scenes: Cleese wanted a scene where a man with a stutter tries to get some information out and can't and Charlie Crichton, the director, wanted a scene where someone was being run over by a steam roller. Based on these two scenes, Cleese started to write the movie.
The producer, Michael Shamberg, has a cameo as one of the suspects during the identification.
When movie was released, the Stuttering Foundation of America organized a demonstration to criticize the "inappropriate" depiction of people suffering from a stutter. Only 30 people showed up.
When Otto chases Archie across the lawn there are multiple shadows indicating at least three spotlights.At the beginning of the movie when Wanda tells Ken that Otto's dad used to beat him up, Ken says "good" but his lips don't match his voice.
The second getaway car is an Austin Metro City X 5 door model, it has two wing mirrors. However, the car they get out of in the lock-up is a Metro City as it has only one wing mirror and no 'X' decal on the rear wing.When Wanda is talking to George in prison, you can see crew equipment bobbing up and down over their heads.The first time they mention George's address, it's Murray Avenue. All other times, it's Murray Road.
The first goldfish Otto picks from the aquarium changes color just before he puts it in his mouth.Otto forces Archie into a barrel of sludge at the airport, waist deep. When Archie escapes the barrel, his clothes are dry.After coming out of the airport building, Archie's suit doesn't have the two bullet rips from Otto's gunshots.
Ken causes the death of the first dog by releasing an attack dog. The old lady is holding three leashes, colored red, yellow, and blue. The attack dog is obviously headed for a small dog attached to the red leash, but during a quick cut the attack dog grabs the one on the yellow leash.After the family walks in on Archie's striptease act, one shot facing the family (from behind Archie) shows that Archie is wearing dark briefs (only visible in the non-letterboxed version).The position of Wanda's hands on Archie's shoulders and face as she kisses him in the apartment.
When the crew meets for the first time before the robbery, Otto throws a knife at a poster on the wall where it hits the nose of a baby seal. Later in the movie the poster is undamaged.When Archie runs out of the house after the "burglary".When Otto shoots the sleeves of Archie's suit in the airport, the hole in his left sleeve blows out before the shot.
When Otto fires his gun on the safe in the hideout the gun makes the sound of a silenced weapon, but his gun is not equipped with a silencer.The garage with the safe is in an archway under a very wide railway viaduct. But dialogue between Wanda and Ken places it in Fulham, which has no such viaduct.
The flat that Archie borrows has an E1 postal address, putting it on the north side of the Thames, but has a view of Tower Bridge from the south side.Wanda is in a car putting on red lipstick. After a cutaway and return to Wanda in close-up, she is wearing bright pink lipstick.Reflected in a mirror in an early scene in George's flat.
Crew and camera visible in a mirror when Wanda visits Archie in his office for the first time.Path in cement before the cement roller has been there.The wedge that Ken shoots out of the pulley was inserted from the wrong side, so that the weight on the rope would have loosened it rather than it holding safely.
The fish that 'Kevin Kline (I)' eats are made out of Jello. Kline claims that he offered to eat real, live fish, but the filmmakers wouldn't let him.Jamie Lee Curtis buried her face in pillows during 'Kevin Kline (I)' 's ejaculation scene, to keep her from bursting out laughing at the faces he was making.Jamie Lee Curtis was listed as "Jamie Lee Schwartz" on all the call sheets, because John Cleese found it amusing that her father Tony Curtis's real name was Bernard Schwartz.
Premiere voted this movie as one of "The 50 Greatest Comedies Of All Time" in 2006.Michael Palin's father stuttered, so Michael used a lot his real life experience when playing Ken, including the fact that Ken's stutter is less pronounced around people he trusts (Tom and Wanda) and worse around people he is uncomfortable with (Otto).
The British Airways plane that can be seen at the airport is a Boeing 747-236 called "City of Manchester", registration G-BDXC. It was scrapped in 2002 after about 25 years of service.James Cossins was cut out of this film. The plane featured in the final scenes of the film has now been destroyed. It was sold to European Skybus Ltd and then scrapped in Cardiff. G-BDXC.
The poem Archie Leach recites in Russian for Wanda Gershwitz is Molitva (1839) by Mikhail Lermontov (1814-1841).The principal interior setting was the flat of Nicholas Lacey and playwright wife Juliet Aykroyd, in a loft development in a former warehouse at Reeds Wharf, Docklands, London.
John Cleese claims that this is Charles Crichton's movie. He merely took a co-director credit to reassure studio execs because they were not sure Crichton could direct comedy.In the robbery scene it really was Kevin Kline shooting the crossbow at the sensor. He got it on the second take.For the French dubbed version when Wanda states that Otto mistook the Gettysburg Address for Lincoln's residence, it is replaced with Wanda stating that Otto mistook General Motors for a hero of the war of '14.
Kevin Kline begged John Cleese to let Otto speak French instead of Italian when he wants to seduce Jamie Lee Curtis, since Kline speaks French. Cleese insisted that it had to be Italian. Kline started singing "Volare" because he ran out of Italian cheeses and other Italian phrases that he could ad lib, and was concerned that the director did not yell cut, since the producers did not own the rights to "Volare" when the scene was being filmed.Holds record of Longest Time to Reach #1 as of 2003. The movie was released on 15 July 1988 in the U.S., and reached #1 on 16 September 1988.
George Thomason is played by Tom Georgeson.In the opening sequence that introduces the principal cast, a model Eiffel Tower can be seen over Michael Palin's shoulder. This may be a reference to Charles Crichton's earlier film Lavender Hill Mob, The (1951) , in which Alec Guinness tries to smuggle stolen gold out of England by melting it and disguising it as model Eiffel Towers.
Michael Palin went on to found the London Centre for Stammering Children after a group of stutterers confronted him regarding the sensitivity with which he dealt with Ken's handicap in this film.In the original English version, Otto speaks Italian in some scenes with Wanda. In the Italian dubbed version he speaks Spanish.
When Otto ('Kevin Kline (I)' ), suggests possible snitchers to George, he suggests Kevin Delaney, which are Kline's first and middle names.The dog death scenes were originally filmed with entrails from a butchers scattered around the dead dog. Preview audiences reacted strongly to this, so the scenes were reshot with an obviously fake straw dog.The hymn that the choirboys sing at the dogs' funerals is: Miserere Dominus, miserere Dominus, Canis mortuus est, which translated into English is: Have mercy, Lord; have mercy, Lord; the dog is dead.
Leach's daughter Portia is played by John Cleese's real-life daughter Cynthia Cleese, credited as Cynthia Caylor.The scene where Otto sits up in the background behind Wanda (Jamie Lee Curtis) is reminiscent of a scene in Halloween (1978), in which the character of Michael Myers sat up behind Curtis' character.John Cleese's character is called Archie Leach, which is Cary Grant's real name.
