A Fish Called Wanda - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of A Fish Called Wanda or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to A Fish Called Wanda

[janice]

For the French-dubbed version when Wanda states that Otto mistook the Gettysburg Address for Lincoln's residence, it was replaced with Wanda stating that Otto mistook General Motors for a hero of the war of '14.

[darrell]

Kevin Kline's Oscar-winning performance in this movie is his only Academy Award nomination.

[ava]

Sir Michael Palin thought the script was awful when he first read it and recorded his low opinion of it in his diary.

[nicholas]

When Otto suggests possible snitchers to Georges, he suggests Kevin Delaney, which are Kline's first and middle names.

[tom]

Wanda Gershwitz (Jamie Lee Curtis) says that she would want to have sex with the murderous psychopath Otto West even if he was her brother. In the Halloween film franchise, she was pursued with an incestuous subtext by her murderous psychopath half-brother.

[sophie]

John Cleese, who played British barrister Archie Leach, entered Cambridge University as a law student, although he never became a member of the British bar.

[willard]

In 1989, when this movie was shown in theaters in Denmark, a Danish man named Ole Bentzen, an audiologist, literally laughed himself to death during the scene where Ken Pile (Sir Michael Palin) gets the chips up his nose. Bentzen's heart rate went between two hundred fifty and five hundred beats per minute and he eventually succumbed to cardiac arrest. The story behind this is that the man had made a joke a few years earlier with his family during dinner, where he put a piece of cauliflower up his and every family members nose as a joke and made a bet with them on who could eat up their carrots without the cauliflower falling out. When the scene with Ken Pile and the chips came up, he started thinking about this dinner incident and laughed so hard that his heart stopped. This story is well-known in Scandinavia and spread around as almost an "urban legend" shortly after it happened. It was confirmed by his son, who also told the dinner story as an explanation to why his father laughed so hard during the chips scene that he died.

[violet]

James Cossins' scenes (he played a bank teller) were cut from this movie.

[richard]

John Cleese and Charles Crichton began discussing this movie in 1983. Cleese's only idea was having a character with a stutter have to impart some important information. Crichton wanted to see someone be run over by a steamroller.

[ruby]

In the robbery scene, it really was Kevin Kline who shot the crossbow at the sensor. Kevin got the shot off correctly on the second take.

[bernard]

Georges Thomason was played by Tom Georgeson.

[mathew]

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.

[edgar]

One of Otto's lines throughout this movie is "Don't call me stupid." In The Ladykillers (1955), "One-Round" Lawson (Danny Green) didn't like to be called stupid either. Writer and director Charles Crichton was a veteran of the Ealing movies, most famously directing The Lavender Hill Mob (1951).

[bessie]

Although John Cleese is solely credited for the screenplay, in interviews he has acknowledged the contributions of Jamie Lee Curtis,Kevin Kline, Michael Palin and Maria Aitken in coming up with lines for their respective characters. He has stated that 13 people, including first assistant director Jonathan Benson, gave suggestions that ended up in the script.

[carla]

Archie Leach's daughter Portia was played by John Cleese's real-life daughter Cynthia Cleese.

[jim]

Archie Leach speaks in Italian: "Ma ho sposato una donna che preferisce lavorare in giardino a fare l'amore appassionato. Uno sbaglio grande!", what translates as: "But I married a woman who prefers working in the garden to making passionate love. A big mistake!" It could refer to Archie's marriage.

[scarlett]

The dogs that were seen with Patricia Hayes were her own,

[elmer]

This movie holds the record of Longest Time to Reach #1 (from 1982 to the present). This movie was released on July 15, 1988 in the U.S. and reached number one on September 16, 1988.

[bryan]

Kevin Kline won a Best Actor in a Supporting Role Oscar without winning any previous awards during the awards season (he only received a BAFTA nomination), which is a rare feat in terms of Oscar winners.