The Fisher King - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of The Fisher King or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to The Fisher King

[manuel]

Terry Gilliam: [burst] at the diner.

[sylvia]

Two Percheron circus horses, Lightning and Goliath, performed as the Red Knight's mount. One was used for galloping, and the other for rearing.

[kim]

The positioning of Jack Lucas with the homeless cabaret singer in his arms at the hospital echoes the positions of Mary and Christ in Michelangelo Buonarotti's Pieta at the Vatican.

[carl]

Tom Waits: the beggar in the wheelchair at the train station.

[sandra]

Mercedes Ruehl's Oscar winning performance is her only Academy Award nomination.

[aaron]

Jeff Bridges wears the same baseball t-shirt in The Big Lebowski (1998).

[jeffrey]

The girl that Jack says might be able to help Parry to find the Holy Grail is named Lydia Sinclair. One of the legends about the grail is that it is buried under Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland which was built by the Sinclair clan. The name Sinclair comes back in several grail myths.

[oscar]

The film cast includes three Oscar winners: Robin Williams, Jeff Bridges and Mercedes Ruehl; and four Oscar nominees: Tom Waits, Dan Futterman, Richard LaGravenese and Mel Bourne.

[chris]

The front window of the video store features a poster for director Terry Gilliam's previous film The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988). A poster for Brazil (1985) (also directed by Gilliam) appears on the wall in the first video store scene. Almost all of the posters and video tape boxes in the video store are from RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video, the video arm of TriStar Pictures, which released the film.

[kim]

Mercedes Ruehl and David Hyde Pierce both have a connection to a radio talk show host in this movie, something which would come true again years later in the TV show Frasier.

[ruby]

Robin Williams' character says he practices "cloud busting" while in the middle of Central Park with Jeff Bridges, who later does the same thing in The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009).

[lonnie]

The first film directed by Terry Gilliam to not feature any other members of Monty Python.

[clayton]

Parry says to Lydia that he "he has a hard-on the size of Florida". In the beginning of the film, Jack's girlfriend is shown sketching a picture of a man lying down naked (just as Parry does in central park) with the United States drawn over his torso and groin, Florida being placed exactly where a hard-on would be located.

[gabriel]

Besides his connection to the medieval legend of the Fisher King, the Red Knight as he is depicted in the movie combines both the fire from the murderer's shotgun and the immediate splattering of the face of Parry's wife. Both images being so traumatic that it is implied his subconscious converts them into the fire and splattered-red configuration of the Red Knight's armor.

[kenneth]

At college, Mercedes Ruehl had done a thesis about T.S. Eliot's poem "The Wasteland", in which the Fisher King features. Consequently when she received a script entitled "The Fisher King", she knew that this was the right project for her.

[jeffrey]

The only non-Best Picture Oscar nominee that year to be nominated for Best Original Score.

[kylie]

The Red Knight costume was fashioned out of latex over leather and urethane, with the helmet cast in aluminum and fireproofed. The "pennants" on the armor were made from Chinese silk, fishing poles and dune buggy antennae. The suit weighed approximately 125-150 pounds and was entirely self-contained: it was padded to protect stuntman Chris Howell in the event of a fall, and could have ice packs placed inside to keep Howell cool. Fire and smoke effects were controlled by Howell via buttons on the knight's lance. Propane tanks fueling the helmet's fire bursts were hidden in the horse's saddle, along with oxygen tanks for Howell's breathing apparatus (hidden in the helmet along with a two-way radio).

[aaron]

Costume designer Beatrix Aruna Pasztor's initial concept for the Red Knight was that the suit of armor would be made from found objects (not unlike Parry's "medieval" garb) such as car parts and industrial waste, but Terry Gilliam wanted something more accurately medieval. The final concept was meant to suggest the knight was burning from the inside out, with smoke pouring from his joints and flame bursting from his helmet.

[kylie]

Howard Stern was asked for tapes of his radio show. Howard refused and instead asked to be a consultant since they were modeling the character after him. The studio did not want to pay Stern, so they declined and in return Stern told them he wasn't interested in giving them his tapes.