A Fish Called Wanda

A Fish Called Wanda (1988)

Timing: 1:49 (109 min)

7.205/10
2400

7.34/10
11509

7.5/10
165000

All about film

Video 3

Photo 58

Actors and characters

Release date

1988-07-15

Country

United Kingdom, United States

Production

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Prominent Features, Fish Productions, Michael Shamberg Productions

Genre

Comedy, Crime

Budget

$7 500 000

Revenue

$188 593 712

Website

Director

Charles Crichton

Actors

Jamie Lee Curtis, John Cleese, Kevin Kline, Michael Palin, Maria Aitken, Tom Georgeson, Cynthia Cleese, Patricia Hayes, Geoffrey Palmer, Mark Elwes
All actors and roles (10)

Scenario

John Cleese

Producer

Michael Shamberg, John Cleese, Steve Abbott

Operator

Alan Hume

Composer

John Du Prez

Artist

Audition

Priscilla John

Editing

John Jympson
All team (52)

• Trying to win Wanda’s favor, Archie reads her Mikhail Lermontov’s poem “Prayer” in Russian.
• The role of Archie Leach’s daughter is played by John Cleese’s daughter, Cynthia Cleese (credited as Cynthia Caylor).
• Sir Michael Palin's father stuttered, so, while playing Ken, Palin based his performance on childhood memories and knowledge of the subject. Specifically, on the knowledge that people who stutter stutter less when communicating with close people (in the film, these are characters played by Tom Georgeson and Jamie Lee Curtis), but stuttering becomes more pronounced when communicating with those with whom these people are uncomfortable (in the film, this is the character played by Kevin Kline).
• Kevin Kline pleaded with John Cleese (who starred in the film, was an executive producer, and also served as one of the directors and writers) to allow him to speak not in Italian, but in French during the seduction scene with Wanda (played by Jamie Lee Curtis). The reason was that Kline himself knew French. However, Cleese insisted that it had to be only Italian, and nothing else. Kline had already run through all the Italian cheese names he knew, and all the Italian phrases that came to mind, and had already begun belting out “Volare” (an Italian song from the late 1950s), but director Charles Crichton (1910-1999) still wouldn’t say “Cut!”. The actor was worried because, at the time of filming this scene, the film’s producers did not have the rights to the song.
• When this film was released in Danish cinemas in 1989, a man named Ole Bentzen (an otolaryngologist by profession) literally died of laughter while watching the scene in which Kevin Kline’s character stuffs slices of fried potato into Michael Palin’s character’s nostrils. The fact is that he himself had suggested something similar (albeit not as torture, but for amusement) to members of his own family at dinner a few years earlier. Seeing what happened to Palin’s character, he, of course, remembered that incident, and began to laugh so hard that his heart gave out. This story is well known throughout Scandinavia, and immediately after it happened, it almost turned into an urban legend. The deceased’s son confirmed its truth.
• The fish that Kevin Kline’s character ate was made of jelly. The actor claimed that he had offered to eat a real fish, but the filmmakers wouldn’t let him.
• At the end of the film, in the airport, Otto takes a boarding pass from a random passenger played by British television star Stephen Fry.
• John Cleese and Charles Crichton began discussing the idea for this film as early as 1983. The only thing that came to Cleese’s mind at the time was the idea of a stuttering character who needed to tell the others something important. Crichton, for his part, wanted to show on screen a roller skating rink running over a person.
• In the original finale, Otto, played by Kevin Kline, was crushed by a steamroller. During preview screenings in the United States, it turned out that the audience loved this character so much that an additional scene was filmed with him, covered in cement, looking through a porthole at the characters of John Cleese and Jamie Lee Curtis.
• Trying to win Wanda's favor, Archie reads her Mikhail Lermontov's poem "Prayer" in Russian.