A Fish Called Wanda
Short description
A gang of thieves pulls off a jewel robbery in London, but the score quickly becomes a problem for the people who took it. Wanda is playing her accomplices against each other in the hope of keeping the diamonds for herself, while George, the man who led the job, ends up in prison with the loot hidden somewhere only he knows. With their only route to the diamonds running through George, Wanda sets out to charm his lawyer, Archie Leach, a conventional and unhappily married barrister whose life is about to be turned upside down.
Charles Crichton directed, working from a screenplay by John Cleese, and the film sits among the later entries in a directing career that began in the 1940s. Cleese also stars as Archie, opposite Jamie Lee Curtis as Wanda, Kevin Kline as Otto, Michael Palin as Ken and Tom Georgeson as George. Michael Shamberg produced, with 30 credited cast members and 53 credited crew.
Released in July 1988, the film was made for about 8 million dollars and took roughly 190 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds 7.5/10 from around 165,000 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 7.2/10 from a much smaller base of about 2,500 votes. A critics' rating of 8.2/10 from 68 reviews places it somewhat above both audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- 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.
- 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.
- The role of Archie Leach’s daughter is played by John Cleese’s daughter, Cynthia Cleese (credited as Cynthia Caylor).
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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).
- Trying to win Wanda's favor, Archie reads her Mikhail Lermontov's poem "Prayer" in Russian.
- 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.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
