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Fish Called Wanda, A. Date: 1988. Director: Charles Crighton. Production Company: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Prominent Features, Star Partnership. Stars: John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline, Michael Palin. Location (s): London, Oxfordshire, Surrey. Region (s): London E-G, South East E-L.
British gangster George Thomason (Tom Georgeson) and his hapless aide, Ken Pile (Michael Palin), draft a pair of arrogant Americans, grifter Wanda Gerschwitz (Jamie Lee Curtis) and weapons expert...
- (69)
- Charles Crichton, John Cleese
- R
- Comedy
Apr 25, 2022 · A Fish Called Wanda was a huge success that somehow bridged the gap between British and American humor, an infamous void separating two cultures with a common language. Critics loved it,...
- It Was Director Charles Crichton’s First Film in Two decades.
- Crichton and John Cleese Spent Five Years Writing The Film.
- It Was Inspired by The Ealing Comedies.
- The Actors Helped Shape Their characters.
- Kevin Kline’s Character Was Inspired by A Los Angeles Self-Help Guru.
- Cleese’s Character Was Named After Cary Grant.
- The Original Ending Was Much darker.
- Cleese Cut A Big Chunk of The Cathcart Towers Scene.
- One Audience Member Laughed Himself to death.
- It Was Nominated For Three Oscars.
Back in the 1950s, Charles Crichton was a famous director of Ealing Comedies—a series of comedy films produced by London’s Ealing Studios—who was known for his work on films like The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953), Hue and Cry (1947), andThe Lavender Hill Mob(1951). By 1988, however, he hadn’t directed a feature film in two decades (though he had work...
A Fish Called Wanda was years, even decades, in the making. Cleese and Crichton first met and began discussing ideas for a comedy heist film, inspired by The Lavender Hill Mob, all the way back in 1969. Though they parted ways professionally, Cleese continued to look for opportunities to collaborate on a film with Crichton. More than a decade later...
Unsurprisingly, A Fish Called Wanda was heavily indebted to the Ealing Comedies, especially Crichton’s own The Lavender Hill Mob, a heist comedy which starred Alec Guinness and Stanley Holloway as a pair of bumbling bank robbers. Cleese, however, claimed the parallels between the Ealing Comedies and A Fish Called Wandawere unintentional, but embrac...
Cleese encouraged Kevin Kline, Michael Palin, and Jamie Lee Curtis to contribute ideas and help develop their characters. Curtis, in particular, was responsible for major changes to Wanda’s personality. "She was a sexually brazen, cold-hearted manipulator, who simply wanted money,” Curtis toldThe New York Times. “I didn't find that real. I decided ...
InA Fish Called Wanda, Kline’s Otto is a pseudo-intellectual who constantly misinterprets everything from the teachings of Buddhist philosophy to the writings of Nietzsche. According to Cleese, his character was inspired by the real-life self-help guru Zen Master Rama, sometimes calledthe “yuppie guru.” “I got the real key to the character out of L...
Cleese named his character Archie Leach after movie star Cary Grant, who was born Archibald Leach. Though Cleese’s bumbling lawyer has little in common with the famously debonair Grant, Cleese explainedthat he chose the name because he and Grant shared a hometown, and because it was the closest he would ever get to “being Cary Grant.”
A Fish Called Wandastarted off as a much darker comedy, but test audiences in America were apparently uncomfortable with the film’s cruelty, and lack of romantic payoff, so Crichton and his cast went in for a few re-shoots. In addition to softening Palin’s character a bit, they ended up re-shooting the film’s ending three times. “We played the whol...
In addition to changing the ending, Cleese cut several minutes from the film’s penultimate scene, in which Archie tries to get the stuttering Ken (Palin) to telling him where Wanda, Otto, and the diamonds are. Ken, whose stutter gets worse under pressure, can’t seem to utter the two words “Cathcart Towers.” Initially, the scene was a Monty Python-e...
Ole Bentzen, a Belgian audience member, was so tickled by the scene in which Ken has French fries stuck up his nose, that he actually laughedhimself to death. The scene reminded him of a similar experience at a family dinner, in which his family had shoved cauliflower up their noses to great comic effect. He began laughing so hard, his heart rate e...
Comedy movies rarely fare well at the Oscars, butA Fish Called Wandawas an exception. The film was nominated for three awards: for Best Original Screenplay (for Cleese and Crichton), Best Director, and Best Supporting Actor for Kevin Kline, who took home the statuette.
A Fish Called Wanda Review. After a successful diamond heist, lovers and partners in crime Otto and Wanda double-cross their boss and land him in jail. However, as only he knows where the...
A Fish Called Wanda is a 1988 heist comedy film directed by Charles Crichton and written by Crichton and John Cleese. It stars Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline, and Michael Palin. The film follows a gang of diamond thieves who double-cross one another to recover stolen diamonds hidden by their jailed leader.
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Aug 17, 2012 · A comedy heist movie penned by the ever popular Monty Python legend, John Cleese, and come awards time it was honoured with several nominations and even won an Oscar. It's a classic british movie. It's also very much a product of the time, and time, so often hailed as the greatest healer of all, has not been so kind with this little gem from ...
