Moonstruck: Everything You Didn't Know

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of My Heart Radio. Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that brings you the secret histories and let alone fascinating facts and figures behind your favorite movies, music, TV shows and more. We hear your two Wolves with its paw stuck in a trap of weird facts. That wasn't granatic. I don't think that one that was great. I'm Alex Tigel and I'm Jordan, and Jordan's today we're talking about one of the most beloved films the last thirty five years, a modern Italian classic that for once doesn't turn my people into too much of a punch line. Many punch lines, but they're they're affectionate ones whatever, much like cool Hand Luke. Is there anyone who doesn't love Moonstruck? I don't want to know, no one in this house. Keep them away from me. No, I don't. I don't want them around me because if you don't, what that hell's wrong with you? Um? This is one of my family, these big comfort watches like growing up. But I don't think I watched it until like I was an adult, because I was always like, they're watching the share rom com again. It is not a romantic comedy. It is obsessed with death, very much fixated upon death and the terrible, weird things that people do because they're afraid to die. Pauline Kale summed up perfectly as she always did. She described Moonstruck as rose tinted, black comedy that's a giddy homage to our desire for grand passion. Yeah, and I was busy watching Rumble in the Bronx in the basement. Um, but man, it is just it's sweet, it's sappy, it's funny, it's a little bit sad. It's got shared Nicholas Cage, Danny Aello Jordan's your thoughts on Moonstruck? Oh yeah, this movie is great. Um, it's weird. I was always aware of it, but for some reason, like you, I never actually sat down to watch it until the pandemic. I think pandemic Freshman year. Oh, the great coronavirus rediscovery of moons. Yeah, I had no idea that was a thing until researching this episode. But apparently I was very much not alone in watching Moonstruck during the pandemic. Ultra called it quote the morbid spaghetti rom calm we all need right now, and New York Times editors even echoed the sentiment, saying that under lockdown, the film became a solve too many. I guess it's a good comfort watch. Uh yeah, this was a big one for my mother, who was Sicilian and grew up in a very loud Sicilian household. But the type of loud Sicilian household where the women didn't really yell back my memory, so I think there was something cathartic for her about seeing Share talking back to all these loud, loudish men. And yeah, Share was always revered in my household. I know my mom was in high school when the Sunny and Share comedy Hour was on, and I always got the sense that she like looked up to her like a cool big sister. So she got a big kick out of Moonstruck. I can't tell you the number of times she did the snap out of it bit if I was bummed or something as a kid. I don't think I realized until later that it was a reference to Nicholas Cage confessing his love for Share. Um. I just thought it was snap out of being bummed out until I was in my thirties. Moonstruck for those who need a quick refresher course, of these sometimes convoluted, farcical plot follows the trials and tribulations of Loretta Castarini played by Share, a thirty something widow who agrees to marry Johnny Camerary mostly out of common sense more than anything else. And then she meets his brother, Ronnie, who's a brutish but passionate baker who lost his hands played by Nicolas Cage, and he sets her soul aflame. And then there's Loretta's philandering father, her long suffering mother played by Olympie Dicaucus, her grandfather who's a little too obsessed with dogs, and a socially hopeless n y U professor played by the dad from Fraser. I summed up, okay, am I missing anybody? Big? Yeah you did? Yeah? I man, Chrissie, bring me the big night. That's my favorite line from this is it is an endlessly quotable movie. That yeah well, from the rough and tumble Bronx playwright who penned the script, to the iconic New York shooting locations, to the near fist fights that erupted on set, to the one the only Share. Here's everything you didn't know about Moonstruck Moonstruck screenwriter John Patrick Shanley was born into an Irish American family in the Bronx. His mother worked as a telephone operator, and his father, who was an immigrant, was a meat packer. The neighborhood, he told The New York Times magazine in two thousand four, was extremely anti intellectual and extremely racist, and none of this fit me. I was in constant fist fights from the time I was six. I did not particularly want to be one two cents. People would look at me and become enraged at the sight of me. I believe that the reason was that they could see that I saw them, and they didn't like that. This guy is a quote machine, as we will discover. I also didn't realize until I was researching this, he wrote, doubt what one of the most like crippling like Irish Catholic oscar bait Philips. Yeah, I didn't realize that either, Yeah uh he And this is an interview gave to Vulture. He said, I was like, I want to be a poet. That was about the most unrealistic thing a kid whose father was a meat packer and whose mother is a telephone operator could come up with. What's more, I didn't want to just be any poet. I wanted to be Cyrano diversierac. And his youth is filled with these like really dickenzie and is a word that keeps coming up the too much information archives, but that's the word for it. He went to a Cardinal Spellman High School, which is run by Irish Christian brothers, who he said, they beat children with their fists. I saw two pound brother put a boy, a little gangly boy, against a wall and hit him in the stomach as hard as he could. But he told Vulture. By going out in the world, I found many of the things that I saw it. When I wrote Moonstruck, I was in an Irish and Italian neighborhood. I would go to the Italian American households, and the woman serving me dinner had three buttons on her blouse undone and was handing me a bowl of pasta, again playfully stereotypical. Here it's all in good fun. I was like, this is a lot better than what's going on in my house. So I took everything from my household, which was very good talk and intellectual rigor of a kind, and everything from the Italian American household to build something new. Shandley had written a number of plays performed off Broadway and in London before Moonstruck, which he wrote on spec and sent to the film's director Norman Jewison. I was, in a way trying to get what I wanted, Schandley continued to Vulture. First of all, I wanted to describe a family that worked. He has a he had a bad relationship with his parents. He talks about a lot in those interviews. When I thought, what would that family look like? It would look like the family that I wrote in Moonstruck. Then I wanted to be like, what would a relationship look like? That I find exciting. It involved very big feelings that I had, which were described by many as more operatic than realistic. The language in Moonstruck was very stylized. Shanley told Bomb magazine. I remember somebody saying people don't talk that way, but if he talks that way in a movie, you buy it. There's truth and not truth in that. I said, well, it's not the way all people talk. But I was on the train and I heard two women talking and they were talking in the exact style of Moonstruck. Jewison got the script with this original title The Bride and the Wolf terrible. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Jewison said, I said the Bride and the Wolf. It sounds like a horror film. This is him talking to the directors Good of America in an interview. So we had a big battle about that, and it ended up being called Moonstruck because I convinced Shanley it's about the moon. Everybody's talking about the moon. The father is talking about the moon, the full moon. They keep shooting the moon. It should be called something. What is it? She's moonstruck. That's a good title. So we called the Moonstruck. And in his memoir, Juison calls the original title quote one of the worst I've ever seen. And he asked Shanley's agent, Janine Edmonds, who else had had a chance at the dog eared, copy stained, well thumb script. Everybody? She told him she was his producing partner. Patrick Palmer hated the script so much that he called Edmonds to yell at her for sending him such a bad script. That is incredible. Hollywood was a mean place, calling an agent to tell him, you hate to de berate her for sending that caliber of script to you. Shanley, as you mentioned, is a quote machine from a Vulture interview, he said, I had a nameless ache in my heart every time I looked at the moon when I was growing up. I couldn't believe it existed. I wanted to go there. I was floored by the specificity of it, the craters, the rough edges of it, and the light that had shone on me and everything around me. That changed. Light changes every thing. There's a daytime world in a nighttime world. When I was a boy, I remember telling my brother Jim that I could run significantly faster at night than I could in the daytime. What I didn't tell him was that I also thought I was a horse. I kind of don't like this guy. I don't know how you made that through this. It's just funny. If you imagine him reading, if you imagine like reading it in the like it basically Nick Cage's voice, like like then it's suddenly this thrown into clear relief. Funnily enough. Speaking of hoofed mammals, she was an actually raised cattle on his own farm outside of Toronto. He told the l a times, I'm a farmer, so I know the moon affects animals, and I think the moon affects humans to a greater extent than most of us recognize. By way of an example, he named Steve McQueen, he directed in Cincinnati Kid and the Thomas Crown Affair, and who, he said quote was really affected by the full moon. He did become very strange irrational behavior, like calling it three in the morning and saying I feel threatened and running away, usually to an open place, usually out in the desert somewhere. Just Steve mccleen becoming spooked by the full moon directed to say he feels threatened and running into the desert. I feel threatens up there with I'm taking steps. I'm taking steps. Wow uh. Jewison liked the snappy dialogue. He said the language certainly attracted me to the project. I like to call Shanley the Bard of the bronx Ah. He also like the characters, some of which were drawn from real life. Shanley told Vulture, I was writing about versions of real people I have known, and versions of myself. I mean, I grew up with two guys. One of them lost his hand in a bread slicing machine and another lost his foot pushing his car off the inner State. I still know the guy who lost his foot. The guy who lost his hand died. His son contacted me and said, was my father and inspiration for Moonstruck. I said absolutely. Um, actually maybe it's walking. Maybe that's that you got to read everything in the walking said so, Shanley continued to Vulture. I flew to Toronto and Jewis and I acted out all the parts across the desk from each other. He got it. We had a very similar sense of humor. He didn't attempt to mess with it. Yeah, it's funny. In one of the documentaries, juwis And is like, uh, yeah, I got this script and you know, la la la, And my agent said, okay, the writer wants to come up in audition with you. And he's like he's he's the writer and he wants to audition. And she was like, I think he wants to read it to you, which is not really something you do, especially this was his second script that he'd written. He was not like a known quantity. I don't know. There's this guy's he's got hut spy. I like him. According to The Hollywood Reporter, jewish And first brought Shanley script. MGM Chief executive Officer Alan Ladd Jr. At the Night five Toronto Film Festival. Although Jewison is in the midst of signing a contract with Columbia Pictures at the time and was therefore required to give the studio a first look option, Columbia had David Putnam permitted Jewison to show the property to other studios and MGM requested a deal within twenty four hours. Shanley said that he did not have anyone in mind for the characters, but Jewison did and that was the one, the only the mother, truck and chair. According to Ira Well's book on Jewison from just last year, called A Director's Life, MGM had lots of actresses in mind for the starring role. Demmy Moore, which would made sense coming off all the brad Pack stuff. Pretty young though for being like like like a mid thirties Yeah, that's true. Well, the other ones then make more sense. Barbra streisand Liza Minnelli, which would have been very different film. And Rosetta ar Quent, who have been interesting. Um shares role in Robert Altman's come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean Jimmy Dean, which is a long and awkward movie title. Uh is that one of your favorite altman's No, no, not at all. I'm a man parish parish. The thought, yeah, I mean I don't think anyone really liked that. If I remember, well, the Golden Globes did because Share was nominated for that and God started getting work as an actress again for that. But apparently again in researching this, I just was always like, oh, yeah, boody, start people love Share because this was where I went. This was turn back Time, was her big mid eighties hit. Yea was that I think? Yeah, so this would have been Yeah, she would have been hot then, but apparently not. In that Wells book, he founds the surveys conducted by the private firm Marketing Evaluations, who are famous for this thing called a Q score, which is there supposedly objective measure of brand appeal. That's their invention, right, because it's always excited. It's always in like place that people's like Wikipedia pages like yeah exactly. Stephen Levitt, who is the company's president, said she's never been as popular as she was when she was on television in nineteen four. My prediction, based on the data we have is that people are not going to go out of their way to see a movie she's in, even sardon nev I hopes for this she just finished, which is in Eastwick, and she said, as much as I liked Moonstruck, as we're talking to the l a times, it wasn't like Mask, which I felt like I just had to do. I was a little frightened because there seemed to be all kinds of possibilities and all kinds of risks here. I wondered if at this point in my career, when there might be some people out there interested in seeing my movies, that they might accept me in this role. Shared worked on a Brooklyn accent with Julie Bavasso, who played John Travolta's mother and Saturday Night Fever. Bovaso literally recorded all of SHARE's lines in the film on the a tape recorder, which Jewison made her listen to over and over and over again. I mean, for a musician and a singer, that's kind of a good way to get people in. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Sharon said she much preferred playing the pre makeover Loretta, saying the freedom is not interesting to me because that's something I know. Usually it's so funny that they were like. They were like, oh, she's like dowdy and giving up on life, and it's just shared with like a few gray hairs. She's still like an objectively beautiful woman. It was like rail thin and striking in every way. And they're like, just may put her hair in her butt and give her like one or two grays. Let's give a sweater. Yeah, yeah, she said. My father's our Median and my mother is French and Cherokee Indian. And the truth is that characters in the film aren't like my family at all. This is her talking in the film's promotional packet when it was released, but The Times quoted her as saying it kind of reminded me of Sonny's family. Sonny Bono's family. Everybody eating and talking and shouting, but you have such good times. Sonny Bono was born in Detroit to Zenna de Mercurio and Santo Bono. So yeah, it sounds about right. She was mother just died the other day. Well, let's do this episode as a tribute to Share his mom. Share. His mother was still alive. Holy, she was like ninety two or ninety six. I forget wow. Um Share was not convinced that the movie was going to be a hit or even good, which was apparently the mood on the side. Learning about the making of this movie, I have to say it was depressing because it was apparently, yeah, we'll get into it. Olympia Dukakis, who plays her mother in the film, famously one a an oscar for it, which also like completely changed the trajectory of her career, told the t V Club as a matter of fact, one day we were sitting around talking and somebody asked Share what she thought was going to happen with the movie, and she gave it the thumbs down. Nobody really expected too much out of it, and then look what happened, and that's because we were all stupid and didn't understand what Norman jewis and was really doing. It's widely known that Ducacus was only fifteen years older than Share in the film, but supposedly her repeated groan in the film is a nod to Dustin Offman's characters tick in The Graduate that he does just funny because in the Graduate Dustin Hoffman is only five years younger than Mrs Robinson's and Bancroft, who I believe was considered for the Olympia Ducocus role in Oh Yeah Woundstruck, as was Marine Stapleton, who I guess was too expensive, and Danny Ielo, for what It's worth, is thirty one years older than the Cage, who is supposed to his younger brother oh Um. In the documentary about the film, h Shanley says that when Jewison originally approached Chair, she straight up told him I think you should know I'm very difficult to get along with, which kudos to her. I love her like insecure confidence is the only way I can think of to put it. Like she seems to be so neurotic but also so confident and also completely like okay with her neuroses. Like I mean, the whole of Sunny and Share being a duo was he wanted to make her a sing here because he worked under Phil Specter and she was nervous to sing along. He would just stand in the studio with her and stand next to her on the mic and sing with her to basically calm her down. And that's how that all started. Yeah, and she's, uh, you know, she just she really did know what she wanted though, I mean the famously when when she recorded Believe they went to one of the label heads, was like, what is that stuff on your voice, like your Share, We don't need that like effect on that on the voice, and she was like it stays or the song doesn't come out, and she launched auto tune as a specific effect. Yeah, and uh so there. But there were reports at the time that she just did not take direction well, which has been basically verified um and that she clashed with Jewison Olympiad Caucus even thought apparently that people close to Share had told her not to do the film. Julie Bavasso said that there were certain things Norman had a lot of trouble getting from Share, but Dacacus went to bad for her. She said that ultimately she just thought it was that Share had been through the music industry ringer and at forty was just like, I'm not taking from you from any man, she said. I think she's been through so much and she's been very aware of people controlling her, so that she's really on guard. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more too much information and just a moment. Tom Cruise, Bill Murray, and Ray Liotta were all considered for the part of Ronnie that ultimately went to Nick Cage. Those are bad. Those are really bad. I mean, also, though, how earlier, how much early, elier than this was Peggy's Got Married, Like, if you look at the Peggy Got Married was eighty six, raising Arizona. I was thinking of where he's that that makes more sense, But I was gonna say, like, I don't think I would have immediately thought of Nicholas Cage for this. He's ugly cut not ugly, but no, but he's like he's weird looking. He has that like hangdog kind of quality, and like he cleans up really well. He's so cute in his little tucks with the opera scarf and everything. But yeah, I mean he's not he's not classically leading mannish and uh just a weird dude. It's really weird, dude. The funniest thing was that Jewison wrote needs style and too young next to ray Leona's name, and he was ten years older than Nicolas Cage. Yeah. I kept writing reading this, I wasn't able to pin it down. But um, apparently MGM wanted Peter Gallagher famously the eyebrows behind uh uh Cohen's dad in the O C. Yeah, and they went as far as to screen test him, but share much like with Believe in the auto tune, she was like it's Nick Cage or I Walk God Lover. Her page was just twenty three years old of the time, was coming off raising Arizona and Peggy Sue got married, and he was missing two front teeth, which he had removed for his role in nine Birdie. He had them removed. I'm reading that it says that he had them pulled out without anesthesia to better understand his character. You can't get those back. I think actors are less precious about their teeth than they're just like, just take them out putting the porcelain. They last longer. Uh, because Shyla Buff did that for one of his for one of his dumb movies. He like yanked, yanked a tooth out and like self more like on his face like it was for the Tank movie. It's so funny to me that Chila Buff is like all method and weird for all this stuff, and and like none of those movies make any money. All of his big box office movies of the Transformers films and Holes done lately. Um, we'll get sued or getting me too. Um Cage did not want to make this movie. Funnily enough, I told the Baltimore Son I read the screenplayed the Moonstruck and thought I would never pay money to see this film, but my agent insisted I do it, practically forced me to do it. When I saw the finished film, I didn't know what in the world to make of it. That was my eraor of wanting to make new wave alternative films, And apparently we have Moonstruck to thank for. For cages next film, Vampires Kiss, the absolute peak cage movie. That's where you get the popular as era, back when we had those things called rage comics. That you don't say Nick Cage meme. That's for um Vampires Kiss from the scene which he famously recites the entire alphabet ah. He also eats a live cockroach in that movie on camera. He told USA today one I made moon Struck on a deal with my then agent, Edlamtto. I was desperately trying to get him to say yes to me doing Vampires Kiss. He said, no, you're not going to wear those stupid plastic things. I want you to look handsome do Moonstruck. And I said, I don't want to do Moonstruck like a surly teen I wanted to be punk rock. I didn't want to do a schmaltzy movie about opera. But I said, if I do Moonstruck, will you let me do vampires Kiss? And he said, Okay, I don't think agents had that kind of creative sway, like you know who says they let an actor do anything like I mean, he was twenty three, like I don't know he was had the juice to be fighting over stuff like this. He just really wanted to play a vampire struck from Moonstruck. Okay. Age did what Cage does best, supposedly quote almost entirely nocturnal during shooting. According to Jewison, he uh patterned his character's gestures on classic German expressionist cinema, like the Cabinet of Dr Calagwerry and Fritz Lang's seven classic Metropolis. There's I we watched um the unbearable weight of massive talent and a cage like meta comedy. It's good. It's better than I gave it any credit for being. But the Cabinet of Dr Caligary is a prominent plot point because he keeps trying to like dragoon his teen daughter into watching it, So his obsession with that movie he's real and has been fomenting for a very long time. My favorite Nicholas Cage fact is the fact that no one, ever since Elvis Presley died, has been allowed upstairs at Graceland. It was basically sealed or supposedly left exactly the way it was the day all of us died, to the point where like styrofoam cups that were just on encounters and stuff were left, you know, almost like some kind of weird roaches, right. But ever since grace Land was turned into a tourist attraction, Japanese prime ministers and all these high ranking people have come to visit, and they all want to see Elvis's private quarters at Graceland's the place where he went to seek refuge from fame, and that was the place where he died. Nobody is allowed up nobody, nobody, nobody, nobody, nobody except Nicholas Cage because he was married to Lisa Marie. He apparently, when he's like one of the only people outside the head curator at Graceland, Lisa Marie and Priscilla who went up into Elvis's bedroom at Graceland, Apparently, I ready, like tried on when I always his leather jackets, like sat on the bed or something. I read some story about like what he did up there. I think I read. I think I read that he like got into like the fetal position at the place where he died. That scans I saw his um, his grave he supposedly bought in New Orleans. Yeah, his prepaid mausoleum. And I was gonna say, does he still because I thought he was broke and needed to resell stuff. I don't know if he's sold that. Let's find out its cage New Orleans. Have you ever seen the picture of him in in the Superman costume from the Tim Burton movie? Noh you, This is like the third time that has come up on the shop. It's just a very funny. Well, oh yeah, he still owns it. He did not sell it. I was right. The secret visit to upstairs at Graceland took place during the week of the anniversary of Elvis's death, at which time it is said that Nicholas Cage sat on the king's throne, the toilet where he died, assumed the prone position in which Elvis died, and laid on the Singer's bed and tried on a leather jacket. Weird he oh he built it. Mausoleum, Yeah, it's a pyramid that apparently cemetery history ends in New Orleans. People have derided as like tacky and not in keeping with the rest of them, with the rest of the mausoleum, like the style of the graves and Mausoleum's most too clean. It looks like the back of the dollar bill. It looks just it isn't inscribed with the Latin phrase omnia ab uno, a motto popularized by the Rosicrucians um everything from one mm hmm um, Jesus, where was I? Uh Nicholas did have a darker interpretation of Ronnie than I did. Jewish and total reporter in that we both agreed that a poetic quality was central to the character. He also called Cage the most tormented guy I could find, And I just have to add this anecdote from the Wells piece he's de sited earlier, the Wells book that you sided earlier. Cage also owned two sharks, an exotic insect collection, and a jewel encrusted tortoise. I've always been fascinated by marine biology. Cage told play a girl. I don't know why. It's sort of like my bible. I have a picture of a fish in my wallet that was just going to knock your socks off. That's so cute. Part of that interpretation of the character, Cage told the interview site The Talks, was that I wanted to talk like Jean Murray in Beauty and the Beast. He had that accent and his voice was very gravelly, and I thought of my character and Moonstruck like a wolf who spoke with a growl. And so I was talking like that in the movie. And I got a call from the director, Norman Jewison, and he said, Nicholas, the dailies aren't working. And then I started hearing names of other actors, and I thought I was going to get fired. I had to quickly drop the Jean Murray. When does the think those Cajun voices? Didn't he do his character and Peggy's You Got Married? He based the voice on Pokey from the Gumby cartoons, which royally piste off the movie's directors uncle Francis Ford Coppola, to such degree that his own uncle basically vowed and never were with him again. You know, what do you do to the bid? He commits a bit, you don't. I think it's I forget who's I don't want to say his coster man. But somebody was talking about I think Bowie and Iggy Pop and the difference between them and lou Reid, and they were like Bowie and Iggy never blinked like, you know, whatever ridiculous stuff that they were doing. They were just like, nope, this is it, one hondo. Not a single part of me is kept it in like an arch winking removed to this. I'm on this train. It's going a hundred ten miles an hour. You do not have the option to derail it or reroute it. Whereas lou Reid was a little bit more like this'n like, I'm kind of like a little that was like part of his bit. And and Nick Cages does not blink man. He makes choices. He commits to the bid, despite the chemistry that he had with Share on screen, though they I don't really think they liked each other. Share told news Week in ninet seven, I don't know if Nikki will ever be a huge mainstream actor. He takes unbelievable chances and personally I think he's crazy. Sometimes he's a blast on set. Other days I'd get real peeved at him and Cage despite admitting to having loved chair when he was ten, I mean who among us? Told Newsweek in that exact same interview. I do think Share needs a good director, otherwise she's trouble folks, your romantic leads. Um, there's a guy. The guy who plays the grandfather who's just like yelling in his holley and all the time and walking around with his dogs is a guy named Fyodor Chaliapin Jr. Uh ad libbed everything he says to the dogs in the movie. And Uh, there's a great bit. There's if you ever wanted to see an old Jewish man impersonate Sean Connery, it's in the documentary about this movie. Before he cast this guy, Jewison called Sean Connery, who had worked with this actor in the Aim of the Rose. And Sean Connery told Jewison he cannot she he cannot hear, and he'll steal every bloody sheen in the film. Uh. And this guy was deaf, he was losing his hearing, couldn't hear what the other actors were saying in the film. And would just get his jewis and said he just timed everything in his cues by watching the other actor's lips, and when when they stopped talking, he would just jump in. Incredible. I just want to add something just to you before we continue. Kathleen Turner and her memoir speaks of Nicholas Cage. He caused so many problems. He was arrested twice for drunk driving, and I think once for stealing a dog. He come across the Chihuahua he liked and stuck it in his jacket. On the last night of filming, he came into my trailer and he'd clearly been drinking heavily. He fell to his knees and asked if I could ever forgive him. I said, not right now, I have a scene to shoot, excuse me, and just walked out. Nicholas didn't manage to kill the film, but he didn't add a lot to it either. For years, whenever I saw him, he'd apologized for his behavior. I'd say, look, I'm way over it, but I haven't pursued the idea of working with him again. Wow, I don't think I realized he was arrested, apparently twice at a career retrospective in New York. In Jewison explained that the film's climactic scene was going very poorly on the set. Nicholas Cage apparently through a chair and another actor who you say is Danny Io. Yeah. Apparently one point during the filming of this scene, Danny A Yello clutched his testicles and screamed at Nick Cage, you gotta give it to me from here, which is a very Italian, the Italian man thing to do. Yes. Meanwhile, Share was threatening report Norman Jewis into the screen actors Guild because he kept them working through lunch. He later said, I told her something authoritative, like, well, break when we get it right. Well, a lot of bad man is UM's being thrown around the set on this day. And then Theodore, the guy playing the grandfather, achieved piece by saying, Calma, Colma, Colma. This is a fiote farce. And in the Fiorda farce we pull everything together in the last scene. And Jewis and said, we did it again and everything fell into place. And as you mentioned, that would be the nineteenth century French play, right, George fied George, do I have no idea what that is? I just I just love the idea that this dude, this dude just calmed the entire room of actors by addressing a nineteenth century French play. Right Olimpaducaccus told the A V Club, Well, you know, we were in the car jewis in and I and he had asked me to come to do a benefit for him in Canada. He was gonna show a moonstruck and he wanted me to come. And I was so grateful to him for that experience and so admiring of him that I went. And he said, you know, you're going to get an Academy Award for this, and I looked to him like he was stark raving mad. Ducacus tells the story about how Julie Bovasso blew up at Cage at one point when they were refusing direction, and he told her to go herself, to which Bovaso retorted, well, I haven't had to do that in a long time, uh, And then Cage threw a cup of coffee on the table, which splashed on Olympia Ducacus, and Bovaso told her that that was God's punishment for not speaking up and backing up Jewison against Cage. And chair Italians man uh Norman Jewison calls Olympia Ducacus Limpi, which is really really adourable and kind of a weird nickname, and said that she was the person who ended up backing him. She would go to bat for him whenever he was dealing with cage and share. My girlfriend took a few acting classes with Olympia Ducacus a few years ago. Her really good friend and our NYU classmate was Olympia's protege actually, and she's now there talented acting teacher who runs her own school where Olympia was doing some classes just before her death. And not to speak out of turn, but my main thing I remember hearing was that Olympia was one tough lady. That's the main thing I remember from UH tales. You gotta give it to me from here pretty much. Yeah. Anyway, who who among us? Danny Aella, who was just two years away from his starring Rolling Spike Lease do the Right Thing, said on the Diane Rem radio show. And Reem Dane Reem said on the Dane Ream Radio Show that he couldn't stand the character I played, which is funny because he is such a like beta loser. Uh. He continued Norman. When I told him that I couldn't stand the character, he said to me, are you crazy? You're wonderful, but my neighborhood, you can't play a whimp on the screen. You know, people didn't even know me as an actor, but to see me as they didn't know me was troubling in the area where I live. So it did adversely affect me at first. All I know is I was stupid looking on the screen. Well, he kind of seems like a dick. He oh yeah, he very much does. His His friendship with Spike Lee is so like adorable, Like there's a really funny video of him and Spike hang out. Spike Lee just loves him as this like ridiculous Italian dude. But they you know, they're telling all these stories and Danny Aello like, we'll kind of walk back. He's like Italian American racism at the time, and then Spike Lee is like, no, you got to tell him what you really called me the first time we met. He died three years ago exactly today. Alright, p you we'll see see this episode goes. Danny Iel also felt that Share should have picked him over Nicholas Cage. Of course, even if even even if it's fake, you can't let this fake defeat enter in your consciousness. He said. I said, do you think Nicholas Cage is going to get a woman that I have? I said, that's not gonna happen. I said, Share will be with me from the beginning. God. Despite not liking the role, he said that it earned him more money and a quote elevated a lot of other parts from me in comedic situations and so forth. Yeah, he's talked about being he's by his own admission, being very combative on set, and so it's just so imagine him Nicholas Cage coming to blows in a tiny Brooklyn kitchen is so funny to me in front of Share, not in front of Share. Uh. John Mahoney, who was famously Frasier's dad, Uh, just steals them. I love that scene with him in Olympic, that little walk that they do and he's like a skirt chaser. So he's like, you want to let me into your house and she's like, shuts him down. They have such beauty, wonderful chemistry. That's such a just such a well written movie. They end up I forget I'm forgetting how that that she just like sends him away? No, but I mean this is that? How is is that? They're all we hear from his character. I'm trying to remember, Like he doesn't come back, he doesn't come back, and it's just it's just this little because they you know, you see him in the restaurant twice and he just ends up like he just walks her home. Yeah, it's so great. Uh. You know he was born in mad Chester. He was old. He lived there for a while, right, but completely lost the accent. Yeah. Yeah. He was an English teacher and edited a medical journal until he was thirty seven. And his students were like, yeah, you should go pursue this acting bug that you have, and uh yeah, I mean until Moonstruck he wanted Tony, which is wild to me, but he was basically a character actor. He'd only done three movies. He did Ten Men with Richard Dreyfus and Danny DeVito, Manhattan Project with John Lithgow, and then Suspect with Share and then Moonstruck and he said this, you know, blew the doors open for him. And then soon after I think in eight nine he was the dad and Cameron Crows say anything. Oh, that's right, he is. Yeah, he's so good at just like the like gruff. You're instantly just like yes, dad, he told the u P. I Moonstruck was my breakthrough in pictures. The restaurant scene was an actives dream and completely changed my career. For the first time, audiences were able to see me as I really look. I never envisioned in a million years the movie would be so great, or that my role would have so much impact. I thought it was a nice little cameo role. Fortunately, I auditioned with Olympia Lorman knew he wanted her for the film immediately prior to Fraser. He said that that was the role that he's the most approached about, which makes sense. I would love to talk with him about being Frasier's dad. Despite its status, is one of the all time great New York movies. More than that, just a second production shot most of Moonstruck's interiors in Toronto. They constructed sound stage replicas of the castor in a family brownstone, the Grand Ticino restaurant, Ronnie's apartment above the bakery, and the scene in which Cage and Share are actually watching Labo m was shot on Terry that's not actually the map. Parts of it are shot at the map, but the interior. The one interior scene in there is at the Markham Theater in Ontario. Apparently, of the movie originally opened with a song from Lobo Him, but it performed badly and test screenings because the crowd heard it and thought they'd been duped into attending an art film, So that replaced it with Dino doing that's Sam Because what's the most stereotypical song we got? It's about to say, what's the most borderline offensive thing we could throw in here? Uh? What? What would what would the other one be? I tried, so I was trying to think, I mean val are as like the other one, yeah, yeah, or like the Tarantella Yeah. I would say something like Colley Frances. As you meditate on that, we'll be right back with more too much information after these messages. The film's climactic scene, in which Ronnie gives an impassioned post opera speech to Share and convinces her to come back to his apartment with him, was the last one that they shot in Brooklyn, and Cage said, the only thing I remember on that movie was Sharon I freezing in Brooklyn in the winter at night. It was that whole big diet tribe about the snowflakes are perfect, the stars are perfect, not us. We are here to ruin ourselves. That was my favorite bit of writing by John Patrick Shanley, this powerful soliloquy. That being said, our mouths were frozen and it was so hard to move. It's very hard to act when you're freezing. Talking to the cut in, Share expanded on that scene. She said, I was really crying because it was so cold that our lips were turning blue. In a doorway, they kept a space heater from me, and I got too close to it and set the back of my coat on fire. I still have that code. It's singed. The moment people smelled something coming from where I was, they stepped in. They were like, she can't go up in flames until we finished the film. Share also still has the jeweled red heels that she wore on the film. She told The New York Times in that she went to see the film in a theater and when her character puts her foot out of the cab at Lincoln Center and she said, this man in front of me went, God, she's got a long skinny foot, and I went, oh, my god, I do how neat of him to say that when I'm sitting right behind him, even though he doesn't know it. Someone made that. Speaking of that soliloquy, here's Shandley giving a typically winding anecdote about the creation of the Snap Out of its slapping scene the Vulture. I took this anecdote and not my mom. I was up in a tenement living on a hundred and seventy seven street in Fort Washington. I had an apartment with chunks of flaster falling out of the walls and a couple of windows that were cracked, and became very friendly with the super, a guy named Ralph. Really, I just kind of adored him. He was very short, and he looked like he was from Castilian Spain. He looked like he was running in front of a bunch of bulls. He came up and would say, let me fix that hole in your wall, and I would say, I love that hole, dude, not touch that. He'd say, let me fix that window, and I'd be like, that crack in the window is a once in a lifetime I don't want it touched. I was very in love with the way the things are and the imperfectness, the imperfectness which Nick Cage talks about in the snow scene when he talks her into going upstairs. I wrote the stage directions, I just acted it, pictured it in my head. So I slapped him and I looked at him and it didn't work. So I slapped him again and said, snap out of it. And then the interviewer says, when you say you slapped him, you were talking about an imaginary person. I'm talking about me. I do the one part, then I turn around, I do the other. You slap yourself. Yeah, I do that a lot. This guy, this guy seems a little too, a little too into the process for my liking words. You just can trying to think what else he's written other than there's a lot like the two Oscar nominated movies. Yeah, I was gonna say what Oh en a pull it, sir and a Tony Alright, fine. This picture on his Wikipedia page is so funny because it's like it's like he heard you talking about him. Now click on it and look at his expression. That's the face of a Pulitzer winner. Just New York City filming locations included the Casa Italian Bakery on Ninth Avenue, the Grand Tuchino Restaurant in the West Village, the t w A Turmmel at Kennedy Airport, and the Metropolitan Opera House in Lincoln Center. Those scenes were filmed with over three hundred background actors, while hundreds of real life Lincoln Center audience members filed out of the theater after an actual performance. Sadly, the Grand Duchino restaurant lost its lease in August of two thousand one was forced to close after eighty two years. It is now called Cafe Clooney on West twelve and was used more recently the Jennifer Aniston starring movie Switch. I'm pretty sure I've been in Cafe Clooney. I found it unremarkable. I probably would have liked it a lot more, but I know it was the Grant gino Um, the real life bakery and Carol Garden's Brookley that stood in for the camerary shop was hilariously not owned by the actual cameraries, but by Gilberto Goodoy, who is a Argentinian immigrant to whom the family sold their bakery in. Well, I didn't know that was a famous like It's the equivalent of Landmark. Yeah, I had never heard of that until he's gone by the time we were there, Like everything Jewish until the New York Times. Whenever I can. I like to cast people who do the same job in real life. And he picked that particular bakery because it has one of the few coal fired ovens left in the city. Heat and humidity are always there, and bread is always rising and there's an incredible smell. It helps the actors to be in a real environment. So good door is in the film. He used to sign his autograph on bread bags um and he refused to close the bakery during filming because he had a quota five thousand loaves a day to maintain. So for three days he just kept the bakery operating around the casting crew. It was hysterical Jewis and said, we had lights, trucks, cameras, share and the poor guy was still baking while they were filming. Our customer barged into the shot demanding a loaf of bread, and she was in just motion to share, to take the guy's money and give him a loaf of bread. Don't Scorsese's parents have bit roles as customers in the bakery. I don't think I knew that. I guess if there's anything Italian related going on in New York and cinema, the scorsesees are legally had to be evolved. I think so. Yeah, she has a very specific look. It's hard to miss, hard to miss those hard to miss momasse Yeah, yeah, I found the exact still of them. Holy crap. He really aged exactly into his dad. Goodoy had a tremendous line to The New York Times from that article the movie stars made more mistakes than me. People rave about share listen. She ran up and down the stairs for three days. She never did it right with my part, we did it in one to three. Moonstruck made that bakery more famous and caused tourists to flock to the place, But Goodoy had a spring steenie and run of bad luck. In the nineties. He and his wife Nalita, who worked behind the counter, divorced. He told The New York Times ninety seven that I was lost and emotionally and financially drained by the split. And then in six one of the baker's to brick ovens caught fire was destroyed. They closed merged with a different Italian bakery, Monteleone and Carol Gardens, and then they opened up a bakery and cafe and Hoboken, which lasted just over a year, and then they filed for Chapter eleven bankruptcy. According to Crane's they owed debts to no fewer than fifty creditors. Uh, there's a camera. He's famous in Howell, New Jersey currently, but I could not find anything about its connection to this guy, because there's a zillion volleyball player by the same name who excused the Google results. But he is a very handsome man, so that's that was a nice consolation price. Apparently the original bakery equipment is still downstairs at the old bakery because it is too heavy to get rid of. The moon Struck House, meanwhile, has become one of the most famous in New York cinema. The four story Federal style brownstone at Cranberry and Willow Streets in Brooklyn Heights was built in eighteen twenty nine and was owned for nearly fifty years by Edwards Ruhleman, who was instrumental in persuading the city to declare Brooklyn Heights the first historic district in New York in nineteen sixty five. Rolling and his wife, appropriately a former opera singer, about the house in nineteen sixty one, and sold it for nearly four million in two thousand eight, subsequently moving to Cape Cod, but he put the work in before that. In nineteen sixty five, he quit his job at a Manhattan architectural firm to open a small shop devoted the restoration in Brooklyn Heights. Uch the restoring more than fifty local buildings, including Saint Anne's School, and the house was put up for sale again in one for twelve point eight five million dollars per the New York Post, and it was I guess subsequently lowered to eleven million, and Amy Schumer, of all people, wound up buying it in July of this year for twelve point five million, which is a true New York City real estate story. I love it. That guy was a restoration nut, you know. That really warms warms the cockles of my heart. And then of course it inflated my value a hundred thousand times. And a famous comedian who's the cousin of a state senator, uh bought it. That's Chuck Schumers. I didn't realize they related. They are the same Schumers yep, really just a true New York City story. The film's giant prop Moon was a modified version of a lighting grid created by British director of photography David Watkin, guy also shot Out of Africa and Chariots of Fire. It is a large array. He created this thing a large array of one ninety six tightly spaced fade lights in a fourteen by fourteen square elevated up to a hundred and fifty feet on a cherry picker or crane. It was supposedly nicknamed the Wendy Light because Watkins was openly gay and Wendy was apparently semi affectionate nickname for him on film sets. Because Hollywood is obsessible. He created this thing um while filming Hanover Street in nine at Shepperton Studios in England, because he was trying to solve the problem of night lighting on sets and designed this thing so that it was easy to move, you know, raise it on a crane or cherry picker. It only cast one shadow and it created such intense light that whatever it was mounted on was unable to be seen. And they put it like they would put it up to like a quarter mile away in exteriors for shooting night scenes. Picture of it, I can't well, you can find it. It's it's just a massive grid. What they did for Moonstruck was they put it behind a big fake moon um and uh he which just you know, raised it above everything. Uh he said. There was an interview he gave where he said the first time he ever used it, there was like a local like English boy who thought it was a UFO, which is adorable. We talked a little bit about how they've recut the opening scene to this um. There's a book that came out called Audience Oology, How movie Goers Shape the Films we Love. That's all about test screenings for different famous movies. This author, Kevin Gets quotes MGM. S. Greg Foster, who recalled it early test audiences for Moonstruck were perplexed by the film's tone. They didn't laugh, Like heightened dialogue kind of put them off. He described an undercurrent of tension from the common cards. What became very apparent was that the movie goers hadn't gotten the humor. Foster said, they don't know why it's funny. Film editor lou Lombardo surmised from reading the cards, they've got to show them it's okay to laugh. And originally, as we said earlier, the film's opening montage was set to Puccini, which Lombardo said was setting the wrong tone from the outset, so he swapped in Dean Martin's That's Mr which, as you said, tell o higel I just I'm trying to think of again, what could be the only more like stereotypically offensive choice. Definitely just I. Presumably they weren't able to film insert shots of like little nonies like stomping wine in a big vat while playing the mandolin, or like Mario like Super Mario Brothers. They were gonna they were gonna use the music from Super Mario Brothers. That that that that that did I send you that clip of the You sent me the clip of the guy who did the Mario voice. Right, oh yeah, we like running out of tape. They're like, yeah, we have like a thirty seconds to tape left. Give us an Italian voice and he was like, it's a meat body, I'm making a pizza and they're like, good rap. Probably right around the same time as this, when did Mario come out late eighties or that? Oh man, is there a book about the massive American experience, the Italian American Yeah, around this time, because it's it is funny you think about there was like this, my cousin Vinny Goodfellas, super Mario Brothers, such an important piece of representation, and then Godfather three belatedly swoops in. I was going to say it that it just all went away. Donnie Brasco. H Uh. Moon Struck open and limited release in December and went wide in January. It is pretty much a unanimous hit. Actually, Jeane Siskel and Jeered Ebert both loved it. It currently has a rotten tomatoes. Janet Maslin we were talking about her review of The New York Times earlier, comically wrote that Moonstruck clearly means to celebrate all things Italian, but quote creates the false but persistent impression that most of the people who made it have never been closer to Italy than perhaps Iowa, which is just it's very funny to me because well, she's not wrong. It's obviously like extremely stereotypical, extremely like this is how people think in New York. Italians behave like slapping and screaming, but they kind of do a and be John Patrick Shanley grew up in the broad around a bunch of Irish and Italian people like I do trust him. Um. The film went on to gross over a hundred twenty two million worldwide on what was the reported budget of eleven to fifteen mill and it cleaned up at the Oscars Share one Best Actress the Year, she wore one of her many amazing Bob Backy dresses uh Lympidococcus. One Best Supporting Actress Shanley one Best Screenplay. Jewison was sadly shut out of Best Director. Limp Deccas were one of her fantastic Bob Mackie dresses. John Patrick shadow Sham were one of his many iconic Bob Mackey dresses. Norman Jewison was shut out despite having turned out one of his many iconic, fabulous Bob Mackey dresses. It is sad that all the all the actress actors who were interviewed for this there, you know, when they talk about all the success for it, and then they're just like and Norman just sat there all right. The film is on seven different American Film Institute Best of lists, which might be some kind of a record. UM and Hebert officially entered it into his Great Movies Collection in June two thousand and three, and as of this writing, I have a petition to the Library of Congress to enter it into the National Film Archive. I don't actually, but that's I'm putting that on my to do list for tomorrow. That's it's gonna be for me. Olivia the Caucus has a cute line about this movie. She said, it changed my whole life while daughter was going to college on credit cards when I did that movie. After that, we were able to send our children through college with no problems. Imagine the time when you could pay first semestor college on a single credit card. Alright, um, probably my favorite line, and I read a lot of think pieces about this from the Great Coronavirus Lockdown rewatch era. B. D. McClay wrote it. The New Yorker gave my favorite final thought final thoughts. Moonstruck is a comedy, but it's deeply obsessed with death, to the point that it opens in a funeral parlor. It's a romance, but instead of trying to build up its central couple, it takes their sudden and total attraction to one another as an act of God. Nobody in the movie acts reasonably or even normally, and yet it feels completely true to people as they are ridiculous and passionate in search of answers and solutions and taking what they can get, which is usually better than what they thought they wanted. As the film knows, most of the things in life that matter aren't chosen, but sometimes we at least get to love the wrong people who might just be the right people. After all, it's great writing. There, I have nothing else to add. Uh, go watch mooden Struck. Go go to shares Twitter. She's hilarious for I was born November. I was born December eighty seven. I think wait, I want to see what day it was released? December before your birthday? There you having, folks, rewatch Moonstruck and wish Jordan a happy birthday, all in the same weekend. Uh, this has been too much information. I'm Alex Hegel and I'm Jordan run Talk. We'll catch you next time. Too Much Information was a production of I Heart Radio. The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan run Talk. The show's supervising producer is Mike Alder June. The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan Runtog and Alex Hegel with original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts and I heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.