[Vhfcn-l] Monday musings

[Gary Thewlis]

I'm not addicted to cocaine. I just like the way it smells.

Richard Pryor

 

I often warn people: "Somewhere along the way, someone is going to tell you,
'There is no "I" in team.' What you should tell them is, 'Maybe not. But
there is an "I" in independence, individuality and integrity.

George Carlin

 

Sorry, I'm allergic to bullshit.

Will Smith 

 

Knowledge is realizing that the street is one way; wisdom is looking in both
directions anyway.

Albert Einstein

 

I knew it would fly; it was a Gooney Bird, a C-47, mostly patches and God
knows how many millions of miles. It would get to Singapore on one engine if
asked. I knew my luck was in as soon as I saw that grand old collection of
masking tape and glue sitting on the field.

>From the writings of Robert A Heinlein

 

If you think research is expensive, try disease!

Mary Lasker

 

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29 Fun Facts About My Cousin Vinny

 

1. MY COUSIN VINNY WAS INSPIRED BY AN ENCOUNTER WITH A GUY HOPING TO PASS
THE BAR.

My Cousin Vinny was one of the earliest ideas screenwriter Dale Launer ever
had. "In the very early '70s, I met a guy who ... was waiting the bar exam
results," he told ABA Journal in 2012. Launer asked what would happen if he
didn't pass, and the guy said he could just take it again, and if he didn't
pass that time, he'd just take it again. And again. Until he passed. "So I
said, 'What's the most times somebody has taken and failed and finally
passed?'" Launer recalled. "He said, 'Thirteen times.' ... I always thought
that guy who took 13 times to pass the bar, or girl, is probably out there
practicing law in some capacity. Now, how would you feel if suddenly you
learned that guy is your lawyer? ... What if you have been accused of a
crime and clearly, you have what appears to be the worst lawyer in the
country?"

 

2. DALE LAUNER TOOK A ROAD TRIP TO RESEARCH THE SCRIPT FOR MY COUSIN VINNY.

According to the bio on his website, Launer set off on a road trip across
the South for script research. He rented a car in New Orleans, then drove
through Mississippi and Alabama and down the Gulf Coast. The trip provided
plenty of inspiration for scenes that would eventually make it into the
script: Launer's car got stuck in the mud, every restaurant had grits on the
menu, and he experienced the unearthly call of the screech owl. He even
stopped to talk to the district attorney in Butler, who reminded him of Lane
Smith; the actor was eventually cast in the role of Vinny's DA.

 

Also a big inspiration: the attitude of the people he met along the way.
Everyone "was very friendly and helpful," according to the bio, "but when he
told them he was making a movie that took place in the south-they'd get very
concerned-afraid that Hollywood movies always made them look like bumpkins.
That too [was] weaved into the story."

 

3. ROBERT DE NIRO WAS LAUNER'S FIRST CHOICE TO PLAY VINNY GAMBINI.

After the script was written, a casting meeting was called and Launer met
with Fox's president, vice president, and CEO. When Launer suggested Robert
De Niro for the part of Vincent LaGuardia Gambini, "the prez looked
uncomfortable, embarrassed that I would suggest such an actor," Launer told
Writer Unboxed. "'De Niro, uh . well . he's not funny. And . his movies
don't make money.' . Now ... the only movies De Niro acts in that make
money? Comedies! So, I feel vindicated. But I wish I could've been given a
big fat check when I [ended up] being proved right."

 

4. MY COUSIN VINNY DIRECTOR JONATHAN LYNN HAD NEVER SEEN THE KARATE KID WHEN
HE CAST RALPH MACCHIO AS BILL GAMBINI.

"I was very eager to have Ralph Macchio in the movie," Lynn said in the
movie's DVD commentary. "I must confess, I had never actually seen The
Karate Kid. I watched him in a couple of videos that his agent sent and I
thought he was just perfect for the part. . He's very good in the movie."

 

5. JOE PESCI BASED VINNY ON GUYS FROM HIS NEIGHBORHOOD.

"There's a lot of people around like that in smaller neighborhoods, so I put
a few of them together and [came] up with Vinny," Pesci, who grew up in New
Jersey, told The Movie Show in 1992.

 

6. THE STUDIO INITIALLY WANTED TO CUT MONA LISA VITO FROM MY COUSIN VINNY.

In 2007, Launer told Writer Unboxed that the studio had wanted to get rid of
Vinny's Chinese-food-loving, unemployed hairdresser/car expert girlfriend.
To keep the character, Launer reluctantly added a scene, requested by the
studio president, to the second draft: "He wanted Vinny's girlfriend to
complain that he's not giving her enough attention," Launer said. "You often
see movies where some guy is hell bent on accomplishing something, and
you're on the ride with him-and his wife/girlfriend/mother is feeling
neglected. And she complains. And I HATE this! ... Watching those scenes is
simply boring. You want to fast forward it. Awful."

 

Eventually, he said he "figured out a way where they'd HAVE to keep her and
embellished her character ... she does complain, but at least apologizes for
bringing it up, and you don't hate her for bringing it up largely because
it's funny. ... Now, I thought if she brought this up at this point where he
is simply going through hell-he should be pissed off. And he is. So he kinda
tears into her." Mona Lisa's "biological clock" rant (above) became one of
his favorite scenes in the script.

 

7. WILL SMITH WAS UP FOR THE ROLE OF STAN ROTHENSTEIN IN MY COUSIN VINNY.

Mitchell Whitfield had just moved to Los Angeles from New York when he got
word about the My Cousin Vinny auditions-which were taking place in New
York. So he flew back to do the screen test. "Believe it or not, Will Smith
was also up for the role," Whitfield told Abnormal Use. "So, clearly, they
didn't know exactly which way they were going to go with the part. ... I
think it could have been funny either way." Whitfield ended up having to
lose 25 pounds to play Stan.

 

8. THE STUDIO TOOK A CHANCE ON MARISA TOMEI.

Tomei didn't have a lot of film experience when she landed the part of Mona
Lisa Vito. "I'd seen her [on the set of Oscar] working with John Landis and
[had] gone with [him] to the cutting room to look at her performance," Lynn
said in DVD commentary." She was playing a 1920s blonde flapper, very
different, but I could see how funny and talented she was. And we got her in
to read. She read wonderfully and we persuaded the studio to let me go with
this unknown actress in the role. It was the best decision I ever made."
Lynn said he knew they'd gotten the right actress for the part when he saw
the dailies from the first scene they shot with her-Mona Lisa and Vinny's
arrival in Alabama, when she tells him, "Oh, yeah, you blend."

 

9. MARISA TOMEI IS FROM BROOKLYN, BUT SHE DOESN'T SOUND LIKE HER MY COUSIN
VINNY CHARACTER.

Tomei grew up in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, so "I really knew the
neighborhood," she told The New York Times in 1992. But that doesn't mean
she sounded just like Mona Lisa. "I don't think that extreme, but I could be
wrong," she told NPR's Fresh Air in 2010. "My mom was an English teacher,
and she was on my butt about that kind of thing and correcting my speech
from a young age."

 

10. THE LEGAL SYSTEM IS PORTRAYED VERY ACCURATELY IN MY COUSIN VINNY.

Lynn has a law degree from Cambridge University, and, he said in DVD
commentary, "I get terribly irritated when I see films in which the legal
procedure is obviously wrong." In addition to Launer's research, Lynn made
adjustments to make sure the legal proceedings were correct. "I'm very
pleased with the fact that, although this is heightened for comedic
purposes, everything you see legally in this film could happen and is
approximately correct," he said. "Which, by the way, makes it the more
frightening." Lynn even sat in on a murder trial in the Monticello, Ga.
courtroom that served as the inspiration for the Vinny courtroom set. "Some
of the lines in the [Vinny trial] came directly from that trial," he said,
including Lane Smith's pronunciation of heinous ("high-a-nus") and his line
about "our little old ancestors" in the opening remarks.

 

11. VINNY WAS SUPPOSED TO BE DYSLEXIC IN MY COUSIN VINNY.

In the original script, when Vinny is asked why it took him six times to
pass the bar, he says, "I'm a little dyslexic." Viewers would have
experienced it themselves while watching Vinny attempt to read the huge book
of Alabama Criminal Court procedure; Launer envisioned that the camera would
show a close shot of a word jumbled up, gradually becoming less so until
Vinny could read it-and the pattern would repeat itself as Vinny moved to
the next word.

 

Ultimately, the idea got cut because Lynn "said he did not know how to
portray dyslexia," Launer told Abnormal Use. The screenwriter was very
unhappy about the omission because it made Vinny seem "not so bright. You
don't know why it took him so long to get through the bar. And then suddenly
he starts acting smart. What you have to do is make assumptions that he is
actually a smart guy, and the law is just complicated and boring. And for
some reason, he didn't pay attention. ... I don't know if there is any other
conclusion than that." In the final film, there's no reason given for why it
took Vinny six times to pass the bar.

 

12. ONE SCENE IN MY COUSIN VINNY WAS LIFTED FROM A BOOK ABOUT COMEDY AND THE
LAW.

The book featured real moments from actual courtrooms. Launer lifted the
memorable voir dire scene of a potential juror for Vinny. The lawyers "ask
them their opinion on capital punishment, and they said something like, 'I
think it should be left up to the victims' families,'" Launer told Abnormal
Use. "Then they then described exactly what the murderer did, and then that
the juror actually said, 'Fry them.' So I put that right in the movie."

 

13. MY COUSIN VINNY SHOT SCENES IN AN ACTUAL PRISON.

The cast and crew shot for several days in a state prison in Gainesville,
Georgia, in the wing where prisoners are kept in solitary confinement. "It
does have a death row, right beside the wing where we were shooting, and I
looked all around death row," Lynn said in DVD commentary. "It was a very
frightening building, and we were all pretty scared when we were there, even
though we had guards with us at all times."

 

It took up to 40 minutes to get from the outside of the building to where
they were shooting inside. Whitfield told Abnormal Use that "When Ralph and
I were walking through the prison the first time like holding our blankets
and walking to our cell and you hear the prisoners screaming at us. Those
are real prisoners, and they really were yelling at us. ... They had to tone
it down with what they put in the movie because they were saying some
horrible stuff. Ralph and I were petrified."

 

14. THE PRISON GUARDS IN MY COUSIN VINNY AREN'T ACTORS.

The guards in the movie were real prison guards. The production used real
prisoners as extras twice: once in the background when Stan and Bill are
being brought into the prison, and during a short scene where the duo plays
basketball during exercise time. "The prisoners were all extremely
cooperative and did exactly what we asked," Lynn said in DVD commentary. "I
don't know what incentives or threats were made in order to achieve that."

 

15. THE SCENE IN MY COUSIN VINNY WHERE VINNY AND STAN HAVE A
MISUNDERSTANDING WAS CUT FROM THE SCRIPT AT ONE POINT.

The scene had appeared in the script Lynn initially read, but had been cut
from the shooting script. Everyone agreed that it had to go back in, and it
garnered some of the biggest laughs from audiences. The scene, of course,
could never have really happened; any interaction between the accused and
their lawyers would have to take place in an interview room-an issue the
filmmakers discussed at length. Making it factually accurate, Lynn said,
"would have meant losing that extremely funny scene, and we decided to bet
that nobody noticed that it should have taken place in an interview
room-and, in fact, nobody ever did."

 

16. JOE PESCI LEARNED HOW TO DO A CARD TRICK FOR MY COUSIN VINNY.

In the scene where Vinny is convincing Bill to let him represent him, Vinny
does a card trick. "It was important to me that the card trick wasn't
faked," Lynn said in DVD commentary. "Of course you can fake anything by
cutting and showing another shot, but I talked about this to Joe before we
started shooting, and he learned how to do this card trick. So the scene in
which he does it does not have any cuts in it. He actually fools the
audience before their very eyes. He did it beautifully. I thought Vinny's
argument would be much less powerful if the audience could say oh well that
was just faked by the way the scene was cut."

 

17. SCENES ABOUT BILL'S MOTHER WERE CUT FROM MY COUSIN VINNY.

In prep, someone at the studio pointed out what they thought was a big
problem: What kind of mother doesn't come down to support her son when he's
on trial? "Well, that was a tough question, because the answer is, Mother
ought to have been there," Lynn said in DVD commentary. "But she would just
have been a damn nuisance. The script was already long enough ... and we
didn't want to introduce another character who had no other plot function."

 

To compromise, the filmmakers added some scenes where, after Vinny comes
down to Alabama, Bill's mother has a heart attack. "We had Bill trying to
keep in touch with mother in hospital and getting messages and there were a
couple of scenes to do with mother's heart attack; we never saw her," Lynn
said. "When we started putting the film together in the cutting room, it was
just obvious that these scenes were going to be in the way of the momentum
of the film. And we said, 'Why don't we just try leaving them out and see if
anyone notices that mother never shows up?' Nobody ever noticed. So we took
those scenes out and saved between five and 10 minutes of stuff we really
didn't need."

 

18. THE FILMMAKERS USED AN ACTUAL SCREECH OWL IN ONE OF MY COUSIN VINNY'S
MOST MEMORABLE SCENES.

 

One of the film's running gags is the fact that Vinny is always awakened by
something-a steam whistle, noisy pigs, and, finally, a screech owl. Lynn and
his team used an actual owl for the scene, "which was probably a ridiculous
chance to take," he said in DVD commentary. "People . think it's a Muppet
because its behavior was so perfect. It screeched, it looked back at Vinny,
and then it looked back at the camera and screeched again. We got amazingly
lucky with that screech owl."

 

The owl's screeches were added later. To get the bird to open his mouth at
the right time, they used a trick: "We discovered that if you put a little
bit of meat into its beak, it half swallows [it] and then, approximately
three seconds later, opens its beak as the meat goes down," Lynn said. "So
we fed it a little bit of beef just before the camera starting turning so
that for its first screech, which is added afterwards, his beak opened at
the right moment. Everything else he did in that scene was pure luck, and we
couldn't believe our eyes when he reacted so perfectly, and of course we
never shot it again." The owl was basically a wild animal, Lynn said, though
it had been trained a little bit: "He had heard a lot of gunfire in the
previous weeks so that he wouldn't get frightened by it."

 

19. AUSTIN PENDLETON HAD EVERYONE IN STITCHES WHILE FILMING MY COUSIN VINNY.

Director Jonathan Lynn cast his friend, Austin Pendleton-who, Lynn said, has
a stutter in real life-in the role of the tongue-tied public defender. "I
knew he would be really funny in that part," Lynn told Abnormal Use. "But I
really didn't quite imagine just how funny. And I had to literally hide
behind the camera. I normally sit by the camera. But I had to hide because I
was laughing so hard. I had to somehow stop myself from making a sound, and
I couldn't let Austin be put off by seeing me . That's the funniest moment
I've had on any film I've ever made." Whitfield agreed, telling Abnormal
Use, "if you watch the movie and you see us at the table when he's
stuttering, and my shoulders are going up and down like I'm crying, I was
laughing. I couldn't help it."

 

20. THE WORD YUTES CAME FROM A REAL CONVERSATION WITH JOE PESCI.

The conversation between Vinny and Judge Chamberlain Haller about "two
yutes" became "perhaps the most quoted piece of dialogue from the film,"
Lynn said in DVD commentary. It was inspired by a conversation that Lynn and
Pesci had when they were prepping the film at the Mayflower Hotel in New
York City. "He said something about 'these two yutes' who were on trial and
I said 'what?' and he said 'what?' and I said 'what's a yute?'" Lynn
recalled. "I realized as we were having that conversation that that was
something that ought to happen between Vinny and the judge, so I simply
wrote it in the way it happened naturally."

 

21. JOE PESCI'S OSCAR ALMOST MADE A CAMEO IN MY COUSIN VINNY.

The night before they shot the scene where Vinny sleeps like a baby during a
prison riot after being held in contempt of court, Pesci had won the Oscar
for Goodfellas. "He flew in from Los Angeles, and on the first take, when we
panned to him, he was clutching the Oscar in his arms," Lynn said in DVD
commentary, laughing. "We sent that to the studio as the dailies."

 

22. YOU CAN VISIT MANY LOCATIONS FROM MY COUSIN VINNY.

Though the film is set in Alabama, the production actually shot in three
separate small towns in Georgia. "Apart from the courtroom," which was a
set, "virtually everything was shot on location," director Jonathan Lynn
said in Vinny's DVD commentary. "It wasn't a very expensive movie, and that
was the cheaper way to go. It also had more authenticity." Which means you
can visit a number of the film's locations-including the Sac-O-Suds
convenience store.

 

23. MY COUSIN VINNY WAS PRAISED BY THE LAW COMMUNITY.

"The movie is close to reality even in its details," lawyer Maxwell S.
Kennerly wrote on his blog, Trial and Litigation. "Part of why the film has
such staying power among lawyers is because, unlike, say, A Few Good Men,
everything that happens in the movie could happen-and often does happen-at
trial." Professor Alberto Bernabe of The John Marshall Law School, who hands
his students a list of law movies organized by category, puts Vinny under
"Education," not just because "it provides so much material you can use in
the classroom. For example, you can use the movie to discuss criminal
procedure, courtroom decorum, professional responsibility, unethical
behavior, the role of the judge in a trial, efficient cross-examination, the
role of expert witnesses and effective trial advocacy."

 

The film has also been praised by a Seventh Circuit Court Judge; referenced
by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia; and made it into a legal textbook.

 

24. MY COUSIN VINNY EARNED A SPOT ON THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION'S LIST OF
GREATEST LEGAL MOVIES.

Coming in at number three, "The movie packs in cinema's briefest opening
argument ('Everything that guy just said is bulls**t'), its best-ever
introduction to the rules of criminal procedure, and a case that hinges on
properly introduced expert testimony regarding tire marks left by a 1964
Skylark and the optimal boiling time of grits," the journal notes. Launer
said the honor was "like getting the Oscar. In some ways, better." Vincent
Gambini came in at no. 12 on the association's list of Greatest Fictional
Lawyers (Who Aren't Atticus Finch).

 

25. MARIA TOMEI FOUND OUT ABOUT HER OSCAR NOMINATION FOR MY COUSIN VINNY IN
AN UNLIKELY PLACE.

Tomei was sleeping on a friend's couch-a friend who was pregnant and due at
any moment-when she found out about her Best Supporting Actress Oscar
nomination. Her friends were watching TV, and "there were shouts from the
other room, and they awoke me," she told David Letterman in 1993. "I didn't
know if she was going into labor or what." Tomei would go on to win the
Oscar-and yes, despite the urban legend that 74-year-old presenter Jack
Palance announced the wrong name, the actress really did win.

 

26. THERE COULD HAVE BEEN A SEQUEL TO MY COUSIN VINNY.

In 2004, Lautner's bio noted that "Joe wanted to do it, but Marisa didn't.
Now she does, and so does Joe, but the studio isn't terribly interested in
the remake, feeling too much time has passed since the initial release.
Perhaps everyone who liked it has passed on. Or changed their minds. Launer
hopes they will see the light." According to Whitfield, the sequel might
have involved Vinny going to Europe.

 

27. JOE PESCI MADE AN ALBUM AS VINNY GAMBINI.

Before he was an actor, Pesci was a lounge singer; six years after My Cousin
Vinny came out, he released an album called Vincent LaGuardia Gambini Sings
Just for You. It features the songs "Wise Guy," "Take Your Love and Shove
It," "Yo Cousin Vinny," and "I Can't Give You Anything But Love," a duet
with Tomei as Mona Lisa. It debuted at No. 36 on the Billboard Heatseekers
Chart.

 

28. THERE'S A BOLLYWOOD VERSION OF MY COUSIN VINNY.

Banda yeh bindaas hai (This Guy is Fearless) was directed by Ravi Chopra and
starred Govinda, Lara Dutta, and Sushmita Sen. Chopra reached out to Fox in
2007 for approval to produce the remake, and was given permission to make a
film loosely based on the original idea. But in May 2009, Fox sued Banda yeh
bindaas hai's production company, B.R. Films, for $1.4 million, saying the
remake had not been approved, and that a script review showed the film to be
"a 'substantial reproduction' of the U.S. film" with an identical storyline,
according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. B.R. Films denied the
claims, saying their version featured different characters and settings; the
company eventually settled with Fox in August 2009, paying the studio
$200,000.

 

29. PATRIOTS COACH BILL BELICHIK REFERENCED MY COUSIN VINNY DURING
DEFLATEGATE.

Rudy Guiliani isn't the only person who has randomly referenced My Cousin
Vinny during a press conference. "I would not say that I am Mona Lisa Vito
of the football world," Belichik said when asked what he knew about football
pressure. When she heard, Tomei texted Pesci. "We thought it was pretty
funny," she told The Rich Eisen Show.

 

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According to U.S. Agriculture Department grading regulations how many ounces
must a dozen "jumbo" eggs weigh?

A :Thirty ounces.

 

Black-eyed peas are not peas.  What are they?

A: Beans.

 

What product was introduced in Japanese supermarkets after a survey showed
half the country's young people weren't able to use chopsticks?

A: Trainer chopsticks, with loops to show users where to put their fingers.

 

The pretzel shape was created by French monks in 610A.D.. What was it
designed to resemble?

A : A little child's arms in prayer.

 

What American brewery was the first to market beer in a bottle?

A: F & M Schaefer.

 

Two states have official beverages. Florida's is orange juice. What's the
other state and its beverage?

A: Ohio, tomato juice.

 

In 1867 Emperor Napoleon III had a chemist develop a food product "for the
army, navy, and the needy classes of the population." what was it?

A: Margarine.