50 Fun Facts About Moonstruck

Who directed Moonstruck?

Norman Jewison used his standing to found the Canadian Film Centre, a training school for filmmakers in his home country, which opened in 1988.

Who wrote the screenplay for Moonstruck?

John Patrick Shanley, a playwright from a rough part of the Bronx, dropped out of New York University to join the Marines, then went back and graduated as valedictorian.

Besides its two acting Oscars, Moonstruck won the Academy Award in which other category?

Best Original Screenplay was handed over in the middle of a Hollywood writers' strike, which was five weeks old when the ceremony was held in April 1988.

What is Loretta Castorini's job in Moonstruck?

Bookkeeper: she keeps the accounts for local businesses and treats marriage just as practically, and her mother is relieved to hear that she does not love Johnny.

What task does Johnny Cammareri give Loretta before he flies to Sicily?

Invite his brother to the wedding: the two have not spoken in five years, and sending Loretta to make peace is what throws her and Ronny together.

What does Loretta blame for her first husband's death?

Failing to follow tradition when they married: there was no proper ceremony, she says, so this time she makes Johnny go down on one knee and hand over a ring.

What kind of business does Loretta's father Cosmo run?

Plumbing: Cosmo talks customers into pricey copper pipe because 'it costs money because it saves money', yet he refuses to pay for his own daughter's wedding.

Ronny Cammareri blames his brother for the accident that cost him his hand and what else?

His fiancée left him after the accident, and in the five years since he has refused to speak to Johnny, who he feels should not get to marry when he could not.

In what setting does Loretta first track down Ronny in Moonstruck?

The bakery where he works: she finds him stoking the ovens in the cellar, and he greets her news of the wedding by raging that Johnny cost him his hand.

What does Loretta cook for Ronny in his apartment in Moonstruck?

A steak, after which she tells him some hard truths about himself; he answers by overturning the kitchen table, kissing her and sweeping her off her feet.

Which opera do Ronny and Loretta see at the Met in Moonstruck?

La bohème deeply moves the hard-headed Loretta, and Puccini's music from it runs through the film's soundtrack alongside Dean Martin.

Whom does Loretta spot at the opera, to her horror, in Moonstruck?

Her father with his mistress, Mona, though Cosmo is just as dismayed to find his engaged daughter there on another man's arm.

In Moonstruck, Rose Castorini, dining alone, watches a professor named Perry get dumped by whom?

One of his students throws a drink in his face and walks out; Rose invites him to her table, lets him walk her home, then turns him down: 'I know who I am.'

Which Moonstruck character recalls being woken years ago by a moon so big he thought Cosmo had brought it?

Rose's brother Raymond tells it at the family dinner table: Cosmo was courting his sister at the time, so he blamed him for the giant moon outside the house.

Why does Johnny finally call off the wedding in Moonstruck?

He says marrying would kill his mother; Loretta gives back his ring, and Ronny promptly borrows it to propose to her himself.

What was the original title of the Moonstruck screenplay?

The Bride and the Wolf was dropped because the director thought it sounded like a horror film, much to the screenwriter's chagrin.

For which actress was the Moonstruck screenplay originally written?

Sally Field had asked the screenwriter to write something for her over lunch at the Russian Tea Room, then found she could not picture herself as an Italian from Brooklyn.

Cher pushed for Nicolas Cage to play Ronny after seeing his odd-voiced turn in which film?

Peggy Sue Got Married had him speak in a cartoon voice modelled on Pokey, the clay horse from Gumby, a risk that Cher admired.

After her night with Ronny, to whom does Loretta admit that she slept with her fiancé's brother?

A priest hears it in confession, slipped in between taking the Lord's name in vain and bouncing a cheque at the liquor store, and he asks her to repeat 'that second thing'.

Which future star auditioned for Ronny in Moonstruck but was judged too young by the director?

Ray Liotta's audition drew the notes 'needs style' and 'too young', yet the part went to Nicolas Cage, who was nine years younger than Liotta.

Which future Frasier star plays Perry, the professor who ends up at Rose's table in Moonstruck?

John Mahoney, the future Martin Crane, had just won a Tony on Broadway, and this film and Suspect, another 1987 Cher picture, brought him wider film work.

Nicolas Cage modelled Ronny's 'I lost my hand' outburst on a mad scientist in which silent film?

Metropolis has the inventor Rotwang hold up the artificial hand he has built, a gesture Cage wanted to reproduce with Ronny's wooden one.

In Ronny's speech to Loretta after the opera, love doesn't make things nice; what does it do instead?

It ruins everything, he says: snowflakes and stars are perfect, but people are here 'to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and die'.

Interiors such as the Castorini family home were built in a warehouse in which Canadian city?

Toronto was where the company moved in late January 1987, straight after filming Ronny's big outdoor speech in Brooklyn in freezing cold.

Julie Bovasso, who plays Aunt Rita, was also hired to coach the Moonstruck cast in what?

Brooklyn accents were her brief as dialogue coach, but when she told Nicolas Cage to play a scene 'loud and fast' he threw a chair; he apologised afterwards.

What does Ronny promise Loretta if she will come to the opera with him just once?

To leave her alone for good was the deal, and she throws it back at him after the opera: he had promised, she reminds him, to 'leave me alone forever'.

Nicolas Cage's breakthrough year of 1987 paired Moonstruck with which Coen brothers comedy?

Raising Arizona, in which he plays an ex-convict who kidnaps a baby, came out the same year; neither that film nor his Ronny earned him an Oscar nomination.

Passed over by the Academy, Nicolas Cage's Ronny did earn a best-actor nomination from which awards body?

The Golden Globes nominated him as best actor in a comedy or musical but he lost, while Cher and the actress playing her mother both went home with Globes.

'That's Amore' first appeared in which 1953 Martin and Lewis comedy?

Composer Harry Warren and lyricist Jack Brooks earned an Oscar nomination for it, losing to 'Secret Love' from Calamity Jane.

Cher starred in three films released in 1987: Moonstruck, Suspect and which supernatural comedy?

The Witches of Eastwick cast her as a glamorous witch close to her stage persona; Moonstruck did the opposite, starting her out as a dowdy widow with greying hair.

Moonstruck's director won the best-director prize, a Silver Bear, at which 1988 film festival?

Berlin's jury gave him its directing prize for Moonstruck, which the Academy did not: he was nominated for the Oscar that spring but lost.

The final scene gathers the whole family around the Castorini kitchen table for which meal?

Breakfast, with oatmeal on the table: Ronny turns up uninvited to meet the family, Johnny arrives with news of his own, and it all ends in a champagne toast.

Which Moonstruck line made AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes list at No. 96?

Snap out of it! is what Loretta says, with a slap, when Ronny tells her the morning after that he is in love with her.

Julie Bovasso, Moonstruck's Aunt Rita, played John Travolta's mother in which film?

Saturday Night Fever cast her as Florence Manero, mother of Travolta's disco king Tony, and she returned to the part six years later in the sequel Staying Alive.

Which critic added Moonstruck to his 'Great Movies' series in 2003?

Roger Ebert's 2003 essay argued that Nicolas Cage, who was not even nominated, gave a performance 'worthy of an Oscar' as Ronny.

Moonstruck's cinematographer, David Watkin, had won an Oscar two years earlier for which film?

Out of Africa won him the cinematography Oscar; here he swapped its sunlit plains for Brooklyn nights, bathing the lovers in cold moonlight and the family kitchen in warm colours.

The actress who won an Oscar as Rose in Moonstruck was a first cousin of which politician?

Michael Dukakis, her first cousin, was running for president when she won; she was in her mid-fifties and had spent decades on the stage before the film made her name.

When Ronny sweeps Loretta off her feet and she asks where he is taking her, what does he answer?

To the bed! is his reply, and one famous critic argued that the formal little 'the' is what makes Loretta let her head fall back in surrender.

Besides Moonstruck, Cher earned her only other Oscar nomination for which film?

Silkwood brought a supporting nomination for playing Meryl Streep's roommate; Mask then won her the best actress prize at Cannes in 1985 but no Oscar nomination at all.

Vincent Gardenia, Oscar-nominated as Cosmo, had earlier been nominated for which 1973 baseball film?

Bang the Drum Slowly cast him as the team's manager opposite a young Robert De Niro, and his future Moonstruck co-star Danny Aiello had a small part as a ballplayer.

Danny Aiello, Loretta's fiancé Johnny, earned his own Oscar nomination two years later for which film?

Do the Right Thing cast him as pizzeria owner Sal; his was one of only two nominations for Spike Lee's film, which was left out of the Best Picture race.

Moonstruck star Nicolas Cage was born with what surname?

Coppola: to be judged on his own merits rather than as director Francis Ford Coppola's nephew, he took a new name that nods to both the Marvel hero Luke Cage and the composer John Cage.

Which film won Best Picture at the 60th Academy Awards, the ceremony where Moonstruck won its Oscars?

The Last Emperor won all nine Oscars it was nominated for without a single acting nomination, which left the acting prizes open to films like Moonstruck.

Who won Best Actor on the night Cher won Best Actress for Moonstruck?

Michael Douglas won for playing Gordon Gekko in Wall Street; he already owned an Oscar as a producer, for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Which play by Moonstruck's screenwriter won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama?

Doubt: A Parable is set in a Bronx Catholic school in 1964, and its author turned it into a 2008 film starring Meryl Streep, which he directed himself.

Moonstruck's director also made which film that won Best Picture for 1967?

In the Heat of the Night took Best Picture and four other Oscars, yet its director went home without the directing prize, just as he would for Moonstruck.

Which Nicolas Cage film did his agent reportedly forbid unless he also agreed to make Moonstruck?

Vampire's Kiss, a black comedy about a literary agent who believes he is turning into a vampire, was the film Cage really wanted, and he ate a live cockroach for it.

How did Moonstruck's crew create the huge moonlight that shines over Brooklyn?

A bank of lights on a crane: cinematographer David Watkin packed 196 lamps onto a cherry picker, a rig known as 'Wendy', which was his own nickname.

Moonstruck's screenwriter went on to write and direct which 1990 Tom Hanks comedy?

Joe Versus the Volcano sends Hanks, told he is dying, to a South Pacific island to jump into a volcano, with Meg Ryan playing three different women along the way.

Which 1960s ballad does Cosmo Castorini keep playing on his record player and singing along to?

It Must Be Him, Vikki Carr's 1967 hit about waiting by the telephone, is how Cosmo unwinds, while his wife grumbles about 'that damn Vikki Carr record'.