50 Fun Facts About Moonstruck

Who directed Moonstruck?

The Canadian filmmaker was Oscar-nominated for Best Director in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s: for In the Heat of the Night, Fiddler on the Roof and this film.

Who wrote the screenplay, winning the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay?

The Bronx-born playwright later won a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony for a play about a nun and a priest.

How many Academy Awards did Moonstruck win?

It had six nominations. Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress and Best Original Screenplay were the wins.

What is Loretta Castorini's job?

She lives in Brooklyn Heights with her parents and her paternal grandfather.

Why does Johnny Cammareri leave for Sicily right after proposing?

He asks Loretta to invite his estranged brother to the wedding before he goes.

Loretta insists on doing everything properly this time. What does she blame for her first husband's death?

He died suddenly after two years of marriage. Rose is relieved that Loretta does not actually love Johnny.

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

It is successful enough that he can pay for a formal wedding; he simply does not want to, because he dislikes Johnny.

How long have Johnny and his younger brother Ronny not spoken when the film begins?

Ronny blames Johnny for the accident that cost him his hand, saying his brother distracted him.

In what setting does Loretta first track down Ronny?

The Cammareri Brothers Bakery was in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn; when Jewison saw the coal ovens in the basement he moved the scene there.

What does Loretta cook Ronny in his apartment before delivering her wolf speech?

She tells him he is like a wolf who gnaws off its own paw to escape a trap, and that the accident was not Johnny's fault.

Which opera do Ronny and Loretta see at the Met?

Shanley wrote Ronny as a bohemian after falling for the opera, and the film uses eleven other cues from it besides the love scene.

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

Cosmo points out that she is hardly one to talk, since she is there with Johnny's brother.

Rose Castorini, dining alone, watches an NYU professor named Perry get dumped by whom?

He walks her home; she turns him down because, as she says, she knows who she is.

Rose's brother Raymond recalls a night when Cosmo was courting his sister and what woke him up?

He blamed Cosmo, thinking he had brought the moon to their house, and the memory gives the film its title image.

Why does Johnny finally call off the wedding?

Loretta throws the ring at him, and Ronny borrows it to propose on the spot.

What was Shanley's original title for the script?

He wrote it for a star who could not picture herself as an Italian from Brooklyn. Jewison thought the title sounded like a horror film.

For which actress did Shanley originally write the screenplay?

They met for lunch at the Russian Tea Room, and he promised her the part would bring an Oscar nomination.

Where did Jewison pitch the project to Alan Ladd Jr. and John Goldwyn?

His pitch already had Cher in the lead. He got Shanley to trim most of the dialogue first.

Jewison said he cast the film as if it were an opera. Which voice type did he assign to Cosmo?

Loretta was the soprano, Rose the alto, Johnny the baritone and Ronny the tenor.

Which future star auditioned for Ronny but was dismissed by Jewison as too young?

In the script Ronny was the same age as Loretta. The choice came down to Nicolas Cage and one other actor.

Cher chose Nicolas Cage over which other finalist for the role of Ronny?

She liked the other man but concluded that 'Nicky was nuts, and nuts is what we needed', having admired his Gumby accent in Peggy Sue Got Married.

What detail about Ronny finally hooked Nicolas Cage on the role?

Cage was at a low point after a cousin's death and disliked the mainstream script until that detail caught him.

Cage initially played Ronny with a voice modeled on Jean Marais in which 1946 Cocteau film?

He saw Ronny as the Beast; Jewison talked him out of the voice.

Where was most of Moonstruck filmed?

Shooting took place in early 1987 in the director's home city, with Brooklyn used for locations such as the bakery.

Who was the dialect coach who helped Cher master a Brooklyn accent in a few weeks?

She also played Loretta's Aunt Rita. Her urging Cage to speak louder and faster in the final scene prompted him to throw a chair.

Which part of the movie did Jewison call the most difficult of his entire career to shoot?

Cage was persuaded to say, then had cut, lines describing himself as red meat and his brother as milk and cookies.

Which Puccini aria plays during Ronny and Loretta's love scene?

Jewison took the whole cast to the opera to get them in an operatic frame of mind.

Why was Puccini's music replaced by Dean Martin's 'That's Amore' over the opening?

Once the song went on, test audiences laughed along to the whole movie.

'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.

What was Moonstruck's production budget?

It grossed $80.6 million in the US and Canada and $122.1 million worldwide.

Where did Moonstruck finish at the US box office on its wide release?

It went on to spend 20 nonconsecutive weeks in the top ten.

Which critic called Moonstruck a 'rose-tinted black comedy' that 'could become a holiday perennial'?

She also called Shanley's script an opera buffa in which the arias are the characters' lines.

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

The film also placed 41st on AFI's 100 Laughs and 17th on its 100 Passions.

On AFI's 2008 '10 Top 10' list, Moonstruck ranked eighth in which genre?

AFI polled more than 1,500 people from the creative community to build the lists.

In 2003 Roger Ebert added Moonstruck to which of his collections?

He and Siskel had both put it in their top ten for 1987. Criterion released a remastered Blu-ray in 2020.

What was the title of the Moonstruck sequel that Nicolas Cage's company began developing in 2001?

Saturn Films started work on it, but the sequel never materialised.

The actress who won the Oscar for playing Rose is the cousin of which politician?

Her cousin was the 1988 Democratic presidential nominee. Jewison predicted she would win honors for the role.

Before acting, Olympia Dukakis earned a Boston University degree in what?

She used the training to treat polio patients at the height of the epidemic.

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

She won the Cannes Best Actress prize for Mask in 1985, but that film brought no Academy nomination.

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

Born Vincenzo Scognamiglio near Naples, he was also Archie Bunker's neighbor Frank Lorenzo and Mr. Mushnik in Little Shop of Horrors.

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

He played pizzeria owner Sal for Spike Lee. Earlier he had ad-libbed 'Michael Corleone says hello!' in The Godfather Part II.

Nicolas Cage was born with what surname?

He changed it to avoid the appearance of nepotism as Francis Ford Coppola's nephew.

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

Bertolucci's epic won all nine awards it was nominated for. Chevy Chase hosted for the second straight year.

Who won Best Actor the night Cher won Best Actress?

His Wall Street win made him the first person with Oscars for both acting and producing, after One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

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

He wrote and directed the film version and was nominated for another Oscar, this time for adapted screenplay.

In which New York neighbourhood do Loretta and her family live?

The Cammareri Brothers Bakery, by contrast, was located in Carroll Gardens, where Jewison moved the meeting scene to the coal ovens in the basement.

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

Cage was at a low point after the death of his cousin Gian-Carlo Coppola and disliked the mainstream feel of Shanley's script.

Which cinematographer created the giant moonlight by clustering reflectors into huge lights over Brooklyn?

Ronny's climactic speech after the opera was shot in freezing temperatures under those lights.

Roughly how much did Moonstruck gross worldwide?

It spent 20 non-consecutive weeks in the US top 10 on its way to $80.6 million domestically, against a $15 million budget.

Where did the Writers Guild of America West rank the Moonstruck screenplay on its 101 Greatest Screenplays list?

The film also sits at No. 41 on AFI's 100 Laughs and No. 17 on its 100 Passions list.