The Green Mile - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of The Green Mile or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to The Green Mile

[addison]

The name for the character John Coffey was lifted from a college professor, Rev. John Coffee. Stephen King had met him once and really liked his name and used it in "The Green Mile." Rev. Coffee taught history classes at Emerson College in Boston, MA, and retired in May 2005.

[stephanie]

Bonnie Hunt and Patricia Clarkson both appeared in Jumanji (1995). They did not share any scenes there and only share one here.

[melinda]

(at around 32 mins) It's ironic that when Percy first encounters Mr. Jingles he calls him "scurvy", which is a condition caused by lack of vitamin C. Mice have an active gene that synthesizes vitamin C.

[fred]

Doug Hutchison (Percy) made a $20 bet with the extras (behind the scenes) during Del's execution that they couldn't recite his lines. Unknowingly, Tom Hanks wrote Hutchison's lines on big cue cards behind him. Hutchison caught on to the joke when the extras kept laughing. By the end of the day, he owed at least $60 to different people.

[cameron]

That giant brick wall in the background of the prison is made out of lightweight fiberglass. All the walls could be moved to make room for cameras and lighting.

[steve]

(at around 3 mins) The music played over the loudspeakers in the retirement home as Old Paul Edgecomb first walks out of his room is the same as the music the nurses played at medication time in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975). The music used is Mantovani's "Charmaine".

[jessica]

(at around 1h 30 mins) No mice were injured during the stomping scene. They used a puppet.

[ruby]

Features Michael Clarke Duncan's only Oscar nominated performance.

[nora]

Sam Rockwell felt really bad delivering some lines in the flashback sequence, because the two little girls liked him.

[beth]

According to the novel by Stephen King, Percy Wetmore is supposed to be 21 years old. During production, Doug Hutchison (Percy) was 39. He told director Frank Darabont he was in his early/mid 30s. When he went to audition for The Salton Sea (2002), the director for that film told him he was "too young," at which point Hutchison showed his driver's license to prove his age.

[duane]

(at around 1h 40 mins) It was Michael Jeter's idea for Delacroix to be reciting the Hail Mary in Cajun French when he's in the electric chair.

[manuel]

Michael Keaton and Michael Douglas were considered for the role of Paul Edgecomb.

[ruby]

Frank Darabont called Thomas Newman's score "a rainbow of music and emotion."

[michele]

In reality, Michael Clarke Duncan was of a similar height to his co-star David Morse, and was a couple of inches shorter than James Cromwell. Amongst other things, creative camera angles were used to create the illusion that Duncan, as John Coffey, towered over the prison staff, even "Brutal" Howell and Warden Moores.

[tom]

Although Harry Dean Stanton appears in this film, and there are characters named "Harry" and "Dean Stanton", they are only coincidences; they were in the original novel, which was written long before Stanton was cast in the film.

[manuel]

Final film of Dabbs Greer. NOTE: Greer had originally turned down the role because he had health issues, but director Frank Darabont was determined to have him, so he shot around Greer's character, Paul Edgecomb, until Greer's health issues had been resolved enough to enable him to take the role.

[miriam]

The plot unfolds in the form of Paul telling Elaine the story of the Green Mile. In the book, Paul writes his story down in the form of a novel. At the end of the film, as Paul leaves the cemetery after Elaine's burial, a tombstone can be seen behind him that reads "Greene", and two others, one in the foreground and one to the right of the screen, that read "Story".

[fred]

(at around 2h 5 mins) When Paul and Brutus take John Coffey outdoors at night, John looks at the stars and says, "Look Boss, it's Cassie, the lady in the rocking chair." This is a reference to the constellation Cassiopeia. In Greek mythology, Queen Cassiopeia is often depicted as sitting in a chair or rocking chair.

[tamara]

Stephen King's original novel "The Green Mile" was published in 100-page paperback installments between March and August of 1996. He had begun developing the story while writing "Desperation" and needed to finish that novel but still wanted to see where his death row story would go. Ralph Vicinanza, a friend of King's who sells foreign publication rights, had recently had a discussion with another friend in England about Charles Dickens, in which he learned that Dickens often published his novels in installments in newspapers and magazines, and it had been suggested that, in the U.S., King could try writing a book that way. Vicinanza was under the impression that no recent novels had been written this way. He was, in fact, mistaken--Tom Wolfe had published his first draft of "The Bonfire of the Vanities" in installments in "Rolling Stone", and that story was also turned into a Tom Hanks film (The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990). "Green Mile, as it turned out, was not King's only story published in installments: his "Dark Tower" series spanned seven full-length books, published over the course of 22 years, from 1982 until 2004.