Trailer
Plot summary
Loretta Castorini, a Brooklyn Heights bookkeeper, lives with her mother and father, Rose and Cosmo, and her grandfather. Her first husband died in a bus accident years ago, and she believes that marriage failed because the couple wed at City Hall. Johnny Cammareri proposes, and she accepts, insisting that this wedding follow tradition. She tells Rose she does not love him, and Rose is relieved. Her father Cosmo runs a plumbing business, dislikes Johnny, and does not want to pay for the wedding. Johnny goes to Sicily, where his mother is dying, and asks Loretta to invite his younger brother Ronny. The brothers have not spoken in five years. Ronny works the ovens at a bakery; he refuses to attend and blames Johnny for the bread slicer accident that took his hand.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Moonstruck (1987)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- When Jewison pitched the role to Cher she warned him that she could be difficult; he replied, "Are you any more difficult than Judy Garland?", and warned her that she would spend the rest of her life regretting turning the part down.
- Audiences at test screenings did not see the film as a comedy, and Jewison realized the operatic score was setting the wrong tone; when the opening music was replaced with Dean Martin's "That's Amore", audiences laughed along to the entire movie.
- Norman Jewison loved the script but insisted on a name change because the title sounded like a horror film; he got Shanley to cut out most of the dialogue and pitched it, with Cher in the lead, to Alan Ladd Jr. and John Goldwyn at the 1986 Toronto film festival.
- Nicolas Cage was at a low point after a death in the family and turning down work, and disliked the mainstream sensibility of Shanley's script; he was far more interested in Vampire's Kiss, but his agent Ed Limato forbade it unless he agreed to do Moonstruck.
- Ronny Cammareri's wooden hand was what ultimately hooked Cage on the role: he wanted to replicate the moment in Fritz Lang's Metropolis when Rotwang holds up a robot hand he invented, and saw the character as analogous to the beast in Beauty and the Beast.
- Julie Bovasso, the production's dialect coach, helped Cher master a Brooklyn accent in a few weeks; while filming the final scene, which Jewison called the most difficult of his entire career, she urged Cage to speak louder and faster and he threw a chair.
- Ray Liotta auditioned but Jewison dismissed him as too young; Raul Julia, John Turturro and Al Pacino were all considered for the role, and it finally came down to Peter Gallagher and Nicolas Cage.
