miscellaneous trivia

» Darlene Cates was chosen for the part of Bonnie Grape after a casting director contacted the "Sally Jessy Raphael" (1985) show and was sent a tape of her appearance as a guest a few months earlier.


» The picture of Mrs. Grape as a young woman is a real life picture of Darlene Cates as a young woman.


» In the film, while playing Arnie Grape, DiCaprio put a grasshopper in a mailbox and slammed it shut beheading it: "I didn't know I wasn't supposed to kill him. They said put the head in and slam it. So I killed one and that is the take they used. There was a whole bunch of animal rights people on the set to make sure that the grasshopper didn't get its head chopped off, and I didn't know, and they complained. But it was too late when its head was on the floor. But if you think about it, an animal rights person for a dirty little grasshopper?! I mean, that's a bit ridiculous, don't you think? I think they should be helping some homeless people or something..."


» Leonardo DiCaprio said that playing Arnie was "the most fun I've ever had".


» Johnny Depp felt bad about having to ridicule Darlene Cates's character "Momma" and would often apologize to her after shooting. Depp once said to Cates, "Man, I want you to know how much I hated having to say those things about you, or about your character."


» Leonardo DiCaprio created Arnie's trademark flicking his finger against his nose, describing it as a sort of "brain wipe... like Arnie is massaging the inside of his brain."


» You can spot some of Darlene Cates' family (her daughter, son-in-law, and grandson) during the scene when Momma goes to get Arnie from jail.


» Leonardo DiCaprio feared that audiences might perceive Arnie as obnoxious and was surprised at how much everyone loved the character.


» Part of the audition for the role of Arnie involved watching a video of an actual mentally-retarded teen and copying his actions. Of Leonardo DiCaprio's audition, Hallstrom remarked, "Leonardo was the only one who had picked up on the essentials, the body mannerisms, and integrated them....In the first audition, I noticed that (Leonardo's) gaze became different when he did the reading and was amazed that he seemed to be able to enter the mind of the mentally challenged kid intuitively. Leonardo himself had gone somewhere else..."


» Leonardo DiCaprio went beyond Arnie's scripted mannerisms and incorporated ones he observed when he visited a school for mentally-retarded kids as well as many of his own making. On playing Arnie, DiCaprio said, "I could have made (Arnie) autistic. I could have made him anything. He was officially entitled 'mentally retarded' but I like to call him Arnie."


» Some people, who hadn't heard of Leonardo DiCaprio before, thought that he was actually mentally-retarded after seeing the movie.


» Darlene Cates disagreed with certain parts in the movie, such as the fact that Momma doesn't bathe and the part where Momma walks out of the bathroom and the floor creaks and almost falls in, because she felt they were too stereotypical.