Trivia / Amadeus

• Ability over Appearance: Miloš Forman insisted that his lead actors retain their American accents so that they could concentrate on their characters and performance instead.
• California Doubling: 18th century Vienna was shot in 1980s Prague - because their roofs don't have lots of satellite dishes that could potentially spoil the shot.
• Career Resurrection: A rare example in that Amadeus revived the career of a dead man. Before the movie came out, Salieri and his work were mostly forgotten, but the film has since revived interest in Salieri and his music. Wikipedia describes modern-day performances of his music, including a festival in his hometown, where a theatre was renamed in his honor.
• Cast the Runner-Up: F. Murray Abraham originally sought for the small role of Rosenberg. During one audition session, Miloš Forman asked him to read for the part of the old Salieri. His reading was so good that Forman has already had in mind of him playing the lead role but deliberately stopped short of saying "you got the part" because Forman knew that casting him for that would clash with his work on Scarface (1983), so he deliberately waited until he nearly completed all his scenes. A few days later, Forman asked Abraham to do the same reading for a few more audition sessions, but his refusal to do so eventually convinced Forman to cast him because he felt Abraham "could be a great actor if there are no breaks in between."
• The Cast Showoff: That really is Tom Hulce playing the piano on his back in one scene.
• Celebrity Voice Actor: In the Japanese dub, Antonio Salieri was voiced by the late movie and theater actor Takeshi Kusaka, who many Anime fans can recognize him as the voice of the main villain M. Bison in Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie.
• Deleted Scene: Forman's R-rated Director's Cut version has twenty minutes of extra scenes that were cut for pacing or in order to get a PG rating. Many of them fill in minor Plot Holes.
  • A scene after Cäcilia Weber (Constanze's mother) faints on-stage after the first performance of The Abduction from the Seraglio and Caterina Cavalieri angrily hits Mozart with a bouquet of roses. Salieri follows her to her dressing room and congratulates her. Mozart turns up and Cavalieri angrily says that Constanze "must be dazzling in bed" (much to Mozart's shock) and that's why Mozart is marrying her. This is how Salieri knows for certain that "the creature had had" his darling girl.
  • A scene after Constanze shows up at Salieri's house and asks him to look at her husband's work and appoint him to the post. Salieri tells her to come back tonight alone and that a "service requires a service". She does so later on that night, and begins undressing. As she is standing there topless, Salieri suddenly rings for his valet to come and show her out. This explains why Constanze is rude to Salieri in later scenes.
  • A scene where Mozart arrives at a wealthy family's home to teach their teenage daughter to play the piano. However, the father also has loads of dogs who howl at music, and he insists that they stay as Mozart plays so they can be broken of the habit. Mozart eventually cuts off the lesson and curtly requests the man contact him should he need a second lesson for his dogs. A Call-Back scene has him returning to the same man and drunkenly beg for a job.
• Dueling Dubs: There are two French dubs for the film; the original from 1984 and the second made for the 2002 Director's Cut. In the case of the latter, Luq Hamet as Mozart and Claude Giraud as Emperor Joseph II are the only voice actors from the original dub who reprised their roles.
• Dyeing for Your Art: F. Murray Abraham learned to play the piano for his role as Salieri.
• Enforced Method Acting: Hulce also deliberately skipped lines so as to make it seem Salieri could not understand what he was being dictated.
• Fake Nationality: The Austrian and Italian characters are all played by American and British actors, though F. Murray Abraham has Italian ancestry.
• Hostility on the Set: Writer Peter Shaffer and director Milos Forman were holed up together in Forman's house in Connecticut developing the screenplay, and very quickly tired of each other. It seems to have been a case of proximity breeding contempt, as the two were able to laugh about it once they weren't forced to live together in close quarters for an extended period.
• Method Acting: Tom Hulce and F. Murray Abraham consciously maintained a deliberately distant working relationship during the making of the film, to emulate their characters. The cast and crew describe both Hulce and Abraham becoming Lost in Character to an extent; Elizabeth Berridge, who played his character's wife, lived with Hulce for a time after filming wrapped and noted that he was like a completely different person. Abraham, meanwhile, largely kept to himself, turning down invitations to get-togethers at the end of shooting days.
• The Other Darrin: The Japanese dub has a very interesting case of this: the Director's Cut replaced some of the voice actors from the dub used in the original theatrical cut. In this case, Salieri, Emperor Joseph II and Leopold Mozart's voice actors were replaced with new ones, while keeping the rest of the voice cast intact.
• The Other Marty: Meg Tilly was originally supposed to play Mozart's wife Constance, but she injured her leg the day before filming and the part had to be recast. Director Miloš Forman did later hire her again for another period film set in the 18th century, Valmont (based on the novel Dangerous Liaisons).
• Revival by Commercialization: According to The Other Wiki, the film ironically helped spark a revival of Salieri's music, which had previously languished in obscurity.
• Self-Adaptation: Playwright Peter Shaffer adapted his play to the screen, reworking it almost from the ground up to suit the new medium, including changing several plotlines and beefing up Mozart's role to a co-lead with Salieri. Both Shaffer and director Milos Forman acknowledged having worked on the script together, but only Shaffer receives credit in the finished film.
• Throw It In!: In the scene when Mozart is dictating the Requiem to Salieri, the audio playback suffered technical difficulties; however, since Mozart is supposed to be delirious with fever, Hulce played his reactions in character and this made it into the final cuts.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The original script saw a number of variations in character actions and roles: Salieri's initial suicide attempt saw him attempt to jump out of his bedroom window as his servants tried to coax him away from the window and back to his own room (at which point they, as in the finished film, break down the door and find Salieri wounded); Salieri's servant girl Lorl played a slightly larger role; Leopold Mozart took a more vehement stance against stopping his son Wolfgang's marriage to Constanze; and the Baron Van Swieten was cast as "Von Swieten".
  • Mark Hamill was considered for the role of Mozart (for the film) and he had already played the role on Broadway. He was rejected because the director wanted lesser-known actors. David Bowie, Kenneth Branagh, Tim Curry, Mel Gibson, and Mick Jagger were also among those rejected for the part. According to Miloš Forman's autobiography, one studio offered to fund the film on the condition that Forman cast Walter Matthau (a reported Mozart enthusiast). Forman refused the offer, considering Matthau to be too old for the role, since he was more than 60, and Mozart only lived to be 35. Andrew Lloyd Webber told The One Show that he was offered it, but turned it down.
  • Burt Reynolds was an early candidate for Salieri. Sam Waterston auditioned for the role.
  • Forman wanted Amy Irving to repeat her Broadway role of Mozart's wife. To his disappointment, she passed, unable to cope with six months in Prague. Rebecca De Mornay and Elizabeth McGovern (who had previously worked with Forman in Ragtime) screen-tested for the role.
  • Ian Richardson was originally cast as Emperor Joseph II.

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