Trivia / Cocoon

• Awesome, Dear Boy: Steve Guttenberg worked on this movie for less than his usual fee because he liked the script, and really wanted to work with Ron Howard.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Wilford Brimley was only fifty years old when the first movie was made, and had to have his hair colored white to look old enough to be a senior citizen.
• Enforced Method Acting: The scene where Hume Cronyn's character punches out the orderly wasn't all acting. Cronyn, who was a Golden Gloves boxer and was blind in one eye, actually knocked the guy out because he (Cronyn) lacked accurate depth perception.
• On-Set Injury: Hume Cronyn had lost sight in one eye in his days as a Golden Glove boxer, so in the scene where he hits the young orderly, he had no depth perception and accidentally knocked the other actor out.
• Real-Life Relative:
  • Joe and Alma Finley are played by real-life husband and wife Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. The sequel was the last movie they'd ever appear together in before Tandy's death in 1994.
  • Ron Howard's wife Cheryl, his mother Jean, his brother Clint and his father Rance all appear in the movie as well.
• Throw It In!: Ron Howard says in the DVD Commentary that Wilford Brimley just made up his Unusual Euphemism on the spot, and they decided to keep it.
• Underage Casting: Wilford Brimley was only 50 when he played senior citizen Ben Luckett, whereas his costars were all in their 70s. He was only eleven years older than his on-screen daughter Linda Harrison.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Robert Zemeckis was the original director, but low expectations for Romancing the Stone led to his firing from this film. Stone went on to be a critical and box office hit, and led to Zemeckis directing Back to the Future and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and so forth.
  • Nicolas Cage and Bill Paxton were considered for Jack Bonner.
  • Joan Bennett was the first choice for the role of Bess McCarthy, but her husband had talked her out of taking it, and it went to Gwen Verdon instead. Had Bennett accepted, it would have been her first film since Suspiria (1977) (which ended up being her final role).

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