Summary
- The Green Mile's use of 15 mice for Mr. Jingles adds to the film's entertainment and supernatural elements.
- Setting The Green Mile in Louisiana was a rare non-Maine choice for Stephen King, adding discomfort and racial tension.
- Despite historical inaccuracies, The Green Mile's visual choices and costume details enhanced character development and storytelling.
From the reality behind how tall Michael Clarke Duncan really is to the mice who played Mr. Jingles, there are a lot of interesting details about the making of The Green Mile. Years after Frank Darabont made the acclaimed The Shawshank Redemption, he made another Stephen King adaptation set in a prison. However, The Green Mile is a much different movie as it stars Tom Hanks as a prison guard working at a death row facility in the 1930s who encounters an unusual prisoner named John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan).
The Green Mile is a movie that has held up well to the test of time, and it's a great film that anyone can watch and enjoy over and over again. However, even those who have seen the movie countless times might not be aware of some of the smaller details that helped bring the larger production together. The key cast for the film, the period setting, and the ambitious genre elements required a lot of interesting approaches to making The Green Mile the beloved movie it is today.
Everything The Green Mile Changes From Stephen King's Book
The critically acclaimed movie The Green Mile is based on a book by Stephen King. Here are all of the differences between the film and the novel.
13 Several Mice Were Used As Mr. Jingles
The Nice Required To Perform Specific Tricks
Despite all the incredible performances and rich characters among the human cast of the movie, The Green Mile's Mr. Jingles threatens to steal the show each time he appears on-screen. The tiny mouse appears on death row and brings a bit of fun and amusement into the dreary world of the doomed criminals. He also becomes key to the overall story and its supernatural elements.
The movie actually cast 15 mice in total.
The mouse in question is shown to do far more than just scurry around on the floor as he provides a lot of entertainment in the form of some circus tricks, like posing a small wheel. While it is impressive that the production managed to find one mouse that could be trained to do this, according to the making-of documentary, the movie actually cast 15 mice in total to pull off the part with each mouse hired to do the specific tricks required for filming.
12 A Rare Non-Maine Setting For A Stephen King Story
King Chose Louisiana As The Setting
Author Stephen King is undoubtedly best known for his horror work, so it's easy to forget the fact that he actually has a very wide variety of stories that he likes to tell, including the tale of The Green Mile. However, one thing that makes The Green Mile seem even less like a Stephen King tale is that, in a very rare departure from his standard, the story is actually not set in his home state of Maine.
The Shawshank Redemption's setting does stick to the common Maine location for the story, but The Green Mile is a story set in the South during the Great Depression. The film was shot in a dilapidated prison in Tennessee, but the story itself takes place in Louisiana. The humid climate can be felt throughout the movie, adding a sense of discomfort while the racial tensions of the area at the time play into the story as well.
11 The Correctional Officer Uniforms Are Inaccurate
The Choice Was Based On The Visual Authority Given By The Uniforms
It is interesting to see the challenges that come with making a period piece as sometimes the filmmakers are attempting to balance the historical accuracy of the movie with what the audience would expect. Usually, anachronisms in films are just simple mistakes, not choices made by the film production intentionally. However, The Green Mile made an understandable choice when they decided to put all of the prison guards in uniform even though prison guards in that era didn't have official uniforms yet.
They could have made the film more accurate to the time period, but ironically, the viewing audience most likely would have had a hard time buying the characters as guards if they weren't in uniform. It could also be that Darabont and his team chose to stick closer to King's work as inspiration as the source material does specifically mention guard uniforms.