In Leon: The Professional (1994), his potted plant is a variety of aglaonema, and Leon says it is like him because it has 'no roots'. At the end of the movie, Mathilda plants it in the grounds of her new school (insert) to give it roots, which will kill it. (source & explanation in comments).
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Not to mention she just bungs it into the ground in an open space. The groundskeeper's mower will get it before the frost.
Wee gul won't be plantin assassin's lettice on Willey's watch!
THE NOOZLE AT THE END OF THE HOOSE!
Noodle? What noodle?
Those Scots sure are a contentious people.
I never sounded so Scottish as when I read your comment in my head. It’s a miracle cause I can not do accents! Cool, thanks!
read Trainspotting, you’ll think in a Scottish accent for weeks
I’m from Glasgow and I have to read it in an Edinburgh accent.
Watch this instead https://youtu.be/GH9ajekHNKM
Or r/scottishpeopletwitter
"Arrrmed robberreh! Bu' wi' a replica! Ah mean how the fook cannie be armed robberreh wi' a fookin' replica?!?!"
Or read any Irvine Welsh.
I had to sound out parts of "The Acid House" in my head to read some dialogue.
Angelas Ashes for Irish?
This is so true. Weird hu it trens yer brain so qwickly
Hahaha! I’m so tempted to do this now!
That's awesome haha!
Here’s a really fun one I learned:
Wanna say “Spice Girls” with a perfect Scottish accent? Say... Space Ghettos...
“Hmm. ‘Don’t touch Willy.’ Good advice.”
Lousy Smarch weather!
Jou mean the hoose at me house? (=
That’s mah retirement grease❗️
Lass. He’d say Lass
So this scene, when it shows the overhead view, pans out and you see the city skyline, was filmed in a park in West New York, NJ. That house isn't there, that was shot elsewhere. How do I know?Because I was there. This was in the park behind our apartment building (56th street and Boulevard East) and where my friends and I played every single day. On this day we went out there to play and there were all these people in our park. So I (was around 13/14) go up to the guy next to the camera and I ask him what's happening, why are you guys in our park. So this french guy says, "we're filming a movie." He was a little annoyed but not too bad, so I asked him what the name of the movie is and he tells me, "Leon."
Now I'm hispanic, this is a hispanic neighborhood. So I respond, "A movie about a lion in West New York, that's fucking stupid." And walked away. Little did I know...
Little did you know that Besson was already mentally casting for Fifth Element. You could have been discovered then and there, a kid from the streets...you could have been a star.
I coulda been somebody!
Fantastic username
I coulda bean somebody!
I coulda been a contender
Jose, luz!
This is the best response so far.
Besson married a 15 year old when he was 30 (and was probably the inspiration for Leon) so probably best not to wish upon that particular star.
Yeah, getting discovered by Besson wasn't necessarily a good thing.
All Ruby Rod was missing was a spanish accent.
I don’t think there were any child actors in the 5th Element tho
Well, there was Aziz.
"Aziz, light!"
Thanks for clearing that up for me. At the beginning of the final scene, she walks out of the house, passing the group of teen girls sitting on the steps. That was filmed on the Stevens Institute of Technology campus in Hoboken, NJ.
But I was always confused because when the scene ends with the overhead view that shows the NYC skyline, that was never the angle from Stevens Tech, which is more directly across from the Empire State Building. So now I know: it was on Boulevard East.
Stevens Tech of course! I thought it looked familiar! I was confused too when I watched the movie because the building/view also didn't line up for me either and I knew they had filmed part of it in WNY.
So what happened to the plant?
Art Department would have removed it, refilled the hole and replaced the grass that was cut out for the scene.
I choose to believe that someone from the Art Department took it home for retirement and that it's happy and still growing.
No clue, but if they left it there we would have removed it. Couldn't have that on our two-hand touch football field.
Almost expected this to end with a WWE reference or George Lucas filming.
Was actually Albert Einstein
I lived in WNY too! On 67th and Hudson for about 3 years. Nice area, but it takes about an hour and a half to find any street parking after 5pm.
Nice, that's the border, almost Guttenberg/NB. I learned to drive in WNY, so my parking/driving through narrow spaces skills are amazing.
These are one of my favorite things for locals. In Tom Cruise's The War of the Worlds, he runs down Ferry Street in Newark, NJ, turns a corner, and ends up very far away. lmao
wait. West New York is in NJ? is it closer to NY or PA?
All I could think during that scene was that she's planting a hot house plant that will die at the first frost in NYC.
Funny enough and I'm not sure if you are referring to Memorial Park on Broadway or Donnells memorial park on BLVD east, but it currently has a sign that says "Sponsored by the West New York Cuban Lions"
I grew up in WNY and saw that it was a filming location for that movie and been looking everywhere for the spot. I finally found your comment so thank you!
What were you before?
Yes that's exactly the one thing in the movie that drives me nuts. "Not in the open green, matilda, the gardener will mow it down as soon as he can! No.just.don't!" She does it anyway anytime i watch the movie, ignoring my yelling...
It'll die just like Leon, by being mowed down.
SPOILERS!
Can we really cry spoilers for an almost 30 year old movie
I’d say not if you’re in a thread specifically about details from the movie.
But in general discussion about movies, I don’t really subscribe to the idea that there’s a certain time when spoilers are no longer spoilers.
If I just turned 13 today, then I really haven’t had a chance to watch The Godfather, The Professional, Fight Club, etc., even though they’re extremely popular movies. And those are great stories that I would hate to spoil for anybody.
I really don’t get why we even need an arbitrary moratorium on spoilers. Why not just assume that someone hasn’t seen it and doesn’t want it spoiled? That should be the default, even if the thing being discussed is a hundred years old.
People being born everyday. Think of the CHILDREN.
No, we cannot.
Nah, he blew himself up with Gary Oldman
I laughed so hard reading “bungs it into the ground”
Thank you for that.
This is what I always thought. Poor little plant friend.
she did end up being the death of him, it's just the shape of his heart I suppose.
Odd choice to wrap things up I thought.
Pretty much the only thing about that movie that doesn't work for me (aside from Besson's ongoing preoccupation with small waifish girls being sexualized while learning to be violent)
Don't read the original script.
This is one of my favorite movies... I don’t want to read the original now.
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did he direct la femme nikita too?
Yep, but it sure doesn't stop there. Let's take a quick trip over to IMDb and see...yep, i count eight movies (plus two upcoming sequels) he wrote and directed that involve fetishization of young, vulnerable-looking females being sexy or violent (usually both):
Anna
Valerian & The City of a Thousand Planets
Lucy
Colombiana
The Messenger
The Fifth Element
Léon: The Professional
La Femme Nikita
Especially since he married a 15 year old.
I hadn't known about that before this thread. I'm weirdly unsurprised.
Sting is that you?
It's hard to say [it]....
Might not survive the mods, and fair enough, but here goes...
In the IMDB page for Leon, this is mentioned because New York Times film critic Janet Maslin (unfavourably) reviewed the movie in 1994 (He May Be a Killer, But He's Such a Sweetie), and noted that "Mathilda eventually digs a hole for Leon's houseplant on the school's grounds, giving it symbolic life without realizing it will die in the first frost."
Researching the plant reveals firstly that it could be pronounced 'ag-LEON-ema', which seems like a decent detail in itself, but also that yes, it's a Chinese evergreen and does not handle cold climates, like a New York winter might provide, at all.
So I'm wondering if Luc Besson also chose the plant and the ending as an response to Leon's 'no roots' sentiments about something that can be moved easily and thrive but, once it stays too long in one place, can easily die a quick death.
I can't find anything from the man himself to confirm it though, so maybe it was just a shitty plant choice...
Sources...
Janet Maslin 1994 review
Article about the plant and the film
Article about aglaonema temperature sensitivity
I can't think of a single houseplant that would survive a NY winter outdoors in the ground. Most houseplants are either succulents or tropical plants. So being sensitive to cold isn't a aglaonema thing, it's just a houseplant thing. And I don't get the "no roots" thing, chinese evergreens have roots?
I don't know this for a fact but if something was described to me as not having roots, I would just assume its roots don't go very far and it is either easily transferable for that reason, or it's well-suited to living in a pot, or both.
Plant roots can go as far as their container allows. A plant that could have huge, winding roots in nature can still grow fine in a pot. Leave them in long enough and they can completely fill the pot, displacing most of the soil.
Right, being rootbound is generally a super bad condition for a plant to be in, so if someone said a plant was "rootless" I'd assume they meant one with shallow or sparse root systems more suited to container gardening.
I probably wouldn't use the term "rootless" but that's on Leon.
The only one that comes to mind is "English ivy". "No roots" confuses me too. It's not like anubias where burying the rhizome kills it. Aglaonema grow roots.
A bromeliad like an "air plant" comes to mind for me.
They can have roots to attach to stuff. Unless you specifically talking about spanish moss one.
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It is a super common houseplant that you can regularly find in grocery stores. Almost all houseplants can't live outside in most of the US, that is why they are houseplants and not garden plants.
Same goes for house cats. If you plant your house cat outside thinking it will grow into a big tiger, you’re mistaken.