Bloody Mama/Fun Facts
From The Grindhouse Cinema Database
< Bloody Mama
- In a January 2003 interview with Esquire Magazine, Robert De Niro says he spent a lunch break sleeping in an open grave to help stay in character.
- Robert De Niro lost approximately 30 pounds to play his role.
- Bruce Dern's character of Dirkman is a combination of several Barker Gang members, most notably Alvin Carpis, who was a cellmate of Freddie Barker and the primary member of the gang (outside of the family).
- Shelley Winters was such an extreme method actress that she spent the entire evening before the grave scene at a funeral parlor staring at a real corpse in a coffin convincing herself she was staring at her dead son, in addition to listening to loud opera just before shooting a scene to work herself up emotionally, and throwing a very real wine bottle at Lloyd (Robert De Niro) in order to make him cry.
- In one scene where Herman Barker (Don Stroud) punches Ma Barker (Shelley Winters) in the nose, Stroud accidentally punched Winters in the nose for real, and hurt her badly enough that she had to be taken to the hospital.
