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9 unusual facts about Sergio Leone


A Fistful of Paintballs

The episode is a tribute to Western films, specifically the "Dollars Trilogy" by Sergio Leone.

Alternative title

An example is Italian Director's Sergio Leone's 1971 film initially released as Duck, You Sucker!, as he was convinced this was a well-known English saying.

Battle of Glorieta Pass

The 1966 Sergio Leone film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly refers obliquely to the battle, setting one scene during the post-battle retreat of Sibley's men.

Brent Amaker and the Rodeo

The Rodeo have a cinematic quality and are often put in context of spaghetti western films made by Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone.

Chang Cheh

Heavily influenced by Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns and Japanese samurai films, Cheh brought elements from these movies into his own work, revolutionizing Hong Kong filmmaking.

Fabio Testi

His most famous job as a stuntman was in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West, where he fell from a rooftop and hit the ground on his shoulder.

Techniscope

Many DVD editions have been transferred this way and the results have frequently been stunning, e.g. Blue Underground's The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and MGM's special editions of Sergio Leone's Westerns.

Ted Kurdyla

In 1984, Kurdyla worked as the production liaison for the New York unit of Once Upon a Time in America, which was directed by Sergio Leone and starred Robert De Niro.

The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla

Stephen King has acknowledged multiple sources of influence for this story, including Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, its stepchild The Magnificent Seven, Sergio Leone's "Man with No Name" trilogy, and other works by Howard Hawks and John Sturges, among others.


Ernesto Gastaldi

He has collaborated with Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci, Riccardo Freda, Tonino Valerii, Sergio Martino and Sergio Leone; as such he can be regarded as a chief architect of the giallo and Spaghetti Western film.

Franco Giraldi

Later Giraldi had the opportunity to work as assistant director of, among others, Gillo Pontecorvo, Giuseppe De Santis, Sergio Corbucci and Sergio Leone.

Monthly Film Bulletin

From January 1971, all films were listed in alphabetical order, mainly because a new wave of critics who were influencing the magazine had already overturned the assumptions implicit in the separation of films (for example, several by Sergio Leone and many from the stable of Roger Corman were only included in the "shorter notices" section).

Pest of the West

Aspects of the musical cues used in the high noon duel between SpongeBuck and Dead Eye Plankton was from Sergio Leone's 1968 Spaghetti Western film Once Upon a Time in the West, complete with Ennio Morricone's harmonica riff used for the Charles Bronson character.

René Giessen

The success of these movies originated a whole new genre later known as the "Spaghetti Westerns" where once again the harmonica plays a dominant role (there is even a character by the name of Harmonica in Sergio Leone's movie Once Upon a Time in the West) in the music of Ennio Morricone, played on the harmonica by Franco De Gemini.

Sieghardt Rupp

His most noted western performance was his role as Esteban Rojo in Sergio Leone's 1964 production A Fistful of Dollars alongside Clint Eastwood and Gian Maria Volonté.

Star Wars sources and analogues

Lucas is also a fan of Sergio Leone's film Once Upon a Time in the West, and according to Leone's biographer, Christopher Frayling, he listened to the score from Leone's film while editing The Empire Strikes Back.

Storm Rider

Storm Rider (Il Grande duello, 1972), aka The Grand Duel and The Big Showdown is a Spaghetti Western directed by Giancarlo Santi, who had previously worked as Sergio Leone's assistant director on The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West.

Sukiyaki Western Django

It also takes inspiration from the "Man with No Name" stock character variously used in the spaghetti western genre but most notably in the Dollars trilogy by Sergio Leone (initially inspired by Akira Kurosawa's jidaigeki film Yojimbo).

The Texican

Audie Murphy was one of the many stars who turned down Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars because he recognised that the screenplay was an uncredited copy of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo.

Wolfgang Lukschy

Possibly his most noted performances worldwide were his roles as Alfred Jodl in the 1962 American war film The Longest Day and as John Baxter in Sergio Leone's 1964 production A Fistful of Dollars alongside Clint Eastwood and Gian Maria Volonté.


see also

The Big Gundown

The Big Gundown (Italian title: La resa dei conti – roughly The Settling of Scores) is a 1966 spaghetti western, written by long-time Sergio Leone collaborator Sergio Donati and directed by Sergio Sollima.