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The following FAQ entries may contain spoilers. Only the biggest ones (if any) will be covered with spoiler tags. Spoiler tags have been used sparingly in order to make the page more readable.
For detailed information about the amounts and types of (a) sex and nudity, (b) violence and gore, (c) profanity, (d) alcohol, drugs, and smoking, and (e) frightening and intense scenes in this movie, consult the IMDb Parents Guide for this movie. The Parents Guide for My Cousin Vinny can be found here.
No. It is based on script by producer/screenwriter Dale Launer.
Bill Gambini (Ralph Macchio) and Stan Rothenstein (Mitchell Whitfield) were on their way to California to attend UCLA. It was January, so they decided to take their convertible by the southern route through Alabama where the scenery would be nicer rather than brave the winter weather in the Midwest and Rocky Mountains.
That wasn't a photo of the getaway car. It was a photo of Bill and Stan's car. When all three witnesses claimed to see a green convertible with a white top tooling out of the parking lot, the officials put up the top on Bill and Stan's car in order to photograph it as described by the witnesses. Only the viewers knew that the top was down when Bill and Stan were at the store. At this point in time, no one suspects that there were two cars involved.
This question is frequently asked by viewers who become confused by a later scene in which Bill is telling Stan how Vinny (Joe Pesci) nailed the magician at Cousin Ruth's wedding. Bill asks Stan, "Do you know who I'm talking about?" and Stan replies, "That magician with the ponytail?" Some viewers think that Bill and Stan are referring to Vinny. The actual reference is to the magician, Alakazam. Stan recognizes Alakazam, probably from his publicity, but Stan was not at Ruth's wedding and had never met Vinny before.
Joe Pesci actually learned the card trick. It's a fairly simple sleight-of-hand trick. He has two cards in his hand, one card over the other. Bill can see that the card is a black-and-white joker. As he talks, Vinny waves the cards around a lot to keep Bill's attention diverted. At the point where he says "HIS WHOLE CASE," his hand dips down close to the table, and he lets the top card fall into his lap. The next time he shows Bill the card, presto, it's a colored joker.
Not from the southern United States, are you? Grits are a type of porridge, similar to polenta, made from coarsely ground corn. The corn kernels can be hulled, producing white grits (as in the movie) or left unhulled, producing yellow grits. Learn more about grits.
Norton is an apparent felon who is facing the electric chair. His presence in the movie is to remind the viewer that Bill and Stan are also facing execution if Vinny doesn't come through for them.
Because Judge Haller (Fred Gwynne) had confronted him about the fact that there is no record of any Vincent Gambini trying any cases in the entire state of New York. Quick-thinking Vinny comes up with the story that he started out as an actor, but there was already a famous actor in New York with his name, so he legally changed his name to Jerry Gallo, and that's the name underwhich he practices law.
Just after Vinny tells Haller that his legal name is Jerry Gallo, he says that Haller can still call him Gambini.
Stan's parents were somewhere in the mountains of Chile and couldn't be reached. Bill comments about his mother's poor health when he and Stan are playing basketball on the prison grounds. She did, however, recommend Vinny as their lawyer.
Technically, he didn't disprove them, but he did cast doubts about their testimony in the eyes of the jury. Sam Tipton (Maury Chaykin) actually saw the "yoots" drive into the Sac-O-Suds parking lot before he started cooking his breakfast grits. He also saw the real killers leave the store when he looked out after cooking his grits. Vinny was able to show that 20 minutes had passed between those two events, not the five minutes that Tipton claimed, thus opening the door to the idea that there may have been two cars involved. Mrs Riley (Paulene Myers)'s testimony was suspect because she could not identify how many fingers Vinny was holding up at half the distance she had been from the getaway car. Ernie Crane (Raynor Scheine) was made to question his own identification of the two men in a green convertible when he was forced to realize that he had made it looking through a dirty window, crud covered screen, a bunch of leaf-covered trees, and seven bushes.
When Special Automotive Instructor for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) George Wilbur (James Rebhorn) provides testimony for the prosecution that the tire tread on the yoots' car was identical to the tread marks on the pavement and that the chemical composition of the tire residue was identical, Vinny then looks at the photos of the tire treads taken by his fiancée Lisa (Marisa Tomei) and lights begin to go off in his head.
At one point Vinny explains to Lisa that the reason he has no court experience is because "between your father's garage and working nights, when was I supposed to go?" Apparently, Vinny put his way through law school by working at Lisa's father's garage and does have knowledge about cars, at least enough to remember that both the '63 Pontiac Tempest and the '64 Buick Skylark had similar bodies, tire tread, and paint colors but different suspensions and to realize that the yoots' car, not having positraction, could not have made the tire tracks left behind by the getaway car.
It's been pointed out by a number of viewers that, after Vinny tells Judge Haller that his legal name is Callo (not Gallo) and Haller gives him 90 minutes until he can verify it, Vinny fails to mention the name change to Lisa when he talks to her in the diner. Consequently, they wonder how Lisa knew about the name change, such that she got Vinny's mentor, Judge Malloy, to fax over the impressive but fake resumé of Jerry Callo. There is no answer to that question, at least not one that can be found in the movie. Some viewers see it as a plot hole. Others think it could have been a scene that landed on the cutting floor. We know only that, when Vinny first tells Lisa that he used the name Jerry Gallo and she reminds him that Jerry Gallo is dead, they had plenty of time over the next three days to discuss a back-up plan in case Judge Haller found out about Gallo (which he did on the third day). Perhaps changing to Callo was one of the things Vinny and Lisa discussed during that time. We also see Lisa making a phone call just before her testimony, which some viewers assume is when she contacted Judge Malloy, who might have told her at that time that an inquiry had just been made regarding one Jerry Callo. Unfortunately, these are just possibilities that cannot be verified in the movie itself.
Other than the fact that Lisa is angry as a hornet and would love to get in a jab at him, Vinny is apparently using Lisa's natural tendency to argue in order to get her to reveal the evidence that he knows will win his case. All along, Vinny had been building his case on the possibility that there were two Buick Skylarks. Suddenly he realizes that isn't the case at all. However, he doesn't want to make it look like he is leading the witness, so he must get her to come up with the answer herself. He gets Lisa on the stand and allows her to tell the world that, in her expert opinion, Vincent LaGuardia Gambini is WRONG. There wasn't two '64 Buick Skylarks as he had theorized. It was a totally different car, as shown by her own photographic evidence. For Vinny, it was the coup that allows him to win his case. For Lisa, it was the coup that allows her to win an argument with Vinny as well as to finally be of help to him. Case dismissed and love-argue relationship salvaged!
He tossed her a big hint. He wanted her to focus on the hydraulic system of the car. "Hydro" refers to water, so he asks her: "Does the defense's case hold WATER?" Get it?
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