Coming to America

• Music played during the bathroom scene between 04:47-05:14. Additional scenario voice "The royal penis is cleaned, Your Highness!" is done by by Victoria Dillard

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• "She's your queeeeeeeeeen to be..."

• "Tell me you did not love me when you thought I was a goat herder." (Akeem to Lisa)

• "Listen....REAL Americans!" (Akeem excitedly says when hearing the guys in the My-T Sharp barber shop screaming and cursing at each other)

• "We seek meager accommodations." (Akeem tells the landlord of housing project while all dressed up in royal attire).

• "This is America, Jack...you say something about my daughter again and I'm gonna break my foot off in your royal ass." (Cleo McDowell to the King)

• "Bark like a dog...a big dog...hop on one leg...make a noise like an orangutang..." (Akeem to arranged wife, who proceeds to do exactly as he says)

• "The royal penis is clean, your highness." (Bathers to Akeem)

• Akeem: "Ohar, it is my 21st birthday, do you think just for once I could go to the bathroom by myself?" Ohar: "Most amusing, sir. Wipers!!!"

• King Joffe: "Do not alert him to my presence. I will deal with him myself." (evoking James Earl Jones' Star Wars persona, Darth Vader)

• "I have recently been placed in charge of garbage... When you think of garbage, think of Akeem!" (Akeem to Lisa)

• Queen: "I only want our son to be happy". King: "Even if she agreed, they still could not marry, it is against the tradition". Queen: "Well, it is a stupid tradition". King: "Who am I to change it?". Queen: "I thought you were the King!".

Trivia

• This film includes a cameo of two characters from the movie Trading Places, another Eddie Murphy/John Landis film. At the end of Trading Places, the Duke brothers, Randolph and Mortimer, lose their entire fortunes at the hands of Murphy's character. In this film, the brothers are now homeless and living on the streets. Prince Akeem gives them a paper bag filled with a large sum of money, enough to get them off the streets again.

• Like many of Eddie Murphy's films, Coming to America features Murphy in several different roles, this time paired with Arsenio Hall. For example, Hall plays Reverend Brown, who introduces Randy Watson (Murphy) and his band Sexual Chocolate, who perform a terrible rendition of Whitney Houston's song "Greatest Love of All" at the "Black Awareness Rally." In the famous barbershop scene, Murphy and Hall (in heavy makeup) play the elderly barbers Clarence and Morris, who engage in furious debate with Sweets (Clint Smith) about the boxing skills of Joe Louis and Rocky Marciano rather than attending to Akeem's hair. The barber scene is especially notable because Murphy plays both Akeem and Clarence simultaneously, effectively giving himself a haircut. Murphy also plays the Jewish old man in the barbershop, displaying his marvellous talent for the Yiddish impersonation.

• Eriq La Salle, as Darryl, briefly breaks the fourth wall in the scene where Patrice lets him come through the window of her room.

• Musician Karl Denson is a member of Sexual Chocolate.

• Actor John Amos was in a McDonald's commercial in the 1970s.

• Cuba Gooding Jr.'s first ever role in a motion picture as the boy getting his hair trimmed at the barber shop.

• Because of the obvious name similarity, the film's producers had to obtain permission from McDonald's before using the name McDowell's. The scenes of McDowell's were actually filmed at a Wendy's restaurant, located at 85-07 Queens Boulevard in Elmhurst, Queens.

• Actors James Earl Jones and Madge Sinclair performed as king and queen again in Disney's Lion King. That role was also Sinclair's last, before she died of leukemia.

• One of the Zamunda scenes is recreated in the 1997 Busta Rhymes video Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See.

• Soul Glo has entered the English and American vernacular as a name for any jheri curl product.

• Famed South African chorus, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, sings Mbube during the opening sequence (the song is known as The Lion Sleeps Tonight in America). The group has gone on to record several different versions of Mbube; however, the version heard in Coming to America has not been released on its soundtrack or on CD as of 2006.

• Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon was one of the three "rose bearers".

• Actor Jamie Foxx played the soldier who opened the door to the back room in the engagement scene.

• Samuel L. Jackson played the man who tried to rob the McDowell's restaurant at gunpoint in one of his early roles.

• Stand-up comic Louie Anderson plays the McDowell's clerk in the same scene as Samuel L. Jackson.

• In 2006's "World Series of Pop Culture" on VH-1, one of the pop culture-obsessed teams competing named themselves Sexual Chocolate as an homage to this film.

• John Landis's calling card, See You Next Wednesday, appears on a science-fiction movie poster in the subway station after Lisa storms off the train and Akeem follows her.

• WWE wrestler Mark Henry was nicknamed 'Sexual Chocolate' in a reference to the film.

• Paula Abdul arranged the wedding dance scene.

• Snoop Dogg's new single, "That's That Shit" featuring R. Kelly, samples the music in the scene where Eddie Murphy is getting washed by female servants in the lavatory.

References

1. ^ Thane Rosenbaum wrote, "In 1995, the syndicated columnist Art Buchwald prevailed after a seven-year legal battle against Paramount Pictures, claiming that he had submitted the idea, and the original script, for the Eddie Murphy film, Coming to America, withouet ver being properly compensated or acknowledged for his efforts. The trial court eventually agreed with Buchwald, although the damage award that he received was considerably less than what he had sought, and even less than what he eventually had to pay out in legal fees. The Myth of Moral Justice, page 182.

External links

• Coming to America at the Internet Movie Database
• Filming Locations

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