The Green Mile (1999) - 8 questions

Question: Why is Percy put into a mental hospital at the end?

Answer: Coffey put the sickness that he absorbed from Hal's wife into Percy, causing him to snap mentally, shoot Wild Bill and then collapse into what amounts to a catatonic state. He was placed in a mental hospital for long-term treatment to try to cure his condition.

Question: I know most movies have a disclaimer at the end of the credits saying that no animals were hurt during this movie, etc., so I have to ask this: did Percy stomp on a real mouse? I'm only asking because the after-death twitching that the mouse did was VERY realistic. (I've trapped many mice in my home so I know what I'm talking about - only I don't stomp on them.)

Answer: No, not a real mouse, just a very good puppet.

Question: After killing "Wild Bill," Percy is lying on the ground "puking" out Melinda's brain tumor that John Coffey placed into him. While Percy's spitting that out, one of the guards keeps yelling "Oh no!" I see nobody's lips moving to say that, so is that an audio error, or was the person not on the screen? Anyway, it really bothers me, but who was it who yells that?

Answer: The camera is only on three individual people (Paul, Percy and the dead Wild Bill) when you hear Dean saying "Oh no, oh no."

Question: What are the other inmates on death row for?

Answer: Wild Bill is condemned for murdering people during a robbery. John is there for the twin girls. We don't learn what the others are there for as it isn't relevant to the plot.

Question: What are the meanings of the random French words that Del uses throughout the movie? When Percy is chasing the mouse, he calls him a dumb something. (I don't want to put it here because it might be profane.) And when talking about who will take care of Mr. Jingles, referring to Dean's son, he says "He just a boy, n'est-ce pas?"

Answer: In the example you gave he says "He's just a boy, isn't he?"

Question: Would the guards have made up a reason to move a death row inmate out of death row so the inmate wouldn't have to watch the guards do a runthrough of his execution?

Answer: Most likely that would be the reason. As the guards explain to Percy in one of the scenes that the best course of action to take with death row inmates to keep things as calm and relaxed as possible. This way they don't have to worry about upsetting the inmate.

Question: As in Del's case, would the guards have fabricated a scenario by which to get a death row inmate out long enough to do a practice run like they did?

Answer: The practice run wasn't with a death row inmate. He was incarcerated in another part of the prison.

Question: There seemed to be an unusually high number of guards as compared to the number of prisoners; would they actually be armed with pistols?

Answer: Since this movie takes place in the '30s, I think the number of guards is about right. There were no such things as stun guns back then. If a prisoner freaked out, they would need a few men to overpower him, just like we see when 'Wild Bill' is brought in. Prison guards today don't carry guns because they could be used against the guard. In the '30s no such rules existed. If you were a cop or a guard, you had a gun no matter what.