#412: Top Five Things You Didn't Notice About the Sound of Music
The Patrick Coffin Show | Interviews with influencers | Commentary about culture | Tools for transformation
Patrick Coffin
4.8 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 16 August 2025
⏱️ 9 minutes
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Summary
In this video, podcaster and media analyst Patrick Coffin uncovers some surprising facts about the 1965 smash hit musical The Sound of Music, and explains why singer actress Gwen Stefani should play Maria in a remake. * Julie Andrews was knocked flat several times by the helicopter downdraft while filming the iconic opening scene.
• Christopher Plummer thought the film was overly sentimental, nicknaming it The Sound of Mucus—and he filmed the Salzburg Music Festival finale tipsy.
• Why the title The Sound of Music makes perfect sense once you know the backstory.
• “Edelweiss” is not Austria’s national anthem—it was penned by Oscar Hammerstein in New York specifically for the movie.
• Patrick’s dream-casting for a remake: Gwen Stefani as Maria and Blake Shelton as Captain Von Trapp.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You've seen it. Your parents have seen it. Your grandparents have seen it. You've probably forced your kids to watch it during a snow day. |
| 0:07.1 | The Hills are alive with it. That's right, The Sound of Music. We're going to talk about the five things hiding in plain sight surrounding behind the scenes and in the 1965 hit movie, The Sound of Music. |
| 0:18.0 | Directed by Robert Wise and written by Ernest Lehman. Ernest Lehman, |
| 0:21.3 | if that name sounds familiar, also wrote the classic Hitchcock thriller, North by Northwest. |
| 0:27.8 | Great writer. What a team that put together this film based on a stage play that itself was based |
| 0:34.5 | on the memoirs of the real-life woman Maria von Trapp. |
| 0:40.3 | But there's a lot about the film you probably have not noticed, |
| 0:43.2 | and I'm going to give you five fascinating behind the scenes. |
| 0:48.3 | Facts about the film, the last great drop of golden sunshine, |
| 0:50.3 | and what we call the Golden Age of Cinema. |
| 0:53.8 | This is one of the great G-rated films. |
| 0:55.5 | Now, can you imagine a film like this today winning an Academy Award, let alone best picture? Different time, different culture. |
| 1:02.5 | So I have a special fact number five that's going to be a particular interest to fans of |
| 1:08.8 | Gwen Stefani. So watch out for number five at the end of this video. |
| 1:11.6 | Once you hear these, you're not going to see the movie again in the same way. So you have been warned. |
| 1:18.6 | Fact number one, the opening scene almost didn't happen the way it appears on screen now. |
| 1:22.6 | Julie Andrews recalled after the filming of the film that they used a jet helicopter with a paniflex camera mounted on the strut of the helicopter. |
| 1:32.3 | And the downward draft caused by the blades of the chopper blew her to the ground, like pancake flat, over and over. |
| 1:41.3 | She said it was like biting the dust over and over again. She's standing there |
| 1:44.6 | trying to sing and kaboom she's down and they couldn't adjust the the down draft. So what they did |
| 1:50.2 | was they took a much broader pass at her and as you can see from the opening shot of the film |
| 1:56.7 | she's singing the song and the chopper stops well in advance of where she's standing and then |
... |
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