in 1944, before the film's set period. The characters in the film listen to Little Richard's "Tutti-Fruitti," which was released in November 1955, while Albert Einstein died in April of that year. While some viewers believe Robbins' character can be seen impersonating Don Vito Corleone, portrayed by Marlon Brando, from The Godfather, which was released in 1972, he was actually impersonating the character of Johnny Strabler (also played by Marlon Brando), from The Wild One, a 1953 American film noir, whose persona became a cultural icon of the 1950s. Production The director, Fred Schepisi, later said that, while he liked the film, it was not what it could have been: The problem was there were two other producers, there was a studio and there was Tim Robbins and they were all contributing, and Tim Robbins was being difficult because he said in the '90s nobody would like a character who has a woman fall in love with him because of a lie. That's the whole premise of the film. And it's all right for him to know that and believe it, but he should spend the whole time trying to say, "Hey, I'm lying to you," and be constantly frustrated. Because of that attitude, he pulled the film this way, he pulled it that way while we were writing and it just felt messy. And nobody ever understood the value of those four scientists, and I like the cast that I had, but the other three scientists apart from Walter Matthau were originally going to be Peter Ustinov, Barry Humphries and John Cleese. I wanted them all the way through, but nobody understood how strong they would be. Nobody understood that with a garage and the scientists and this other guy, if you could just stay within that world, if you kept your two lovers together all the time under pressure and you do lots of silly things - there were a couple of wonderfully silly things when they were trying to prove his theory and they kept blowing things up - it had that whimsy about it that would have kept the lovers together and under tension. If they want subplots, they up the stakes and all this formulaic crap - and that's the problem. Release and reception I.Q. opened in theaters on Christmas Day. It grossed $3,131,201 during its opening weekend, ranking eighth at the US box office.