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Stripes (film)
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Stripes is a 1981 American comedy film starring Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Warren Oates, and P.J. Soles. The director was Ivan Reitman. Stripes also featured several noted actors in their first significant movie roles, including John Larroquette, Sean Young, and Judge Reinhold. It was one of Canadian comedian John Candy's early breakthrough film appearances. Dave Thomas, Bill Paxton and Timothy Busfield are also in one scene apiece. The film was among Oates' last films, as he died of a heart attack the year after it was released.
Winger (Bill Murray) is a cab driver in his late 20s who lives in New York City.
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Encyclopedia
Stripes is a 1981 American comedy film starring Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Warren Oates, and P.J. Soles. The director was Ivan Reitman. Stripes also featured several noted actors in their first significant movie roles, including John Larroquette, Sean Young, and Judge Reinhold. It was one of Canadian comedian John Candy's early breakthrough film appearances. Dave Thomas, Bill Paxton and Timothy Busfield are also in one scene apiece. The film was among Oates' last films, as he died of a heart attack the year after it was released.
Plot summary
John Winger (Bill Murray) is a cab driver in his late 20s who lives in New York City. He experiences the worst day of his life as, in the span of just a few hours, he loses his job, his car is repossessed, he drops his pizza on the street, and his girlfriend dumps him. Realizing that his life is a failure, he decides he needs a new direction. At that moment, a recruiting ad for the U.S. Army plays on the television, and he decides that is just what he needs to get in shape (and meet girls). Talking his best friend, English-as-a-second-language teacher Russell Ziskey (Harold Ramis) (whose own life is not doing so well either) into joining, they quickly drive to the nearest recruiting office and are soon off to basic training.
Upon arrival at "Fort Arnold" (filmed at Fort Knox), they meet their fellow recruits. Moments after arriving, Winger has already offended their drill sergeant, Sergeant Hulka (Warren Oates), and stands out as a misfit throughout basic training. Their commanding officer is Captain Stillman (John Larroquette). As basic training progresses, Ziskey and Winger become closer to a pair of female MPs named Stella and Louise (P.J. Soles and Sean Young) on the base, and quickly become friends with the rest of their platoon. However, not long before graduation, Sergeant Hulka is injured in a freak mortar accident caused by Captain Stillman's impatience.
On their first leave, the men go to a mud wrestling bar. When the club is raided by MPs, Stella and Louise cover for Winger and Ziskey, while the rest of the platoon is transported back to base to face Captain Stillman. Stillman threatens to force them to repeat the entire course of Basic Training, as they are unlikely to pass muster at the graduation ceremony scheduled for the next day.
The situation looks bleak until Winger and Ziskey return (after having sex with their girlfriends in General Barnicke's home while he was away). Winger manages to motivate his platoon with a rousing speech, and begins to get them in shape for graduation. However, after a long night of drilling, they oversleep and almost miss the ceremony. Without time to even get dressed properly, they run to the parade grounds out of regulation uniform and give an unconventional drill display led by Winger. When General Barnicke finds out that they had to complete training without a drill sergeant, he decides they are just the kind of "go-getters" he wants working on a secret project in Italy.
Once in Italy, their mission is to guard the EM-50 Urban Assault Vehicle (disguised to look like a large recreational vehicle, specifically, a late 70s GMC motorhome). What would seem to be an easy assignment gets less tolerable when a recovered Sgt. Hulka arrives, but the assignment remains easy. Bored with sitting around an empty hangar, John and Russell steal the top-secret EM-50 (by telling the MP guard they're taking it "to get it washed") to visit their MP girlfriends Stella and Louise, now stationed in West Germany. When Stillman finds the EM-50 missing (he was taking his date to show it off to her), he launches an unauthorized mission to get the vehicle back without his superiors knowing it was gone.
On a dark and stormy night, Stillman inadvertently leads his platoon across the border into the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. Sgt. Hulka, who accompanied Stillman and the platoon and repeatedly warned Stillman not to proceed, jumps out of their truck before it is captured, having realized where they are and what has happened. When Hulka makes a Mayday radio broadcast explaining the situation, Winger and Ziskey in the EM-50 realize that their platoon came looking for them and that the U.S. Department of Defense will deny everything — their friends are in big trouble behind the Iron Curtain. With no hope for rescue other than them, Winger, Ziskey, and their two MP girlfriends take the Urban Assault Vehicle and, with some assistance from the stealthy Sgt. Hulka, manage to break everyone out and heavily damage the Soviet base. In the end, Winger, Ziskey, Stella, Louise, and Hulka are each awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, Sgt. Hulka retires with honor and begins the HulkaBurger franchise, Stella appears on the cover of Penthouse and Captain Stillman is reassigned to a weather station near Nome, Alaska; a promise made him by commanding officer Colonel Glass if he screwed up the mission.
Selected cast
Production
On his way to the premiere of Meatballs, Ivan Reitman thought up the idea for a film: "Cheech and Chong join the army." He pitched it to Paramount Pictures and they greenlit the film that day. Len Blum and Dan Goldberg wrote the screenplay in Toronto and read it to Reitman, who was in Los Angeles, over the phone. The director, in turn, would give the writers notes. Cheech and Chong's manager thought the script was very funny; however, the comedy duo wanted complete creative control. Reitman then suggested to Goldberg that they change the two main characters to ones suited for Bill Murray and Harold Ramis, figuring if they could get Ramis interested and let him tailor the script for the two of them, he could convince Murray to do it.
Ramis had already co-written National Lampoon's Animal House and Meatballs, but was unknown as an actor. He screen-tested for Columbia Pictures. They hated his audition, but Reitman told the studio that he was hiring the comedian anyway. Judge Reinhold played Elmo, who was a collection of all the best jokes from the Cheech and Chong version of the film. The casting agent picked Sean Young based on how she looked and Reitman felt that her "sweetness" would go well with Ramis. P.J. Soles tested with Ramis and they got along very well together. John Diehl had never auditioned before and this was his first paying job as an actor. Reitman was a fan of the westerns that Warren Oates had been in and wanted someone who was strong and that everyone respected to control the film's misfit platoon. Goldberg knew John Candy from Toronto and told Reitman that he should be in the film. Candy did not have to audition.
Before filming started, Reinhold thought that he had a handle on his character but once filming started, he was "petrified" because this was his first big studio film. Every scene had some element of improvisation and this was due in large part to Murray and Ramis, who suggested things for him to say and this spread to other cast members. Reinhold said that during filming, Oates would tell everyone stories about working on films like The Wild Bunch and they would be enthralled. Reitman wanted, "a little bit of weight in the center", and had a serious argument between Hulka and Winger. It was not played for laughs and allowed Murray to do something he had not done before. During filming one of the obstacle courses scenes, Reitman told the actors to grab Oates and drag him into the mud without telling the veteran actor about it to see what would happen and get a genuine reaction. Oates' front tooth got chipped in the process and he yelled at Reitman for what he did.
Much of the mud wrestling scene was made up on the spot by Reitman. Candy felt uncomfortable during filming, but Reitman talked him through it. Filmed in Kentucky in late 1980, the production was allowed to shoot the army base scenes at Fort Knox, the city scenes in Louisville, and the Czechoslovakia scenes at the Jim Beam distillery in Clermont with a budget of $9-10 million and a 42-day shooting schedule. Reitman was amazed that they got the Department of Defense's cooperation. The spatula scene in the kitchen of the general's house was filmed at three in the morning, after the cast and crew were up the entire day. Murray improvised the "Aunt Jemima Treatment" sequence and Soles reacted naturally to whatever he said and did.
The taxi cab scene in the movie where Murray's main character becomes mad at a pompous cab fare, was filmed on the Memorial Bridge (a.k.a 2nd Street Bridge).
Reaction
Stripes was released on June 26, 1981 and made USD 6.1 million in 1,074 theaters on its opening weekend. It eventually grossed $85 million in North America.
Stripes currently holds a 88 % "fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes. Roger Ebert in his Chicago Sun-Times review praised it as "an anarchic slob movie, a celebration of all that is irreverent, reckless, foolhardy, undisciplined, and occasionally scatological. It's a lot of fun". Janet Maslin of the New York Times called it "a lazy but amiable comedy" and praised Murray for achieving "a sardonically exaggerated calm that can be very entertaining". Gary Arnold, in his review for the Washington Post, wrote, "Stripes squanders at least an hour belaboring situations contradicted from the outset by Murray's personality. The premise and star remain out of whack until the rambling, diffuse screenplay finally struggles beyond basic training".
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