Stripes
Short description
John Winger loses his job, his car, his apartment and his girlfriend all on the same day, and decides the U.S. Army is the answer. He talks his friend Russell Ziskey into enlisting with him. What follows is basic training under a hard-nosed sergeant, a platoon of mismatched recruits, and a growing rivalry with their instructors. The two friends stumble into more trouble than they bargained for, and their antics eventually put them behind enemy lines with a stolen military vehicle.
Ivan Reitman directed the film, the second of the fifteen he made, following Meatballs and preceding Ghostbusters. Bill Murray plays John Winger and Harold Ramis, who co-wrote the screenplay with Len Blum and Daniel Goldberg, plays Russell Ziskey. Warren Oates appears as Sgt. Hulka, with P.J. Soles, Sean Young and John Candy among the cast. Reitman and Daniel Goldberg produced for Columbia Pictures.
Stripes was released on June 26, 1981, and runs 106 minutes. Against a budget of about 10 million dollars, it took in roughly 85 million worldwide, a strong return for a comedy of its period. On IMDb it holds a 6.6 rating from 1,074 votes, and on TMDB it also sits at 6.6, based on 41 reviews, so critics and audiences have judged it similarly.
What's left behind the scenes
- Ivan Reitman came up with the mud fight scene on the spot. John Candy initially refused to participate in it, but Reitman persuaded him.
- Bill Murray and Sean Young did not get along on set. She strongly disliked his penchant for improvisation, and he vowed never to work with her again.
- According to Ivan Reitman, before filming the haircut scene, he did not inform the actors that they would be cut by army barbers. He filmed the scene exactly as written in the script to capture the actors' genuine reactions. After filming this scene, John Candy fell into a depression. Bill Murray and Harold Ramis were already better known to the public than the other actors, so they were allowed to keep a bit of hair rather than being shaved completely bald.
- Upon hearing of the death of John Lennon (1940-1980), the film’s cast went on a two-week binge. John Larroquette later admitted that he was drunk while filming the scene where he berates servicemen after a mud fight. When filming resumed in Los Angeles, Bill Murray and Warren Oates once got drunk at the grave of Strazer Martin (1919-1980).
- In one take of the scene where his character runs through the door, John Larroquette broke his nose. The actor played heavily made-up for the remainder of the filming. The first take of this scene was used in the film.
- Director Ivan Reitman felt some discomfort while filming the third part of the movie, but understood that a film about the army should show war, and came up with a conflict with Czechoslovakia, where he was born.
- The boot camp sequence in the film takes place on the grounds of the fictional Fort Arnold. A fort named after General Benedict Arnold (1741-1801) did exist in the 18th century. When the general was exposed as a traitor, Fort Arnold was renamed West Point.
- A nine-minute scene was filmed in which Bill Murray and Harold Ramis’s characters take LSD and accidentally end up in the Colombian jungle in the middle of a clash with insurgents. The studio believed it was the best scene in the film, but Ivan Reitman cut it, stating that it contrasted with the film’s overall tone.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
