Trading Places
Short description
Two wealthy brothers who run a Philadelphia investment firm make a wager over whether success comes from upbringing or from innate ability. To settle the argument, they secretly arrange for Louis Winthorpe III, a smug and comfortable executive at their company, and Billy Ray Valentine, a small-time street hustler, to switch places. Louis loses his job, his home and his standing, while Billy is installed in the position Louis once held.
John Landis directed the film, the sixth of eighteen features in his directing career in chronological order, following Michael Jackson's Thriller and preceding Twilight Zone: The Movie. The screenplay is by Herschel Weingrod and Timothy Harris. Dan Aykroyd plays Louis and Eddie Murphy plays Billy, with Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche as Randolph and Mortimer Duke, Denholm Elliott as the butler Coleman and Jamie Lee Curtis as Ophelia. The credited cast runs to 99 names.
Made for about 28 million dollars, the comedy took roughly 90 million dollars worldwide, a strong return on its budget. On IMDb it holds 7.5 out of 10 from around 181,000 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 7.2 from a much smaller base of about 3,800. A critics' rating of 7.4 from 53 reviews places it close to the audience scores, indicating broad agreement among reviewers and viewers alike.
What's left behind the scenes
- The men’s club “borrowed” its appearance from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.
- Don Ameche's religious beliefs prevented the actor from using profanity. At the end of the film, where his character utters something unprintable directed at representatives of Wall Street, it was impossible to avoid swearing. The scene had to be filmed in one take, as Ameche had warned beforehand that he would not reshoot it.
- Eddie Murphy later admitted that in the final scene of the film, when his character is on the stock exchange floor, he simply followed the script without having the slightest idea of what was going on around him. The workings of the stock exchange were beyond his understanding.
- Jamie Lee Curtis simply couldn't manage to speak with an Austrian accent.
- Since December 24, 1997, the film has been regularly broadcast on Italian television on Christmas Eve: it has become a Christmas classic for that country.
- The building in which Duke & Duke Commodities Brokers is located in the film is on South Broad Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Since February 2014, it has been occupied by Wells Fargo Bank.
- Winthrop tells Valentine upon arriving at the World Trade Center: “In this building, you either kill or are killed.” After 2001, some television broadcasters removed this line from the film in memory of those who died in the collapse of the Twin Towers.
- Filming took place inside the New York Mercantile Exchange, where real brokers carried out their duties alongside extras. Initially, filming there was scheduled for a weekday, but the arrival of Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy caused such a commotion among the brokers that work came to a standstill. Filming had to be moved to the weekend.
- In 2010, the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, regulating the provision of financial services, included a rule prohibiting the use of insider information. This is roughly what the Duke brothers were trying to do in the film. This rule came about due to the film and unofficially became known as the “Eddie Murphy rule.”
- When Valentine is asked about wheat in the restaurant, everyone falls silent to hear his answer. This is a reference to a series of 1980s commercials for the brokerage firm E.F. Hutton, whose slogan was “When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen.”
Similar movies
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
