American Pop

[It's the 1980s - Pete has grown up dealing cocaine. He arrives at a recording studio]

Pete: [Slamming down briefcase full of cocaine on table]  Pizza man! We deliver!
Musician: You got the coke, daddy-o?
Pete: What do I look like, man? A soda fountain?
Musician: Hey, what else you got there?
Pete: Songs.
Musician: You scorin' songs now, too?
Pete: Givin' 'em away, a song an ounce.
Musician: By who?
Pete: Me!
Musician: You can keep the songs, man.
Pete: I will keep the coke too!

"American Pop" is the story of four generations of a Russian Jewish immigrant family of musicians whose careers parallel the history of American popular music in the 20th century.

Released on February 13, 1981, "American Pop" was released and became a financial success in its own right.  It was different.  It was animated.  And it touched on a subject matter that many people simply didn't care about nor were interested in... except for a select few.  Those "few" were the ones that helped make it what we know as a cult favorite today.  After it's release date, the New York Times' write Vincent Canby stated, "I'm amazed at the success that (director) Mr. Bakshi has in turning animated characters into figures of real feelings."

Director Ralph Bakshi pitched the idea of "American Pop" to Columbia Pictures.  He wanted to produce a film in which songs would be given a new context in juxtaposition to the visuals.  While the film is not based on his own personal experiences, its themes were strongly influenced by people he had come across in his own life.  For under $1 million, Bakshi was able to acquire the rights to an extensive soundtrack including songs by Janis Joplin, The Doors, George Gershwin, The Mamas & the Papas, Herbie Hancock, Lou Reed, and Louis Prima.  Due to music clearance issues, the film was not released on home video until 1998.

"American Pop" was filmed in the retroscope style which is likened to portable peepshow style viewers where you look through a eyepiece, crank a handle, and watch animated pages flip one right after the other right before your eyes.

This film featured the voice talents of Ron Thompson as "Tony" and "Pete", Mews Small as "Frankie", Jerry Holland as "Louie", Lisa Jane Persky as "Bella", Jeffrey Lippa as "Zalma" (this was his first film), Roz Kelly as "Eva", Frank DeKova as "Crisco", Rick Singer as "Benny", and many others.  Most of those I've listed had previous credits to their names which included both film and television and continued on with their careers.  Frank DeKova's credits were vast totalling 147, but "American Pop" would be his second-to-last production as he died in 1981 at the age of 71.

Here are a few other pieces of information regarding the making of the film...

1.  Although not specifically stated, the incident in which Zalmie's mother dies appears to be the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, a one of the worst industrial disasters in New York City's history. 146 garment workers, mostly immigrant women, died either in the fire, or by jumping from the windows of the 8th-10th floors because the doors were locked shut. The fire prompted legislative and union action to improve safety and working conditions in garment sweatshops.

2.  Except for a few bits of live-action stock footage and the still drawings in the opening credits, the movie is entirely rotoscoped.

3.  Some of the gangland scenes are rotoscoped footage from The Public Enemy (1931).

4.  Director Ralph Bakshi's voice is cameo'd as the voice of the piano player who tells a pregnant Bella that her song "is going to be a big hit. I think you should try it out."

5.  The two dancers in the "Sing Sing Sing With a Swing" montage are the rotoscoped Nicholas brothers in Stormy Weather (1943).

6.  According to Ralph Bakshi, he originally wanted to end the movie with Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird".

And now you know.

Although all of the characters are fictional, many were partially inspired by real people. The character of Frankie, for instance, was based on Grace Slick (of Jefferson Airplane) and Janis Joplin (of Big Brother and the Holding Company).

The following are some picture stills chronologically arranged to follow the story line of the film...

[Louie and Zalmie are performing as the two halves of a dancing horse - Zalmie being the lower half]
Zalmie: Louie?
Louie: Yeah?
Zalmie: I'm 17 years-old. When's my voice gonna change already?
Louie: It's changin'. It's changin'.
Zalmie: I know it's changin'. When's it gonna change for good?
Louie: What's your rush?
Zalmie: I don't wanna be a horse's ass forever.

Stripes

Recruiter: Now, are either of you homosexuals?
John Winger: [John and Russell look at each other] You mean, like, flaming, or...
Recruiter: Well, it's a standard question we have to ask.
Russell Ziskey: No, we're not homosexual, but we are *willing to learn*.
John Winger: Yeah, would they send us someplace special?
Recruiter: I guess that's "no" on both. Now if you could just give Uncle Sam your autograph...

Bad luck + the unsatisfied feeling with their jobs + lackluster love lives = a much needed change for friends John and Russell.  So what do they do?  They join the US Army, of course!  Boot camp leads to a special assignment... and no one in the Army expected this!  No one!


On June 26, 1981, the Columbia Pictures film "Stripes" made its premiere in the US on a total of 1,074 screens which was a bit more than its competition that weekend, "For Your Eyes Only".  The other competitive films that weekend were "The Great Muppet Caper" and "Dragonslayer".  In 1981, five out of ten Box Office Hits came out in June.  "Stripes" was ranked #5 (the others were "For Your Eyes Only", "The Cannonball Run", "Superman II", and "Raiders of the Lost Ark".  With a budget of an estimated $10 million, "Stripes" grossed almost $85.3 million just in the US alone.

In "Stripes", we had a great talented team of five individuals of whom had all worked together before.  That film was none other than "Meatballs".  The team consisted of director Ivan Reitman, comedic star Bill Murray who starred as "John Winger", and the three writers Len Blum, Daniel Goldberg, and Harold Ramis who also co-starred as "Russell".

I already mentioned stars Bill Murray and Harold Ramis, but other stars included Warren Oates as "Sgt. Hulka", P.J. Soles as "Stella", and Sean Young as "Louise" (this was her second film).  Co-stars included John Candy as "Ox", and John Larroquette as "Capt. Stillman".  "Stripes" was the film debut for Conrad Dunn who played "Psycho" (he currently has 66 credits to his name).

Though the latter part of the film's story takes place in Europe, no filming actually took place there.  Instead, a majority of the film was shot in Kentucky.  "European" locations included 149 Happy Hollow Road, Clermont, Kentucky which served as the Russian outpost, the PAL trestle on State Hwy 835 in West Point, Kentucky, and even the "German Resort" was located not in Kentucky, but at the Greystone Park & Mansion located at 905 Loma Vista Drive in Beverly Hills, California.  The location site for the Army scenes was none other than Fort Knox, also in Kentucky.

Here are some other bits of information regarding the making of this comedic hit...

1.  According to the DVD special features, the film was originally conceived as a vehicle for Cheech & Chong; Ivan Reitman has also stated that the reason this fell through was because their manager insisted (without the pair's knowledge) on a 25% share of Reitman's next five films, which he wasn't willing to give up. The script was then rewritten for Bill Murray and Harold Ramis, and most of the "stoner" humor was shifted to the "Elmo" character played by Judge Reinhold.

2.  Murray agreed to do the film two weeks before shooting began. However, he did not show up until the third day of shooting because he was attending baseball games instead.

3.  According to Ivan Reitman, Bill Murray insisted 'Harold Ramis (I)' be cast as his friend for two reasons: 1. They were long time friends in real life. 2. So Ramis could help Murray re-write his dialog or help him improvise.

4.  Harold Ramis was initially reluctant to play the role of Russell Ziskey and Dennis Quaid auditioned for the role but Bill Murray was adamant about Ramis appearing in the film and said he would not do the film without him. Quaid, who was married to co-star P.J. Soles at the time, appears as an extra during the graduation scene.

5.  According to Ivan Reitman in the DVD Commentary, Kim Basinger was offered the part of MP Officer Stella Hanson but she was turned down when her agent asked for too much money.

6.  P.J. Soles, who plays the role of Stella, also played Pvt. Wanda Winter the year before in Private Benjamin (1980).

7.  Bill Murray and P.J. Soles went through basic training with the real troops at Fort Knox for three days.

8.  According to Ivan Reitman in the DVD Commentary, the scene where Bill Murray is loading the rich woman's suitcases into the trunk and he hits himself in the crotch was accident. Murray really did hit himself in the crotch with the case, thus his very real line "Oh, my balls."

9.  John Winger states, after doing push-ups in his apartment, "I gotta get in shape or I'll be dead before I'm 30". Bill Murray was actually 31 when this movie was filmed.

10.  In case you missed the connection, the character nicknamed "Psycho" is actually named "Francis". Francis is Norman Bates' middle name in Psycho (1960).

11.  John Diehl ("Cruiser") stayed in character as the not-too-bright Cruiser throughout filming. After the film wrapped, Diehl apologized to Ivan Reitman for being dumb all the time.

12.  The cast improvised virtually all of the dialog where they sit around and tell their back stories. This includes Murray's lines about 'Lee Harvey' making out with a cow and calling Sgt. Hulka a 'big toe'.

13.  John Larroquette improvised the dialog where he's watching the girls in the shower through the telescope, including the odd line "Oh, God! I wish I was a loofah!" According to Larroquette, he had to explain to Reitman what a loofah was.  Speaking of John...

14. ... According to John Larroquette, he was drunk in many of his scenes.

15.  An Ivan Reitman prank to have some of the characters drag Warren Oates' character ("Sgt. Hulka") into the mud during the obstacle course scene, led to Oates chipping a tooth and Reitman getting a tongue lashing from Oates.

16.  According to Ivan Reitman in the DVD Commentary, Columbia Pictures wanted to cut out the scene where Sgt. Hulka and John Winger have a confrontation in the latrine. They felt the scene was 'too serious'. But Reitman insisted that it be left in to truly establish Sgt. Hulka's strength and authority.

17.  Film debut of Timothy Busfield (he was the soldier who tried to tell "Captain Stillman" that the coordinates for the grenade launch was in direct line with the challenge course that brought "Sgt. Hulka" crashing to the ground).  As of today (September, 2014), Mr. Busfield has over 70 credits to his name including appearances in films such as "Field of Dreams" (1989), "Sneakers" (1992), "Little Big League" (1994), and many television shows including "thirtysomething" (1987-1991) for which he won an Emmy.

18.  Hulka was originally supposed to be killed in the mortar accident and replaced by his twin brother, also played by Warren Oates. But the idea was discarded before filming.

19.  The kitchen scene between Bill Murray and P.J. Soles was completely improvised.

20.  The scene the morning after John Winger and MP Officer Stella Hanson had sex in General Barnicky's house, when they emerge from the trunk, is actually a lift from a cut scene when the guys and girls meet up in Germany. This lift is now something of a continuity error in the Special Edition DVD where those cut scenes in the German Hotel are now restored. You can tell this because if you watch the decor of the General's bedroom and Winger and Hanson's wardrobe, it's the same clothing they're wearing in their German Hotel Suite and the General's decor and the suite are the same.

21.  The last sentence the platoon shouts during their performance at graduation, "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog", is a sentence that was popularly used to test typewriters and telegraph machines because it contains every letter of the alphabet at least once.

22.  Robert J. Wilke (who played "General Barnicke" had trouble remembering his lines. His shots took longer to shoot than the soldiers' graduation drill routine.  (Speaking of Robert, and off the subject,... this film was his last )

23.  The EM-50 Urban Assault Vehicle was built from a 1973-1978 GMC Motor Home.

24.  At the end of the film, the four main characters receive Distinguished Service Crosses.

25.  A nine-minute sequence was filmed in which John and Russell take LSD and accidentally end up on a mission to fight rebels in the Colombian jungle. Columbia Pictures thought it was the best scene in the film but Ivan Reitman deleted it because he felt that it did not fit the film's tone.

26.  The U.S. Army was actually very helpful and cooperative during filming, which surprised Ivan Reitman since the script depicts the military as being made up largely of buffoons.  Hollywood and all of the millions of people who have seen this film thank you, U.S. Army!

And now you know.


This film was a part of a mini-cycle of Hollywood movies made during the early 1980s centering around military cadet training. The pictures include "Private Benjamine" ((1980), "Up the Academy" (1980), "Taps" (1981), "Stripes" (1981),  "An Officer and a Gentleman" (1982), and "The Lords of Discipline" (1983). Then the mid-to-late 80s saw a few more: "Heartbreak Ridge" (1986), "Full Metal Jacket" (1987), and "Biloxi Blues" (1988).

Enjoy the following picture stills following just a bit of the story without giving too much away.  We'll start with the key characters...

Now a pictorial following the story line...

John Winger: Cut it out! Cut it out! Cut it out! The hell's the matter with you? Stupid! We're all very different people. We're not Watusi. We're not Spartans. We're Americans, with a capital 'A', huh? You know what that means? Do ya? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. We are the wretched refuse. We're the underdog. We're mutts! Here's proof: his nose is cold! But there's no animal that's more faithful, that's more loyal, more loveable than the mutt. Who saw "Old Yeller?" Who cried when Old Yeller got shot at the end?  [raises his hand, then sarcastically]  Nobody cried when Old Yeller got shot? I'm sure.  [other soldiers hands are reluctantly raised]  I cried my eyes out. So we're all dogfaces, we're all very, very different, but there is one thing that we all have in common: we were all stupid enough to enlist in the Army. We're mutants. There's something wrong with us, something very, very wrong with us. Something seriously wrong with us - we're soldiers. But we're American soldiers! We've been kicking ass for 200 years! We're ten and one! Now we don't have to worry about whether or not we practiced. We don't have to worry about whether Captain Stillman wants to have us hung. All we have to do is to be the great American fighting soldier that is inside each one of us. Now do what I do, and say what I say. And make me proud.