Sunday, July 10, 2022

Don't Make a Scene: Top Secret!

The Story:
How often I've repeated the line "It all sounds like some bad movie!"
 
Sometimes even in movie theaters.
 
Top Secret!, the Z-A-Z (Zucker, Abrahams, Zucker) follow-up to their successful parody, Airplane! had a bit of a rocky start and wasn't a huge success at the box-office. It wasn't a send-up of an already existing movie (in the case of Airplane!, it was 1957's Zero Hour!), but a wholly original idea imagining a mash-up of an Elvis Presley movie with a wartime espionage film, with the same exuberance throwing jokes at the film and seeing how much sticks. Quite a lot, it seems. 
 
But, at some point, the film just stops, re-caps the complications and then states the obvious—"it all sounds like some bad movie!" with the actors guiltily breaking the fourth wall and acknowledges that (indeed) it might just be a bad movie.
 
The surprise of the movie was Val Kilmer, who had previously been known for dating Cher, but made an all-singin', all-dancin' comedic debut as the Elvis imitator, Nick Rivers. This film and the next year's Real Genius established Kilmer as a superb comic actor, but it is his subsequent dramatic roles for which he is best known. This Summer his scene with Tom Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick was a nostalgically emotional highlight.
 
The Set-Up: Pop-rock phenom' Nick Rivers (Val Kilmer, in his film debut) is on an extensive European tour, when he is swept up in international intrigue in East Germany surrounding the disappearance of a prominent scientist. There are complications...oh, we'll just let him describe them.
 
Action.
 
HILLARY FLAMMOND
Nick...
HILLARY FLAMMOND
I want to explain. - 
NICK RIVERS
 
What's to explain? 
HILLARY FLAMMOND 
But I just want to say that...
NICK RIVERS  Look...
NICK RIVERS
I'm not the first guy who fell in love with a girl he met in a restaurant, 
NICK RIVERS
...who turned out to be the daughter of a kidnapped scientist, 
NICK RIVERS
...only to lose her to her childhood lover she'd last seen on a deserted island...
NICK RIVERS
...who, years later, is the leader of the French underground. 
HILLARY FLAMMOND
I know it. 
HILLARY FLAMMOND
It all sounds like some bad movie. 

NICK RIVERS Forget it.

 
 
Words by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker
 
Pictures by Christopher Challis and Jerry Zucker, David Zucker, and Jim Abrahams
 
Top Secret! is available on DVD and Blu-Ray from Paramount Home Video.


No comments:

Post a Comment