I said I have an idea for a movie blog post. Jon suggested a sports movie blog. That wasn’t my idea, but it was a pretty good one. I don’t know how many movies I’m going to do. But if I was going to start, I had to start with my favorite movie of all time, which might be a baseball movie. That’s right, I’m talking about The Naked Gun. Is it a baseball movie? I’ll give you my answer at the end of this post.
I took AP Literature as a senior in high school. After the AP test, we had to do a movie project. When my brothers took the class, their friend’s project was him pretty much just fast forwarding to different scenes in a movie and showing them to the class (I think maybe it was Goodfellas, but I’m definitely not sure about that). One of the other students in the class commented, “Why don’t you just show the whole movie?” As you’ll see, this blog post is going to be a little like that.
The opening scene in Beirut is a solid start to the movie. Arafat, Qaddafi, Gorbachev, Ayatollah Khomeini, Fidel Castro, are Idi Amin plotting against the United States. But fortunately, Frank Drebin was a hero while on vacation. And they got this right. You had people who thought Gorbachev and Arafat were good guys. Gorbachev obviously wasn’t as bad as Stalin, but he was trying to save communism. Fortunately he failed. And Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize. The guy was an actual terrorist and he won the Nobel Peace Prize. I am literally more deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize than he was and obviously I don't deserve one.
After the opening credits, we have Nordberg kind of dressed like he’s going to murder somebody, but no gloves. When he goes to bust the guys on the I Love You, the one guy throws down his gun. Nordberg gets shot and all sorts of other bad things happen to him. I like the part where he leans against the wet paint. Why is there a wedding cake and a bear trap on the boat? Nordberg had a 50/50 chance of living, but there’s only a 10% chance of that. He ended up at Our Lady of the Worthless Miracle. And why was it called Our Lady of the Worthless Miracle? Because Ricardo Montalban was a devout Catholic and he objected to a much more crude joke name for the hospital. Wikipedia says that St. John Paul the Great made him a Knight in the order of St. Gregory the Great, which is the highest honor that a Roman Catholic lay person can receive from the Church.
Frank succinctly summarized my feelings on the British monarchy with this line: “For no matter how silly the idea of having a queen might be to us, as Americans we must be gracious and considerate hosts.” There is absolutely no need for the monarchy anymore. Monarchies are stupid to begin with, but at least the king or queen once served a purpose. Henry VIII and George III are two of my least favorite people in history, but at least they actually governed England.
I really enjoy the scene where Frank questions the guy on the dock. He gives him $40 for information. The guy gives him the $40 back for information. Then he gives him another $20 and then borrows the $20 to give it to Frank. So Frank made $20 and the guy owes him another $20. That’s some quality police work.
In the meeting between Ludwig and Drebin, we learn that Frank doesn’t smoke Cuban cigars. I approve. Ludwig has a pen that is impervious to everything except for water? What good is that? But it was a gift from the Emperor Hirohito and it’s value is “beyond estimation.” Also it serves the same function as a pen that I could get for 8 cents on Amazon. I get why some things are valuable, but not others. A pen is a pen. I don’t get why people would spend a ton of money on a car. My Honda Civic is a nice car and it gets me from place to place just like cars that are twice as expensive (or much more than that). If I was rich, I’d drive a Honda Civic and use pens that cost 8 cents. Cars are cars and pens are pens. But not all seats at a baseball game are the same. Not all beers are the same. Not all seats on an airplane are the same. I get spending more money when you’re getting something of value for the extra money you spend (like a better seat or a better beer).
How does Ludwig’s sensory-induced hypnosis work? He presses a button and then somebody is determined to kill a particular person? This is not explained. I don’t care. It’s still a great movie.
John Houseman plays a driving instructor in the car chase scene. Unfortunately, we don’t get to hear him say the name Alec Berg. Apparently this was his last movie. He died in October 1988 and the movie came out in December.
We get an 80s movie montage with “I’m Into Something Good.” Yes! The 80s were the best. I wish I could remember the decade. I do have some very vague 80s memories. My memories mostly involve baseball. I remember the Dodgers winning the World Series in 1988 and I remember the earthquake in 1989. Other than that, I think the only other 80s memory I have is going to Ohio in 1988. Ronald Reagan was president until I was five years and 11 days old, but George H.W. Bush is the first president that I can remember being president. Notre Dame went undefeated and won the National Championship in 1988, but my first very vague college football memory is Notre Dame beating Penn State in the snow in 1992. But man, 1988 was a good year. The Cold War was coming to an end, Dodgers won the World Series, Notre Dame won the National Championship in football, and The Naked Gun came out (unfortunately the Lakers winning the NBA Championship knocks it down to like a 96 out of 100).
“When l see five weirdos dressed in togas stabbing a guy in a park, l shoot the bastards. That's my policy.” I mean, that is a pretty good policy.
The scene with the reception for the queen is excellent. Frank searching the guy but actually going through Ed’s jacket pockets is awesome. And to commemorate our friendship, the city of Los Angeles presents the royal family with a Revolutionary War musket. Maybe the Brits could put that in a nice display case near the George Washington statue in London to remind them of who won the war.
The baseball scenes start with establishing shots outside the stadium and of the stands. The DVD commentary says that the shot outside the stadium was Angel Stadium, which I didn’t recognize (it was pre-renovation and I was there long after the renovation). The stands they use are Wrigley Field. But why do they have an Angels game in the movie? If the queen was visiting Los Angeles, she wouldn’t be going to Anaheim (which is not in Los Angeles) to see the Angels. I was thinking maybe the Dodgers wouldn’t let them use the Dodgers, but they let them use the stadium so why wouldn’t they let them use the team? Maybe it’s because they wanted to use Reggie Jackson for the movie. Reggie Jackson’s last year was 1987 with Oakland. But he was an angel from 1982-1986 so maybe it was more believable to have him on the Angels in 1988 than it would have been to have him on the Dodgers (he was mostly a DH the last few years of his career so he couldn’t do that for the Dodgers, but of course he plays right field in the movie).
The broadcast booth is Curt Gowdy, Jim Palmer, Tim McCarver, Dick Vitale, Mel Allen, my birthday buddy Dick Enberg, and Dr. Joyce Brothers. Why no Vin Scully? The best broadcast booth that I’ve ever heard is just Vin Scully. Of course, for the comedy you should have all those other guys. But how do they not get Vin Scully also?
I wrote the previous two paragraphs without doing any research other than watching the movie with and without commentary. This article has some answers to my questions. The Dodgers said they didn’t want to participate because of the brawl. That was a bad decision. It says that Vin Scully loved Airplane! and wanted to be in the movie, but the Dodgers didn’t let him (but the Dodgers didn’t recall not letting Vin participate).
I love the guys sitting in the queen’s box. They paid just as much for those seats as the queen did. So why does the queen get to sit there?
Enrico Pallazzo is clearly not the same size as Frank Drebin. How does his tuxedo fit Frank perfectly? Was there another random tuxedo in the dressing room?
Frank singing the national anthem is a fantastic scene. You have the terrible singing of the wrong words, the police shuffling out onto the field with their hands over their hearts, and Enrico Pallazzo tied up in his dressing room.
The bloopers are classic. You have a guy getting hit by a car, a guy mauled by a tiger, and a guy losing his head trying to take away a home run in center field at Dodger Stadium.
The first pitch by the queen is from the stands. That’s the way ceremonial first pitches used to be done. William Howard Taft was the first president to throw out the first pitch at a baseball game in 1910. But Ronald Reagan was the first president to throw out the first pitch from the mound. Of course, George W. Bush threw out the greatest first pitch of all time before Game 3 of the 2001 World Series.
When Frank gets hit with the bat and stumbles all the way back to the backstop. He would have been stumbling for a long time before they took all that foul territory and filled it with seats at Dodger Stadium.
We get a second 80s movie montage with “I Love LA!” It’s fantastic. And I love that song so much when I hear it at the end of a Dodger game and hate it so much at the end of a Laker game. And every time I go to Los Angeles, I have to listen to it (of course, I’ve never gone there to see the Lakers).
How does Frank meet with Ed as an inning is going on? Ed says there’s only one more out until the seventh inning stretch. I suppose it could have been a pitching change.
When Frank calls the guy safe at home, the catcher goes nuts. You could make a case that he’s not out. He might not have tagged him with the correct ball. When the other umpires start arguing with Frank, how do they not realize that Frank is some random guy and not one of the umpires on their crew? You can make your own Joe West joke here because he’s one of the umpires.
Reggie Jackson must kill the queen. But the queen’s life is saved. The woman who fell on Reggie Jackson violated the laws of physics. She fell at an angle that was not at all perpendicular to the ground.
It seems that the umpire saved the queen’s life. But that’s not the umpire. And that leads to the greatest line in the history of movies:
When Ludwig takes Jane at gunpoint and goes to the top deck, that happens very quickly. It would take a long time to get from the field level to the top deck at Dodger Stadium. When Ludwig falls, he probably wouldn’t have been killed by the fall. Although it’s from the upper deck, Dodger Stadium is built into a hill so the fall isn’t that far. I was thinking about this and the woman who falls on Reggie Jackson the first time I took the Dodger Stadium tour (the link is from the last time I took the tour, the first time I took the tour was before the blog was around). Of course, then he gets run over by a steamroller and the USC band. What happens to Frank’s chest protector? Why does it look like it was deflated or something? It looked normal, then we get the “Two can play at that game line,” and then it looked all weird. The DVD commentary actually answers this question. There was a gag that they took out that would have explained it, but people didn’t think it was funny. So there it is. When Frank is talking to Jane, why can the whole stadium hear what they’re saying? I get that they have a camera up there, but are they wearing microphones? But the good news is that Nordberg is going to be on his feet and as good as new in a week.
So is it a baseball movie? I used to listen to a baseball contest and the topic of what makes a movie a baseball movie came up. One of the guys had a very low bar to clear for a movie to be a baseball movie. This would easily qualify. Here’s the case for this as a baseball movie. The last 22 minutes of the movie take place at a baseball game in an actual Major League Baseball stadium. There are baseball jokes. You have real baseball teams and some real players. Reggie Jackson plays an important role. My verdict would be that it’s not a baseball movie. The subject of the movie isn’t baseball. I think you could not be a baseball fan at all and still like this movie. But if you’re not a baseball fan, you definitely won’t like Major League and you probably won’t like Field of Dreams (but there are probably a lot of non-baseball fans who like A League of Their Own and that’s definitely a baseball movie). I would say it’s a police movie. While a decent portion of the movie has to do with baseball, the whole movie is about police officers. Whatever it is, it’s an all time great movie (and it won zero Oscars, which just illustrates why I don’t care one bit about award shows which are incredibly stupid). You wouldn't expect my favorite movie to involve O.J. Simpson, the queen of England, and the USC marching band, but that's how good this movie is.
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