0615 watchin' movies

To help pass the time between exercises, one of the things I do is watch movies. I have a large collection of DVDs (over 200), and I go through them one by one.

I like seeing movies in theatres, but the advantage to seeing a movie on DVD is that most of them contain a commentary by the director, production staff, and/or actors. I find it interesting to find out that a movie I liked wasn’t originally written that way.

Take, for example, “I Spy”, released in 2003, with Owen Wilson and Eddie Murphy. It was based on the popular TV show from the 60s, with Robert Culp and Bill Cosby. Culp was a CIA agent who traveled freely throughout Europe as the coach for Cosby, who was a professional tennis player. Each episode had Culp on a spy mission and Cosby was drawn into the mystique of espionage, even though he wasn’t trained for it.

The movie was originally written with the agent accompanying a basketball player. When Murphy (who is 5’10”) was signed, he indicated that his part wouldn’t be believable as a basketball player. But his brother was a boxer and he (Eddie) had picked a few things up. So his character’s sport was changed.

There is a scene where the plane they are on dives, so the director had a fuselage set built that could pivot. At a screening, another actor asked how they did it. When he was told, the actor asked, “Why didn’t you just tilt the camera?”

Lastly, there is a point at which Wilson’s character commandeers the plane. Murphy’s character exclaims, “If there’s anything broken on this plane, you’re paying for it!” One of Murphy’s assistants indicated that the exclamation was “pure Eddie Murphy”.