Police Academy
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 The Class of '84.
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Police Academy is a 1984 American comedy film produced by Paul Maslanksy, directed by Hugh Wilson, and starring Steve Guttenberg, Kim Cattrall, G.W. Bailey, and George Gaynes, and was the first film in the Police Academy film series.
Summary
A group of good-hearted but incompetent misfits enter the police academy, but the instructors there are not going to put up with their pranks.
Why It Rocks
- Pretty good acting.
- So many likable characters, such as:
- Carey Mahoney (an easy-going lovable rogue who has to enroll in the police academy to avoid a prison sentence, and is the most normal and sane among his classmates, while always standing up to arrogant people)
- Larvell Jones (a skilled martial artist and human beatbox)
- Eugene Tackleberry (a gun-obsessed adrenaline junkie who packs a revolver with serious stopping power)
- Moses Hightower (a gentle giant and florist)
- Laverne Hooks (a shy girl who can be loud when unexpected)
- Douglas Fackler (an accident-prone man who always makes a mess without knowing it)
- Leslie Barbara (an overweight cowardly but still very friendly man)
- George Martin (a ladies man who puts on a fake Hispanic accent)
- Sgt. Debbie Callahan (a no-nonsense buxom instructor with a heart of gold)
- Lt. Thaddeus Harris (an ambitious instructor who serves as the antagonist to Mahoney)
- Cmndt. Eric Lassard (the commandant of the police academy, who becomes a father figure to the cadets)
- Very humourous jokes, such as the prostitute under the podium, Lt. Harris flying head-first into a horse's behind, and Harris' lackeys Kyle Blankes and Chad Copeland being forced to dance at The Blue Oyster.
- Fun music and brilliant theme composed by Robert Folk, as well as the song "I'm Gonna Be Somebody" by Jack Mack and the Heart Attack.
- Great plot in the "slobs vs. snobs" mold that shows just because someone doesn't match up to other people's standards, it doesn't mean they can't be a hero. The story also maturely fought against racial stereotyping.
- Mahoney teaching Hightower how to drive is very good and pays off when Hightower passes the driving course.
- Awesome climax, which included the pay-off of Barbara standing up to the bullies that made him want to enroll in the first place.
Trivia
- Creator Paul Maslansky got the idea for this movie during the production of The Right Stuff. A group of police cadets arrived to help with crowd control for the filming of a street scene. When the cadets piled out of the buses to take their posts, they were diverse; men, women, tall, short, black, Asian. However, the cadets proved "fumblingly inept" at their assigned task of keeping members of the public away from the set. Maslansky witnessed an exasperated superior officer with a very red face chewing out two sputtering recruits; a lady weighing over two hundred pounds and a flabby man of well over 50. Both were busily trying to rationalize their incompetence. Maslansky found it humorous, asking the sergeant, "Are these all going to be future San Francisco's finest?" The sergeant told him they had an equal opportunity hiring policy: "We have to take anyone who applies into the academy for training - but we can flunk them out in two weeks." It started Maslansky thinking, "What if they don't want to be flunked out? What if some guy or girl wants to stay in?" That night, he wrote a two-page treatment and gave it to executive producer Alan Ladd Jr., who loved the idea and agreed to develop the movie.
- Paul Maslansky originally envisioned the franchise to have ten movies.
- According to director Hugh Wilson, the original cut was around two and a half hours long.
- The film was originally scheduled to be released in August 1984, but got moved to March to avoid competition with Gremlins, Ghostbusters, and The Karate Kid.
- Billy Crystal, Tom Hanks, Michael Keaton, Bill Murray, Judge Reinhold, Jerry Seinfeld, Robin Williams, Bruce Willis, John Travolta, and Rick Moranis were all considered for the role of Mahoney. Hanks turned down the part to star in Bachelor Party, Keaton did Johnny Dangerously instead, Murray and Moranis were both busy doing Ghostbusters, and Reinhold chose to star in Beverly Hills Cop. Steve Guttenberg said in an interview that Paul Maslansky wanted to cast Steve Bassett because his movie Spring Break had been two big weekends, making $4 million at the box office each weekend. Maslansky thought the target audience would love Bassett as Mahoney, but ultimately went with Guttenberg in the end.
- When attending his audition, Steve Guttenberg wore an old police shirt belonging to his father Stanley Guttenberg, who was a New York City police officer.
- The role of Cmndt. Lassard (originally named "Capt. Lewis Lassard" in an earlier draft) was originally written for Robert Conrad, who turned down the part. Conrad later admitted he regretted the decision, to the point that he took the uncredited part of the police chief in Moving Violations (which was co-written and directed by Neal Isreal). Leslie Nielsen was also considered for the part.
- Before Robert Folk was hired, the filmmakers initially wanted Elmer Bernstein to write the film's score. Bernstein was busy scoring Ghostbusters.
- Lance Kinsey auditioned for the role of Fackler, losing out to Bruce Mahler. Kinsey would go on to play Sgt./Lt./Capt. Carl Proctor in the first five sequels.
- When Donovan Scott entered the room for his audition, he flipped forward in a cartwheel, landing on his back. Pleased at finding an actor who was willing to go the extra mile for physical comedy, Hugh Wilson nodded and said to Scott, "I think you've got this."
- In the DVD "Making of" documentary, Marion Ramsey says she came up with Hooks' voice by reading the description of her character in the script and recalling the time she met Michael Jackson, who attended a stage production of Little Shop of Horrors that Marion was performing in. This meeting made Marion think doing a parody of Jackson's voice would work for Hooks.
- Lt. Harris's trademark stick was not originally in the script. The prop was brought onto the set by an extra, who gave it to G.W. Bailey to keep.
- Former U.S. President Bill Clinton once told Steve Guttenberg that this was one of his favorite movies and that watching the films helped Clinton through a difficult time, presumably when he was undergoing heavy media scrutiny during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. He also stated during his speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention that his wife Hillary Clinton had found his parenting choices questionable after he watched six of the movies back-to-back with his daughter Chelsea.
- The prank in which Mahoney tricks Lt. Harris into using a megaphone with shoe polish around the mouthpiece was based on what happened to British director Michael Winner on the real-life set of one of his films.
- Hugh Wilson stated that when it came time to film the scene of Hightower's late-night driving test at 2:30 am, the actor originally cast as the angry driver was found passed out drunk in his trailer. So, Wilson himself ended up playing the minor role instead.
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