Trading Places The Rewatchables
Trading Places poster
Trading Places

Half-Assed Internet Research

Box office and contract; screenplay origins; credits; cameos; sailboat; dialogue; song; mugshot; traders; career counts; trading rule; money clip; profanity; restaurant; Italian broadcast

In the discussion (20)
Approx. transcript time · 00:05:48Read transcript
  • The film reportedly stayed in the box-office top ten for 17 weeks.
  • Paramount reportedly rewarded Murphy with a $25 million five-film contract and financing for a production studio.
  • Writer Timothy Harris’s experience with two wealthy, cheap tennis partners reportedly inspired the Duke brothers.
  • Commodity research included the Hunt brothers and Silver Thursday; familiar orange juice and pork bellies helped make the trading story accessible.
  • The Prince and the Pauper is noted as a possible influence rather than a firmly documented adaptation.
  • The budget is corrected from $50 million to $15 million, with $120.6 million gross and fourth place for 1983 reported.
  • The performer playing Penelope is described as a model with only this film and Manhunter credited, later marrying a biology professor and related to Ansel Elgort; these are reported biographical claims.
  • Harris reportedly received competing claims that Russo or Katzenberg originated the idea once the film became successful.
  • Esposito is identified in the jail scene and Falco as the disgusted salmon witness.
  • The ending’s 56-foot sailboat is reported still in the Caribbean, with the Virgin Islands identified.
  • Murphy reportedly changed stereotyped dialogue; Murphy and Landis opposed the studio’s attempt to remove the Kools-on-the-rug line.
  • The quartet song is described as an American Civil War song; its title is rendered “Orelia” in the transcript.
  • Louis’s mugshot number matches Jake Blues’s number in The Blues Brothers.
  • Actual traders were used in the exchange scenes.
  • The veteran actors’99th and 100th film claims prompted Murphy’s joke that the three collectively made 201 films.
  • A 2010 commodities restriction is reported as the Eddie Murphy rule.
  • The money-clip fumble reportedly happened unintentionally.
  • Ameche reportedly agreed to say the final profanity only once because of religious convictions.
  • A Philadelphia Westin restaurant was named Winthorpe and Valentine.
  • The film is reported as an annual highly watched Italian Christmas Eve broadcast.