![]() ![]() Expy: Francis 'Psycho' Soyer is fairly obviously based on Travis Bickle.Embarrassing First Name: "Anyone calls me Francis, and I kill you.".Eagleland: Most of the main characters are distinctly Type 2 (as Winger puts it, America got started because they got kicked out of every decent country), but still trying to be Type 1.In fact, he's one of the few characters in the entire film who has much in the way of common sense. Drill Sergeant Nasty: Sergeant Hulka, though, befitting an Ivan Reitman comedy, he's more the dry and sarcastic type than a furiously aggressive type such as R.Don't Call Me "Sir": Sergeant Hulka: "You don't say "sir" to me, I'm a sergeant, I work for a living.".Disproportionate Retribution: OK, John, you hate your job and you're mad at your customer, but did you have to turn your taxi into a roadblock on a four-lane highway bridge?!?.This begins the series of hilarious disasters that ends in. Deranged Taxi Driver: Winger pretends to be one when a Grande Dame customer annoys him.Deadpan Snarker: The usual suspects in an Ivan Reitman movie, but Warren Oates' Hulka can stand toe to toe with even Bill Murray's Winger.Cool Old Guy: Hulka, who despite his demeanor is A Father to His Men, going as a One-Man Army to rescue his men (though he has help.).Russell: We're not parking it, we're abandoning it. Analogy Backfire: Winger talking Ziskey into helping him rescue the rest of the squad:.Either they are going to jail, or impress the general so much he selects them for his "special project" in Italy. All or Nothing: After spending the entire basic training screwing up, John leads the platoon in a rifle demonstration in front of the commanding general.Hulka can't help but let out a few guffaws at Winger's smart-assed "Big Toe" speech before promising to come back at 0500 to put that Big Toe where the sun don't shine. It was also fairly successful financially, grossing $85 million domestically on a $10 million budget. The movie was well-liked by critics, with an 88% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. When they come back to the states, somehow they all end up getting medals. Winger and Russell come back to save their squad. The rest of their squad comes after them, thinking that they're communist spies, but they take a wrong turn and get captured by the Soviets in Czechoslovakia. ![]() While John and Russell are guarding it, they decide to "borrow" it and go for a joyride to see their girlfriends in Germany. In the end, they are assigned to guard the new EM-50 urban assault vehicle in Italy. The night before graduation day they stay up all night, show up late for the parade, and put on one hell of a show for the generals. Hulka (Oates), gets injured in a training exercise and they have to finish the training on their own. The two of them have a miserable time in basic training, but eventually their drill instructor, Sgt. John Winger (Murray) is a slacker who convinces his friend Russell Ziskey (Ramis) to join the U.S. Soles, Sean Young, John Candy, and John Larroquette. Also in the cast are Harold Ramis, Warren Oates, P. But looking back on it now, I just think of what a good man he was, stepping right up to address a perceived injustice.A 1981 military comedy directed by Ivan Reitman and starring Bill Murray. It's funny: At the time, that incident represented to me how out-of-touch our band director was with the kids he was teaching. IIRC, it was the drum major who talked him down and explained what had happened, and what the reference was, and that our intentions were to surprise her and make her laugh, not to bully her. So the band director, bless him, started pacing across the field giving us a dressing-down about racism. And our band director had no idea or context about the Stripes reference: All he saw was a bunch of white kids (and a handful of Black kids) giving some sass (with an admittedly jive-y tone) to a Black girl. And would have likely have been seen as such except for one thing: We were a majority white school, and the drum major was Black. She gave us some sort of command, and, as pre-planned by some group of smart-alecks (I'm guessing it was the trumpet section), we all shouted back, "That's the fact, Jack!"įrom my perspective, and I think the rest of the band's, it was an innocent bit of goofballism. At one point, during a night practice, we were at attention and were being addressed by the drum major. This was around 1983 or 84, when the movie was in heavy rotation on cable. Stripes got my high school marching band briefly in trouble. ![]()
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