49 Fun Facts About Stripes

According to its tagline, the hero of Stripes wanted to keep the world safe for democracy and do what?

Meet girls: the lofty half borrows Woodrow Wilson's 1917 war aim, a world 'made safe for democracy'. John manages the other half too, pairing off with Stella, who ends up helping him rescue the platoon.

Harold Ramis made his directing debut a year before Stripes with which comedy?

Caddyshack was Ramis's first film as a director. As an actor he was a harder sell: the studio disliked his screen test for Russell in Stripes and had to be overruled.

Ivan Reitman first pitched Stripes as which comedy duo 'join the army'?

Cheech and Chong liked the script but demanded total creative control, so the leads were rewritten for Bill Murray and Harold Ramis. The stoner jokes were handed to the recruit Elmo.

In his barracks pep talk in Stripes, Bill Murray's character proudly calls Americans what?

Mutts: 'our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world,' he tells the dejected platoon, then praises the loyalty of the mongrel dog and asks who cried at Old Yeller.

What job does Harold Ramis's character, Russell, give up to enlist in Stripes?

ESL teacher: Russell is first seen coaching an English class for immigrants through the words of a pop song. The studio did not want Ramis in the part, but his director and co-star insisted.

In which city does Murray's character drive a cab at the start of the film?

The city scenes were shot there for real, and the Army scenes at a nearby base. Filming began in November 1980.

Which veteran of Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch plays the drill sergeant, Sergeant Hulka?

Warren Oates was cast because the director wanted a figure the misfit platoon would truly respect. It worked off screen too: the young actors sat rapt at his stories from The Wild Bunch.

Bill Murray later said he felt 'a little queasy' about carrying what in Stripes?

A machine gun: 'I felt if you were rescuing your friends it was okay,' he said in 1993. He added that the film did capture life on an Army base, down to the cold and the bad coffee.

Which SCTV alumnus plays the recruit Dewey 'Ox' Oxberger in Stripes?

John Candy's Ox tells the platoon he has enlisted to get in shape, since the Army will do it for free. One reviewer called him a nice surprise as a 350-pound recruit.

Which future Night Court star plays Captain Stillman, the incompetent company commander?

John Larroquette's Stillman causes the final crisis. To hide the loss of a secret vehicle he mounts an unauthorized search for it, and gets the whole platoon captured.

P. J. Soles, Stella in Stripes, was already famous for playing Lynda in which 1978 horror film?

Halloween's Lynda followed her debut in Carrie. Stripes was her second Army comedy in a year, and she said wardrobe handed her the very uniform and boots she had worn in the first.

What Army job do Stella and Louise hold in Stripes?

Military police: the two are there to keep recruits in line, and spend the film bending the rules for John and Russell instead, even helping the pair slip away from a raid.

Which future Beverly Hills Cop actor plays the spaced-out recruit Elmo in Stripes?

Judge Reinhold, in one of his first film parts, got the pick of the jokes left over from the script's first draft, written before Bill Murray and Harold Ramis came aboard.

Sergeant Hulka's deadpan reply in Stripes tells which touchy recruit to 'lighten up'?

Francis has just told the barracks that everyone calls him Psycho, and that he will kill anyone who uses his real name or touches his things. Hulka uses the name at once.

In Stripes, the recruit Ox vows that basic training will turn him into 'a lean, mean' what?

Fighting machine: Ox explains that he picked a tough drill sergeant over a pricey self-improvement course he could not afford, and expects the Army to transform him for nothing.

Which future star of Aliens appears briefly in Stripes as an unnamed soldier?

Bill Paxton had started in films behind the camera, as a set dresser, before he turned to acting. His nameless soldier came three years before James Cameron first cast him.

Which two SCTV cast members play a border guard and the M.C. in Stripes?

Joe Flaherty and Dave Thomas were old colleagues of Harold Ramis from SCTV, where he had been the first head writer before he left the show for films.

After Hulka is hospitalised, the leaderless platoon sneaks off base to visit what kind of establishment?

A mud-wrestling bar: Ox is shoved into the ring when the emcee calls for a volunteer, and when the place is raided Stella and Louise help John and Russell get away.

Why does Sergeant Hulka put John and Russell's whole platoon on kitchen duty in Stripes?

They briefly went AWOL. Stung by the punishment, John then tries to desert for good, and it is Russell who stops him, pointing out that enlisting was John's idea in the first place.

Why does the Stripes platoon turn up late to its own graduation parade?

They overslept after drilling through the night to avoid being made to repeat basic training. They arrive mid-ceremony and perform a routine of their own invention.

What is the EM-50 Urban Assault Vehicle disguised as?

A family motorhome: in the last act John and Russell drive the secret weapon into a Soviet base and use it to break out their captured platoon.

In which country is the platoon stationed when it is assigned to guard the EM-50?

Italy is where the general sends the platoon straight after graduation. John and Russell then borrow the secret vehicle for a weekend with their girlfriends across the Alps, and the trouble starts.

Chasing the missing EM-50, Captain Stillman leads the platoon into which country, where they are captured?

Czechoslovakia was also the director's birthplace. Ivan Reitman's family had fled its communist regime in the hold of a barge when he was four, and he grew up in Toronto.

The poster for Stripes puts Bill Murray in the pose of which famous figure?

Uncle Sam's 'I Want You' poster, made for Army recruiting in the First World War, was reworked with a photo of Murray pointing at the viewer while two blonde women look on.

At which Army post were the training scenes in Stripes filmed?

Fort Knox is also where Bill Murray and P. J. Soles tried training with the real troops at dawn. By her account they planned two weeks of it and gave up after three days.

Before acting in Stripes, Harold Ramis had co-written which hit comedy?

Animal House shared more than a writer with Stripes: Ivan Reitman had produced it, and Roger Ebert wrote that the Army film 'could have been titled National Lampoon's Animal Army'.

Stripes director Ivan Reitman later teamed Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito in which 1988 comedy?

Twins cast the two as long-lost brothers. Schwarzenegger had sought Reitman out to say he could do comedy, and the film remade the action hero as a comic star.

Bill Murray and Harold Ramis both came up through which Chicago improv theatre?

The Second City training showed on the Stripes set: the director let the pair improvise around the script, and nearly every scene ended up with some invention of theirs in it.

Who composed the score for Stripes, including 'The March from Stripes'?

Elmer Bernstein, the composer of The Magnificent Seven and To Kill a Mockingbird, had by then turned to comedy: Airplane!, The Blues Brothers and Trading Places date from the same few years.

In an improvised scene in Stripes, Bill Murray's character woos Stella in a kitchen with which utensil?

A spatula: he tickles her with it until she admits she is crazy about him. The scene was moved indoors and made up on the day, after rain washed out a hillside kiss.

How is Sergeant Hulka put out of action midway through basic training in Stripes?

A stray mortar shell: Captain Stillman orders a crew to fire before the weapon has been aimed, and the round brings down the climbing rig the sergeant is standing on.

In Stripes, how does John fare when Sergeant Hulka invites him to take a swing?

Dropped with one punch: John swings and misses, and Hulka's blow to the stomach takes him down. The sergeant then offers to forget the whole thing and tells him to think hard about it.

The extended cut of Stripes restores a subplot in which John and Russell stow away on what?

A paratroop flight: the pair jump with a special-forces unit, land in a jungle and are seized by guerrillas, all while Russell is high on LSD.

Before his comedy hits, Stripes director Ivan Reitman produced two early horror films for which director?

David Cronenberg's Shivers and Rabid were among Reitman's first ventures as a producer. The two had founded a film co-operative together in Toronto, where Reitman also directed a horror spoof of his own.

Bill Murray's first film in a starring role, also directed by Reitman, was which 1979 summer-camp comedy?

It launched Reitman's directing career and was the first of six Murray-Ramis collaborations, of which Stripes was the second.

Reitman, Murray and Ramis reunited three years after Stripes for which 1984 blockbuster?

Ghostbusters reunited all three, with Ramis again writing as well as acting. Roger Ebert, looking back, called Stripes their breakthrough on the way to it.

Bill Murray had become a national name on which TV show between 1977 and 1980, just before Stripes?

Saturday Night Live made his name. His first meeting with Reitman, at a National Lampoon rehearsal in 1975, went badly: by the director's account, Murray answered a suggestion by steering him out of the room.

The actor who plays Ox in Stripes later co-owned which Canadian Football League team?

Toronto Argonauts: he bought in as a minority owner in 1991 alongside hockey star Wayne Gretzky, and the team won the Grey Cup that same season.

The actor who plays Ox in Stripes died in 1994 while filming which comedy?

Wagons East was days from finishing in Durango, Mexico, when he died of a heart attack at 43. His last scenes were completed with rewrites and a stand-in, and it opened five months later.

Where is Captain Stillman reassigned at the end of Stripes?

A weather station in Nome, Alaska, is his reward for the unauthorized mission that got the platoon captured. The four who rescued it end up on magazine covers instead.

What does Sergeant Hulka do after leaving the Army at the end of Stripes?

Opens a burger chain: a soft landing for the sergeant who, in the last act, slips the Soviet net and radios the distress call that brings the rescue.

Which studio released Stripes on June 26, 1981?

Columbia Pictures' comedy had a long afterlife: forty years on, in 2021, it went back into cinemas for anniversary screenings, with Bill Murray and Ivan Reitman filmed looking back on the shoot.

Which 1993 comedy, directed by Harold Ramis, was his last film with Stripes co-star Bill Murray?

Groundhog Day ended the partnership: the two fell out during the shoot over the film's tone and did not speak for some twenty years, making peace only shortly before Ramis died in 2014.

Who plays Louise, the love interest of Harold Ramis's character, in Stripes?

Sean Young was already cast while the search for a Stella dragged on. Her next film made her name: a year later she was the replicant Rachael in Blade Runner.

The Iron Curtain scenes in Stripes were shot at a closed Kentucky distillery owned by which company?

Jim Beam's closed plant stood in for the Eastern Bloc because the production never left the United States: the shoot was split between Kentucky and Los Angeles.

Who won script changes to Stripes in return for help with the shoot?

The Department of Defense wanted a film that would help recruiting, and got its script changes in return for the Army's help. Reitman later said enlistment did rise after the release.

Which 1960s hit does the Stripes platoon sing as it marches?

Do Wah Diddy Diddy was first recorded by the Exciters, without much success. Manfred Mann's cover was the hit, and in the film Bill Murray's character sets the platoon marching to it.

By what fictional name is the Army post known where the Stripes recruits do basic training?

Fort Arnold gives John an early lesson: when he asks to put off a five-mile dawn run until the platoon is rested, Sergeant Hulka makes it ten.

What is Bill Murray's character's job at the start of Stripes, before he loses it and enlists?

Taxi driver: he quits by stopping in the middle of a bridge and throwing the keys in the river, then loses his car, his apartment and his girlfriend before the day is out.