The Tumultuous Making Of ‘Top Secret!’


Hard to believe that the movie Top Secret is 30 years old. In his article How Silly Can You Get? The Tumultuous Making Of ‘Top Secret!’, Mike Ryan speaks to Jim Abrahams, the Zucker brothers, and Val Kilmer about the making of the cult classic.

I remember watching this film a great deal (on cable, growing up), and I’m positive this movie influenced my sense of humor. I really liked reading the article, as I always enjoy hearing funny people talk about the process of being funny – I find it fascinating.

The behind the scenes stuff is also pretty great. I had no idea Val Kilmer was classically trained:

“I lived the boys and their comedy, but it took me 25 years to ‘enjoy’ not knowing what is going to happen on a set. My acting training is formal and I was fresh out of Hamlet-land and the Julliard School. The boys always wanted me to have more fun, but I wanted to be good and I took it all way too seriously.”

And of course, there’s no way to talk about Top Secret without showing the classic underwater fight scene:

There’s something about comedies from this era that I still find funny and charming. And it’s hard to believe that the film is 30 years old. It makes me feel really old by proxy, but I guess that’s how it goes. Life is filled with it’s little miseries, each of us in his own way must learn to deal with adversity in a mature and adult fashion.

Related:
Clue: Forgotten Flop to Cult Triumph

This Post Has 1 Comment

  1. Heh His hair is dry at the very end when waving.

    Liz Reply


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