Beverly Hills Cop Trivia

This article is a list of trivia from Beverly Hills Cop.

• Eddie Murphy improvised much of his comic lines, as did John Ashton and Judge Reinhold. Literally hundreds of takes were ruined by cast members or actors or the director himself, who were unable to stop laughing during shooting because of this. During the "super-cops" monologue, Ashton is pinching his face hard and looking down in apparent frustration. If you look closely, you can see that he is actually laughing. Reinhold put his hand in his pocket and pinched his thigh really hard to prevent himself from laughing.
• John Landis called the script for Beverly Hills Cop one of the worst they had ever seen, and it was only Eddie Murphy that made the film funny.

• During his tirade at the Beverly Palms Hotel, Axel pretends to be writing an article called "Michael Jackson: Sitting on Top of the World" for Rolling Stone magazine. In real life, Playboy ran an article called "Eddie Murphy: Sitting on Top of the World."
• Axel Foley was originally going to be played by Sylvester Stallone or Mickey Rourke. Stallone left the project and used some of his script ideas to make Cobra (1986). Other actors who were considered for the role of Axel Foley were Al Pacino and James Caan.
• In the process of casting the characters of Rosewood and Taggart, the director paired up various finalists and asked them to do some improvisation to get a feel for the chemistry between the actors. He paired up Judge Reinhold and John Ashton and gave them the following direction: "You are a middle aged couple, married for years. You are having a conversation on an average evening." Judge Reinhold immediately picked up a nearby magazine and the two improvised the "5 pounds of red meat in his bowels" bit almost verbatim as it eventually appeared in the movie. This got them the parts.
• Inspector Todd of the Detroit Police was played by then Detroit Police Department Homicide Dectective Gilbert R. Hill. Det Hill later ran and won a seat on and served as President of the Detroit City Council.
• Originally, two men were supposed to be working in the art gallery scenes. When the director heard Bronson Pinchot's Serge impersonation, however, he thought it was so hysterical he scaled back the other part to give Pinchot more screen time. The second actor shows up only briefly with his shirt collar open too wide, on which Serge comments.
• When filming the scenes in the police station sequences, Eddie Murphy became very tired. The crew offered him coffee but he refused to drink any because he refuses to take drugs of any kind. Eventually, Murphy relented and took small sips of coffee to stay awake. As a result of his first caffeine intake, Murphy became very energized and ad-libbed the "super-cops" monologue.
• Was the highest grossing R-rated film in the United States until The Matrix Reloaded (2003) eclipsed it nineteen years later. If inflation were taken into account it would rank as the third most attended R-rated film after The Exorcist (1973) and The Godfather (1972).
• According to Steven Berkoff (Maitland) in a UK newspaper interview, Sylvester Stallone quit the film because of disagreements about which kind of orange juice was to be put in his trailer.
• Police Chief Hubbard (Stephen Elliott) walks into his first scene carrying some rolled-up sheets of paper. It is actually one of many reworked scripts, which was given to him to memorize and rehearse only minutes before the shooting of the scene started.
• The movie was written for Sylvester Stallone, with the character of Michael Tandino being his brother, and Jenny Summers being his love interest. Two weeks before filming was to start, Stallone was suddenly out and Eddie Murphy was in, prompting massive rewrites.
• The T-shirt that Eddie Murphy wears in the film is from Mumford, an actual Detroit area school attended by one of the filmmakers. When film came out, the school received orders for the shirts from customers all over the world.
• The shooting script was literally pasted together from the half dozen or so scripts written for this project over the years. When they were stuck, Eddie Murphy would improvise dialog or create a scene.
• The song which plays during the strip club scene is "Nasty Girl", by Vanity, and was recommended by the real-life stripper who was hired for the scene.
• Bronson Pinchot got the accent and mannerisms for his character Serge from a crew member he worked with on a earlier project. Like his character, that crew member always said, "Don't be stupid."
• The city hall building seen in the film is the actual Beverly Hills City Hall. However, the exterior was very run-down and the plants were dying, so the film crew had to clean it up and grow new plants so it would look better on film.
• When trying to find Foley and Rosewood, the LAPD use a "satellite tracking system" (the ancestor of the modern-day Global Positioning System or GPS). Such a system did not exist at the time and was made up to advance the plot, but later did come into existence in real life.
• In one of the previous drafts written for Sylvester Stallone, Billy Rosewood was called "Siddons" and was killed off half-way through the script during one of the action scenes deemed "too expensive" for Paramount to produce. Only after Martin Brest cast Judge Reinhold and John Ashton was the decision made to keep Rosewood alive due to his chemistry with Taggart.
• When asked by the producers, director Martin Brest flipped a quarter to decide whether to undertake the direction of the film or not. As the movie proved to be an enormous hit, he framed the quarter and hung it upon his wall.
• The Axel F theme was done with 3 synthesizers: a Roland Jupiter 8, a Roland JX-3P, and a Yamaha DX-7.
• Many of the opening shots were filmed in real-life Detroit, unbeknownst to the "actors", who later gave their consent. In fact, Martin Brest was escorted by the police, who would refuse to follow him when they thought it was too dangerous. Brest and crew, however, soldiered on with their work, unescorted.
• During the opening montage, a man can be seen waving his arms around for a small group. As stated in the filmmaker commentary, the man is actually miming out the bus spin from the truck chase seen soon afterwords that he happened to see filmed.
• Richard Pryor was considered to star.
• The first film to have a release of over 2000 theaters in the USA.
• The earliest version of the script involved a cop in East L.A. who was transferred to Beverly Hills, before evolving into the story of a cop from the East Coast who came to Beverly Hills to avenge the death of his friend. Drafts before the script was locked in (and became more of the comedy it ended up being) gave the cop's name as Axel Elly and set the out-of-Beverly Hills action in Pittsburgh.
• Martin Scorsese was offered the chance to direct, but he turned it down saying the premise reminded him too much of Coogan's Bluff (1968).
• In addition to getting the inspiration of Serge from a crew member on Beverly Hills Cop, Bronson Pinchot would later go on to play Balki on Perfect Strangers (1986) and use a variation of the "Don't be stupid" line. Every time he was asked something he would reply "Of course I do, don't be ridiculous."
• The pistol Eddie Murphy uses in the movie is a Browning HP35 (known in the USA as the Browning Hi-Power, manufactured by Fabrique Nationale in Herstal, Belgium) 9mm pistol, the same pistol the SAS (British SpecOps) use.
• Danilo Bach completed his draft in 1977, six years prior to production.
• The Chief mistakenly refers to Detective Rosewood by the wrong name, as "Rosemont". In Beverly Hills Cop II (1987), Chief Lutz also refers to Rosewood by the wrong name, "Roseweed".
• Body count: 7.
• At 1 hour 45 minutes, the longest running-time of all the Beverly Hills Cop movies made thus far.
• The gated entrance to Victor Maitland's house was first seen as the entrance to David's parents house in Blind Date (1987)
• In the art gallery, there is a large art piece containing several figures. One of the figures, a maitre' d with a chain around its neck, is modeled after director Martin Brest.
• When Axel and Jenny Summers sneak into the art gallery's warehouse the second time around, and Axel breaks open the crate with the coffee grounds and drugs inside, the address of the art gallery where Jenny works is written on the lid of the crate. The address reads "9994 Wilshire Blvd, Beverly Hills, CA".
• David Cronenberg was asked to direct but turned it down.
• Director Cameo Martin Brest: appears at the end of the movie as the clerk who checks Axel out of the hotel.

• The original finale for the Stallone draft of the script took place at night and ended with a car chase between Victor in a Lamborghini and Axel in a turbo-boosting Pontiac GTO. Victor is ultimately killed when his car smashes into an oncoming train.