In the following text, you will find all the things you wanted to know about the famous 1986 film.
“That’s not a knife. That’s a knife!”
This is certainly the most famous sentence from the film. Otherwise, a lot of people say “this is a knife”, which is actually not right. Crocodile Dundee is a movie that was not only known in America in 1986, but was also very popular all over the world. That year, Top Gun topped the list of the most successful films, while Crocodile Dundee took second place. The film achieved significant success and was nominated for an Oscar. In some way, it was a commercial for Australia. In order to honor the legendary movie, which returned to the focus of the media due to the Super Bowl commercial, where Chris Hemsworth and Margot Robbie had the lead roles, we decided to present some interesting details from the original 1986 film.
Real life inspiration?
As Paul Hogan has said many times, the film has nothing to do with real life. In an interview for the BBC in 2000, Paul said that the idea of a film was born on one his trip to New York.
“I felt like an alien from another planet, some of the ‘Bushie’ guys I know would feel even more out of place. There’s a myth that there is a real Crocodile Dundee but there isn’t.”
Still, many believe that the real Crocodile Dundee existed and that the inspiration for this character was Rod Ansell. In 1977 he published a book about his two-month survival. After the premiere of the film, Rod accused Paul of copyright. It was an unsuccessful attempt by Ansell to became famous through this movie. After that, he got into depression and started using drugs. In 1999 he was killed in a shootout, and on that occasion he killed a policeman, too.
Raising the cash
An interesting fact about Crocodile Dundee is that for a film of 1,400 people they collected a budget of $ 7.1 million, while John Cornell and Paul Hogan each invested $ 600,000. The risk was eventually paid off because the film earned $ US328 million.
Different title
Another interesting thing is that on the word “crocodile” quotation marks were added so people can understand that this is a nickname.
“There have been reptile movies – one was even named Alligator, we wanted everyone to know ‘Crocodile’ was a nickname,” said Barry London, president of distribution at Paramount.
Also, some changes were made on the film itself, because some scenes contained expressions that are characteristic of Australia, and maybe Americans would not understand them.
Fact or fiction
The fact is that the film became world-famous. Interestingly, when Mick Dundee came to New York, then he stayed in Plaza Hotel. The scenes for Home Alone 2, Sleepless In Seattle and North By Northwest movies were also filmed here, but due to the great popularity of the film, visitors were asking people at the reception whether Mick Dundee was really in the hotel.
“We also get calls asking for rooms with bidets, something we don’t have.” said the hotel manager.
Stubborn co-star
There is also a popular scene with a buffalo. In relation to her, Paul Hogan said:
“If the buffalo doesn’t want to do anything, it weighs 2000 pounds and you know, it doesn’t. So you have to hang around. It’s like he said, ‘I’ll just sit here. And you can’t do anything about it.”
Real crocs
Scenes with crocodiles were filmed in Kakadu National Park and there were real crocodiles. In order to protect actors from possible crocodile attacks, a guard team is engaged. Paul Hogan wanted to shoot as many scenes as possible with real crocodiles, but some situations were too risky and then mechanical crocodile was used.
Crossover
Will there be another one?
So far, three films have been made on Crocodile Dundee, Crocodile Dundee in 1986, Crocodile Dundee in 1988 and the third part Crocodile Dundee was filmed in 2001. Many fans would like to see a new sequel, so the fourth part is possible. There is also a petition for filming a new movie.
