The Quest for D. B. Cooper
The Quest for D. B. Cooper is really a 1981 American crime thriller film about infamous aircraft hijacker D. B. Cooper, who steered clear of with $200,000 after bouncing from the rear of a Boeing 727 airliner on November 24, 1971. The majority of the show fictionalizes Cooper’s escape after he arrived on the floor..mw-parser-output .toclimit-2 .toclevel-1 ul,.mw-parser-output .toclimit-3 .toclevel-2 ul,.mw-parser-output .toclimit-4 .toclevel-3 ul,.mw-parser-output .toclimit-5 .toclevel-4 ul,.mw-parser-output .toclimit-6 .toclevel-5 ul,.mw-parser-output .toclimit-7 .toclevel-6 ul
In 1971, the hijacker, recognized as “D.B. Cooper”, jumps from your airliner using the rear exit. He jumps on the obvious day, parachuting right into a forest in Washington Condition. The person is later recognized as Jim Meade, an ex-Army man with big dreams. Meade escapes the manhunt utilizing a Jeep he’d formerly hidden within the forest and concealing the cash within the carcass of the deer. He eventually meets track of his estranged wife Hannah, who operates a white water rafting company. Meanwhile, Meade has been hunted by Bill Gruen, an insurance coverage investigator who had been Meade’s sergeant within the Army, and Meade’s Army buddy, Remson, who appreciated Meade speaking about hijacking a plane.
Gruen confronts the Meades in the rafting company, however they escape lower the forest. The Meades lead Gruen and Remson on the mix-country chase involving various stolen cars. Gruen is fired by his employer, but continues the chase to assert the cash for themself. In the aircraft boneyard near Tucson, Arizona, the Meades get a hot-air balloon, but Gruen steals the cash from Hannah. Meade chases him lower having a barely functioning Boeing-Stearman PT-17 crop duster biplane. Meade runs Gruen off course but crashes his aircraft.
Dealing with the wrecks, Meade has Gruen’s gun as well as for a couple of minutes, they discuss how Gruen understood that Meade was D. B. Cooper. Together with clues he’d left, the prior encounters backward and forward men within the Army had convinced Gruen that just Meade might have performed the audacious hijacking.
Meade leaves Gruen having a couple bundles from the cash, and walks away with the remainder, to become selected up by Hannah. With Gruen abandoning the pursuit, it can be Remson to try and recover the stolen money. As he reaches a crossroads the Meades have recently passed, thinking he sees their truck parked nearby, Remson continues the chase.
The Quest for D. B. Cooper took it’s origin from American poet J.D. Reed’s 1980 novel, Free Fall: A Singular.
Jeffrey Alan Fiskin authored the initial script. John Frankenheimer was the initial director, but he was substituted with Buzz Kulik after shooting one sequence. Kulik finished the show. W.D. Richter labored around the script uncredited.
The producers then requested editor-director Roger Spottiswoode to shoot a large new stunt and edit the show. Spottiswoode stated the film was “condemned” unless of course he could shoot new sequences, to become compiled by Ron Shelton who’d be credited as “affiliate producer”. Within the finish Spottiswood-Shelton scenes comprised 70% from the finished film.
Based on one author, the brand new team “added new figures – a rural rogue’s gallery of scam artists – as well as an finish-of-the-hippie era feeling. Even if editing the present material, the brand new author and director altered the show thematically, dramatically, cinematically.”
The Kulik movie would be a “banal, dour Vietnam vet docudrama” where Meade concocts the plan to flee a postwar malaise and will get upset as he wins the acclaim like a hijacker that eluded him like a veteran. The Shelton-Spotiswoode movie was much more of a chase comedy “in regards to a man who returns home and intends to get themself the simple money that’s area of the American dream for him and for the low-lifes he meets on the way (together with a Nam comrade who returns to haunt Meade just like a comic Javert).”
Only Jeffrey Allan Fiskin was awarded credit..
“It had been just a little tricky understanding what would happen with no script” stated Harrold.
So that they can drum up publicity for that film, Universal Pictures offered millions of dollar reward for just about any information which would result in the capture and arrest from the real D.B. Cooper. Nobody ever claimed the cash. [Note 1]
The Boeing 727-173C (c/n 19504-527, N690WA) leased from World Airways, performed negligence the Northwest Orient Airlines Boeing 727 featured on the horizon hijacking. Colored within the make believe “Northern Off-shore” company livery, it made an appearance within the first scene, being photographed by pilot Clay Lacy from his Learjet. Four professional parachutists performed the parachute jump in the rear exit stair from the Boeing 727.
Other aircraft within the film were the wrecks based in the Davis-Monthan Air Pressure Base, including twin-engine and 4-engine propeller aircraft like the Douglas C-47 Skytrain, Lockheed P2V Neptune, Lockheed C-121 Constellation and Douglas C-54 Skymaster. Numerous Sikorsky H-34 and Sikorsky CH-37 Mojave helicopters were also featured. A Boeing-Stearman PT-17 (s/n 41 25304, N56949) traveled by Art Scholl was utilized within the weather vehicle-aircraft chase within the film.
The musical score incorporated the song “Shine”, written and sang by Waylon Jennings. A soundtrack album seemed to be released on Polydor (PD-1-6344), composed mostly of country songs. The musical score was composed by James Horner. It offers the song “Shine”, that was also released on Jennings’ 1982 album Black on Black.
The Quest for D. B. Cooper, although much like other hijacking films from the period, wasn’t successful in the box office. Inside a critical overview of the show, Vincent Canby in the assessment for that New You are able to Occasions, succinctly noted that “… numerous excellent actors (were coerced) into performing exactly what is a dismally unfunny chase-comedy that eventually appears as pointless, shortsighted and cheerlessly cute because the character they have composed and known as ‘D.B. Cooper’.”
In 1982 Frankenheimer described The Quest for D. B. Cooper as “… most likely my worst-ever experience. A vital member within the chain of command have been laying to both management and myself which means that all of us thought i was creating a different movie.”
Roger Spottiswoode, however, would win the Special Jury Prize in the 1982 Cognac Festival du Film Policier.