Trading Places (1983) on Netflix
Louis Winthorpe III is managing director at a Philadelphia commodities firm. Randolph and Mortimer Duke bet on nature versus nurture and swap his life with street hustler Billy Ray Valentine's.
- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb7.5/10184,643 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes87%
Trailer
Plot summary
Randolph and Mortimer Duke own Duke & Duke Commodity Brokers in Philadelphia, where Louis Winthorpe III is managing director and is engaged to the Dukes' grandniece, Penelope Witherspoon. The brothers clash over nature versus nurture and settle the question with a wager: they swap the lives of Winthorpe and Billy Ray Valentine, a street hustler Winthorpe has arrested after mistaking him for a robber. Clarence Beeks, who is on the Dukes' payroll, frames Winthorpe as a thief, a drug dealer and a philanderer, and Winthorpe loses his job and his home. The Dukes post Valentine's bail, give him Winthorpe's position and the use of his house, where the butler Coleman serves him. Ophelia, a prostitute, offers Winthorpe help in exchange for money.
Cast
- Maurice Woodsas Duke & Duke Employee
- Richard D. Fisher Jr.as Duke & Duke Employee
- Anthony DiSabatinoas Duke & Duke Employee
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Trading Places (1983)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Trading Places was developed for Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder as Valentine and Louis Winthorpe III, but after Pryor was severely injured setting fire to himself while freebasing cocaine, the decision was made to cast someone else and Paramount Pictures suggested Eddie Murphy.
- Writer Timothy Harris often played tennis in the early 1980s against two wealthy but frugal brothers whose rivalry and betting left him exasperated, and he concluded they were "awful" people; the situation gave him the idea of two brothers betting over nature versus nurture.
- The trading-floor scene was scripted for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, but the filmmakers could not get permission to film there; it was then scheduled for a weekday, until Aykroyd's and Murphy's presence distracted the active traders and over $6 billion of trading had to be halted, forcing a weekend shoot.
- In the film the Duke brothers plan to profit from frozen concentrated orange juice futures using an illicitly obtained, not yet public Department of Agriculture crop report. Trading on such information was not illegal until the Dodd-Frank reform act, whose Section 746 is referred to as the "Eddie Murphy rule".
- John Landis contacted the Screen Actors Guild to find Don Ameche; told that Ameche had no agent and that his royalties went to his son in Arizona, Landis took it as evidence the actor was dead, until a Paramount secretary said they saw Ameche regularly on San Vicente Boulevard in Santa Monica.
SPOILER
G. Gordon Liddy, a central figure in the Watergate political scandal of the early 1970s, was offered the role of the corrupt official Clarence Beeks, and was interested until he learned that Beeks becomes the romantic partner of a gorilla.- Jamie Lee Curtis was paid $1 million for the slasher film Halloween II (1981), which she did as a favour to director John Carpenter and producer Debra Hill, but she received only $70,000 for Trading Places.
SPOILER
Don Ameche was opposed to using foul language and often apologized in advance to his crewmates for what he was scripted to say; he performed only one take of his final scene, where he shouts "fuck him", referring to Randolph.
