Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988) on Netflix
Engineer Preston Tucker wants to build a car of the future, the Tucker Torpedo, with new safety designs. Financier Abe Karatz raises money to build it, and Detroit's automakers oppose him.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb6.9/1022,864 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes82%
Trailer
Plot summary
Preston Tucker has wanted to build cars since boyhood. He designs an armored car for the military during the war and builds gun turrets in a shop beside his home in Ypsilanti, Michigan, with his wife Vera and their children behind him. When the fighting stops, he sets out to build a new kind of car, the Tucker Torpedo, with disc brakes, seatbelts, a windshield that pops out, and headlights that turn with the wheels. He brings in the young designer Alex Tremulis and the New York financier Abe Karatz, who arranges financing by selling stock.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The filmmakers devised a $24 million production budget, but Universal, Walt Disney, TriStar and Paramount wanted Coppola and Lucas to lower it to $15 million. Lucas decided to cover the $24 million budget himself, and pre-production proceeded.
- Leonard Bernstein agreed to write the music and Betty Comden and Adolph Green were hired to write the lyrics; they all spent a week at Coppola's home in California planning the musical, which resulted in Bernstein writing one song.
- Tucker's descendants granted Bridges the opportunity to wear the man's black pearl ring and cuff links, and Preston's son said Bridges had "got it all in the mannerisms and the look", capturing a father who was always thinking of what came next.
- Schulman was angered when screenwriter David Seidler, previously attached to the project, was granted a co-writing credit by the WGA: "That is one instance where every word of the script is mine." Coppola said the credit went to a writer who had nothing to do with the script he used.
- Three cars were used to film the crash scene: a "before" version with a fiberglass body, a Studebaker modified to look like a Tucker for the actual rollover, and an "after crash" version, another fiberglass body fitted to a Ford LTD chassis.
