We better call an ambulance. Mortimer Duke : Fuck him! Those men wanted to have sex with me! Share Randolph Duke : That man is a product of a poor environment. There's nothing wrong with him, I can prove it. Mortimer Duke : Of course there's something wrong with him Share Harvey: Monkey?
I'm a fucking gorilla, you clown. Share Mortimer Duke : Oh, grow up. Randolph Duke : Mother always said you were greedy. Mortimer Duke : She meant it as a compliment. Harry: We, uh, need a fourth for squash today, Louis. Are you interested? I'll be having dinner with Penelope tonight. Andrew: Oh, lucky you. Share Mortimer Duke : I have no money to give you.
Share Clarence Beeks: Hey. Back off! I'll rip out your eyes and piss on your brain. You are, the most, righteous. Billy Ray Valentine : Yeah right, just get the fuck out, man! Let's go. Share Mortimer Duke : This is an outrage! Whatever happens they can't take that away from you," Coleman tells Billy Ray. But the point of the plot is that the self is something the rich can buy and sell. Merit doesn't make you who you are; someone else's money does.
If you give Billy Ray a house and responsibility and no reason to steal, he won't steal. Prejudice and a malevolent social structure push people into different boxes. That's the obvious critique of meritocracy. But even more telling, perhaps, is the portrait of Randolph and Mortimer Duke, two of the great villains of the s.
Evil rich people are often portrayed with a mixture of loathing and fascination. The wealthy bad guys in Oliver Stone's Wall Street or The Wolf of Wall Street or for that matter in Goodfellas are appealingly violent and oversexed; they have a badness that swaggers, and a lifestyle to envy.
Randolph and Mortimer, in contrast, are not appealing or enviable in any way. They have no sex lives, and no apparent desires save for money and "scientific experiments" which involve ruining the lives of friends for no reason. Furthermore, and importantly, Randolph and Mortimer aren't especially good at being bad.
They aren't efficiently vicious or even moderately perspicacious; they just have lots of money and can pay people to make them more. The Dukes have spent their lives as Wall Street brokers, but Billy Ray is better at reading the market than they are with about five minutes of instruction. Their big money-making gambit in the film involves straightforward, rudimentary corruption; they pay Beeks to steal an agriculture report on orange juice so they can engage in insider trading.
Nothing about their fortune is earned; they inherited wealth, and then they cheat to expand it. Trading Places ultimately can't follow through on these bleak insights, or it wouldn't be a comedy. After establishing that merit and success have little to do with each other, it has to somehow get to a conclusion in which the virtuous and talented are rewarded and the rich parasites get what's coming to them.
After they've stolen the agriculture report and given the Duke's a false one, Louis gives Billy Ray a pep talk about mental toughness and taking no prisoners on the pit floor. Their success in trading is thus framed as a matter of competence, boldness, and skill, even though it's really, again, a matter of inside information.
The Dukes were wealthy assholes who didn't deserve their money. Order is restored. Similarly, even as the film identifies and condemns structures of racism, it rather helplessly reproduces them. Eddie Murphy is a much more charismatic actor than Dan Aykroyd. He dominates every scene he's in, sometimes just by looking deadpan at the camera.
Aykroyd's Louis never convincingly evolves beyond the smug, whiney prat from the beginning of the film—not even when, in a very poor directorial choice, he spends a scene in blackface. Yet, it's Louis who gets the leading role. Ophelia falls in love with him, for reasons that are unclear, and in the pit he's the one teaching, with Billy Ray as his mentee. The film knows that Mortimer and Randolph are rich white jerks who don't deserve their fortune. But it can't quite grasp the fact that being briefly poor doesn't make Louis any better.
When Ophelia, Billy Ray, and Coleman become wealthy at the end of the film, it shows that wealth and poverty are structural positions, not moral states.
They intend to restore Valentine to his place on the streets but decide to leave Winthorpe where he is. Valentine hears the men talking and tries to find Winthorpe. During a news broadcast, the group discovers that Beeks is in possession of a top-secret document on the future of orange crops. Winthorpe and Duke make the connection to Beeks and substantial payments from the Duke brothers to him. They suspect that the Dukes have paid to view the document in advance. The group steals the forged report and takes it to the Dukes.
Based on the false report, the Dukes make a firm financial commitment to future contracts. Several other traders follow suit, and the price of the stock begins to rise. Valentine and Winthorpe sell as many stocks as they can at the inflated price.
The correct crop report is released, and the price of orange juice concentrate dramatically drops. As the stock plummets, Valentine and Winthorpe buy it to ensure maximum profit for themselves. When the stock closes, the two men tell the Dukes they made a bet as to whether or not they could get rich and bankrupt the Dukes at the same time.
The Dukes are left unable to pay for the stocks they have pledged to buy and are bankrupted to cover their debt. Trading Places traces the tale of an affluent commodities broker and a street hustler who meet when the two are selected as the test subjects for a bet as to the outcome when their lives are completely swapped. Considered to be a commercial success, Trading Places was highly praised for its cast and unique brand of comedy. The score for the film was nominated for an Academy Award.
In subsequent years, the movie has undergone further scrutiny. While some laud it as one of the best Christmas comedies ever made, others are incensed by its frequent racial jokes and profanity. One of the most unique Trading Places film sets is St. Croix, the Virgin Island where the final sequence of the movie was filmed. Is slapstick comedy your favorite genre?
Consider yourselves a Trading Places fan? Why not treat yourself to a trip to visit the filming locations for Trading Places? Valentine cons people on the street scene in Trading Places Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania This Trading Places location opens on Valentine kneeling on a cart, pushing himself down the city street while he pretends to be both blind and legless.
He runs across two policemen who suspect he is not actually handicapped or blind. One of the policemen stops his cart with his foot. Valentine, still playing blind, asks who it is. The policemen tell him they have had some complaints about people in the area claiming to be crippled and blind when they in fact are not. The following conversation ensues in one of many funny scenes in Trading Places. It was rough, very painful. So were we.
I was all over that place, basically a lot of places, a lot of places. To visit this Trading Places production location, you are spoiled for choice when it comes to public transit options. If traveling by bus, the following lines all have stops at Rittenhouse Square: 16, 2, 21, 27, 4, , , 42, and He starts juggling a vase and accidentally drops it on the ground, destroying it.
He apologizes to the Duke brothers, and the men engage in this conversation together: Randolph: Perfectly alright, William, it was your vase. That was a fake, right? The men: NO! The two also said that Murphy and Aykroyd acknowledged that they were unfamiliar with Bellamy and Ameche. When it came to casting, Landis said , "What really got me in trouble was Jamie Lee Curtis, because up to that point she had only done horror pictures.
But Jamie did a terrific job. She somehow made her part, the hooker with a heart of gold, almost believable! Gordon Liddy allegedly considered playing Clarence until reading the final scene involving his character getting sexually assaulted by a gorilla. In the movie, Beeks reads Liddy's autobiography Will on the train.
Fifteen days of exterior shooting took place in Philadelphia. On the last day of production, March 1, , filming concluded on a beach in the U. Virgin Islands. She was engaged to Marlene Dietrich's grandson, production designer J. Michael Riva, at the time. It was located at Park Avenue. Giancarlo Esposito portrayed "Cellmate 2.
So what happened? It starts with some insider information. Aykroyd and Murphy steal a report that will cause the price of orange juice to fall, and replace it with a report that says OJ prices will rise. They do this because they know their enemies, the Duke brothers, will trade on the phony report.
Moving to the big scene, the Duke brothers, through their trader, starts buying OJ futures. Then everyone buys. The value skyrockets. The group steals the forged report and takes it to the Dukes. Based on the false report, the Dukes make a firm financial commitment to future contracts. Several other traders follow suit, and the price of the stock begins to rise.
Valentine and Winthorpe sell as many stocks as they can at the inflated price. The correct crop report is released, and the price of orange juice concentrate dramatically drops. As the stock plummets, Valentine and Winthorpe buy it to ensure maximum profit for themselves. When the stock closes, the two men tell the Dukes they made a bet as to whether or not they could get rich and bankrupt the Dukes at the same time.
The Dukes are left unable to pay for the stocks they have pledged to buy and are bankrupted to cover their debt. Trading Places traces the tale of an affluent commodities broker and a street hustler who meet when the two are selected as the test subjects for a bet as to the outcome when their lives are completely swapped. Considered to be a commercial success, Trading Places was highly praised for its cast and unique brand of comedy.
The score for the film was nominated for an Academy Award. In subsequent years, the movie has undergone further scrutiny. While some laud it as one of the best Christmas comedies ever made, others are incensed by its frequent racial jokes and profanity. One of the most unique Trading Places film sets is St. Croix, the Virgin Island where the final sequence of the movie was filmed. Is slapstick comedy your favorite genre?
Consider yourselves a Trading Places fan? Why not treat yourself to a trip to visit the filming locations for Trading Places? Valentine cons people on the street scene in Trading Places Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania This Trading Places location opens on Valentine kneeling on a cart, pushing himself down the city street while he pretends to be both blind and legless.
He runs across two policemen who suspect he is not actually handicapped or blind. One of the policemen stops his cart with his foot. Valentine, still playing blind, asks who it is. The policemen tell him they have had some complaints about people in the area claiming to be crippled and blind when they in fact are not. The following conversation ensues in one of many funny scenes in Trading Places.
It was rough, very painful. So were we. I was all over that place, basically a lot of places, a lot of places. To visit this Trading Places production location, you are spoiled for choice when it comes to public transit options. If traveling by bus, the following lines all have stops at Rittenhouse Square: 16, 2, 21, 27, 4, , , 42, and He starts juggling a vase and accidentally drops it on the ground, destroying it.
He apologizes to the Duke brothers, and the men engage in this conversation together: Randolph: Perfectly alright, William, it was your vase. That was a fake, right? The men: NO! This Trading Places scene takes place in a private residence in a suburb of Philadelphia. Make another right onto Market Street and a left onto S 21st Street. Turn left onto Delancey Place, and the former film set can be seen on the right-hand side. The man next to her stares at her, leaving her feeling awkward and uncomfortable.
Winthorpe comes through the door looking disheveled and dressed in strange attire.