Trivia / Beverly Hills Cop

• Cast the Expert:
  • The role of Detroit police inspector Douglas Todd was played by Real Life Detroit police detective Gilbert Hill.
  • The stripper in the club was an actual stripper named Mouse. She even chose the song she dances to - "Nasty Girl" by Vanity 6, which was what she danced to in real life.
• Completely Different Title: In Sweden, the film was called "Snuten i Hollywood", meaning "The Cop in Hollywood", despite not actually being set in Hollywood.
• Corpsing: Eddie Murphy apparently caused plenty of this, especially because most dialogue was improvised. During the "Super Cops" scene, John Ashton is doing sort of a Face Palm to hide his laughter (with a self-aware little eyebrow raise that pleads, "stop shooting, I'm going to blow the take"); Judge Reinhold, in turn, was pinching his thighs through his pants pockets.
• Creator Backlash: Steven Berkoff is said to have been disappointed with his performance in the film, and refused to speak about it in interviews after the fact.
• The Danza: John Ashton as Sgt. John Taggart.
• Defictionalization: During his tirade at the Beverly Palms Hotel, Axel pretends to be writing an article called "Michael Jackson: Sitting on Top of the World" for Rolling Stone magazine. In real life, Playboy ran an article called "Eddie Murphy: Sitting on Top of the World."
• Deleted Scene:
  • The 2020 Blu-Ray release of the film includes two previously-unreleased scenes — Axel questioning a "Mr. Carbonowski" in a steak restaurant about Mikey's death (who assures him he had nothing to do with the matter, and unintentionally gives Axel the motivation to travel to L.A.), and a sequence of Axel packing up some belongings in preparation for the trip. Both these scenes were evidently cut from the film for pacing and redundancy reasons. Part of the scene involving Carbonowski (played by Ron Karabatsos) made it to the theatrical trailer, however.
  • Behind the scenes stills showed Axel taking part in some kind of melee fight with Maitland, which never occurs in the finished film.
• Executive Meddling: When the script was in development, the character of Jenny was supposed to be the Love Interest. After Eddie Murphy was finally cast in the part, Paramount got nervous and decided to make Jenny Axel's platonic childhood friend.
• Harpo Does Something Funny: By the time Eddie Murphy was attached to the project, the script had been shopped around considerably and rewritten several times. Many of the funniest scenes just resulted from Eddie and the other actors improvising in place of the scripted lines.
• Mid-Development Genre Shift: It went from violent action film to comedy.
• No Stunt Double: Eddie Murphy did many of his own stunts during the opening chase sequence.
• Recycled Set: The Beverly Hills PD was inspired by Martin Brest's original conceptual designs for the NORAD scenes in WarGames, a film which he was fired from.
• The Red Stapler: Axel's "Mumford Physical Education Department" t-shirt became an instant best seller.
• Serendipity Writes the Plot: In the script, Axel stuffs potatoes he stole from the hotel kitchen into the tail pipe of Rosewood and Taggart's car. Due to time constraints, no scene from the kitchen could be shot. Because the hotel lobby was already a location for a few scenes, the script was re-written so Axel takes bananas from a buffet in the lobby.
• Spared by the Cut: Back when this was an action film, Billy Rosewood was originally killed off halfway through.
• Throw It In!: There are a spectacular number of ad-libs in this movie in general, most of them from Murphy. One example of this is a moment where Maitland has Axel and Jenny cornered and is deciding what to do with them when he stops in his tracks and makes a face. In reality, Steven Berkoff was reacting to something Eddie Murphy ad-libbed but was removed in editing. They kept in his reaction because it made Maitland seem even more sinister and unhinged.
  • The chief referring to Rosewood as Rosemont was an accident during rehearsals that they decided to keep in the finished film.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Sylvester Stallone was originally attached to play Axel Foley. The Stallone draft of the film itself featured various ideas:
    • When Stallone was attached to the film, the character of Jenny was supposed to be his Love Interest. After Eddie Murphy got the part, Paramount were concerned about the implications, and made the (somewhat questionable) decision to make Jenny Axel's childhood friend.
    • The original finale for the Stallone draft of the script took place at night and ended with a car chase between Victor in a Lamborghini and Axel in a turbo-boosting Pontiac GTO. Victor is ultimately killed when his car smashes into an oncoming train.
    • Amusingly, Stallone had a bunch of ideas about how the movie should go and was editing the script accordingly. When Murphy was brought on, Stallone gracefully backed out, taking the ideas with him to be used in Cobra.
  • Jeff Bridges, James Caan, Robert De Niro, Harrison Ford, Richard Gere, Mel Gibson, Michael Keaton, Nick Nolte, Al Pacino, Richard Pryor, Dennis Quaid, Mickey Rourke, Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Travolta, Robin Williams and Bruce Willis all could have been Axel.
  • Originally, two men were supposed to be working in the art gallery scenes. When Martin Brest heard Bronson Pinchot's Serge impersonation, however, he thought it was so hysterical he scaled back the other part to give Pinchot more screen time. The second actor shows up only briefly with his shirt collar open too wide, on which Serge comments.
  • Martin Scorsese was offered the chance to direct but he turned it down, saying the premise reminded him too much of Coogans Bluff. David Cronenberg was also asked to direct, but turned it down.
  • A fruit stand scene was to have been included during the cigarette tractor-trailer chase, but was scrapped for unknown reasons.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: The film had a very tight shooting schedule and the screenplay was being reworked as production went on. Sometimes the actors would be given their dialogue less than an hour before shooting. When Stephen Elliott as the chief of police enters his first scene, you’ll notice he’s carrying rolled up papers in his hand. Brest notes these are actually script pages he was handed just before filming the scene. Holding these pages during rehearsals looked so official that Martin Brest felt it added to his character to be holding them during the actual shoot.

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