Tucker: The Man and His Dream
Writers: Arnold Schulman, David Seidler
Directors: Francis Ford Coppola
Release: August 12, 1988
Tagline: When they tried to buy him, he refused. When they tried to bully him, he resisted. When they tried to break him, he became an American legend. The true story of Preston Tucker.
Producer(s): Fred Fuchs, Fred Roos, George Lucas
Associate-Producer: Teri Fettis-D’Ovidio
Stars/Actors: Jeff Bridges, Joan Allen, Martin Landau, Christian Slater
Production Company: LucasFilm
Genre(s): Biography, Drama
ID: tt0096316
Rating: PG
Runtime: 110 minutes
Synopsis: The story of Preston Tucker, the maverick car designer and his ill-fated challenge to the auto industry with his revolutionary car concept.
Declassified by Agent Palmer: Tucker – The Man, The Car, The Movie
Quotes and Lines
“The car of tomorrow… today.”
“… When I was a little kid, maybe five years old, in the old country, my mother used to say to me; she’d warn me, she’d say, ‘Don’t get too close to people. You’ll catch their dreams… ‘… Years later, I realized I misunderstood her… ‘Germs’, she said, not ‘dreams’, ‘You’ll catch their *germs*’… I want you to know something, Tucker. I went into business with you for one reason – to make money. That’s all… How was I to know… if I got too close, I’d catch your dreams…”
“When I was a boy, I used to, uh… I used to read all about Edison, and the Wright brothers… Mr. Ford, they were, they were my heroes… ‘rags to riches’ that’s not just the name of a book; that’s, what this country was all about!… We invented the free enterprise system, where anybody, no matter who he was, where he came from, what class he belonged to… If he came up with a better idea, about ANYTHING, there’s no limit to how far he could go… I grew up a generation too late I guess because now the way the system works… The loner; the dreamer; the CRACKPOT, who, comes up with some CRAZY IDEA that everybody LAUGHS at, that LATER, turns out to REVOLUTIONIZE THE WORLD… HE’S SQUASHED, FROM ABOVE, BEFORE HE EVEN GETS HIS HEAD OUT OF THE WATER, BECAUSE THE BUREAUCRATS, THEY’D RATHER KILL A NEW IDEA THAN LET IT ROCK THE BOAT!… IF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN WERE ALIVE TODAY, HE’D BE THROWN IN JAIL FOR SAILING A KITE WITHOUT A LICENSE! It’s true!… We’re all puffed up with ourselves now because we invented *the bomb*… Dropped the… Beat the daylights out of the Japanese; the Nazis… But if ‘big business’ closes the door on THE LITTLE GUY WITH A NEW IDEA, WE’RE NOT ONLY CLOSING THE DOOR ON PROGRESS, BUT WE’RE SABOTAGING EVERYTHING THAT WE FOUGHT FOR!… EVERYTHING THAT THE COUNTRY STANDS FOR! And one day, we’re gonna find ourselves at the bottom of the heap, instead of king of the hill, having no idea how we got there; buying our radios and our cars from our former enemies!… I don’t believe that’s gonna happen; I *can’t* believe it, cuz… if I ever, stop believing in plain old common horse-sense of the American people… there’s no way I could get out of bed in the morning… Thank you.”
“Big ships fine,” Confucius say. “Rowboats long in tooth, make big noise, go nowhere.”
Although only fifty Tuckers were ever produced, forty six of them are still road worthy and in use today. Tucker’s innovations of aerodynamic styling, padded dash, pop out windows, seat belts, fuel injection and disc brakes were slowly adopted by Detroit and are found in the cars you are driving now. Preston Tucker died of an illness six years after the trial, but his ideas will live forever.