FILM · 1973 · USA
The Last Detail
44 archived facts 7 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (44)
- #001
The screenplay was completed in 1970 but contained so much profanity that it could not be filmed as written. The studio waited two years for writer Robert Towne to soften the language. Instead, by 1972 standards for profanity had loosened so much that all the profanity remained.
- #002
Jack Nicholson turned down the role of Johnny Hooker in The Sting (1973), which was written by his close friend Robert Towne, because he considered himself too commercial for the film; Robert Redford later took the part. Nicholson and Redford were both nominated for the 1973 Academy Award® for Best Actor and lost to Jack Lemmon for Save the Tiger (1973).
- #003
This was the first of three films for which Jack Nicholson was nominated for the Academy Award® for Best Actor in three consecutive years. It was followed by Chinatown (1974) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), the last of which he finally won.
- #004
In 1974, a year after the film's release, the Department of Defense permanently closed the Navy prison in Portsmouth, NH. All naval prisoners were subsequently sent to the Fort Leavenworth Military Prison in Kansas.
- #005
The U.S. Navy would not allow director Hal Ashby to shoot at its base in Norfolk, so the base scenes were filmed in Canada. In the film the Norfolk base is referred to twice as "Shit City." The scene of the sailors leaving Norfolk was shot at the Greyhound bus terminal at the corner of Granby Street and Brambleton Avenue in downtown Norfolk. The grey Navy vehicle turns left off Granby and drops the sailors at the rear entrance of the station. The bus terminal and storefronts on Granby look much the same 40 years later.
- #006
A more respectable version with less profanity was also filmed for television broadcasts. Because of the amount of profanity, the entire film was nearly shot twice.
- #007
John Travolta was a strong candidate to play Meadows but lost the role to Randy Quaid at the last minute.
- #008
After Jack Nicholson was cast as Buddusky, he hoped his old friend Rupert Crosse would be cast as Mulhall, but Crosse was terminally ill and could no longer work.
- #009
The word "Fuck," in all its permutations, is spoken 65 times, a record at the time.
- #010
Nancy Allen was originally offered the role of "Young Whore" (played by Carol Kane) but turned it down because she felt she would be too nervous to speak while naked on camera.
- #011
This was the first film of Nancy Allen, who plays the character Nancy, with whom Badass talks all night at the party.
- #012
In the hotel where SM1 Buddusky (Jack Nicholson) encourages his fellow sailors to learn to be Signalmen, the others only want to watch the movie on television, so he uses a combination of semaphore and Morse code to make an obscene suggestion to them. He signaled "F*ck" in semaphore and the letter U in Morse code.
- #013
This was the first feature film of actor/comedian Gilda Radner, who plays one of the Buddhist singers. Her character is listed in the credits as "Nichiren Shoshu Member."
- #014
The Last Detail (1973), following the precedent of the novel, was groundbreaking in that the screenplay does not explicitly call attention to Mule's black race. An anecdote found in various modern sources states that at the end of filming Jack Nicholson congratulated Otis Young for being the first African American allowed to play a "human being."
- #015
In 2017 Richard Linklater announced the sequel Last Flag Flying (2017), starring Bryan Cranston, Laurence Fishburne and Steve Carell in roles previously played by Jack Nicholson, Otis Young and Randy Quaid. Although it is not a true sequel (the characters' names are different), the novel that inspired that film was the sequel to Darryl Ponicsan's novel that inspired this film.
- #016
At the end, the two veteran sailors are seen leaving the prison. Their brisk pace and the camera angle soon reveal a natural, unconscious "in step" march stemming from basic training camp. The only brief moment they break out of it is when Mulhall steps over a small obstacle, and shortly afterward Buddusky brings them both back into the same stride. The whole scene is further enriched by a marching band's rendition of "Anchors Aweigh!"
- #017
Several members of the cast and crew were actual military veterans. Jack Nicholson was a firefighter in the California Air National Guard, Otis Young served in the Marines during the Korean War, Clifton James was a highly decorated Army infantry platoon sergeant who served in the South Pacific during World War II, cinematographer Michael Chapman was in the Army during the Korean War, editor Robert C. Jones was also in the Army, editing training films and documentaries, and writer Darryl Ponicsan drew on his personal experience in the Navy when writing the novel.
- #018
Cinematographer Michael Chapman plays a "taxi driver" here for the first time as a full-fledged cinematographer. Ironically, Chapman would later be the cinematographer of Taxi Driver (1976).
- #019
The U.S. Navy refused to cooperate with the production because of the way it depicted the service and its members. The Canadian Navy, however, was happy to help.
- #020
For the roles of Buddusky, Mulhall and Meadows, the studio wanted to cast Burt Reynolds, Jim Brown and David Cassidy.
- #021
Director Hal Ashby was arrested for marijuana possession while scouting filming locations in Canada.
- #022
"Lawrence M. Meadows" was Randy Quaid's first major role, playing a transit prisoner in The Last Detail (1973), and it also contains his only Oscar®-nominated performance.
- #023
The film's cast includes two Oscar® winners, Jack Nicholson and Hal Ashby, and three Oscar nominees: Randy Quaid, Carol Kane and Michael Chapman.
- #024
While traveling to Meadows's hometown, the men pass behind a school that Meadows describes as Calvin Coolidge Junior High School. It is actually Vincent Massey Collegiate in the Etobicoke suburb of Toronto. More than a decade later, the same school was used as Degrassi Junior High in Degrassi High (1987).
- #025
Bud Cort met with Hal Ashby and begged to play Meadows, but the director felt he was not right for the role.
- #026
Robert Englund auditioned for Meadows, the role played by Randy Quaid.
- #027
Producer Gerald Ayres had bought the rights to Darryl Ponicsan's novel in 1969. Robert Towne began adapting the novel after returning from the set of Drive, He Said (1971). The screenwriter adapted the script for his close friends Jack Nicholson and Rupert Crosse; it was completed in 1970. In adapting the novel, Towne removed Buddusky's "secret intellectualism and beautiful wife." The screenwriter also changed the ending so that Buddusky lives rather than dies, as in the book. Ayres persuaded co0050868 to make the film based on his advisor's praise of Bonnie and Clyde (1967), but had difficulty getting the film made because of the studio's concern about the foul language in Towne's script. Peter Guber recalled: "There were 342 'fucks' in the first seven minutes." Columbia's president asked Towne to reduce the number of profanities, to which the writer replied, "People talk that way when they can't get action; cunts." Towne refused to soften the language, and the project remained in limbo until Nicholson, then a bankable star, became involved. Ayres sent the script to Robert Altman and then to Hal Ashby. Ayres recalls: "I thought it was a picture that required a skewed perspective, and so was Hal." Ashby was recovering from the disappointing commercial and critical failure of Harold and Maude (1971) and was in pre-production on Three Cornered Circle at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) when Jack Nicholson told him about The Last Detail (1973), which he was going to shoot at Columbia. The director had been sent the script in the fall of 1971, and a reader's report had described it as "long and unimaginative," but he personally found it very appealing. He wanted to do it, but it conflicted with the Three Cornered Circle schedule. Ashby withdrew from his deal with MGM, and Nicholson suggested they team up on The Last Detail. Columbia disliked Ashby because he had a reputation for distrusting authority and made little effort to communicate with executives. The $2.3 million budget was low enough for him to be approved.
- #028
Don McGovern, who plays the racist bartender in Washington, also appeared as a bartender in other Jack Nicholson films.
- #029
Buddusky was a Signalman First Class and Mulhall was a Gunner's Mate Second Class.
- #030
The music playing as the three sailors cook hot dogs over a fire in a snowy Boston park is William Byrd's The Bells, Suite #6. This is the "alternate" version of the original; it plays throughout their journey as they set off again for Portsmouth and simply disappears when they arrive, the "closed" ending of the original being quite different.
- #031
The phrase "let's shag ass," used in this film, was later used in The Royal Tenenbaums (2001).
- #032
Dennis Hopper, who made Jack Nicholson a star with his first feature film Easy Rider (1969), would later remake this film directly as the comedy Chasers (1994), using a woman as a captive.
- #033
Apart from Jack Nicholson, the real star of The Last Detail (1973) is Robert Towne's irreverent, heartbreaking script. Until that point, Towne was known mainly as a master script doctor; a hired gun who could polish someone else's work without being listed in the credits until it shone like a freshly cut diamond. His rewrites of both Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and The Godfather (1972) were secrets not well kept in film circles, and most people thought he would one day write a dazzling script of his own. Nicholson, who had known Towne for years, had already lined him up to write the remake of John Garfield's melodrama The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946). But when that film failed, both Nicholson and Towne chose to make The Last Detail (Nicholson would later make The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981) for director Bob Rafelson, with David Mamet writing the script).
- #034
Some parts of the film were shot at train stations in Norfolk and Richmond, VA; Washington, DC; and New York's Pennsylvania Station. When the necessary equipment was not available at the Richmond station (later demolished) for the scenes, the shooting of this scene had to be moved to Atlanta, Georgia. The ice skating scene in the film was shot hours later at Rockefeller Center in New York City, and the hot dog stand scene was shot on MacDougal Street near Washington Square in New York City. Filming locations around Boston, MA included the seedy area of Washington St. for the adult bookstore scene and the Suffolk County Jail, which stood in for the New Hampshire naval prison. Some parts of the film were shot in Toronto. The naval base scenes were shot here, and modern sources add that the company used a military base in Toronto after the US Navy refused permission to film at its Norfolk base, unhappy with how the Navy was portrayed in the film. The final scene in the picture and the last frame filmed were at Deer Island in Winthrop, MA, located across Boston harbor.
- #035
After dropping off the prisoner, when Buddusky and Mulhall are given a hard time by a Marine lieutenant at the disciplinary barracks, both demand to see the XO. XO is an abbreviation for Executive Officer. This lieutenant would be the XO's subordinate.
- #036
Jack Nicholson was nominated for the Oscar® for Best Actor in 1973, and Randy Quaid for Best Supporting Actor. The film received its third Oscar® nomination for Robert Towne for Best Adapted Screenplay. Nicholson and Quaid were also nominated for Golden Globes for their performances in The Last Detail (1973), and Nicholson won the BAFTA award for Best Actor as well as other accolades for his performance. Nicholson was named Best Actor at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival, where the film was widely acclaimed.
- #037
(At about the 32nd minute) When the three sailors enter a bar to buy beer, there is a distinct sign for Andeker from America. Andeker was a premium beer first produced by Pabst in 1939. It was discontinued in the 1960s, but Pabst relaunched it in 1972 to compete with Anheuser-Busch's Michelob. Andeker lost that battle and disappeared again in 1986. However, in later years, when craft beers experienced a boom in the brewing scene, Pabst began producing Andeker again in 2018 (a 5% Helles style), but it was only available at the Pabst Milwaukee Brewery. However, it still discontinued production of the brand in 2020.
- #038
Buddusky wants to toast Batman and Superman. Jack Nicholson would later establish villainous connections to both men. Nicholson played the Joker in Batman (1989) and was later set to play Lex Luthor in Tim Burton's cancelled Superman Lives.
- #039
In New Zealand, the film was given a Restricted 18 rating, largely because of its heavy profanity.
- #040
Randy Quaid plays a boy who suffers from kleptomania, an uncontrollable urge to steal objects with no regard for their economic value.
- #041
Jack Nicholson's character mentions that he was briefly married to a girl from Torrance. Seven years later, Nicholson would play the role of Jack Torrance in The Shining (1980).
- #042
In 1975, Jack Nicholson won the Best Actor award at the British Academy Film Awards for The Last Detail (1973) and Chinatown (1974). He was unable to attend the ceremony in London because he was shooting One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) at the same location. Instead, he filmed an elaborate and witty acceptance speech on set with the rest of the film's cast, which was shown during the ceremony and on national television.
- #043
The Italian censorship visa # 65207 was issued on 26 September 1974.
- #044
The Last Detail (1973) is an American comedy-drama film directed by Hal Ashby from a screenplay by Robert Towne, adapted from Darryl Ponicsan's 1970 novel of the same name. Ponicsan, a former teacher, also wrote "Cinderella Liberty," which formed the basis of the 1973 film of the same name. The film stars Jack Nicholson, Otis Young, Dennis Quaid, Clifton James and Carol Kane. It follows two career sailors assigned to escort an emotionally withdrawn young recruit from Virginia bases to the Portsmouth Naval Prison in Maine.
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