Watching Beverly Hills Cop in 35mm is the closest I will ever get to actual time travel. There are a lot of reasons that this is one of my 100 favorite movies. Of course, many of them have to do with simple nostalgia, as I was the perfect age when this film came out in December of 1984. I saw it many times in the theater in the last month of that foundational year and then countless times on VHS in 1985 and the ensuing decades. But I can't chalk my love for this film solely up to the Pavlovian responses that watching the movie and hearing its soundtrack evoke in me. Like so many of my favorite pictures, this is one of those ultra-rare movies in which all the ingredients magically came together to produce something that even its creators could never have dreamt would turn out so well. That magical cohesion is especially wild in the case of Beverly Hills Cop since this film was made with many late twists and turns in its production process, but the resulting picture benefited from such last-minute circumstances far more than if everything had followed the original plan.

Beverly Hills Cop transformed action movies and Hollywood cinema in general. The concept of the action/comedy certainly existed prior to this picture, but it was always a strange genre hybrid. It was far more typical to see a segregation between comedy and action, much as there was a segregation for movies made for Black audiences and "mainstream audiences" prior to this film. For a brief time, Eddie Murphy occupied a space in pop culture as the one Black actor who could crossover into areas that were essentially whites-only beforehand. Michael Jackson did this crossover at roughly the same time, when MTV had an unspoken but obvious rule against playing "Black music" unless it was the music of Michael Jackson, a performer who seemed made for the visual music medium but who also possessed qualities that made him unthreatening to white executives. With Eddie Murphy, his appeal was less based on being unthreatening since Murphy's stand-up was very "raw," and more the result of Hollywood seeing money when they looked at him, and that was enough.

It took some time after Murphy had kicked open the door for African-American actors to get more solo-vehicle lead roles in tent-pole pictures, but there's no question he did kick down that door in terms of making movies that were tailored around him, rather than fitting himself into established formulas. Unlike Sidney Poitier, Murphy didn't have to play an idealized version of a Black man, and unlike his idol Richard Pryor, he didn't need to share billing with a white co-star when making mainstream Hollywood fare. Like Pryor, Murphy was one of the most foul-mouthed entertainers of all time, but from Beverly Hills Cop on, he was able to star in both raw solo concert films and major blockbusters in which he was the lone star working under his own shingle, Eddie Murphy Productions.

Murphy had made two hit films prior to this one, 48 Hrs. in 1982 and Trading Places in 1983. In both films, he had equal billing with his established white co-stars. But Beverly Hills Cop was a straight-up star vehicle for the 23-year-old stand-up comedian, who had been the undisputed breakout star of the lambasted seasons of Saturday Night Live that came after the original cast, producer, and writing staff left the show upon completion of its initial five-year run. Murphy was already a popular cultural figure in comedy, late-night TV, and a couple of movies, and it was obvious he was going to be a mega-star. Still, his earlier 1984 film, Best Defense, proved that he wasn't going to turn any turkey he touched into box-office gold. He needed the right project as a showcase for his unique talents. Paramount Pictures was developing a few projects for Murphy, but none of them were coming together. Beverly Hills Cop was never meant to be an Eddie Murphy star vehicle, but at the last minute, that's what it became.

According to producer Don Simpson, who was notorious for exaggerating his creative contributions to many films, the project was initiated in 1977 when Simpson was a Paramount executive. He claimed that he came up with an idea for a fish-out-of-water action movie about a blue-collar cop from East L.A. who gets transferred to swanky Beverly Hills and has to acclimate to the radical difference in police culture in such a posh city. Screenwriter Danilo Bach wrote the screenplay in 1981, though he had the cop come from Pittsburgh. Bach wrote a straight action movie picturing Al Pacino or James Caan as the lead. Simpson teamed up with partner Jerry Bruckheimer and started producing movies for Paramount. They scored a massive, unexpected success with their first film, Flashdance, and began to develop more projects with similar aesthetics featuring slick, MTV-style visuals and pop music soundtracks. Their first release was 1984's Thief of Hearts, which was a big flop, but they knew they had something special in Beverly Hills Cop.

Daniel Petrie Jr. was a young screenwriter who had just sold his first script, which Jim McBride would eventually make as The Big Easy in 1986 with Dennis Quaid and Ellen Barkin. Petrie was brought in to rewrite Bach's script for Mickey Rourke, who was signed to a holding contract to star in the film. Petrie was not a comedy writer, but he was a struggling writer living in LA who found the city strange and hard to take seriously, especially its culture of haves and have-nots. He would constantly look in the windows of high-end clothing stores and art galleries, not believing anyone would ever wear or display the showcased merchandise. He put this attitude into his draft, and the fish-out-of-water and class-clash aspects got funnier and funnier. Paramount and the producers loved Petrie's humorous script, and Rourke left the project to make another film. Paramount had a standing deal with Sylvester Stallone wherein he was given first refusal on any script for which he could be even remotely appropriate. They sent him Petrie's screenplay, assuming he'd turn it down, but Stallone surprisingly wanted to do it. Beverly Hills Cop became a go-picture with Sylvester Stallone in the role of Axel Elly, a cop from Detroit whose brother Mikey, back home from LA with stolen bearer bonds in his possession, gets murdered, causing the rough, tough Axel to unofficially investigate his brother's Beverly Hills employer in an attempt to find the killer.

As was Stallone's modus operandi, he started to do rewrites. First, he gave notes to Petrie on how to tailor the role for his persona, and then he took over the writing of his own screenplay drafts. Stallone had renamed the lead character Axel Cobretti so he could go by the nickname "the Cobra." Stallone's explosion-packed screenplay required a sizable increase to the film's budget, which Paramount was not eager to approve. However, their deal with him was pay-or-play. If they canceled the film or replaced him at this point, they were contractually obligated to pay him his $3M salary. So, the film continued into pre-production. To direct, Simpson and Bruckheimer hired Martin Brest, a graduate of NYU Film School and the American Film Institute. Brest's first commercial feature Going in Style—a heist comedy/drama he'd written that starred George Burns, Art Carney, and Lee Strasberg as three senior citizens who rob a bank—had been a commercial and critical hit. Brest had been fired off his second movie, WarGames, two weeks into shooting because the producers felt he was making the movie's tone too dark. The experience left Brest pessimistic about his career in Hollywood, but he jumped at the chance at redemption these Paramount producers were offering him.

Nearly every actor, every location, and every production decision was made with the intention of Beverly Hills Cop being a Sylvester Stallone action thriller. But Brest read all the earlier drafts and loved their comical ideas. He especially liked that the initial concept of having all the Beverly Hills cops look like glamour models rather than policemen had been abandoned by Petrie in favor of writing the two main supporting cops as more of a comedy duo—one green and eager, one older and frustrated with the job. A fan of Laurel and Hardy, he set out to cast two actors who could play this "odd couple." Brest had been at the AFI with director Amy Heckerling and had seen Judge Reinhold in her first feature, Fast Times at Ridgemont High. He thought Reinhold had the right look for the younger Beverly Hills cop and tested him with various older actors. Casting Director Margery Simkin (Times Square, Baby It's You, Reckless) brought in John Ashton, who had held small roles in An Eye for an Eye, Breaking Away, and Borderline, and the two clicked. Lisa Eilbacher (who played one of Richard Gere's fellow officer candidates in An Officer and a Gentleman) was hired to play Stallone's love interest, Jenny Summers.

Steven Berkoff had just starred as a villainous, power-mad Russian general in the 1983 James Bond film Octopussy, which Simkin happened to catch on a flight. She thought Berkoff would be perfect for the main baddy, Victor Maitland. Berkoff is an actor known for playing things at a high intensity to an almost comical degree. But Brest wisely has him play this role with a quiet, controlled reserve, making this one of Berkoff's best screen roles. He was partially responsible for the trend of suave European actors playing villains in '80s action movies. As Maitland's right-hand henchman and the man who would kill Stallone's brother, they cast Jonathan Banks, who'd had a small role in 48 Hrs. Beverly Hills Cop launched Banks on a decades-long career playing slimeballs and killers, culminating in his roles on the acclaimed TV series Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul.

Things were shaping up nicely, but the ballooning budget was still a concern, and Brest was clearly more interested in Ashton and Reinhold's comic-relief supporting characters, detectives Taggart and Rosewood, than he was in Axel Cobretti. With just two weeks left before the start of principal photography, the producers hit upon the idea of offering Stallone a graceful exit that wouldn't cost them anything. They explained their money issues and offered him the option of either going back to the Daniel Petrie Jr. script he'd initially said yes to or taking all the revised drafts and materials he and the other writers had created and making a different film at Paramount the next year. He agreed to the latter plan and took all his work on Beverly Hills Cop in lieu of the $3M they technically owed him. Stallone made his cop movie as Cobra, which was a big hit in 1986, and he went on to cast Steven Berkoff as the villain in Rambo: First Blood Part II. With Stallone out of the picture, Simpson, Bruckheimer, and Brest were now free to make the action/comedy they felt certain the Beverly Hills Cop script wanted to be. Knowing Murphy's SNL and stand-up background, as well as his status as a rising star, it was a no-brainer to offer the lead role to him. They flew to New York to pitch Murphy, who agreed right away, stepping in with just two weeks left before cameras rolled.

It sounds like a crazy way to embark on such an expensive endeavor, but many films were made this way back when impetuous, coked-up people who loved making movies as much as they loved making money ran the studios. While the script needed some reimagining, the rewrites were fairly minor. Not a single cast member was replaced. Axel's brother and love interest became childhood buddies from the old neighborhood who'd moved out to Beverly Hills. The only people brought on after Murphy came aboard were Ronny Cox as Taggart and Rosewood's superior officer, Lieutenant Andrew Bogomil, and Gil Hill as Axel's Detroit boss, Inspector Todd. Cox was a veteran of many acclaimed movies like Deliverance, Bound for Glory, and The Onion Field. Hill was not an actor but an actual Detroit homicide detective whom Brest had met while researching and scouting locations for the film's early sequences in that city. Brest loved Hill's demeanor. Though Hill had never yelled at anyone on the job like his character does, he had been on the receiving end of such tongue-lashings, so he knew what it was like. Hill didn't show much promise as an actor, but Brest thought he had great paternalistic chemistry with Murphy, so he worked with him, and Hill got better. He parlayed his role in this movie into running for Detroit City Council, becoming its president, and eventually seeking the position of Mayor, although his bid was unsuccessful.

Watching the film, you might think the many comedians that pop up were brought in after Murphy was cast, but they were all picked by Brest and Simkin to bring out the humor in the movie when it was going to be a Stallone picture. Paul Reiser was a comedian hungry to get into movies and constantly pestered Simkin to get her to see his stand-up act. She felt his annoying quality was perfect for Axel's worrywart fellow Detroit cop, Detective Jeffrey Friedman. Rick Overton, because he had a great "surprised face," was cast as the Bonded Warehouse Night Supervisor whom Axel surprises. Simkin knew Bronson Pinchot from his roles in Risky Business and The Flamingo Kid. Originally, there were two characters who worked in the art gallery with Jenny. They were cast with the idea that they would play off each other, baffling the blue-collar cop played by Stallone. But when Murphy took over, he could play off Pinchot, so the other actor was let go. Pinchot claims he based his characterization on "one of those guys who works on Rodeo Drive who you just have no idea where they're from—is it the Middle East? Is it France? Is it Morocco?"

The only comedian Murphy added to the cast was Damon Wayans, who plays a hotel employee who lets Alex take some bananas to stuff into the tailpipe of the unmarked police car of Taggart and Rosewood. This brief scene is a prime example of how things came together perfectly and seemingly effortlessly by the talented folks who made Beverly Hills Cop. The script had a scene in which Axel (then Stallone) sneaks into his hotel's kitchen and swipes a potato, which he then places in Taggart and Rosewood's tailpipe while they are sitting in their car during a stakeout. It was hardly a complicated scene, but it required a whole kitchen and could easily have taken half a day to shoot. Brest was determined that he was going to film the movie’s opening scenes on location in Detroit, but Paramount would only allow this plan to happen if the director brought the initial shoot in under budget. Therefore, Brest was constantly looking for places to cut a few corners in ways that wouldn't damage the film. One example was a shot where Axel is in a jail cell, which he grabbed while shooting another scene by putting some bars in front of a wall rather than bringing a crew to an actual jail cell. Many of the comical scenes of Axel walking down the streets of Beverly Hills, including the iconic long lens shot where he walks past two guys dressed in matching Michael Jackson's Thriller outfits, were just grabbed run-and-gun style during lunch hours with Murphy or Brest calling in friends to be extras. That was also the case with the "banana man" scene. Brest saw a chance to save some time by shooting the scene in a part of the hotel where the crew was already set up. Rather than lighting a separate location for a physical scene of Axel sneaking into a kitchen and stealing a potato from a chef, it could be a flat, locked-off shot of a guy with a bunch of fruit who Axel asks for a banana. Murphy called in Damon Wayans for a one-shot part because he knew Wayans could help make this utilitarian moment into a funny scene. The potato in the tailpipe became the banana in the tailpipe, which is inherently funnier, and "the banana in the tailpipe" got called back a few times for additional laughs later in the movie.

Everyone loved playing scenes with Eddie Murphy, and the set was often filled with laughter. Those laughs translated effortlessly to the screen. I'm always miffed when I watch comedies made in the last twenty years (what few comedies get made) at how strained and labored the jokes feel. Within the improv aesthetic that was in vogue in the late 1990s (further enabled by shooting digitally as opposed to on film), comics and comic actors make up dozens of new optional lines for every joke in an attempt to make things fresh and spontaneous. This practice results in horrendously edited scenes that feel like exactly what they are—actors desperately trying to get laughs rather than characters who are intrinsically funny. Eddie Murphy certainly did a lot of improv around the screenplay in Beverly Hills Cop. Not only was this method his stock in trade, but it was also a requirement to make sense of scenes written for Sylvester Stallone to feel authentic to him. But this earlier '80s approach to improv was all about working things out with one's fellow actors in rehearsal and on set and then changing things up within the established beats of each scene, not just pointing multiple cameras at each actor and watching them try to surprise each other in the hopes that things will feel spontaneous and hilarious when slapped together later on.

Almost all contemporary comedies also seem to struggle with basic narrative concepts like exposition and plot development. It's as if modern comedy filmmakers have all collectively agreed that exposition is a necessary evil that needs to be mocked or ironically pointed out rather than folded artfully into the story. It's amazing when you compare the strained plot mechanics found in comedies of the last two decades with how effortlessly copious amounts of exposition and key narrative information get ladled onto scenes by the characters in Beverly Hills Cop. There's a whole lot of shoe leather that has to be conveyed by Murphy and his fellow actors, not all of it elegantly scripted, but this cast makes delivering info to the audience seem as natural as a casual conversation.

The notion that solid narrative development matters, even in a wacky vehicle for a stand-up comedian, is another thing I love about '80s action/comedies, which Beverly Hills Cop set the standard for. The plots in these movies are not complex—this ain't Chinatown—but they're not perfunctory either. They don't exist strictly as a framework on which to hang jokes. In the case of Beverly Hills Cop, the relatively substantial and satisfying plot exists because it was written and developed as a Stallone thriller. However, it was not a straight-action movie that became a comedy when a different actor was cast in the lead. These filmmakers always intended to refine a blend of action and comedy that had started in films like Busting, Hooper, and 48 Hrs. (which were action movies with comic elements) or Silver Streak, Smokey and the Bandit, and The Blues Brothers (which were comedies with action elements). Beverly Hills Cop has legit stakes. We never take all that seriously the danger that the characters are in, but we do get invested in what they're up to. When violent things happen, it doesn't feel like a radically inappropriate tonal shift. Beverly Hills Cop paved the way for movies like the Lethal Weapon pictures and others that skillfully blend the comedy and action genres. Just as Die Hard would do four years later, Beverly Hills Cop reinvented an existing style of Hollywood film and then, for decades, remained the gold standard of the genre it redefined.

Much of what makes Beverly Hills Cop go down smoothly is a testament to the editing by Billy Weber. Weber's work ranges from the meditative films of Terrence Malick—Badlands, Days of Heaven, and The Thin Red Line—to fast-paced '80s action comedies like 48 Hrs., Midnight Run, Pee-wee's Big Adventure, and Top Gun. Weber seems to have an easy report with the major directors he's worked with over the decades, cutting several films for Malick, Brest, Tim Burton, Walter Hill, Tony Scott, and Warren Beatty.

Perhaps the film's other most distinctive ingredient is the score by German synth-pop virtuoso Harold Faltermeyer. A session musician, arranger, producer, and songwriter, Faltermeyer had worked with numerous pop stars, including Donna Summers on her album Bad Girls, for which he co-wrote "Hot Stuff." That record was produced by the Italian composer and "Father of Disco" Giorgio Moroder, who was then just getting into movie soundtracks with Alan Parker's acclaimed Midnight Express in 1978. Faltermeyer worked on many of Moroder's scores, including 1980's American Gigolo, which was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. The producer took note of what a great problem solver Faltermeyer was. Four years later, Bruckheimer called on him to help with Thief of Hearts, which Simpson and Bruckheimer were struggling with. Thief of Hearts became the first soundtrack by the composer, and the two producers immediately brought him over to their '84 movie that wasn't in trouble. The main instrumental theme of Beverly Hills Cop was as successful as the film itself. "Axel F," as it was named on the soundtrack album, became a rare instrumental Top 40 radio hit with an MTV music video and DJ's remixing it for dance clubs. It is so catchy and unmistakable that it ranks with Henry Mancini's "The Pink Panther Theme" in terms of its instant association with not only a character from a movie but also the vibe of that movie. You hear that music, and it makes you smile.

Faltermeyer's style and approach to film music felt entirely fresh in 1984, and it became influential for a brief period. He would go on to score Fletch, Top Gun, Fatal Beauty, Beverly Hills Cop II, and The Running Man. He also produced Beverly Hills Cop's "signature" pop song, Patti LaBelle's "Stir It Up," and co-wrote the hit opening title song, "The Heat Is On," which was performed by Glenn Frey. "The Heat Is On" is about as ridiculous and cheesy as an '80s movie title song can be, complete with a wailing saxophone prominent in the mix. Yet, this song flawlessly sets the tone for the movie we're about to watch. And the picture is filled with pop tunes that instill a good-time vibe. Even during the car chases, the soundtrack is full of jaunty, cheerful pop music that underscores the humor of the chase. One of the reasons action movies have become so monotonous and interchangeable in the new millennium is that film music has become a background color as opposed to a primary one. Aurally, modern action movies, even action comedies, are all about loud sound FX editing with generic music mixed so far down you can't even notice how nondescript it is. Just as modern action comedies rarely have any sense of place because they're all shot in the same handful of cities and reliant on CGI backdrops, they have no sense of time period. In part, this lack stems from their use of pop songs only as overt needle drops, usually of older tunes, as opposed to action movies of the '80s and '90s, where contemporary songs are placed in the foreground.

Beverly Hills Cop launched Eddie Murphy into the stratosphere and went on to become the top-grossing movie of 1984. Danilo Bach and Daniel Petrie Jr. were nominated for the Best Original Screenplay Oscar—a rare instance of the Motion Picture Academy recognizing a comedy. It might seem strange that a movie most people assumed was just improvised by the actors on the set would land a writing nomination, but this is why I've always maintained that the Oscars matter: the nominees, if not the winners, are chosen by people who work in each respective field who understand their various crafts. It means something for an editor to be nominated by their fellow editors more than by a bunch of critics who likely will give an award to the "most edited film" rather than the best-edited film. It's not surprising to me that the members of the Academy's screenwriting branch saw this movie and were impressed with how nimbly its story was woven around its comedic set pieces (or vice versa). The combination of that much-revised screenplay, producers who were trying to solidify an in-house style, a young, talented, hungry director, a big star becoming a superstar, and a phenomenal cast of supporting actors make this light, breezy comedy feel like an organic, lucky, effortless rendezvous with destiny.