The Pursuit of D. B. Cooper

On a clear day in 1971, the hijacker identified as D.B. Cooper jumps from an airliner by using the rear exit, parachuting into a forest in Washington State. The man is later identified as Jim Meade, a military veteran with big dreams. Meade escapes the manhunt using a Jeep that he had previously hidden in the forest and concealing the money that he has stolen in the carcass of a deer. He meets his estranged wife Hannah, who operates a river rafting company. Meade is being hunted by Bill Gruen, an insurance investigator who was Meade's army sergeant, and Meade's army buddy Remson, who remembered Meade talking about hijacking an aircraft.

Gruen confronts the Meades at the rafting company, but they escape down the river. The Meades lead Gruen and Remson on a cross-country chase involving various stolen cars. Gruen is fired by his employer but continues the chase to claim the money for himself. At the aircraft boneyard near Tucson, Arizona, the Meades acquire a hot-air balloon, but Gruen steals the money from Hannah. Meade chases him with a barely functional Boeing-Stearman PT-17 cropduster biplane. Meade runs Gruen off the road but crashes his aircraft.

Recovering from the wrecks, Meade has Gruen's gun and for a few minutes, they discuss how Gruen knew that Meade was D. B. Cooper. Along with clues that he had left, the previous encounters between the two men in the army had convinced Gruen that only Meade could have managed the audacious hijacking.

Meade leaves Gruen with a few bundles of the cash and walks away with the rest, to be picked up by Hannah. With Gruen abandoning the pursuit, Remson must try to recover the stolen money. When he reaches a crossroads that the Meades have just passed, Remson thinks that he sees their truck parked nearby and continues the chase.

The Pursuit of D. B. Cooper was based on American poet J.D. Reed's 1980 novel Free Fall: A Novel.[3]

Jeffrey Alan Fiskin wrote the original script. Robert Mulligan was the initial director, but he was allegedly fired because it took him seven days to shoot the whitewater rapids chase.[4]

Director John Frankenheimer also worked on the film, but he was replaced by Buzz Kulik after shooting one sequence, and Kulik finished the film. W.D. Richter worked on the script uncredited,[5] as only Jeffrey Allan Fiskin was awarded credit.[5]

The producers then asked editor-director Roger Spottiswoode to shoot a major new stunt and edit the film. Spottiswoode argued that the film was "doomed" unless he could shoot new sequences, to be written by Ron Shelton, who would be credited as an associate producer. The Spottiswood-Shelton scenes comprise approximately 70% of the finished film.[5]

According to one writer, the new team "added new characters - a rural rogue's gallery of scam artists - and an end-of-the-hippie era feeling. Even when editing the existing material, the new writer and director changed the film thematically, dramatically, cinematically."[5]

The Kulik film was a "banal, dour Vietnam vet docudrama" in which Meade concocts the scheme to escape postwar malaise and becomes upset when he wins the acclaim as a hijacker that had eluded him as a veteran. The Shelton-Spotiswoode film was more of a chase comedy "about a man who returns home and plans to get himself the easy money that's part of the American dream for him and for all the low-lifes he meets along the way (including a Nam comrade who returns to haunt Meade like a comic Javert)."[5]

Kathryn Harrold later said: "It was a little tricky knowing what was going to happen without a script".[1]

To generate publicity for the film, Universal Pictures offered a million-dollar reward for any information that would lead to the capture and arrest of the real D.B. Cooper, but no one ever claimed the money. [Note 1]

The musical score includes the song "Shine," written and sung by Waylon Jennings and also released on Jennings' 1982 album Black on Black. A soundtrack album was released by Polydor Records (PD-1-6344)[8] consisting mostly of country songs.

Track listing

The Pursuit of D. B. Cooper, although similar to other hijacking films of the period, was not a success at the box office.[9] In a critical review of the film, Vincent Canby of The New York Times noted that "... a number of excellent actors (were coerced) into performing what is a dismally unfunny chase-comedy that eventually seems as aimless, shortsighted and cheerlessly cute as the character they've made up and called 'D.B. Cooper'."[10]

In 1982, original director John Frankenheimer described the film as "... probably my worst-ever experience. A key member in the chain of command had been lying to both management and myself with the result that we all thought we were making a different movie."[11]

Roger Spottiswoode won the Special Jury Prize at the 1982 Cognac Festival du Film Policier.[12]

• D. B. Cooper in popular culture

• The Pursuit of D. B. Cooper at IMDb
• The Pursuit of D. B. Cooper at Rotten Tomatoes
• Pursuit of D.B. Cooper, The (1981) at the TCM Movie Database