DIRECTED BY: Richard Donner

WRITTEN BY: Roy Huggins (Television series), William Goldman (screenplay)

MEL GIBSON AS: Bret Maverick

GENRE: Adventure, Comedy, Western

TAGLINES:

- The greatest gambler in the West has finally met his match.

- In their hands, a deck of cards was the only thing more dangerous than a gun.

PLOT SUMMARY:

Bret Maverick (Mel Gibson) is a superb professional poker gambler, as handy with the handgun as he handles the cards, but also a master at avoiding violence by deception. Like all great poker layers, he’s on his way to a winner take all championship on Commodore Duvall’s (James Coburn) riverboat, but first must complete the steep entry sum, collecting debts and gambling. He has most confusing encounters with other gamblers, mainly fake ‘Southern belle’ Annabelle Bransford (Jodie Foster) and Marshal Zane Cooper (James Garner), tricksters in his league, and various other stooges and accomplices, such as the bandit Angel (Alfred Molina) and his gang, the Indian Joseph who preys on tourists and one of them, a Russian Archduke. Things are rarely what they seem, as layers of shameless deception are unfolded. –IMDB

RELEASE DATES:

1994 May 20 (United States)
1994 June 18 (South Korea)
1994 June 30 (Germany)
1994 July 1 (Sweden)
1994 July 14 (Netherlands)
1994 July 15 (Denmark)
1994 July 15 (Finland)
1994 July 15 (United Kingdom)
1994 July 21 (Argentina)
1994 July 29 (Portugal)
1994 August 3 (France)

BOX OFFICE GROSS:

United States: $101,453,239

FILMING LOCATIONS:

El Mirage and Lone Pine, California; Northern Arizona; and Portland, Oregon, USA.

TRIVIA:

- Meg Ryan was the original choice for Annabelle.

- Mel Gibson had special lessons to learn how to draw a gun from a holster.

- The name of James Garner’s character, Zane Cooper, is taken from novelist ‘Zane Grey’ and actor Gary Cooper, both of whom worked almost exclusively in the Western genre.

- A scene in which Linda Hunt played a magician who nursed Maverick back to health following his near hanging was cut due to running time constraints.

- Cameo: [Danny Glover] bank robber. Glover’s and Mel Gibson’s characters appear to almost recognize each other. This is a reference to Lethal Weapon (1987), Lethal Weapon 2 (1989), and Lethal Weapon 3 (1992), all of which were also directed by Richard Donner. During their appearance on screen, the Lethal Weapon theme song can be heard, and as Glover departs he says “I’m too old for this shit”, a line his character used frequently in the Lethal Weapon series.

- This film is loaded with cameos by famous country singers, such as Carlene Carter (playing a waitress on the riverboat), Hal Ketchum (bank robber), ‘Gill, Vince’ (spectator at the poker game), Clint Black (gambler who gets thrown off the boat for cheating), Waylon Jennings and Kathy Mattea (two people with guns on the riverboat).

- James Garner, who plays Zane Cooper, was the original Bret Maverick in “Maverick” (1957).

- Leo Gordon, who plays a poker player here, wrote episodes of the original “Maverick” (1957) TV series.

- The large rock formation in the distance behind Maverick when he is playing the “sick injun” hunted by the Russian archduke, is Half Dome in Yosemite National Park, California. It’s partially visible first when Maverick is attempting to ride the bicycle and again later when Maverick leaves the Indian village.

- Final film of Leo Gordon.

- Cameo: [Steve Kahan] The dealer on the riverboat as Maverick wins his way into the final round. Kahan was Mel Gibson and Danny Glover’s captain in the Lethal Weapon series.

-The initials of the stagecoach line in the movie are “GMC” which continued the use of GMC trucks in the Richard Donner/Mel Gibson Lethal Weapon series. GMC trucks have been driven by Gibson’s character in every Lethal Weapon movie.

- After Bret Maverick escapes from his botched hanging, he is shown plodding through the desert, dragging a tree limb behind him as the sand swirls around him. This mirrors a situation from Mad Max 2 (1981), when The Gyro Captain is chained to a log by Max, also played by Mel Gibson, and forced to find his way out of the desert.

- Cameo: [Margot Kidder] Margret Mary, one of the villagers robbed of their mission money. Kidder starred as Lois Lane in Richard Donner’s Superman (1978).

- Near the movie’s beginning, Maverick asks the young man wearing the bowler hat at the poker table who claims to be a gunfighter what his name is. He answers, “Johnny Hardin,” and Maverick fumbles his chips pretending to be scared, but then clowns around pointing his own gun at the youth. The real John Wesley Hardin was a notoriously fast, volatile and deadly gunfighter of the old west who shot and killed over 40 men before being shot in the back of the head and killed in 1895.

- Cameo: [Vilmos Zsigmond] The cinematographer appears as landscape painter Albert Bierstadt.

- A number of stars of classic television westerns play in the poker tournament: Denver Pyle from The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (1955), William Smith from Laredo (1965), ‘Doug McClure (I)’ and James Drury from The Virginian (1962), Henry Darrow from The High Chaparral (1967) and Robert Fuller from Wagon Train (1957) and Laramie (1959).

- Final film of Denver Pyle.

- Linda Hunt and western actor Clint Walker both had cameo roles in this film, Hunt playing a magician and Walker playing a sheriff. However, the film itself ran too long, so their parts were cut from the theatrical release.

- The steamship “Lauren Belle” is named for Lauren Shuler Donner, wife of director Richard Donner. She also appears in the movie as the bathhouse maid. James Garner’s character calls her “Mrs. D” as she is leaving.

- The $25,000 needed to enter the poker tournament in the 19th century America would be about $600,000 in 2004 terms.

- Another Lethal Weapon reference arises when Annabelle shrinks Maverick’s “Lucky Shirt”, in the same way that Leo shrinks Riggs’s shirt in Lethal Weapon 2 (1989).

- James Garner’s role was first offered to Paul Newman who turned it down.

- Final film of Dub Taylor.

- The running gag about Bret Maverick’s name being mispronounced as Bart comes from the fact that early in the original TV series Bret’s younger brother Bart was introduced and would often star in episodes independent of the main character in order to film more episodes of the series at the same time.

- In the stagecoach chase sequence, stunt-man ‘Mic Rodgers ‘ (double for ‘Mel Gibson’ ) had to go under the coach and get up at the back. This is a direct nod to Yakima Canutt’s similar stunt in Stagecoach (1939). Coincidentally, second unit director ‘Terry Leonard’ , a former stunt-man himself, performed this in the truck chase in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).

- Alice Cooper had a cameo as the town drunk, but his segment was cut.

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