Tommy Boy director takes the blame for society's mass misquoting of a certain Star Wars line
Aux Features great job internet
In the pantheon of misquoted lines from movies, “Luke, I am your father” is right up there with “Play it again, Sam.” True Star Wars fans will remember that, during the fateful showdown between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker in Empire Strikes Back, the exchange plays out a little differently with Luke asserting that Darth Vader killed his father and the Sith lord retorting, “No, I am your father.” Weirdly enough, the collective misremembering of this line can be traced back to a film that’s about as far from the Star Wars universe as you can get: Tommy Boy.
In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter commemorating the 25th anniversary of the beloved Chris Farley comedy, director Peter Segal issues a formal apology for the flub and provides some insight into how it happened in the first place. This will come as a surprise to almost no one, but it turns out there wasn’t much thought put into an offhand Star Wars quote in the middle of a 90-minute comedy.
“I would describe this movie as sort of a Caesar salad,” Segal tells THR. “We had no script to start with, and any ingredients that we thought might congeal into the thinnest thread of a story were put into the script. That was one of those moments where I stupidly spoke into the vibration of a fan, and I came up with that and thought, ‘OK, that might work. Let’s just put that in the movie.’”
Despite starting principal photography with only half a script, Segal says that there really wasn’t much improvisation once Chris Farley and David Spade were on set. With the two leads still being active cast members at Saturday Night Live, the entire film had to be shot during SNL’s summer hiatus. The truncated shooting schedule made improv virtually impossible.
“So, as the guys would fly back and forth from New York to Toronto, we wrote as we could,” Segal says. “The days off that they had from our movie were days that I could sit at the computer and write.” So, it sounds like there wasn’t much time to consider whether a quote from a popular sci-fi franchise was accurate or not and, thus, a whole generation of casual moviegoers was doomed to have bad Darth Vader impressions forever.
Read the full interview here.
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53 Comments
I feel like I remember the misquoting of the line from earlier than that but I definitely may be wrong…
Yeah, it seems of a piece with other frequent misquotings like “Play it again, Sam” and “Elementary, my dear Watson”, where the name is inserted in order to make it more instantly recognizable. (I know the Holmes one may be a non-great example because I’m sure there’s been plenty of adaptations that have used that line, but I think the overall point stands.) “No, I am your father” does not instantly scan as Star Wars the way it does if you start with “Luke”.
Right I could swear we were saying it when I was a kid and I was definitely not a kid by the time Tommy Boy came out.
Yes. That’s it exactly. People added the “Luke” in there so their friends would know what they were quoting. Within a few years, we’d all heard the movie quoted far more than we’d actually seen the movie, so the false quote replaced the real one in our memories.
Yeah, I’m kind of tired of people talking about ‘why are these lines always misquoted?’ when the vast majority of the ‘misquotes’ are just adding character names for context. ‘Beam me up, Scotty’ is another common one. ‘Play it again’ is pretty meaningless on its own.
Yes, I’m pretty sure people were saying “Luke, I am your father” before Tommy Boy, but Tommy Boy was the earliest it was referenced that way. Even then, I gotta believe it was said somewhere. Back to the Future had Star Wars references, though not “Luke, I am your father”, so other films or television must have said it that way too.The Simpsons episode, Round Springfield, used the line “Luke, I am your father” as part of their James Earl Jones joke, but that came out a month after Tommy Boy was released to theaters.
Which means the Simpsons and Tommy Boy probably independently came up with the same misquotation since both were in production around the same time, supporting your theory that people were probably misquoting to the day the movie came out.
Ah I JUST brought up the Simpsons episode only to see this comment lol
I feel at least for myself, This article makes sense. I definitely remember this movie inspiring us to quote star wars via Tommy Boy back in middle school.
It was definitely being used earlier than Tommy Boy. Check out Strange Brew, over a decade earlier
I was going to say Strange Brew as well.
Give in to the dark side of the force you knobAlso Spaceballs had the name first too:Lone Starr, I am your father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate
What does that make us?
People were definitely saying it wrong in the 1980’s, which is probably why the writers got it wrong. Pretending that Tommy Boy was that influential is delusional anyway.
Yeah, this reads more like dude is trying to oversell the impact of his movie.
I would argue that Tommy Boy is quite influential; how often do we all say “Fat guy in a little coat?” these days?
100%
Pretty sure Tommy Boy just picked it up wrong from the grapevine like everybody else.
Pretty sure they do “Luke I am your father” in the first Bill & Tedd, too. But as others have pointed out, it’s been such a widespread, organically misquoted line since probably a week after Empire Strike Back was released. Anyone trying to claim credit for it woild be like when Mike Myers puts standard jokes and phrases into his movies and acts like he’s clever for doing so (“homo-says-what,” “bears in the cave,” etc.)
You’re not wrong. The claim that this common misquote only dates back 25 years is absurd.
You’re not wrong. This asshat is full of shit.
Well the movie came out on March 31, 1995 and then an episode of the Simpsons referenced the line on April 30, 1995. Is that too little turnaround time between them to work that (seemingly throw-away at the time) line Into an episode? I’m thinking it’s too little.
“Awww, boy. I’m just so tired of all these star wars.”-Matt Walsh
He was the king of the titular lines! my personal favorite, “Aww boy, Im just so tired of all this traffic, I can’t wait until I get out of Africa”
“Meka Leka Hi, Meka Hiney Ho!” ~ Darth Vader, Return of the Jedi
“PEE WEE I AM YOUR FATHER!” – Jambi, Big Top Pee Wee
“Now put your dick away, you are a kids show icon dammit!!!”
“Hah-coon-ah frittata!”
~ that weird little creature from The Lion King
No.
The power of the Force stopped you, you hosers.
He’s not even wearing a toque.
Max von Sydow’s finest film.Not really, but I just like saying that.
“Okay, everyone. This movie was my idea.”
And that’s Gold Leader himself!
Well I was there opening night and people were joking, “Luke, I AM your father!” In the parking lot on the way out. It was common pop culture long, long before “Tommy Boy.” I have no doubt the line is in the movie because that’s how everyone was already saying it, much like “Play it again, Sam” and “Beam me up, Scotty.”
I know “Play it again, Sam” is famously misquoted, but I never heard “beam me up Scotty” was – what is the correct quote? Interesting!
“LUKE, I am your father!”
“Luke, I am your father!”
“Luke, I am YOUR father!”
“Luke, I am your FATHER!”
~ David Prowse rehearsing his lines for maximum impact
Is he going to apologize for every mistake he’s made? It’d be a good way to make this whole quarantine thing go by faster.
It has been misquoted like that since the Wednesday Return of the Jedi came out.
META!
FREEEEEDOM!
This is my favorite fucking movie ever made. Not the best, not the most classic, but my favorite. The one I quote the most. The one I never turn off when I catch it on cable. The one I put on when I’m folding laundry. I took this class in grad school on Film Marketing, and some muckety muck from Paramount (CMO maybe? High up there) was our regular guest lecturer. The first day he went around the room and asked all of us our favorite movie, and everyone was saying stupid shit like Casablanca or The Godfather or Fight Club. I said Tommy Boy and the Paramount guy basically high fived me for not trying to impress him.
Why would Fight Club impress anyone? I mean, it’s a fairly recent action film.
Ha. Props to that Paramount guy
Didn’t you also lift one cheek and let one fly while giving him a high five?
And then everybody applauded, I’m guessing.
Uh, no. I wasn’t asking for a cookie, just telling a story.
Look: I am your father.
Bullshit
People were absolutely saying “Luke, I am your father” well before Tommy Boy came out.
Ah yes, I remember me and my friends flawlessly play acting and quoting “No, I am your father” to each other for years until the hugely influential Tommy Boy came out and changed our collective memories. Frankly I forgot it was even Darth Vader that had said it, since Tommy Boy my mind has always placed Chris Farley in Cloud City saying that.
“Luke . . . it stinks!”
“beloved Chris Farley comedy”OK, sure.