Stakeout Behind The Scenes

Prior to rolling the cameras on "Stakeout," and as he has done on all his previous pictures, Badham conducted extensive research on his subject matter. "For this film, we spent a lot of time with policemen and detectives. We studied their lifestyles, their methods of surveillance. We also interviewed the technical police about the various state-of- the-art electronic tools, such as listening devices and video cameras, that are being used these days in stakeouts."

Martin Short was originally to star opposite Richard Dreyfuss but backed out at the last minute due to his commitment to the film "Cross my Heart".

Writer Jim Kouf had a very specific requirement in mind when it came to casting the role of sultry Maria McGuire. "It was vital to me to have a Latina or at least a half-Latina woman in the part," says Kouf, "because I modeled a lot of the character of Maria after my wife. I wanted to avoid putting a stereotypical star in the role." Adds producer Cathleen Summers, "We went through a lot of names and met some very interesting actresses, but Madeleine really had the chemistry we were looking for."

Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez were having a movie trivia contest on the set one day. Estevez asked Dreyfuss to identify the movie that the line "This is no boating accident" was from. Dreyfuss didn't recognize the quote, despite the fact that he was the actor who said it in Jaws. Deciding that this was too good to pass up, this incident was re-enacted for the film.

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