Editing Top Secret! (section)

==Production==
After the success of ''[[Airplane!]]'' the team of ZAZ were unsure of what to do next. They made the TV series ''[[Police Squad!]]'' but it was cancelled after six episodes.<ref name=ScreenCrush>Ryan, Mike (June 18, 2014). [http://screencrush.com/top-secret-30/ "How Silly Can You Get? The Tumultuous Making Of 'Top Secret!'"]. [[ScreenCrush]].</ref><ref>Roush, Matt (June 3, 2013). "Cancelled Too Soon". ''[[TV Guide]]''. pp. 20 and 21</ref> David Zucker explained:

<blockquote>We just needed a subject that we would be excited about. Starting out, we didn't have a whole genre like the airplane disaster movies. We were just fans of those black and white World War II movies that were made during the war. Somehow, we didn't think that was enough: we didn't want to do a period piece, we wanted to make it contemporary. That was the whole concept of 'Top Secret!': that it was not necessarily grounded in reality, but it would have kind of this heightened sense of craziness – even to which genres we were picking, which was a split hybrid between Elvis movies and the World War II movies.<ref name=ScreenCrush/></blockquote>

David Zucker said they had been working on the script since ''Airplane!'' "but we just couldn't figure out how to do it. We made repeated attempts to combine a rock and roll movie with a World War II movie but it was very difficult to do&nbsp;... We already had ideas for scenes we wanted to do and we tried to fit in plot around those scenes". A fourth writer, Martyn Burke, was brought in to work on the plot. "If it weren't for Martyn we'd still be sitting in that room", said Jerry Zucker.<ref name=NewYorkTimes>{{Cite news|author=Bennetts, Leslie|date=June 24, 1984|title='''Top Secret''' Suggests That Three Heads May Be Funnier Than One: Three Behind 'Top Secret'|work=[[The New York Times]]|page=H19}}</ref> The film was mostly written at the offices of ZAZ's lawyers. The film's budget was a reported $8.5 million, whereas ''Airplane!'' was made for $3.2 million.<ref name=NewYorkTimes/> Key portions of ''Top Secret!'' are parodies of [[The Conspirators (1944 film)|''The Conspirators'']], including the street scene with the novelty vendor.<ref>{{Citation|title=Top Secret! (1984)|url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088286/movieconnections|access-date=2019-01-11}}{{Better source needed|date=September 2022|reason=The current source is insufficiently reliable ([[WP:NOTRS]]). [[WP:IMDB]]}}</ref>

For the underwater saloon fight scene the actors had to actually hold their breath and it was filmed in bits of 10 to 15 seconds each.[https://www.moviemaker.com/11-actors-held-breath/#:~:text=Val%20Kilmer%20(Top%20Secret%2C%201984)&text=Directors%20David%20Zucker%20and%20Jim,of%20oxygen%2C%E2%80%9D%20added%20Kilmer.]

===Casting===
Kilmer was cast after the directors saw him in a play called ''Slab Boys'' with [[Sean Penn]] and [[Kevin Bacon]].<ref name=ScreenCrush/> He turned up to the audition dressed like Elvis Presley.<ref>{{Cite news|author=Maslin, Janet|date=June 22, 1984|title=''At the Movies'': 'Top Secret!' rock star aims to be lovable|work=The New York Times|page=C10}}</ref> "I like to think of it as the role Elvis never got but should have", said Abrahams. Lucy Gutteridge, who plays the female lead, had just appeared in the [[Royal Shakespeare Company]] production of ''[[Nicholas Nickleby]]''.<ref name=NewYorkTimes/> Unlike ''Airplane!'', the film does not feature a large number of cameos by famous actors, because, as Zucker explained, "That was one of the jokes in ''Airplane!'' and we had done it and wanted to move on."<ref name=NewYorkTimes/> Two well-known actors who were cast in the film were [[Omar Sharif]] as Agent Cedric and [[Peter Cushing]] as a Swedish bookstore proprietor.