Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks rap about being police officers and dance to choreography by Paula Abdul…
On 26th June 1987, Universal Pictures released the film Dragnet to the world. The buddy cop comedy film directed by Tom Mankiewicz was an adaptation of the notable 1950’s detective TV series of the same name. The film starred Dan Aykroyd (who also wrote the film) as the straight-laced Sgt Joe Friday and Tom Hanks as the smart-alecky Detective Pip Streebek. With Universal Pictures hoping to find the same magic with Aykroyd that Columbia had found with Ghostbusters three years earlier, they were willing to pull out all the stops.
One of the steps that Columbia had taken to advertise Ghostbusters was to recruit singer Ray Parker Jr. to record a theme song for the film. The song, also called ‘Ghostbusters’, became an international hit around the world, spending three weeks at the top of both the US and UK charts, earned an Oscar nomination and, as of 2020, has since sold over 3.35 million copies worldwide. One of the reasons for the success of the song was the accompanying music video, which included Parker Jr and the four Ghostbusters actors Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson dancing down a New York street. The video also featured cameos from Chevy Chase, John Candy, Irene Cara, Melissa Gilbert, Danny DeVito, Jeffrey Tambor, Carly Simon, George Wendt, Ollie E. Brown, Al Franken, Peter Falk and Teri Garr singing the song’s title. The video has since been since viewed 45 million times since being officially uploaded to YouTube in 2013 and millions of times before then. As someone once said, “If you can’t them, join them”, and Universal did.
To promote the release of Dragnet in 1987, someone decided that the film needed a theme song. A theme song that would be used to promote the film and would eventually be played over the end credits. British electronic rock group Art of Noise had already been hired to produce a remixed version of the original 1950s TV theme for the film’s opening credits. Instead of getting Ray Parker Jr to do the Dragnet theme song ,which could have been a funny in-joke, Dan Aykroyd hired his younger brother Peter to write the theme. Instead of producing a dance-pop piece equivalent to that of ‘Ghostbusters’, the final product was a song titled ‘City of Crime’, that would be performed by the film’s stars Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks.
Hanks wasn’t known for his singing ability, but Aykroyd had struck gold just under a decade earlier, forming The Blues Brothers in 1978 with best friend John Belushi while the two performed on Saturday Night Live. After appearing in sketches on the show, the duo released an album called A Briefcase Full of Blues that went double Platinum in the US and Gold in the United Kingdom. The success led to the release of The Blues Brothers, which made $115 million at the box office ($363 million in 2020). To get to the point, Aykroyd wasn’t a musical novice. The problem was that Aykroyd wasn’t going to be singing on ‘City of Crime’, he and Tom Hanks were going to be rapping their lines.
In addition to the prospect of Aykroyd and Hanks rapping in Dragnet’s end credits song, the studio would also produce a music video. In the video, the two actors would dance to choreography designed by a 25-year-old called Paula Abdul. The next year, Abdul would set the record for the most Billboard number-one singles from a debut album. At this point in her career, Abdul was known for her work choreographing music videos for Janet Jackson, including ‘Control’ and ‘Nasty’. The year after Dragnet, she would work with Tom Hanks again, planning out the famous giant keyboard sequence in Big. For now, she had to make two comedy actors look good in a music video being used to convince people to visit their local cinema.
How did the song and music video turn out? You can judge for yourself by watching the video below:
‘City of Crime’ is an ’80s time capsule. It was produced during a time when rap was growing in popularity and every corner of popular culture tried to capitalise on the craze from films to television to advertising. Rap was used for advertising He-Man toys and by Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble to promote Fruity Pebbles. In 1989, the Ghostbusters theme even received a rap remix from giants Run DMC as part of the Ghostbusters II soundtrack.
In this particular case, the mixing of comedy and rap does not mesh. Whether it be the line delivery of Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks, the cheap sets or even the ridiculous sight of the two film stars dancing to choreography more suited to Janet Jackson, this video is terrible and cheesy, yet it also kind of works. Nobody should go into this video expecting serious rapping talent from these two actors or expecting it to be the lost Blues Brothers single, If you turn off your brain for 4 minutes, it is entertaining in a way that you spend every second wondering ‘Whose idea was this?’ while watching Tom Hanks’ audition to become the 4th Beastie Boy.
Dragnet opened at No. 1 at the US box office in June 1987, grossing $10.5 million in its opening weekend and would remain at the top the following week. The film would stay in the top 10 for 6 weeks before dropping out in the second week of August 1987. From its budget of $20 million ($45 million in 2020), the film would eventually gross $57.4 million domestically and $9.3 million abroad for a total worldwide gross of $66.7 million ($152 million in 2020). How much of a role the ‘City of Crime’ song and music video played in this success is unknown. However, the music video would feature in EMPIRE Magazine’s list of ’15 Gloriously Awful ’80s End Credit Songs’ in 2013.
Unlike Ray Parker Jr’s ‘Ghostbusters’ song and music video, Aykroyd and Hanks’s ‘City Of Crime’ does not hold the same place in pop culture history and is not often celebrated as an essential part of ’80s nostalgia. While ‘Ghostbusters’ has been officially uploaded on YouTube and viewed by millions, ‘City of Crime’ has not been afforded the same honour or reached the same audience. The music video has been uploaded to YouTube twice under two different names. The first, titled ‘City of Crime’, uploaded in 2008, has received over 7,300 views. The second, strangely titled ‘Tom Hanks and Dan Aykroyd have a Rap battle’, uploaded in 2011, has received over 25,000 views. Neither video is of exceptionally high quality, meaning that some suit at Universal Pictures has the original copy of the video locked up in a vault somewhere. Tom Hanks has admitted to owning a tape of the video somewhere in his basement. In a 2015 appearance on The Graham Norton Show, Hanks said that the video for ‘City of Crime’ was the first YouTube video he ever saw after his kids starting asking about it. He even joked that the ‘rap hit’ would “haunt me for the rest of my days”.
The ‘City of Crime’ music video is an example of ’80s cheesiness and ’80s excess. A video featuring actors playing larger-than life movie characters, who out of their way to promote the latest film they are starring in by rapping about police work and dancing to high end, but embarrassing, choreography. I will give ‘City of Crime’ and its video credit though as they must have served as inspiration for someone further down the line. Ten years later, one of the biggest hits of the year 1997 would be a song with an accompanying music video in which the star of an upcoming Hollywood film would rap and dance while dressed in character as a way of promoting the latest film he was set to star in. The actor was named Will Smith and the song and film were called Men In Black. The song would sell over 2.7 million copies (as of 2020), top the charts in 9 different countries and win a Grammy Award and the video would receive over 85 million views on YouTube. Looks like ‘City of Crime’ did have a pop culture legacy after all.
forgotten-media.com 