Tucker: The Man and His Dream

Tucker: The Man and His Dream is a 1988 film about a maverick car designer and his ill-fated challenge to the auto industry with his revolutionary car concept.

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Written by Arnold Schulman and David Seidler.

When they tried to buy him, he refused. When they tried to bully him, he resisted. When they tried to break him, he became an American legend. The true story of Preston Tucker.

Preston Tucker

• When I was a boy, I used to, uh, used to read all about Edison and the Wright Brothers, Mr. Ford. They were my heroes. 'Rags to Riches' - that's not just the name of a book. That's what this country was all about. We invented the 'free enterprise' system, where anybody, no matter who he was, where he came from, what class he belonged to - if he came up with a better idea about anything, there's no limit to how far he could go. I grew up a generation too late, I guess, because now the way the system works, the loner, the dreamer, the crackpot who comes up with some crazy idea that everybody laughs at, that later turns out to revolutionize the world - he's squashed from above before he even gets his head out of the water because the bureaucrats, they'd rather kill a new idea than let it rock the boat! If Benjamin Franklin were alive today, he'd be thrown in jail for sailing a kite without a license! It's true.

We're all puffed up with ourselves now 'cause we invented the bomb - dropped the - beat the daylights out of the Japanese, the Nazis. But if big business closes the door on the little guy with a new idea, we're not only closing the door on progress, but we're sabotaging everything that we fought for! Everything that the country stands for!! And one day we're gonna find ourselves at the bottom of the heap instead of king of the hill, having no idea how we got there, buying our radios and our cars from our former enemies. [A juror laughs] I don't believe that's gonna happen. I can't believe it because - if I ever stop believing in the plain 'ol common horse sense of the American people, be no way I could get out of bed in the morning. Thank you.

Dialogue

Preston Tucker: Isn't that the idea? To build a better mouse trap?

Abe Karatz: Not if you're a mouse!

Cast

• Jeff Bridges - Preston Tucker
• Joan Allen - Vera Tucker
• Martin Landau - Abe Karatz
• Elias Koteas - Alex Tremulis
• Frederic Forrest - Eddie Dean
• Christian Slater - Preston Tucker, Jr.
• Don Novello - Stan
• Nina Siemaszko - Marilyn Lee Tucker
• Mako - Jimmy Sakuyama
• Dean Stockwell - Howard Hughes
• Lloyd Bridges - Senator Homer Ferguson

External links

• Tucker: The Man and His Dream quotes at the Internet Movie Database
• Tucker: The Man and His Dream at Rotten Tomatoes