Summary
- D.B. Cooper’s skyjacking in 1971 made him a figure of great intrigue, and the mystery of his fate after the crime endures decades later.
- The film
The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper
strays far from the actual details of the case, flopping both commercially and with critics. - To salvage the chaotic film shoot, Universal opted to play up the celebrity angle of the skyjacker through a million-dollar reward for tips leading to his arrest, which was not claimed.
$200,000 isn’t what we’d call a big take by robbery standards today, but it was quite a fortune in 1971 when a skyjacker fleeced the sum from a regional American airline. Occurring at the height of the age of airliner-related crime, this one gangster took hold of the imaginations of the Pacific Northwest, acquiring folk hero status, and outsmarting multiple state and federal bodies in an unprecedented crime.
Jumping from the backdoor of the Northwest Orient Airlines plane, the world descended on the backcountry of Washington State to catch him. But they were horribly disappointed when the trail grew ice-cold immediately. Cooper, as he gave his name, evaded the law for decades, that is, if he survived at all.
D.B. Cooper’s scheme might have been meticulous, but his biopic was a catastrophe from beginning to end, eventual director Roger Spottiswoode finding himself thrust in the middle of a film already deep in the hole a couple of million. Never underestimate a good promotional plan, because, in the case of The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper, that was all they had. When the FBI and the greatest sleuths fail, who better to nab D.B. Cooper than a bunch of suits from Universal’s marketing team?
There are a few ways to win over the hearts of Americans, and one of the least likely is hijacking a Boeing 727 with a fake bomb while wearing a clip-on tie from J.C. Penney. The mythical Flight 305 to Seattle takes a detour into humor as the film recklessly speculates on the life of the skyjacker after he safely touched down. What opens as a breathtaking heist movie devolves into a romantic road film, then a goofy comedy. If you wanted a hard-hitting, ’70s-style, crime epic, boy, are you watching the wrong movie. True crime this ain’t.
The Story of D.B. Cooper
Decked out in a boring suit and carrying only an ordinary briefcase perfect for a discrete businessman on his weekly commute to a meeting, this particular rider didn’t stand out. However, he wasn’t out for frequent-flyer miles. His legal name remains unknown, but you can call him D.B. We don’t know why people call him that, but the name stuck.
His fate once he plunged out of the fuselage the day before Thanksgiving is a matter of legend. Various bits of evidence in the form of decomposing 20 dollar bills (that denomination requested by the hijacker) have turned up over the decades, but these leads have never conclusively proven legit, and Cooper’s precise landing location and overall plan of escape have never been ascertained. Fittingly, the subject has come up over the years in media, mostly in documentaries rehashing the same details, but did play a large role in the aughts comedy Without a Paddle:
Cooper’s cool demeanor and supposedly perfect crime appealed to Americans’ love of a solid robbery. The earliest attempt to cash in on the cult status of Mr. Cooper was the novel Free Fall by author J.D. Reed, later used as source material for the 1981 film The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper. Incidentally, the case was a blur of misreported facts and conflated eyewitness accounts from the start.
The moniker “D.B.” was added by the press in an apparent typo, or maybe it sounded better in newsrooms. Who knows? The FBI designated him “Dan Cooper,” the name he used when buying the ticket. Early news bulletins on the incident, as seen in clips of CBS’s coverage, also referred to him as “D.A. Cooper.” To expect accuracy from this film is asking too much, and you can’t blame them when no one else got it right either.
Despite modern interest in the mystery, his motives, and countless treasure hunts to pinpoint the final resting place of that stolen cash, we are no closer to tracking down Cooper than we were in 1971, or 1981 for that matter. That hasn’t stopped people from trying.
The Perfect Marketing Gimmick
Robert Duvall’s filmography is so jammed with interesting performances that it’s easy to lose track of the forgettable roles sandwiched among the filler. Lost between his career-defining turns in Apocalypse Now in 1979, and Tender Mercies in 1983 — which finally got him an Oscar — he decided to take a stab at a comedy caper. Duvall headlined, Treat Williams — a respected but largely unknown actor — secured the role as the titular character, and Kathryn Harrold was cast as the love interest.
To stand out, the US distributor Universal came up with a clever angle to promote the heist adventure. For a million bucks, viewers could drop a dime on the skyjacker and resolve the aeronautical crime of the century. Advertisements ran across the country, Cooper’s grinning face (or rather Treat Williams’) flashed across newspapers and magazines with the disclaimer that no law enforcement official nor their extended family were eligible for the prize money. As a piece of helpful advice, Universal’s marketing team stated the following worthless reminder:
“To help you in your search, we suggest you see the new motion picture, ‘The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper,’ now playing at a theatre near you.”
The film is only liable to derail would-be private detectives. Director Spottiswoode’s final product has virtually nothing to do with the case, elaborating on the true identity of the criminal popularly known as D.B. Cooper. In the film, Cooper is a Vietnam vet named J.R. Meade. Duvall plays an insurance investigator out to nab him in the standard cops & robbers setup. The centerpiece of the film, the white-water rafting scene, is of special note. It cost millions to shoot and would lose the original director his job as the film burned through a sizable chunk of the budget in a matter of days. The rest plays out like a Smokey and the Bandit knock-off, which was painfully prevalent at the time.
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Was D.B. Cooper Ever Found?
The film was a certified trainwreck before it hit theaters, as different writers needed to be brought in to polish up the script, everyone on set battling the urge to beat the living hell out of each other. Spottiswoode was a stop-gap solution, recruited to finally bring the troubled production to screen, wrapping up the loose ends left by departing directors John Frankenheimer and Buzz Kulik, both of whom went uncredited in the final film.
According to Ron Shelton, who had acted as a script doctor in the latter stages of the cobbled-together road movie, the producers had a hair trigger when it came to firing directors, rushing to get it out to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the crime. In 2015, Shelton opened up about the shoot to Jim Hemphill at Filmmaker Magazine about its disastrous legacy and explained how the film is now more memorable for its last-ditch marketing Hail Mary and behind-the-scenes drama than the final product:
“They fired Robert Mulligan, a very good director, because he took seven days to shoot a whitewater rapids chase – which, by the way, was the only good thing in the movie – and brought in another director who couldn’t figure out what to do with it. Meanwhile, Williams and Duvall were getting into fisticuffs…it was a mess. They shut it down and had to try to figure out how to make the movie releasable.”
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The publicity stunt makes more sense if you realize how little faith PolyGram and Universal had in this thing, Shelton recalling rewriting scenes that had already been filmed. In a saturated genre, nobody really wanted to watch another Cannonball Run clone. Who actually would have paid the million-buck reward is unclear, but that’s what tax write-offs are for. The film is estimated to have lost roughly ten million at the box office, a colossal dud by 1981 standards or modern ones.
Not surprisingly, the film did not provide the FBI with useful tips, already up to their necks in crank calls from nuts wasting their time. Did the film inspire anyone to break their silence and solve the case? No. But it might have helped shape the D.B. Cooper lore. A man came forth in February 2024 asserting that his Vietnam vet/skydiver dad was Cooper, echoing the plot of this film. Based on the obscurity of this film, that’s probably a coincidence.
But bad news if you have a tip about that crime. Universal-MCA’s promotional campaign expired on December 1, 1981. The FBI ceased their manhunt for the man called “Cooper” in 2016.
The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper is available to stream on Prime Video and Tubi.
