# Did Rodney Dangerfield do his own dive in Back to School?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-rodney-dangerfield-do-his-own-dive-in-back-to-school/653406>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [March 20, 2013, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-rodney-dangerfield-do-his-own-dive-in-back-to-school/653406 "2013-03-20T01:12:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\
**Post date:** [March 20, 2013, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-rodney-dangerfield-do-his-own-dive-in-back-to-school/653406/21 "2013-03-20T16:11:28Z")

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> [@moriah](#):
>
> Define ‘clever.’

Heck, the exterior scenes of the movie were all filmed at my school (University of Wisconsin-Madison) while I was attending, in the fall of '85. A couple of the shots were filmed in front of my dorm.

All of the exterior scenes, that is, except for the diving competition, which was pretty clearly filmed someplace else, entirely – the trees are all wrong (IMDB suggests it was somewhere in southern California). 🙂 Not so clever.

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**Author:** ![moriah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b2d939/32.png) [@moriah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/moriah)\
**Post date:** [March 21, 2013, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-rodney-dangerfield-do-his-own-dive-in-back-to-school/653406/22 "2013-03-21T05:23:18Z")

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> [@Edward\_The\_Head](#):
>
> I like how he does the underarm fart to warm up.

And we found the film’s audience! 😛

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**Author:** ![Edward\_The\_Head](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ce73a5/32.png) [@Edward\_The\_Head](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Edward_The_Head)\
**Post date:** [March 21, 2013, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-rodney-dangerfield-do-his-own-dive-in-back-to-school/653406/23 "2013-03-21T11:49:17Z")

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> [@moriah](#):
>
> And we found the film’s audience! 😛

I respect a good underarm fart.

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**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\
**Post date:** [March 21, 2013, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-rodney-dangerfield-do-his-own-dive-in-back-to-school/653406/24 "2013-03-21T12:38:38Z")

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> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#):
>
> Of course there’s editing involved but the pieces put together are of a real diver doing some very difficult maneuvers.

The only difficult maneuver was the last, uncut, shot of doing a back flip and dive off the springboard. Every other shot was a sideways jump off the springboard with a bunch of rotations. Any stuntman could jump off a board and rotate, the difficulty is controlling it for a precise entry into the pool, which was totally unnecessary given the way the shot is cut.

The jumps from board to board are completely fake, it’s the angle and focus of the shot that makes the second board appear close to the action, it’s actually completely out of the way of the stuntman’s jump.

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