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Don McLean

Donald McLean III (born October 2, 1945) is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. Known to fans as the "American Troubadour" or "King of the Trail", he is best known for his 1971 hit song "American Pie", an eight-and-a-half-minute folk rock "cultural touchstone" about the loss of innocence of the early rock and roll generation. His other hit singles include "Vincent" (about Vincent van Gogh), "Dreidel", and "Wonderful Baby"; as well as his renditions of Roy Orbison's "Crying" and the Skyliners' "Since I Don't Have You".

McLean's song "And I Love You So" has been recorded by Elvis Presley, Perry Como, Helen Reddy, Glen Campbell, and others. In 2000, Madonna had a hit with a rendition of "American Pie".

In 2004, McLean was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In January 2018, BMI certified that "American Pie" had reached five million airplays and "Vincent" three million.

Early life
McLean's grandfather and father, both also named Donald McLean, were of Scottish origin. McLean's mother, Elizabeth Bucci, was Italian, and originated from Abruzzo in central Italy. He has other extended family in Los Angeles and Boston. McLean grew up in New Rochelle, New York, where he delivered newspapers as a boy.

Musical roots
Though some of his early musical influences included Frank Sinatra and Buddy Holly, as a teenager, McLean became interested in folk music, particularly the Weavers' 1955 recording The Weavers at Carnegie Hall. He often missed long periods of school because of childhood asthma, and although McLean slipped back in his studies, his love of music was allowed to flourish. By age 16, he had bought his first guitar and began making contacts in the music business, becoming friends with the folk singers Erik Darling and Fred Hellerman of the Weavers. Hellerman said, "He called me one day and said, 'I'd like to come and visit you', and that's what he did! We became good friends — he has the most remarkable music memory of anyone I've ever known."

When McLean was 15, his father died. Fulfilling his father's request, McLean graduated from Iona Preparatory School in 1963, and briefly attended Villanova University, dropping out after four months. After leaving Villanova, McLean became associated with the famed folk music agent Harold Leventhal for several months before teaming up with his personal manager, Herb Gart, for 18 years. For the next six years, he performed at venues and events including The Bitter End and the Gaslight Cafe in New York, the Newport Folk Festival, the Cellar Door in Washington, D.C., and the Troubadour in Los Angeles. Gart's 18-year tenure as McLean's manager ended acrimoniously in the 1980s. Following Gart's death in September 2018, McLean wrote:

"I feel it is important to note that Herb did many good things for me in the beginning but could not deal with my success, as odd as that may sound. In about 1982 Herb told me his associate Walter Hofer who ran Copyright Service Bureau (a collection business for song publishers) had stolen $90,000 from my account but had 'put it back'. This was a cover story and a lie. Furthermore the amount turned out to be more like $200,000 and because Gart was now complicit in this crime I fired him. He sued me but settled for a small amount and was never heard from again. There is so much of this in my business and artists usually sweep it under the rug but I don't. I want people to know the truth about my journey."

McLean attended night school at Iona College and received a bachelor's degree in business administration in 1968. He turned down a scholarship to Columbia University Graduate School in favor of pursuing a career as a singer-songwriter, performing at such venues as Caffè Lena in Saratoga Springs, New York and The Main Point in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

Later that year, with the help of a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts, McLean began reaching a wider audience, with visits to towns up and down the Hudson River. He learned the art of performing from his friend and mentor Pete Seeger. McLean accompanied Seeger on his Clearwater boat trip up the Hudson River in 1969 to raise awareness about environmental pollution in the river. During this time, McLean wrote songs that appeared on his first album Tapestry. McLean co-edited the book Songs and Sketches of the First Clearwater Crew, with sketches by Thomas B. Allen, for which Seeger wrote the foreword. Seeger and McLean sang "Shenandoah" on the 1974 Clearwater album. McLean still thinks about his experiences of working with Seeger: "Hardly a day goes by when I don't think of Pete and how generous and supportive he was. If you could understand his politics and you got to know him, he really was some kind of modern day saint."

Early breakthrough
McLean recorded Tapestry in 1969 in Berkeley, California, during the student riots. After being rejected 72 times by labels, the album was released by Mediarts, a label that had not existed when he first started to look for one. He worked on the album for a couple of years before putting it out. It attracted good reviews but little notice outside the folk community, though on the Easy Listening chart "Castles in the Air" was a success, and in 1973 "And I Love You So" became a number 1 Adult Contemporary hit for Perry Como.

McLean's major break came when Mediarts was taken over by United Artists Records, thus securing the promotion of a major label for his second album, American Pie. The album launched two number one hits in the title song and "Vincent". American Pie's success made McLean an international star and piqued interest in his first album, which charted more than two years after its initial release.

"American Pie"
McLean's "American Pie" is a song inspired partly by the deaths of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. Richardson (The Big Bopper) in a plane crash in 1959, and developments in American youth culture in the subsequent decade. The song popularized the expression "The Day the Music Died" in reference to the crash.

The song was recorded on May 26, 1971, and a month later received its first radio airplay on New York's WNEW-FM and WPLJ-FM to mark the closing of Fillmore East, the famous New York concert hall. "American Pie" reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 from January 15 to February 5, 1972, and remains McLean's most successful single release. The single also topped the Billboard Easy Listening chart. With a total running time of 8:36 encompassing both sides of the single, it was also the longest song to reach number one until Taylor Swift's "All Too Well (Taylor's Version)" broke the record in 2021. Some stations played only part one of the original split-sided single release.

WCFL DJ Bob Dearborn unraveled the lyrics and first published his interpretation on January 7, 1972, four days after the song reached number 1 on rival station WLS, six days before it reached number 1 on WCFL, and eight days before it reached number 1 nationally (see "Further reading" under "American Pie"). Numerous other interpretations, which together largely converged on Dearborn's interpretation, quickly followed. McLean declined to say anything definitive about the lyrics until 1978. Since then McLean has stated that the lyrics are also somewhat autobiographical and present an abstract story of his life from the mid-1950s until the time he wrote the song in the late 1960s.

The original United Artists Records inner sleeve featured a free verse poem written by McLean about William Boyd, also known as Hopalong Cassidy, along with a picture of Boyd in full Hopalong regalia. This sleeve was removed within a year of the album's release. The words to this poem appear on a plaque at the hospital where Boyd died. The Boyd poem and picture tribute do appear on a special remastered 2003 CD.

In 2001, "American Pie" was voted number 5 in a poll of the 365 Songs of the Century compiled by the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Endowment for the Arts.

On April 7, 2015, McLean's original working manuscript for "American Pie" sold for $1,205,000 (£809,524/€1,109,182) at Christie's auction rooms, New York, making it the third highest auction price achieved for an American literary manuscript.

In the sale catalogue notes, McLean finally revealed the meaning in the song's lyrics: "Basically in American Pie things are heading in the wrong direction. ... It [life] is becoming less idyllic. I don't know whether you consider that wrong or right but it is a morality song in a sense." The catalogue confirmed some of the better-known references in the song's lyrics, including mentions of Elvis Presley ("the king") and Bob Dylan ("the jester"), and confirmed that the song culminates with a description of the death of Meredith Hunter at the Altamont Free Concert, ten years after the plane crash that killed Holly, Valens, and Richardson, and that the song broadly depicts how the early rock innocence of the 1950s, and a bygone simpler age, had been lost; overtaken by events and changes, which themselves had been overtaken by further changes.

Mike Mills of R.E.M. reflected on the song, that "'American Pie' just made perfect sense to me as a song and that's what impressed me the most. I could say to people this is how to write songs. When you've written at least three songs that can be considered classic that is a very high batting average and if one of those songs happens to be something that a great many people think is one of the greatest songs ever written you've not only hit the top of the mountain but you've stayed high on the mountain for a long time."

When asked about his record broken by Taylor Swift in a Billboard interview, Don McLean said, "there is something to be said for a great song that has staying power. 'American Pie' remained on top for 50 years and now Taylor Swift has unseated such a historic piece of artistry. Let's face it, nobody ever wants to lose that No. 1 spot, but if I had to lose it to somebody, I sure am glad it was another great singer/songwriter such as Taylor." When Swift broke McLean's record, she sent him flowers and a handwritten note that read "I will never forget that I'm standing on the shoulders of giants".

"Vincent (Starry Starry Night)"
"Vincent" is a tribute to the 19th-century Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh. The inspiration came to McLean one morning while looking at a book about Van Gogh. As he studied a print of Van Gogh's painting The Starry Night, he realized that a song could be written about the artist through the painting. The song argues that Van Gogh had a psychiatric illness, as opposed to being insane. It reached number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 and it proved to be a huge hit worldwide, including reaching number 1 in the UK Singles Chart. Mike Mills of R.E.M. said "You can't change a note in that song". The song was performed by NOFX on their album 45 or 46 Songs That Weren't Good Enough to Go on Our Other Records and appears on the Fat Wreck Chords compilation Survival of the Fattest. "Vincent" was sung by Josh Groban on his 2001 debut album. In 2018, singer-songwriter Ellie Goulding recorded a new, stripped back, acoustic guitar-driven version of the song.

Subsequent recordings
Personnel from the American Pie album sessions were retained for his third album Don McLean, including the producer, Ed Freeman, Rob Rothstein on bass, and Warren Bernhardt on piano. The song "The Pride Parade" provides an insight into McLean's immediate reaction to stardom. McLean told Melody Maker in 1973 that Tapestry was an album by someone previously concerned with external situations. American Pie combines externals with internals, and the resultant success of that album makes the third one (Don McLean) entirely introspective."

Other songs written by McLean for the album include "Dreidel" (number 21 on the Billboard chart) and "If We Try" (number 58), which was recorded by Olivia Newton-John. "On the Amazon" from the 1920s musical Mr. Cinders was an unusual choice but became an audience favorite in concerts and featured in Till Tomorrow, a documentary film about McLean produced by Bob Elfstrom (Elfstrom held the role of Jesus Christ in Johnny and June Cash's Gospel Road). The film shows McLean in concert at Columbia University as he was interrupted by a bomb scare. He left the stage while the audience stood up and checked under their seats for anything that resembled a bomb. After the all-clear, McLean re-appeared and sang "On the Amazon" from exactly where he had left off. Don Heckman reported the bomb scare in his review for The New York Times titled "Don McLean Survives Two Obstacles".

The fourth album Playin' Favorites was a top-40 hit in the UK in 1973 and included the Irish folk classic, "Mountains of Mourne" and Buddy Holly's "Everyday", a live rendition of which returned McLean to the UK Singles Chart. McLean said "The last album (Don McLean) was a study in depression whereas the new one (Playin' Favorites) is almost the quintessence of optimism."

The 1974 album Homeless Brother, produced by Joel Dorn, was McLean's final studio recording for United Artists. The album featured fine New York session musicians, including Ralph McDonald on percussion, Hugh McCracken on guitar and a guest appearance by Yusef Lateef on flute. The Persuasions sang the background vocals on "Crying in the Chapel", and Cissy Houston provided a backing vocal on "La La Love You". The album's title song was inspired by Jack Kerouac's book Lonesome Traveler, in which Kerouac tells the story of America's "homeless brothers" or hobos. The song features background vocals by Pete Seeger.

The song "The Legend of Andrew McCrew" was based on an article published in The New York Times concerning a black Dallas hobo named Anderson McCrew who was killed when he leapt from a moving train. No one claimed him, so a carnival took his body, mummified it, and toured all over the South with him, calling him "The Famous Mummy Man". McLean's song inspired radio station WGN in Chicago to tell the story and give the song airplay in order to raise money for a headstone for McCrew's grave. Their campaign was successful, and McCrew's body was exhumed and buried in the Lincoln Cemetery in Dallas.

Joel Dorn later collaborated on the McLean career retrospective Rearview Mirror, released in 2005 on Dorn's label, Hyena Records. In 2006, Dorn reflected on working with McLean: "Of the more than 200 studio albums I've produced in the past 40 plus years, there is a handful; maybe 15 or so that I can actually listen to from top to bottom. Homeless Brother is one of them. It accomplished everything I set out to do. And it did so because it was a true collaboration. Don brought so much to the project that all I really had to do was capture what he did, and complement it properly when necessary."

In 1977 a brief liaison with Arista Records that yielded the album Prime Time, and in October 1978, the single "It Doesn't Matter Anymore". This was a track from the album Chain Lightning that should have been the second of four with Arista. McLean had started recording in Nashville, Tennessee, with Elvis Presley's backing singers, the Jordanaires, and many of Presley's musicians. However the Arista deal broke down following artistic disagreements between McLean and the Arista chief, Clive Davis. Consequently, McLean was left without a record contract in the United States, but through continuing deals, Chain Lightning was released by EMI in Europe and by Festival Records in Australia.

In April 1980, the Roy Orbison song "Crying" from the album began picking up airplay on Dutch radio stations and McLean was called to Europe to appear on several important musical variety shows to plug the song and support its release as a single by EMI. The song achieved number 1 status in the Netherlands first, followed by the UK and then Australia.

McLean's number 1 successes in Europe and Australia led to a new deal in the United States with Millennium Records, which issued Chain Lightning two and a half years after it had been recorded in Nashville and two years after its release in Europe. It charted on February 14, 1981, and reached number 28, and "Crying" climbed to number 5 on the pop singles chart. Orbison himself thought that McLean's version was the best interpretation he'd ever heard of one of his songs. Orbison thought McLean did a better job than he did and even went so far as to say that the voice of Don McLean is one of the great instruments of 20th-century America. According to Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, "McLean's voice could cut through steel - he is a very pure singer and he's up there with the best of them. He's a very talented singer and songwriter and he deserves his success."

McLean had further chart successes in the United States in the early 1980s with "Since I Don't Have You", a new recording of "Castles in the Air" and "It's Just the Sun". In 1987, the release of the country-based album Love Tracks gave rise to the hit singles "Love in My Heart" (a top-10 in Australia), "You Can't Blame the Train" (U.S. country number 49), and "Eventually". The latter two songs were written by Terri Sharp. In 1991, EMI reissued "American Pie" as a single in the United Kingdom, and McLean performed on Top of the Pops. In 1992, previously unreleased songs became available on Favorites and Rarities, and Don McLean Classics featured new studio recordings of "Vincent" and "American Pie".

McLean has continued to record new material, including River of Love in 1995 on Curb Records, and more recently, the albums You've Got to Share, Don McLean Sings Marty Robbins and The Western Album for his own Don McLean Music label. Addicted to Black was released in May 2009.

Other songs
McLean's other well-known songs include the following.
 * "And I Love You So" featured on McLean's first album Tapestry first released in 1970. The song was later recorded by Elvis Presley, Helen Reddy, Shirley Bassey, Glen Campbell, Engelbert Humperdinck, Howard Keel, Claude François, and a 1973 hit for Perry Como. The song was performed at the Royal Wedding reception of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in 2018.
 * "Castles in the Air", which McLean recorded twice. His 1981 re-recording was a top-40 hit, reaching number 36 on the Billboard Hot 100 in late 1981.
 * "Wonderful Baby", a tribute to Fred Astaire that Astaire himself recorded. Primarily rejected by pop stations, it reached number 1 on the Billboard Easy Listening chart.

The American Pie album features a version of Psalm 137, titled "Babylon". The song is based on a canon by Philip Hayes and was arranged by McLean and Lee Hays (of The Weavers). "Babylon" was performed in the Mad Men episode of the same name despite the fact that the song would not be released until 10 years after the time in which the episode is set.

In 1981, McLean had an international number one hit with a version of the Roy Orbison classic "Crying". It was only after the record became a success overseas that it was released in the United States. The single hit reached number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1981. Orbison himself once described McLean as "the voice of the century", and in a subsequent re-recording of the song, Orbison incorporated elements of McLean's version.

For the 1982 animated cult movie The Flight of Dragons, produced by Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin, Jr., McLean sang the opening theme. However, no soundtrack has ever been released.

Another hit song associated with McLean (though never recorded by him) is "Killing Me Softly with His Song", which was inspired by Lori Lieberman after she, also a singer-songwriter, saw him singing his composition "Empty Chairs" in concert. Afterwards she shared it with her manager, Norman Gimbel, who had long been searching for a way to use a phrase he had copied from a novel translated from Spanish, "killing me softly with his blues". Gimbel passed the lyrics to his songwriting partner Charles Fox, who in turn composed the music to "Killing Me Softly with His Song". Lieberman recorded the song and released it in 1972. This initial version was heard by Roberta Flack, who recorded it with slight changes to create a number one hit. Two decades later it was recorded by the Fugees, who had another hit.

Later career
The Don McLean Story: Killing Us Softly With His Songs was published in 2007. Biographer Alan Howard conducted extensive interviews for this, the only book-length biography of the often reclusive McLean to date.

McLean is credited as a co-writer on Drake's song "Doing It Wrong", featuring Stevie Wonder. The song includes lyrics from two McLean compositions – "The Wrong Thing to Do" and "When a Good Thing Goes Bad" – both of which were featured on his 1977 album Prime Time.

In a July 2022 documentary, titled The Day The Music Died, McLean discussed for the first time in 50 years the meaning of the lyrics "American Pie".

In February 2022, McLean recorded a performance of "Vincent" at the Immersive Van Gogh exhibit in Los Angeles in honor of Van Gogh's birthday and the 50th anniversary of the song.

In April 2022, Tyson Fury teamed up with McLean to remake "American Pie". McLean won six Telly Awards for the Fury-Whyte fight opening.

In June 2022, McLean published a children's book titled American Pie: A Fable. The story follows the emotional journey of a newspaper delivery boy in the late 1950s who discovers the joy of friendship and music, eventually learning that when you recognize what truly makes you happy, you are never really alone.

McLean led a wave of dropouts from the NRA convention after the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, saying it would be "disrespectful and hurtful" to perform days after 19 children and two adults were killed in a mass shooting in the state. McLean was first among performers who announced they would no longer perform at the National Rifle Association's annual meeting in Houston.

In October 2022, McLean called rapper Kanye West an 'attention-seeking fool' over his antisemitic rants. The "American Pie" singer who briefly lived in Israel said he stands with his Jewish friends. "Lately, a flood of antisemitic invective has been triggered by the ranting of a stupid attention-seeking fool we all know," McLean wrote in the statement that did not mention Ye by name. "I want to say I stand with my Jewish friends and I stand with the state of Israel. When this kind of thing happens, we should realize why the state of Israel must be respected and protected." McLean lived in Israel on-and-off from 1978 to 1982 and he "grew to love the country and the people. Living there changed my life forever."

Concerts
McLean's albums did not match the commercial success of American Pie, but he became a major concert attraction in the United States and overseas. His repertoire included old concert hall numbers and the catalogues of singers such as Buddy Holly and Frank Sinatra. The years spent playing gigs in small clubs and coffee houses in the 1960s transformed into well-paced performances. McLean's first concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York and the Albert Hall in London in 1972 were critically acclaimed.

In recent years, McLean continued to tour the United States, Canada and Europe (2011, 2012) and Australia (2013). In June 2011, McLean appeared at the Glastonbury Festival in Pilton, UK, and in 2014 at California's Stagecoach Country Music Festival.

During 2018, McLean embarked on a world tour with concerts in North America, UK, Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Israel, Norway and Finland. His concert at the London Palladium was reviewed positively by The Times: "'His masterpiece ('American Pie') remains one of the great achievements of the singer-songwriter era: eight and a half minutes of allegory, reflection and melody documenting the history of rock'n'roll and the death of 1950s innocence. He played it, of course, and brilliantly, getting everyone creaking on to their feet and singing along. Before that came almost two hours of well-worn rock'n'roll and acoustic folk that placed McLean somewhere between a straight-up entertainer and a poetic maverick.' – Marilynn Kingwell, The Times" The Jerusalem Post noted that "McLean was the consummate professional in presenting his master class of the Great American Songbook" in their review of his June 2018 Tel Aviv concert.

In 2022, McLean toured through Europe, starting in Wales and ending in Sweden, to celebrate the upcoming 50th anniversary of "American Pie".

In 2023, the 50th anniversary of "American Pie", McLean's Australian Tour concluded with 24 shows in Australia and New Zealand.

Australian Tour 2023

His concert at the Fortitude Music Hall was reviewed positively by Rolling Stone:

"One of 'America's Greatest Songwriters' Don McLean Delivers a Masterclass on Final Australian Tour 'Throughout the evening, McLean tells anecdotes about his life and his creative process, coupled with observations on the modern world. Case in point: he loves Ed Sheeran and has little time for AI.'

'McLean admitted to having been a sickly kid who missed a lot of school and developed an obsession with 1950s rock 'n' roll and folk music; he name checks everyone from The Weavers to Little Richard as influences.'

'Despite the years, McLean has somehow managed to preserve his voice and he sounds mighty close to how he did on 1971's American Pie album, from which the tour takes its name. Running the gamut of his early loves, McLean treats us to a Lead Belly-inspired 'Midnight Special', Buddy Holly's 'Not Fade Away' and, as Johnny Cash's guitarist Kerry Marx is now in the band, there's a rousing rendition of 'Folsom Prison Blues'.'

'Further highlights from McLean's own catalogue include 'Headroom', a spoken word 'Vacant Luxury', and 'Vincent'. If anyone ever questions McLean's credentials, just play them the latter: as he strums through the opening gambit 'Starry, starry night', you know you are in the company of a man who has climbed the song writer's mountain.' - Sean Sennett, Rolling Stone"

Honors
McLean's alma mater, Iona College in New Rochelle, New York, conferred an honorary doctorate on him in 2001. McLean has since been vocal in his criticism of the college: "Iona was, in my day, a college for the average student who wanted to go home after class. The educational experience was perfect for me. I loved the small Greek revival style campus buildings and I got to put on little shows in Doorley Hall auditorium. Since those days, the Irish Christian Brothers have been virtually destroyed by the disgusting behavior of many in their order as charges of mass child molestation have destroyed their ranks. No punishment is harsh enough when you think of trusting Catholic parents giving their children over to these cynical monsters. I am very disappointed in the Irish Christian Brothers and Iona College."

In February 2002, "American Pie" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 2004, McLean was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

In February 2012, McLean won the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards Life Time Achievement award.

In March 2012, the PBS network broadcast a feature-length documentary about the life and music of McLean called Don McLean: American Troubadour produced by four-time Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Jim Brown.

In March 2017, McLean's single "American Pie" was designated an "aural treasure" by the Library of Congress, "worthy of preservation" in the National Recording Registry "as part of America's patrimony". In 1991, a re-issue of "American Pie" reached the UK top 20 singles chart and in July 2017, "American Pie" peaked at number 6 on the Billboard Rock Digital Songs Sales chart, nearly 50 years after its first release.

In May 2019, the UCLA Student Alumni Association awarded McLean its George and Ira Gershwin Award for Lifetime Musical Achievement. However, the award was rescinded before it was formally bestowed because of McLean's conviction for domestic abuse. In response, McLean issued the following statement: "UCLA awarded this lifetime achievement award and then took it back because you found out about my squabble with my ex-wife. This has been all over the Internet for three years. Are you people morons? This is settled law. Maybe I need to give you some bribe money to grease the college wheels? I am guilty of nothing to do with assault and you had better make that clear. We live in a dark age of accusation and not law."

On November 7, 2019, McLean returned to New Rochelle to view a new mural depicting a likeness of his younger self, with lyrics from "American Pie", on the side of a building on the corner of 134 North Avenue and Bonnefoy Place, painted by artist Loic Ercolessi for a non-profit organization, Street Art for Mankind. The mural includes the likeness of singer/songwriter Alicia Keys, with lyrics to the song "Empire State of Mind", which she performed with Jay-Z.

Throughout McLean's career artists including Garth Brooks, Madonna, Drake, Josh Groban and others have recorded his songs. At a ceremony in October 2019, plaques certified by the Recording Industry Association of America for gold, platinum, and multi-platinum sales in the United States as well as presentations from Australia, Austria, Belgium, France, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom were bestowed on McLean. He said: "As a songwriter your songs are like your children, and you are hopeful everyone loves them as much as you do, but rarely is that the case. I am so grateful that songs I have written have touched so many lives and have been recorded by so many great artists."

Television host Alex Trebek asked McLean to sing for him and his Jeopardy family at his annual Christmas party in 2019. McLean was on his "bucket list". The event was held at an Italian restaurant near Trebek's home.

In February 2021, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of "American Pie", McLean recorded an A cappella rendition with the band Home Free. He stars in the music video with the singers in a virtual collaboration. The video won three Telly Awards in 2021.

McLean received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on August 16, 2021, in the Music Category at 6314 Hollywood Boulevard, in front of The Pie Hole restaurant (corner of Hollywood and Vine). Joining in the festivities was McLean's longtime friend "Weird Al" Yankovic, a fellow Hollywood Walk of Fame recipient. Yankovic had previously recorded a parody of "American Pie" titled "The Saga Begins", which recounts the story of the film Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace from the viewpoint of Obi-Wan Kenobi. The song appears on Yankovic's 1999 album Running with Scissors.

September 2022 Don McLean received a 50-million record sales plaque from the TV show Good Morning America.

On November 22, 2022, McLean was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, Tennessee.

October 2023 Ritchie Valens’ sister, Connie Valens, traveled to Nashville to induct McLean into the Music City Walk of Fame. “I am so honored to represent the families of Buddy Holly, JP Richardson, and my brother Ritchie Valens,” she said. For years, she couldn't listen to her brother's music because “it hurt too much,” but she could listen to “American Pie.” Last year, she met McLean when she was invited to take part in the documentary “The Day The Music Died.” They gathered at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, where her brother (and Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper) had their last performance before the plane crash. “I thanked Don and told him he had immortalized my brother Ritchie, J.P, and Buddy. He’d taken a terrible tragedy and written rock and roll history.” She went on to say that. because of McLean, “the music didn’t die.”

Influence
The plane crash that killed musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and "The Big Bopper" J. P. Richardson has become known as "The Day the Music Died", the expression by which McLean, a fan of Buddy Holly, dubbed it in the song. Holly's death for him symbolized the "loss of innocence" of the early rock-'n-roll generation.

Musician Lori Lieberman was inspired by a McLean performance in late 1971 to co-write "Killing Me Softly with His Song". In November 1971, Lieberman, then 20, went out with her friend Michele Willens to see Don McLean perform at the Troubadour nightclub in Los Angeles. McLean's hit song "American Pie" was rising in the charts, but Lieberman was strongly affected by McLean singing another song: "Empty Chairs". This song spurred her to write poetic notes on a paper napkin while he was performing the song. McLean said in 1973 that he was surprised to find out that the song described his singing. "I'm absolutely amazed. I've heard both Lori's and Roberta's version and I must say I'm very humbled about the whole thing. You can't help but feel that way about a song written and performed as well as this one is." After decades of confirming Lieberman's contribution, Fox and Gimbel changed their story about the song's origins to downplay her role. Gimbel threatened McLean with a lawsuit in 2008, demanding he remove from his website an assertion that McLean was the inspiration for "Killing Me Softly", but McLean responded by showing Gimbel his own words confirming the inspiration, published in 1973.

"Vincent (Starry Starry Night)" was rapper Tupac Shakur's favorite song. Shakur's girlfriend reportedly played the song for him when he was hospitalized and in a coma. Shakur's mother also insisted the song be included in a documentary about the rapper's life.

President Joe Biden capped the official state visit of South Korean President Yoon Suk-Yeol with a state dinner on April 27, 2023, at the White House to celebrate the two nations' 70-year alliance. Following a round of musical performances, Yoon took to the microphone himself with a rendition of Don McLean's "American Pie". President Biden then presented Yoon with a guitar autographed by McLean.

Personal life
McLean was raised in the Catholic faith of his mother, Elizabeth McLean; his father, Donald McLean, was a Protestant. His father died when McLean was 15. McLean has claimed that he grew up in a physically abusive household, and was abused by both his parents and his sister. Don McLean has been married twice, with both marriages ending in divorce. His first wife was Carol Sauvion, of Philadelphia, who went on to win an Emmy and Peabody Award for her PBS television series "Craft in America". They were married from 1969 to 1976 and had no children.

His second marriage was to Patrisha Shnier McLean, of Montreal, Canada, from 1987 to 2016. They have two children, Jackie and Wyatt, and two grandchildren, Rosa and Mya. Their marriage ended after McLean was arrested and charged with misdemeanor domestic violence at their home in Camden, Maine, and Shnier McLean filed for divorce, citing "adultery, cruel and abusive treatment, and irreconcilable differences."

In 2018, McLean confirmed his romantic relationship with model and reality star Paris Dylan, who is 48 years his junior.

McLean is an ambassador for Teen Cancer America and performed at the Teen Cancer America and UCLA Health fundraising Backyard Concert in 2018. During the show, McLean sang a duet of his song "Vincent" with Ed Sheeran. The Don McLean Foundation is a charity set up by McLean to be funded by all his income in perpetuity. Its headquarters is based at Lakeview, the Don McLean Maine residence, and it will serve as a center for fundraisers and conferences as well as a nature preserve. Organizations that support the needy in the State of Maine and throughout the United States will be beneficiaries.

On May 23, 2024, Don McLean & girlfriend Paris Dylan attended a state dinner at the White House hosted by President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden in honor of Kenya's President William Ruto and First Lady Rachel Ruto. President Joe Biden considers himself an advocate for survivors of Domestic Violence and on "June 20, 1990, then-Senator Joe Biden introduced the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in the United States Congress."

Controversies
In May 2024, Don McLean sparked controversy with his remarks about Prince Harry. McLean criticized Prince Harry, stating that he "just doesn't get America." He emphasized the cultural significance of Elvis Presley, referring to him as "the poor man's king," who rose from humble beginnings to create some of the greatest recordings ever made. McLean's comments were reported in Yahoo Entertainment and The Telegraph, stirring a public debate.

In 2021, Rolling Stone published a story quoting Don McLean as saying he grew up in a physically abusive household. However, McLean has since denied these allegations. In a statement to People, he asserted, "Absolutely not true. I was never abused as a child at all. No, my parents were wonderful people, but they were very normal, like everybody else." McLean emphasized the conservative nature of the times, explaining that respect and obedience to parents were standard behaviors.

On January 18, 2016, McLean's then-wife Patrisha Shnier McLean alleged that after four hours of "terrorizing" her, McLean pinned her to a bed until she broke free and ran to the bathroom. Shnier McLean alleged that McLean attempted "to shove open the locked bathroom door behind which I had barricaded myself. As it was splintering, I pushed the numbers 911." McLean was arrested on suspicion of domestic violence, and pled guilty to domestic violence assault, criminal restraint, criminal mischief and making domestic violence threats. McLean paid $3,660 in fines, and was not sentenced to any jail time. Under Maine's deferred disposition law, the State agreed to dismiss the domestic violence assault charge if McLean complied with the court's orders for one year, and the charge was expunged a year later. During this time, Shnier McLean filed for divorce, citing "adultery, cruel and abusive treatment, and irreconcilable differences." McLean has denied that he physically abused Shnier McLean, and his lawyer released a statement claiming McLean agreed to the plea deal in the interest of privacy. In March 2017, a Maine court granted Shnier-McLean's request for a 10-year protection order against McLean.

In a 2020 interview with The Irish Times, Shnier McLean alleged McLean had created a cult-like household, remarking "I do feel there is an element of brainwashing there. I relate to a lot of the things they say about cults like the charismatic leader, and how their version of things becomes your version, the twisted version." McLean's daughter Jackie told Rolling Stone in 2021 that her father was emotionally abusive and, like her mother, stated her father created a cult-like household. According to Jackie, McLean used paralyzing verbal attacks, forced isolation, and threats to withhold love or financial support. The article asserted that "[t]exts, emails and recordings of calls between McLean and her father provided to Rolling Stone suggest a pattern of asserting control and manipulation over Jackie, her actions and memories, and a seeming drive by the elder McLean to maintain a certain public image." In one email, McLean wrote his daughter, "unless you support me publicly and frequently you should not expect me to lift a finger for you nor will I give you another red cent." "She remembers things that I don't," said Mclean. What he recalls is telling her after he read her Moby Dick: "It was a man's world, I said, 'but the future is going to be a woman's world and you are going to be perfectly suited for that world." When interviewed for the article, McLean admitted to aspects of Jackie's account, but denied that his behavior constituted abuse. He also said that he himself had grown up in a physically abusive household.

Discography

 * Tapestry (1970)
 * American Pie (1971)
 * Don McLean (1972)
 * Playin' Favorites (1973)
 * Homeless Brother (1974)
 * Prime Time (1977)
 * Chain Lightning (1978)
 * Believers (1981)
 * Love Tracks (1988)
 * For the Memories (1989)
 * Headroom (1991)
 * Christmas (1991)
 * The River of Love (1995)
 * Christmas Dreams (1997)
 * Sings Marty Robbins (2001)
 * You've Got to Share: Songs for Children (2003)
 * The Western Album (2003)
 * Rearview Mirror: An American Musical Journey (2005)
 * Addicted to Black (2009)
 * Botanical Gardens (2018)
 * Still Playin' Favorites (2020)
 * American Boys (2024)

title: Don McLean


text:
Defense

Defense or defence may refer to:

Tactical, martial, and political acts or groups

 * Defense (military), forces primarily intended for warfare
 * Civil defense, the organizing of civilians to deal with emergencies or enemy attacks
 * Defense industry, industry which manufactures and sells weapons and military technology
 * Self-defense, the use of force to defend oneself
 * Haganah (Hebrew for "The Defence"), a paramilitary organization in British Palestine
 * National security, security of a nation state, its citizens, economy, and institutions, as a duty of government
 * Defence diplomacy, pursuit of foreign policy objectives through the peaceful employment of defence resources
 * Ministry of defence or department of defense, a part of government which regulates the armed forces
 * Defence minister, a cabinet position in charge of a ministry of defense
 * International security, measures taken by states and international organizations to ensure mutual survival and safety

Sports

 * Defense (sports), the action of preventing an opponent from scoring
 * Defender (association football), an outfield player whose primary role is to prevent the opposing team from scoring goals
 * Defenceman (ice hockey), a player, other than the goaltender, in a defensive position
 * Defensive batting, a method of avoiding being out in cricket

Law

 * Defense (legal), an attempt to avoid criminal or civil liability
 * Defence of property, argument that a defendant should not be held liable for any loss caused while acting to protect their property
 * Right of self-defense, the right for people to use reasonable force to defend themselves

Places

 * Defence, Karachi, a neighbourhood located within Clifton Cantonment of Karachi, Pakistan
 * La Défense, a business district near Paris
 * The Grande Arche, commonly known as Arche de la Défense, near Paris

Other uses

 * The Defence (TV series), a 2018 Polish television series
 * Defense (chess), a chess opening by Black
 * Defence (ship), name of several ships
 * HMS Defence, Royal Navy ships of this name
 * Thesis defense, oral examination required for certain advanced degrees
 * Defence mechanisms, unconscious psychological mechanisms that reduce anxiety

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Defense


text:
Talk:Defense

I
I sense a large amount of non-NPOV here... I think this article needs to be drastically reworked. I'll start by moving a chunk of the text that seems unnecessary to the /talk page, but I think people more experienced than I should try their hand at this article... --KA

moved block: Defense in the modern world goes beyond 'Oogh',our caveman, and his club beating down tigers. Today defense is a multibillion dollar exploration into the latest, greatest technologies. Defense today, for many Americans, means a fighter jet buzzing overhead, or raining down bombs on 'evilones' oversees. Defense means a gun on the nightstand, a can of mace in the purse, a Club--the popular lock for steering wheels--on their car, a five-sided building with men in pressed pants, decorated with metals, standing over maps, and saving our country from those who wish us harm. Defense has become a 200-plus billion dollar budget allocation to the Armed Forces alone in the United States, not to mention Homeland Security; the FBI, the CIA, the NSC, and the thousands of police departments from New York City, New York, to Proctorville, Ohio.

Defense, though in many senses, has reamined the same; we all need to protect ourselves and those that we value--ou r family, our friends,our neighbors,the citizens of our country-- from the adversity of our enviroment, and the dangerous that surround us. Though defense may have started with Ugh fighting :off a tiger --though it likely did not--, the business of defense can no longer be seen as a solo operation: Any real defense is a common defense

I'd like to make this more useful as a disambiguation page. So how about adding links to pages at Defense (sport), Defense (legal), Defense (politics) and Defense (military)? Is this a good idea? Are these the best titles? -- sannse 07:43 May 3, 2003 (UTC)

 * I think this makes sense, as far as defense (legal) is concerned such a page can really be a quite detailed article in its own right, and seeing how many law topic pages link here, it makes sense that it has its own link so that those pages can be corrected to link directly there. Alex756 10:32 16 May 2003 (UTC)

 * OK, I'll have a go at separating the pages. They will be rather stubish for now but hopefully will develop.   -- sannse 19:01 16 May 2003 (UTC)

 * That's much better. Good move, sannse. Tannin

 * Humm, I've just moved defense (law) to defense (legal) but now I'm not sure. Which is the better title? -- sannse 19:30 16 May 2003 (UTC)

 * Flip a coin. "Legal", I guess. Tannin

 * Tails it is then -- sannse

True or false??
True or false: defense is the American spelling and defence is the Canadian spelling. 66.32.248.34 19:42, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * Yes, defence is also the UK spelling, etc. --taestell 04:28, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)

NPOV: Removed USDoD as euphemism example
Under defense as a politial euphemism for war, somebody had placed "(See United States Department of Defense)" or somesuch. It may have been unintentional, but this would doubtless convey the implication (to some readers) that initiating war is the true purpose of the USDoD.

This is a view worthy of discussion, perhaps, but explicitly and not by implication. --NathanHawking 01:48, 2004 Oct 6 (UTC)

Spelling
Should the redirection not be the other way around? i.e to from defense to defence?

Whilst I understand that defense is a valid ALTERNATE spelling, alternate it is nonetheless. Whilst there may be British/American/Australian English, is English English not the original? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.221.212.66 (talk • contribs • WHOIS )

 * I agree that the spelling should be changed from Defense to Defence. Defence more commonly used and defense is only used inside the USA, therefore the article is not reflecting a worldwide view. TKLM 15:29, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Moved, defence is not a US concept, it has existed well before US english and formation of the USA. Bungalowbill

 * I believe that to be false. Can you give a reference? The US constitution uses the Defence spelling. While some countries other then the US recognise both especially Canada, in British English 'defence 'is the only recognised form of spelling. ChessCreator (talk) 13:45, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

 * But with an s is more internationally recognized: Spanish:Defensa, Dutch:Defensie, Portuguese: Defesa. Not to mention American English and Commonwealth derivatives like defensive.Cameron Nedland 13:34, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

 * Maybe so, but of course then you're looking at Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese, not English. Simply put, US English (AFAIK) is the only type that spells the root word with an 'S'. -- Stephen 20:56, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

 * So it was agreed to move this article from the US-only spelling (s) to (as described in the article) the worldwide spelling (c). This was then reverted a month later, with no discussion on this talk page and two reasons given - that the links in the page are spelt with an s (which, by the same reasoning as above, should then all be changed to a c), and to keep the article consistent with offense. If the spelling of offence is used globally except in the US, surely by the same reasoning it too should be changed. If not, it is after all a different (albeit connected) word anyway - the spelling used need not mirror the spelling used here. To summarise, I suggest that this page be moved back to Defence again, with the articles pointed to also moved to Defence_(foo), and (if applicable) the same thing done to Offence. If there are any reasons I've missed as to why this should stay at Defense, please list them below.
 * Pity you didn't date your comment, but yes in September 2006 is was reverted from the worldwide spelling (c) to the US spelling (s) with no discussion. It has been at least many months since your comment and no one has given any reason to keep defense, therefore it seems to be time to change it to the worldwide spelling. ChessCreator (talk) 13:57, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree. This is the English wikipedia, not the American wikipedia. --Oddeivind (talk) 18:02, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
 * If you'd like to bring this up so long after the conversation ended, then you'd probably be best creating a new topic at the bottom of the page. However, I should point out that there would be no point in doing so here.
 * The official Manual of Style policy is that, for words with different regional spellings (even when one spelling is more common overall), unless the topic itself is particularly unique to a specific locale, then the spelling convention used in the first non-stub version must be the one to stay with.
 * That is, it doesn't matter if everyone but Americans spells it defence. If defense was the spelling used in the original non-stub version of the page (and, let's face it, there's really no such thing as a 'stub' when you're talking about disambiguation), then there it shall stay until the MoS is changed.
 * That doesn't mean that this page can never move. It just means that it can't move until you first change the policy. And, of course, that needs to be done (ideally) at the village pump or (less ideally) at the discussion page for the MoS. 139.57.100.63 (talk) 23:14, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Spelling
Hate to reopen this but the US is the only English speaking country that spells it defense. Population that spells it as "defense": US (300 million). Population that spells it as "defence": Australia (21 million), Canada (31 million), UK (60 million), New Zealand (5 million) Ireland (4 million) and INDIA (1000 Million). Sorry - but defence it is! 58.178.57.17 (talk) 03:32, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
 * India does not count as only a couple of hundred thousand people there speak English as their native language. Also, it doesn't matter anyway because Wikipedia is not a majority rule website.

Not Representative
I should point out that as defence is the worldwide spelling of the word then that should be used, since the entire world uses said spelling. Defense refers solely to the US, and is therefore unrepresentative of the rest of the world. Under Wikipedia [sic] guidelines the spelling should be reverted back to defence.--J.StuartClarke (talk) 17:28, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think there is any wiki guideline to say that. Can you post a link. SunCreator (talk) 15:01, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Globalize/USA

 * Perhaps this? --J.StuartClarke (talk) 21:48, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Perhaps, but would require some more information to make a case.
 * These are the guidelines that I'm aware of are WP:ENGVAR and ENGLISH. The guidelines basically say that both spelling is acceptable, but "retain the existing variety" and in "the early stages of writing an article, the variety chosen by the first major contributor to the article should be used."
 * Another article (not wikipedia guideline's) showing differences are American and English spelling differences.
 * With regards to the word defense I'd like to know if it is exclusively used in America or is both defense and defence in use? I guess it is, but am not sure. SunCreator (talk) 22:30, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
 * The U.S. is the only part of the world that primarily uses "defense". I live in Canada and can say without a doubt that I have never seen anyone spell "defence" as "defense" despite the fact that people outside of Canada believe that they are both accepted here. 174.95.17.194 (talk) 04:18, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

 * I was about to agree, until I realised that a majority of the world's native English speakers use the US spelling (see pie chart on right). --hydrox (talk) 19:52, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Cimetidine
Why is Cimetidine listed on this page? J04n(talk page) 23:30, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Because Defense is one among a host of brand names for Cimetidine. 220.137.252.163 (talk) 01:32, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Spelling - American spelling: is it really American?
I'm American, and I was always taught to spell defence, defence. I recognized that the spelling was used in "department of defense", but thought that was some kind of archaic something or other. So is the American spelling truly American? Furthermore, I wonder how this "defense" spelling came about. From what I've read about spelling reform (the same spelling reform that made "colour" into "color", it seems like it would be more logical to spell it defence. Anyone know?  188.74.96.196 (talk) 16:12, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
 * You're asking in the wrong place. This page is for discussing changes to the Defense article. You could try asking at the reference desk (or should that be the referense desk?) —S MALL  JIM   17:54, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

G angles
Describe crosshairs on g angles Eglassis 2604:2D80:B689:6600:7D19:E036:F285:946A (talk) 07:06, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Kristie Reed
Kristie Reed 2604:2D80:B689:6600:7D19:E036:F285:946A (talk) 07:06, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Defense


text:
DirkJan

DirkJan is a Dutch comic strip series, created in 1989 by Dutch author and artist Mark Retera. It is also the name of its main character. The series is a gag-a-day comic.

Description
DirkJan is an underachiever who stumbles through life in mostly three-panel gag-a-day comic strips. He started out in 1989 as a student at the current Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands, where he lived in a typical student house with all the stereotypical sidekicks, such as the frat boy, the beer drinker, the bossy girl who checks if everybody keeps to the house rules, and the tramps who use the heated shared hallway to stay the night. Early DirkJans contained many references to the student life of Nijmegen.

Publication
DirkJan was first published in Critic, the magazine for the local union of psychology students. It then moved on to monthly publication in the student magazine of Nijmegen (Algemeen Nijmeegs Studentenblad, ANS). DirkJan became known nationally when the then only commercial comics magazine of the Netherlands SjoSji (now defunct) started publishing the strip.

With the last move, the nature of the strip changed. Most of the student sidekicks got cancelled and DirkJan left university, first for jail (DJ is a notorious Kabouter abuser) and then to wander the globe and indeed space.

As of May 2023, there are 28 DirkJan albums, tentatively named 'DirkJan 1' through 'DirkJan 22'. Several newspapers in the Netherlands publish the comic in their daily edition. There are 8 more albums outside the regular series.

The amateur comics magazine Iris (1990–1995) republished a number of DirkJan comics, some of which were refused for publication in SjoSji.

title: DirkJan


text:
Duck Hunt

Duck Hunt (ダックハント) is a 1984 light gun shooter video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) video game console and the Nintendo VS. System arcade hardware. The game was first released in April 1984, in Japan for the Family Computer (Famicom) console and in North America as an arcade game. It became a launch game for the NES in North America in October 1985, and was re-released in Europe two years later.

Players fire the NES Zapper at a CRT television, with three attempts per round to shoot ducks and clay pigeons.

The game initially received a positive reception in the mid-1980s, but was later given mild praise in retrospective reviews. The game was inspired by Nintendo's previous Duck Hunt electro-mechanical arcade game which was based on the Laser Clay Shooting System released in 1976. Upon release as a video game, Duck Hunt became a major commercial success both for arcades and consoles in the 1980s, helping to popularize light gun video games with over 28 million copies sold worldwide.

In 1986, the nationwide launch of the NES included the Deluxe Set bundle with pack-in games Duck Hunt and Gyromite. The later Action Set has Duck Hunt and Super Mario Bros. on one cartridge. The final Duck Hunt bundle is the Power Set, with a multi-cart with World Class Track Meet, Super Mario Bros., and Duck Hunt. The game was released another time on Virtual Console for the Wii U

Gameplay
Duck Hunt is a first-person shooter game with moving on-screen targets, firing the NES Zapper light gun at a CRT television screen. The player selects the game mode, one or two targets appear, and the player has three attempts to hit them before they disappear. Each round totals ten targets.

The player must hit a minimum number of targets to advance to the next round or else get a game over. The difficulty progresses with faster targets of an increasing minimum number. The player receives points per target and bonus points for shooting all ten targets per round. The highest scores are tracked per session.

Duck Hunt has three optional game modes. In Game A and Game B, the targets are flying ducks, and in Game C the targets are clay pigeons that are launched into the distance. In Game A, one duck appears at a time and in Game B two ducks appear. Game A allows a second player to control the flying ducks with a NES controller. Completing Round 99 in Game A advances to Round 0, which is a kill screen where the game behaves erratically, such as haphazard or nonexistent targets, thus ending progress.

Vs. Duck Hunt
Vs. Duck Hunt was released as a Nintendo VS. System arcade game in April 1984, and was later included in the PlayChoice-10 arcade console. The console supports two light guns, for alternate players.

Gameplay consists of alternating rounds of Games B and C, with 12 targets per round instead of 10 and sometimes three targets at once instead of two. Every missed target costs one life until the game ends.

After every second round, a bonus stage has ducks flying out of the grass with the hunting dog occasionally jumping into the line of fire as a distraction. If shot, the dog scolds the player and the bonus stage ends. According to Nintendo of America employee Jerry Momoda, the dog was made impossible to shoot on console releases to make the game more family friendly.

Development
Duck Hunt was inspired by a 1976 electronic toy version titled Beam Gun: Duck Hunt, part of the Beam Gun series, designed by Gunpei Yokoi and Masayuki Uemura for Nintendo. Nintendo Research & Development 1 developed both the NES Zapper and the NES version of Duck Hunt. The game was supervised by Takehiro Izushi, and was produced by Gunpei Yokoi. The music was composed by Hirokazu Tanaka, who did music for several other Nintendo games at the time. The music was represented in the classic games medley on the Video Games Live concert tour. Designer Hiroji Kiyotake created the graphics and characters.

Release
Duck Hunt has been released alone and in several combination ROM cartridges. The Action Set bundle of the NES in the late 1980s has one cartridge containing Duck Hunt and Super Mario Bros. The Power Set bundle includes the Zapper, the Power Pad, and a 3-in-1 cartridge with Duck Hunt, World Class Track Meet, and Super Mario Bros.

Duck Hunt was re-released on Virtual Console for the Wii U console in Japan on December 24, 2014, and internationally on December 25. This version was modified for the Wii Remote controller in place of the NES Zapper.

Reception
In North America, Vs. Duck Hunt became the third top-grossing arcade game on the RePlay arcade charts in November 1985, below Vs. Hogan's Alley at number one. The two popularized light gun video games by 1985. It was bundled with the Nintendo Entertainment System console in 1985, with 28.3 million copies sold worldwide.

Upon release in arcades, Eddie Adlum of RePlay magazine praised Duck Hunt and Hogan's Alley as the "cream on the cake" among Nintendo VS. System and for successfully capturing the experience of older electro-mechanical gun games into video game format. He said that Duck Hunt and Hogan's Alley "sported simulated handguns on a wire cable and pop, pop, pop, you do your thing just like in the old days only at video targets".

AllGame called the game an "attractive but repetitive target shooter" and "utterly mindless... the game is fun for a short time, but gets old after a few rounds of play". Several communities have rated the game positively. 1UP.com users gave it an 8.7 out of 10, and the GameSpot community rated the multi-cartridge of Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt at 9.1 out of 10. It was rated the 150th best game on a Nintendo system in Nintendo Power's Top 200 Games list. IGN placed the game at number 77 on its "Top 100 NES Games of All Time" feature. The game was ranked 24th in GamesRadar's "The best NES games of all time". Jeremy Parish of USgamer stated that Duck Hunt paired with the NES Zapper "made the NES memorable" and was one of the key factors behind the success of the NES. Parish related Duck Hunt to the Wii Remote in that they made their respective consoles more approachable and reach a wider demographic.

Legacy
Duck Hunt nameless non-playable hunting dog has been referred to in media as the "Duck Hunt Dog" or the "Laughing Dog", notorious for smugly laughing at the player for missing ducks. The dog is on GamesRadars list of "the 12 most annoying sidekicks ever", GameDaily list of characters "we wish we could kill but can't", GameSpys "top 10 dogs in gaming", and MTV's award for the greatest video game canine. The dog makes a cameo appearance in the NES Zapper game Barker Bill's Trick Shooting, where he can be shot.

In Wii Play (2006) and its sequel Wii Play: Motion (2011), some elements from Duck Hunt and Hogan's Alley are in the mini-games "Shooting Range" and "Trigger Twist", in which some of the various targets are ducks and cans.

The dog and a duck, collectively referred to as "Duck Hunt", appear as playable characters in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. Masahiro Sakurai, the creator and director of the Super Smash Bros. series, said that Duck Hunt's commercial success as "the most-sold shooting game in the world" was one of the primary reasons for its inclusion. In the games, the Duck Hunt team utilizes multiple attacks inspired by the light gun, including throwing clay pigeons, kicking an explosive version of the can from Hogan's Alley, summoning the cast of Wild Gunman to fire at opponents with their guns, or comically dodging shots fired at opponents from the Zapper. The games feature an unlockable Duck Hunt-themed stage. Both the Duck Hunt team and stage return in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and the team is featured in the June 2019 trailer announcing Banjo and Kazooie as downloadable content.

In the 2015 film Pixels, the dog cameos as an achievement trophy by the aliens the Centipede creatures defeat, and the dog is adopted by an old woman.

The premise for the psychological horror VR game Duck Season by Stress Level Zero is inspired by Duck Hunt.

title: Duck Hunt


text:
Das Boot

Das Boot (, The Boat) is a 1981 West German war film written and directed by Wolfgang Petersen, produced by Günter Rohrbach, and starring Jürgen Prochnow, Herbert Grönemeyer and Klaus Wennemann. It has been exhibited both as a theatrical release (1981) and a TV miniseries (1985). Also, several different home video versions, as well as a director's cut (1997) supervised by Petersen, have been released.

An adaptation of Lothar-Günther Buchheim's 1973 German novel based on his experiences aboard GS U-96 (1940), the film is set during World War II and follows U-96 and her crew, as they set out on a hazardous patrol in the Battle of the Atlantic. It depicts both the excitement of battle and the tedium of the fruitless hunt, and shows the men serving aboard U-boats as ordinary individuals with a desire to do their best for their comrades and their country.

Development began in 1979. Several American directors were considered three years earlier, before the film was shelved. During production, Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock, the captain of the real U-96 during Buchheim's 1941 patrol and one of Germany's top U-boat "tonnage aces" during the war, and Hans-Joachim Krug, former first officer on GS U-219, served as consultants. One of Petersen's goals was to guide the audience through "a journey to the edge of the mind" (the film's German tagline Eine Reise ans Ende des Verstandes), showing "what war is all about".

Produced on a DM32 million budget (about $18.5 million, equivalent to € million ), the high production cost ranks it among the most expensive films in German cinema, but it was a commercial success, grossing nearly $85 million worldwide (equivalent to $220 million in 2020). Columbia Pictures issued both German-language and English-dubbed versions in the United States theatrically through their Triumph Classics label, earning $11 million. Das Boot received positive reviews, and was nominated for six Academy Awards; two of these (Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay) went to Petersen himself. He was also nominated for a BAFTA Award and DGA Award.

Plot
Lieutenant Werner is a war correspondent on the GS U-96 (1940) in October 1941. He is driven by her captain and chief engineer to a raucous French bordello, where he meets some of the crew. Thomsen, another captain, gives a crude drunken speech to celebrate his Ritterkreuz award, in which he mocks Adolf Hitler.

The next morning, U-96 sails out of the harbour of La Rochelle, and Werner is given a tour of the boat. As time passes, he observes ideological differences between the new crew members and the hardened veterans, particularly the captain, who is embittered and cynical about the war. The new men, including Werner, are mocked by the rest of the crew, who share a tight bond. One Nazi officer, 1-WO (the first [watch] officer), is disliked by the others due to his pro-Nazi beliefs and meticulous grooming habits that hogs up the one bathroom that the entire crew has to share. After days of boredom, the crew is excited by another U-boat's spotting of an enemy convoy, but they are soon spotted by a British destroyer and bombarded with depth charges. They escape with only light damage.

The next three weeks are spent enduring a relentless North Atlantic gale. Morale drops after a series of misfortunes, but the crew is cheered temporarily by a chance encounter with Thomsen's boat. Shortly after the storm ends, the boat encounters a British convoy and quickly launches three torpedoes, sinking two ships. They are spotted by a destroyer and have to dive below test depth, the submarine's rated limit. During the ensuing depth-charge attack, the chief machinist, Johann, panics and has to be restrained. The boat sustains heavy damage but is eventually able to safely surface when night falls. A British tanker they torpedoed is still afloat and on fire, so they torpedo it again, only to learn sailors are still aboard. The crew watches in horror as the sailors leap overboard and swim towards them. Neither able nor willing to accommodate prisoners, the captain orders the boat to back away.

The worn-out U-boat crew looks forward to returning home to La Rochelle in time for Christmas, but the ship is ordered to La Spezia, Italy, which means passing through the Strait of Gibraltar—an area heavily defended by the Royal Navy. The U-boat makes a secret night rendezvous at the harbour of Vigo, in neutral although Axis-friendly Spain, with the SS Weser, an interned German merchant ship that clandestinely provides U-boats with fuel, torpedoes, and other supplies. The filthy submariners seem out of place at the opulent dinner prepared for them but are warmly greeted by the Weser's enthusiastic officers eager to hear their exploits. The captain learns from an envoy of the German consulate that his request for Werner and the chief engineer to be sent back to Germany has been denied.

The crew finishes resupplying and departs for Italy. As they carefully approach the Strait of Gibraltar and are just about to dive, they are suddenly attacked and heavily damaged by a British fighter plane, wounding the navigator, Kriechbaum. The captain orders the boat directly south towards the North African coast at full speed, determined to save his crew even if he loses the boat. British warships begin shelling and they are forced to dive. When attempting to level off, the boat does not respond and continues to sink until, just prior to exceeding its crush depth, it lands on a sea shelf at a depth of 280 metres. The crew works desperately to make numerous repairs before running out of oxygen. After over 16 hours, they are able to surface by blowing their ballast tanks, and limp back towards La Rochelle under cover of darkness.

The crew is exhausted when they finally reach La Rochelle on Christmas Eve. Shortly after Kriechbaum is taken ashore to a waiting ambulance, Royal Air Force planes bomb and strafe the facilities, wounding or killing many of the crew. Ullmann, Johann, the second watch officer, and the Bibelforscher are killed. Frenssen, Bootsmann Lamprecht, and Hinrich are wounded. After the raid, Werner leaves the U-boat bunker in which he had taken shelter and finds the captain, badly injured by shrapnel, watching his U-boat sink in the dock. Just after the boat disappears under the water, the captain collapses and dies. Werner rushes to his body and helplessly surveys the grim scene with tears in his eyes.

Cast

 * Jürgen Prochnow as Kapitänleutnant (abbr. "Kaleun", ) and also called "Der Alte" ("the Old Man") by his crew: A 30-year-old battle-hardened but good-hearted and sympathetic sea veteran, he complains to Werner that most of his crew members are boys. He is openly anti-Nazi, and embittered and cynical about the war, being openly critical about how the war is being handled.
 * Herbert Grönemeyer as Leutnant (Ensign) Werner, war correspondent: Naive but honest, he has been sent out to sea with the crew to gather photographs of them in action and report on the voyage. Werner is mocked for his lack of experience, and soon learns the true horrors of service on a U-boat.
 * Klaus Wennemann as chief engineer (Leitender Ingenieur or LI, Rank: Oberleutnant): A quiet and well-respected man. At age 27, the oldest crew member besides the Captain. Tormented by the uncertain fate of his wife, especially after hearing about a British air raid on Cologne. The second most important crewman, as he oversees diving operations and makes sure the systems are running correctly.
 * Hubertus Bengsch as first watch officer (I. WO, Rank: Oberleutnant): A young, by-the-book officer, he is an ardent Nazi and a staunch believer in the Endsieg. He has a condescending attitude and is the only crewman who makes the effort to maintain his proper uniform and trim appearance, while all the others grow their beards in the traditional U-Bootwaffe fashion. He was raised in some wealth in Mexico by his stepparents, who owned a plantation. His German fiancée died in a British air raid. He spends his days writing his thoughts on military training and leadership for the High Command. When the boat is trapped underwater near Gibraltar, he becomes pessimistic and begins to let go of his adherence to Nazi ideas as he finally stops shaving every day and wearing his proper uniform all the time.
 * Martin Semmelrogge as second watch officer (II. WO, Rank: Oberleutnant): A vulgar, comedic officer. He is short, red-haired and speaks with a mild Berlin dialect. One of his duties is to decode messages from base, using the Enigma code machine.
 * Bernd Tauber as Obersteuermann ("Chief Helmsman") Kriechbaum: The navigator and 3rd Watch Officer (III. WO). Always slightly skeptical of the Captain and without enthusiasm during the voyage, he shows no anger when a convoy is too far away to be attacked. Kriechbaum has four sons, with another on the way.
 * Erwin Leder as Obermaschinist ("Chief Mechanic") Johann, also called "Das Gespenst" ("The Ghost"): He is obsessed with a near-fetish love for U-96's engines. Johann suffers a temporary mental breakdown during an attack by two destroyers. He is able to redeem himself by valiantly working to stop water leaks when the boat is trapped underwater near Gibraltar. Speaks a lower Austrian dialect.
 * Martin May as Fähnrich (Senior Cadet) Ullmann: A young officer candidate who has a pregnant French fiancée (which is considered treason by the French partisans) and worries about her safety. He is one of the few crew members with whom Werner is able to connect; Werner offers to deliver Ullmann's stack of love letters when Werner is ordered to leave the submarine.
 * Heinz Hoenig as Maat (Petty Officer) Hinrich: The radioman, sonar controller and ship's combat medic. He gauges speed and direction of targets and enemy destroyers. Hinrich is one of the few crewmen that the Captain is able to relate to.
 * Uwe Ochsenknecht as Bootsmann ("Boatswain") Lamprecht: The severe chief petty officer who shows Werner around U-96, and supervises the firing and reloading of the torpedo tubes. He gets upset after hearing on the radio that the football team most of the crew supports (FC Schalke 04) are losing a match, and they will "never make the final now".
 * Claude-Oliver Rudolph as Ario: The burly mechanic who tells everyone that Dufte is marrying an ugly woman, and throws pictures around of Dufte's fiancée in order to laugh at them both. Also has a disdainful relationship towards the Bibelforscher, as evidenced throughout the miniseries.
 * Jan Fedder as Maat (Petty Officer) Pilgrim: Another sailor (watch officer and diving planes operator), gets almost swept off the submarine during a storm – a genuine accident during filming in which Fedder broke several ribs and was hospitalised for a while.
 * Ralf Richter as Maat (Petty Officer) Frenssen: Pilgrim's best friend. Pilgrim and Frenssen love to trade dirty jokes and stories.
 * Joachim Bernhard as Bibelforscher ("Bible scholar", also the contemporary German term for a member of Jehovah's Witnesses): A very young religious sailor who is constantly reading the Bible. He is punched by Ario when the submarine is trapped at the bottom of the Strait of Gibraltar for praying rather than repairing the boat.
 * Oliver Stritzel as Schwalle: A tall and well-built blond torpedoman.
 * Jean-Claude Hoffmann as Benjamin: A red haired sailor who serves as a diving plane operator.
 * Lutz Schnell as Dufte: The sailor who gets jeered at because of his upcoming marriage, and for a possible false airplane sighting.
 * Konrad Becker as Böckstiegel: the Viennese sailor who is first visited by Hinrich for crab lice.
 * Otto Sander as Kapitänleutnant Philipp Thomsen: An alcoholic and shell-shocked U-boat commander, who is a member of "The Old Guard". When he is introduced, he is extremely drunk and briefly mocks Hitler on the stage of the French bordello. (In the "Director's Cut" DVD audio commentary, Petersen says that Sander was really drunk while they were shooting the scene.) Sometime after U-96 departs, Thomsen is deployed once again and the two submarines meet randomly in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean being put off course by the storm. This upsets the Captain because it means that there is now a gap in the blockade chain. After failing to make contact later, it becomes apparent that Thomsen's boat is missing. When U-96 intercepts the convoy and sees they are without escorts, the Captain makes the observation that they must be away chasing down another boat; this boat is probably Thomsen's.
 * Günter Lamprecht as the Captain of the Weser: An enthusiastic officer aboard the resupply ship Weser. He mistakes the 1st Watch Officer for the Captain as they enter the ship's elegant dining room. An ardent Nazi, he complains about the frustration of not being able to fight, but boasts about the food that has been prepared for the crew and the ship's "specialities".
 * Sky du Mont as an officer aboard the Weser (uncredited).

Production
In late 1941, war correspondent Lothar-Günther Buchheim joined GS U-96 (1940) for her 7th patrol, during the Battle of the Atlantic. His orders were to photograph and describe the U-boat in action. In 1973, Buchheim published a novel based on his wartime experiences, Das Boot (The Boat), a fictionalised autobiographical account narrated by a "Leutnant Werner". It became the best-selling German fiction work on the war. The followup sequel Die Festung by Buchheim was released in 1995.

Production for this film originally began in 1976. Several American directors were considered, and the Kaleun (Kapitänleutnant) was to be played by Robert Redford. Disagreements sprang up among various parties and the project was shelved. Another Hollywood production was attempted with other American directors in mind, this time with the Kaleun to be portrayed by Paul Newman. This effort primarily failed due to technical concerns, for example, how to film the close encounter of the two German submarines at sea during a storm.

Production of Das Boot took two years (1979–1981) and was the most expensive German film at the time. Most of the filming was done in one year; to make the appearance of the actors as realistic as possible, scenes were filmed in sequence over the course of the year. This ensured natural growth of beards and hair, increasing skin pallor, and signs of strain on the actors, who had, just like real U-boat men, spent many months in a cramped, unhealthy atmosphere.

The production included the construction of several models of different sizes, as well as a complete, detailed reconstruction of the interior of the GS U-96 (1940), a Type VIIC-class U-boat.

Hans-Joachim Krug, former first officer on U-219, served as a consultant, as did Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock, the captain of the real U-96.

The film features both Standard German-speakers and dialect speakers. Petersen states in the DVD audio commentary that young men from throughout West Germany and Austria were recruited for the film, as he wanted faces and dialects that would accurately reflect the diversity of the Third Reich around 1941. All of the main actors are bilingual in German and English, and when the film was dubbed into English, each actor recorded his own part (with the exception of Martin Semmelrogge, who only dubbed his own role in the Director's Cut). The German version is dubbed as well, as the film was shot "silent", because the dialogue spoken on-set would have been drowned out by the gyroscopes in the special camera developed for filming. Unusually, the film's German version actually grossed much higher than the English-dubbed version at the United States box office.

Sets and models

Several different sets were used. Two full-size mock-ups of a Type VIIC boat were built, one representing the portion above water for use in outdoor scenes, and the other a cylindrical tube on a motion mount (hydraulic gimbal) for the interior scenes. The mock-ups were built according to U-boat plans from Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry.

The outdoor mock-up was basically a shell propelled with a small engine, and stationed in La Rochelle, France, and has a history of its own. One morning the production crew walked out to where they kept it afloat and found it missing. Someone had forgotten to inform the crew that an American filmmaker had rented the mock-up for his own film shooting in the area. This filmmaker was Steven Spielberg and the film he was shooting was Raiders of the Lost Ark. A few weeks later, during production, the mock-up cracked in a storm and sank, was recovered and patched to stand in for the final scenes. The full-sized mock-up was used during the Gibraltar surface scenes; the attacking aircraft (played by a North American T-6 Texan / Harvard) and rockets were real while the British ships were models.

A mock-up of a conning tower was placed in a water tank at the Bavaria Studios in Munich for outdoor scenes not requiring a full view of the boat's exterior. When filming on the outdoor mockup or the conning tower, jets of cold water were hosed over the actors to simulate the breaking ocean waves. A half-sized full hull operating model was used for underwater shots and some surface running shots, in particular the meeting in stormy seas with another U-boat. The tank was also used for the shots of British sailors jumping from their ship; a small portion of the tanker hull was constructed for these shots.

During the filming there was a scene where actor Jan Fedder (Pilgrim) fell off the bridge while the U-boat was surfaced. During the played rescue, Bernd Tauber (Chief Helmsmann Kriechbaum) really broke two ribs. This event is often purported as Jan Fedder breaking the ribs.

The interior U-boat mock-up was mounted five metres off the floor and was shaken, rocked, and tilted up to 45 degrees by means of a hydraulic apparatus, and was vigorously shaken to simulate depth charge attacks. Petersen was admittedly obsessive about the structural detail of the U-boat set, remarking that "every screw" in the set was an authentic facsimile of the kind used in a World War II U-boat. In this he was considerably assisted by the numerous photographs Lothar-Günther Buchheim had taken during his own voyage on the historical U-96, some of which had been published in his 1976 book, U-Boot-Krieg ("U-Boat War").

Throughout the filming, the actors were forbidden to go out in sunlight, to create the pallor of men who seldom saw the sun during their missions. The actors went through intensive training to learn how to move quickly through the narrow confines of the vessel.

Special camera
Most of the interior shots were filmed using a hand-held Arriflex of cinematographer Jost Vacano's design to convey the claustrophobic atmosphere of the boat. It had two gyroscopes to provide stability, a different and smaller scale solution than the Steadicam, so that it could be carried throughout the interior of the mock-up.

Historical accuracy

Wolfgang Petersen created the film based on Buchheim's novel of the same name with several alterations to the plot and characters.

As a Leutnant zur See in the autumn of 1941, Buchheim joined Kapitänleutnant Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock and the crew of U-96 on her seventh patrol in the Battle of the Atlantic. On 27 October 1941, U-96 left for her seventh patrol and joined group Stoßtrupp three days later. The next day, 31 October, the group made contact with convoy OS 10. U-96 launched four torpedoes at a long range, one of which struck the Dutch SS Bennekom. The ship went down half an hour after being hit, taking nine of her crew of 56 with her. Following the attack, the sloop HMS Lulworth (Y60) arrived on the scene and forced U-96 under water with gun fire. The U-boat escaped the barrage of 27 depth charges unscathed. The next day, U-96 encountered two more of the escorts, HMS Gorleston (Y92) and HMS Verbena (K85), but managed to escape again.

The U-boat spent November patrolling the North Atlantic as part of groups Störtebecker and Benecke, until secretly entering the neutral port of Vigo, Spain, and being resupplied by the interned German MV Bessel on 27 November. After leaving Vigo, U-96 made for the Straits of Gibraltar, with orders to enter the Mediterranean. However, late on 30 November the U-boat was spotted by a Fairey Swordfish of 812 Naval Air Squadron and heavily damaged by two bombs dropped by the aircraft. Unable to reach her destination, U-96 made for the port of Saint Nazaire. On the way she encountered the Spanish SS Cabo De Hornos, which returned from South America, after delivering a group of Jewish refugees to the Dutch colony of Curaçao, when Brazil denied them entry. When U-96's torpedo missed, the ship was stopped and her papers checked. On 6 December 1941, after 41 days at sea, U-96 returned to Saint Nazaire, having sunk one ship of.

In the film, there is only one ardent Nazi in the crew of 40, namely the First Watch Officer (referred to comically in one scene as Unser Hitlerjugendführer or "Our Hitler Youth Leader"). The rest of the officers are either indifferent or openly anti-Nazi (the Captain). The enlisted sailors and NCO are portrayed as apolitical. In his book Iron Coffins, former U-boat commander Herbert A. Werner states that the process of selecting naval personnel based on their loyalty to the party only occurred later in the war (from 1943 onward) when the U-boats were suffering high casualties and when morale was declining. Such a degree of skepticism may or may not have occurred. In support of Das Boot on this subject, U-boat historian Michael Gannon maintains that the U-boat navy was one of the least pro-Nazi branches of the German armed forces.

Both the novel and the film had a much darker ending than in reality, where the U-boat returns to port only to be destroyed during an air raid with many of her crew killed or wounded. In reality, U-96 survived almost to the end of the war, the majority of her senior officers surviving as well. Similarly to its on-screen fate, it was sunk by Allied bombers at its berth in Wilhelmshaven in March 1945.

Even though the beginning and the end of the film occur in the port of La Rochelle, it does not correspond historically. The submarine base in La Rochelle was not functional before November 1941, and at the time of the film the port was dried up. While Saint-Nazaire was the base used in the novel and where U-96 was based at in late 1941, the film was changed to La Rochelle because its appearance had not changed to such a large degree in the years since World War II. Moreover, none of the British fighter-bombers of late 1941 to early 1942 had the range to bomb La Rochelle from bases in Great Britain.

Release
The film opened 17 September 1981 and received the widest release ever in West Germany, opening in 220 theatres and grossing a record $5,176,000 in the first two weeks.

The film opened in the United States on 10 February 1982.

Different versions and home media
Petersen has overseen the creation of several different versions. The first to be released was the 149-minute theatrical cut.

As the film received partial financing by West German television broadcasters WDR and the SDR, more footage was shot than was shown in the theatrical version. A version of six 50-minute episodes was transmitted on BBC2 in the United Kingdom in October 1984 and again during the 1999 Christmas season. In February 1985, a version of three 100-minute episodes was broadcast in West Germany.

In 1997, Petersen edited a new theatrical release, a 209-minute version, entitled The Director's Cut, combining the action sequences from the feature-length release with the character development scenes from the miniseries, also improving audio quality. In 1998, this cut was released on DVD as a single-disc edition including an audio commentary by Petersen, Prochnow and director's cut producer Ortwin Freyermuth; a 6-minute making-of featurette; and in most territories, the theatrical trailer. In 2003, it was also released as a "Superbit" edition with no extra features, but with a higher bit-rate and the film spread across two discs.

From 2010 onwards, the "Director's Cut", along with various new extras, was released internationally on Blu-ray. The American 2-disc Collector's Set also uniquely included the original 149-minute theatrical cut, which is otherwise unreleased on DVD or Blu-ray.

In 2014, the original 308-minute miniseries, also known as The Original Uncut Version, was released on Blu-ray in Germany with optional English audio and subtitles.

In November 2018, a "Complete Edition" was released as a collection of five Blu-ray discs and three CDs. It contains more than 30 hours of material: the Director's Cut (208 min.), the Original Cinema version (149 min.), the complete TV Series in 6 parts ("The Original Uncut Version", 308 min.), Bonus Material (202 min. + various trailers), the Original Soundtrack by Klaus Doldinger (38:21 min.) and a German-language audiobook of the novel read by Dietmar Bär (910 min.).

For the "Director's Cut", the Original Cinema version and "The Original Uncut Version" TV Series, new English language soundtracks were recorded featuring most of the original cast, who were bilingual. These soundtracks are included on various DVD and Blu-ray releases as an alternative language to the original German.
 * 1981 unreleased version (209 minutes)
 * 1981 original theatrical cut (149 minutes)
 * 1984 BBC miniseries (300 minutes)
 * 1997 "Director's Cut" (208 minutes)
 * 2004 "The Original Uncut Version" (293 minutes) – miniseries minus episode-opening flashback scenes

Critical response
The film received highly positive reviews upon its release. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four out of four stars. Prior to the 55th Academy Awards on 11 April 1983 the movie received six nominations: Cinematography for Jost Vacano; Directing for Wolfgang Petersen; Film Editing for Hannes Nikel; Sound for Milan Bor, Trevor Pyke and Mike Le-Mare; Sound Effects Editing for Mike Le-Mare; and Writing (Screenplay based on material from another medium) for Wolfgang Petersen. "'Das Boot' isn't just a German film about World War II; it's a German naval adventure epic that has already been a hit in West Germany." Today, the film is seen as one of the greatest German films. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film received an approval rating of 98% based on 55 reviews, with an average rating of 9.10/10. The critical consensus states "Taut, breathtakingly thrilling, and devastatingly intelligent, Das Boot is one of the greatest war films ever made." The film also has a score of 86 out of 100 on Metacritic based on 15 critics indicating "universal acclaim". For its unsurpassed authenticity in tension and realism, it is regarded internationally as pre-eminent among all submarine films. The film was ranked #25 in Empire magazine's "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010.

In late 2007, there was an exhibition about the film Das Boot, as well as about the real U-boat U-96, at the Haus der Geschichte (House of German History) in Bonn. Over 100,000 people visited the exhibition during its four-month run.

Though impressed by the technological accuracy of the film's set-design and port construction buildings, novelist Lothar-Günther Buchheim expressed great disappointment with Petersen's adaptation in a film review published in 1981, describing Petersen's film as converting his clearly anti-war novel into a blend of a "cheap, shallow American action flick" and a "contemporary German propaganda newsreel from World War II".
 * Buchheim's views of the film

Accolades
Das Boot kept the record for a German film with the most Academy Award nominations, until All Quiet on the Western Front, which received nine nominations including Best Picture.

Soundtrack
The characteristic lead melody of the soundtrack, composed and produced by Klaus Doldinger, took on a life of its own after German rave group U96 created a remixed "techno version" in 1991. The title theme "Das Boot" later became an international hit.

The official soundtrack features only compositions by Doldinger, except for "J'attendrai" sung by Rina Ketty. The soundtrack ("Filmmusik") released following the release of The Director's Cut version omits "J'attendrai".

Songs heard in the film, but not included on the album are "La Paloma" sung by Rosita Serrano, the "Erzherzog-Albrecht-Marsch" (a popular military march), "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" performed by the Red Army Chorus, "Heimat, Deine Sterne" and the "Westerwald-Marsch".

Sequel
A sequel of the same name, in the form of a television series, was released in 2018, with different actors. It was set nine months after the end of the original film, and is split into two narratives, one based on land, the other set around another U-boat and its crew. Like the original film, the series is based on Lothar-Günther Buchheim's 1973 book Das Boot, but with additions from Buchheim's 1995 follow-up sequel Die Festung.

title: Das Boot


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Dynamic HTML

Dynamic HTML, or DHTML, is a term which was used by some browser vendors to describe the combination of HTML, style sheets and client-side scripts (JavaScript, VBScript, or any other supported scripts) that enabled the creation of interactive and animated documents. The application of DHTML was introduced by Microsoft with the release of Internet Explorer 4 in 1997.

DHTML allows scripting languages to change variables in a web page's definition language, which in turn affect the look and function of otherwise "static" HTML page content after the page has been fully loaded and during the viewing process. Thus the dynamic characteristic of DHTML is the way it functions while a page is viewed, not in its ability to generate a unique page with each page load.

By contrast, a dynamic web page is a broader concept, covering any web page generated differently for each user, load occurrence, or specific variable values. This includes pages created by client-side scripting and ones created by server-side scripting (such as PHP, Python, JSP or ASP.NET) where the web server generates content before sending it to the client.

DHTML is the predecessor of Ajax and DHTML pages are still request/reload-based. Under the DHTML model, there may not be any interaction between the client and server after the page is loaded; all processing happens on the client side. By contrast, Ajax extends features of DHTML to allow the page to initiate network requests (or 'subrequest') to the server even after page load to perform additional actions. For example, if there are multiple tabs on a page, the pure DHTML approach would load the contents of all tabs and then dynamically display only the one that is active, while AJAX could load each tab only when it is really needed.

Uses
DHTML allows authors to add effects to their pages that are otherwise difficult to achieve, by changing the Document Object Model (DOM) and page style. The combination of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript offers ways to:

 * Animate text and images in their document.
 * Embed a ticker or other dynamic display that automatically refreshes its content with the latest news, stock quotes, or other data.
 * Use a form to capture user input, and then process, verify and respond to that data without having to send data back to the server.
 * Include rollover buttons or drop-down menus.

A less common use is to create browser-based action games. Although a number of games were created using DHTML during the late 1990s and early 2000s, differences between browsers made this difficult: many techniques had to be implemented in code to enable the games to work on multiple platforms. Browsers have since then converged toward web standards, which has made the design of DHTML games more viable. Those games can be played on all major browsers and in desktop and device applications that support embedded browser contexts.

The term "DHTML" has fallen out of use in recent years as it was associated with practices and conventions that tended to not work well between various web browsers.

DHTML support with extensive DOM access was introduced with Internet Explorer 4.0. Although there was a basic dynamic system with Netscape Navigator 4.0, not all HTML elements were represented in the DOM. When DHTML-style techniques became widespread, varying degrees of support among web browsers for the technologies involved made them difficult to develop and debug. Development became easier when Internet Explorer 5.0+, Mozilla Firefox 2.0+, and Opera 7.0+ adopted a shared DOM inherited from ECMAScript.

Later, JavaScript libraries such as jQuery abstracted away many of the day-to-day difficulties in cross-browser DOM manipulation, though better standards compliance among browsers has reduced the need for this.

Structure of a web page
Typically a web page using DHTML is set up in the following way:

Example: Displaying an additional block of text
The following code illustrates an often-used function. An additional part of a web page will only be displayed if the user requests it.

Document Object Model
DHTML is not a technology in and of itself; rather, it is the product of three related and complementary technologies: HTML, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and JavaScript. To allow scripts and components to access features of HTML and CSS, the contents of the document are represented as objects in a programming model known as the Document Object Model (DOM).

The DOM API is the foundation of DHTML, providing a structured interface that allows access and manipulation of virtually anything in the document. The HTML elements in the document are available as a hierarchical tree of individual objects, making it possible to examine and modify an element and its attributes by reading and setting properties and by calling methods. The text between elements is also available through DOM properties and methods.

The DOM also provides access to user actions such as pressing a key and clicking the mouse. It is possible to intercept and process these and other events by creating event handler functions and routines. The event handler receives control each time a given event occurs and can carry out any appropriate action, including using the DOM to change the document.

Dynamic styles
Dynamic styles are a key feature of DHTML. By using CSS, one can quickly change the appearance and formatting of elements in a document without adding or removing elements. This helps keep documents small and the scripts that manipulate the document fast.

The object model provides programmatic access to styles. This means you can change inline styles on individual elements and change style rules using simple JavaScript programming.

Inline styles are CSS style assignments that have been applied to an element using the style attribute. You can examine and set these styles by retrieving the style object for an individual element. For example, to highlight the text in a heading when the user moves the mouse pointer over it, you can use the style object to enlarge the font and change its color, as shown in the following simple example.

title: Dynamic HTML