FAQ

While nothing "official" appears to be found on this question (which may even never have been brought up at the time), the two most plausible answers seem to be: 1. They did indeed ask someone, who then found the joke (arguably at their expense) too disagreeable and simply declined the offer.

2. Someone decided it wouldn't be convincing enough for the desired effect.

3. Actual cross-dressers auditioned but weren't suited to the roles or couldn't provide the proper comedic timing required.

4. Movies hire actors. Actors don't have to be in real life what they portray on screen.

New York City journalist Sue Charlton (Linda Kozlowski) travels to the Australian Outback to interview crocodile hunter Michael J. "Crocodile" Dundee (Paul Hogan), an eccentric bushman who runs a safari business in the Northern Territory and who managed to survive a crocodile attack. After spending a few days with Mick on safari, Sue invites him to return to New York City with her in order to see the big city, which leads to an amusing clash of two cultures.

The screenplay for Crocodile Dundee was a collaborative effort by the movie's star Paul Hogan, Hogan's one-time manager John Cornell (who also produced the movie), and screenwriter Ken Shadie. The movie is based, however, on the true life experiences of Australian Rodney Ansell (1953-1999), who became stranded in the remote Northern Territory in 1977 and managed to survive alone (except for his two dogs) for two months before he was eventually rescued by a group of traveling bushmen. Ansell wrote a book about his experiences, titled To Fight the Wild (1986), which was made into a documentary of the same name. The movie inspired two sequels, Crocodile Dundee II (1988) and Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles (2001). A remake of the first movie is in the works, scheduled to begin production in 2011.

The island continent of Australia is a land mass roughly the size of the continental United States. Surrounded by the Indian and Pacific Oceans, Australia's 22,000,000 inhabitants mostly live along the coast, particularly the southeastern coast that comprises the states of New South Wales and Victoria. The Northern Territory, as its name implies, comprises the vast northern territory in what could roughly be described as the "midwest" of Australia. Most of the Northern Territory, with the exception of the far northern tropical area, is made up of grasslands and a large portion of the Outback Desert. It is sparsely populated, with the majority of its inhabitants living along a highway that connects Darwin with Alice Springs.

When Mick "Crocodile" Dundee shows his mangled boat to Sue, they are standing on dry ground. Mick comments that, when the crocodile attacked him, he was "fishing" and the ground was covered with 20 feet of water. The wet season in the Northern Territory occurs during the summer months (November to April), so it must have been the dry season (May to October) when Sue was being shown around.

A walkabout is an Australian term that refers to a "walking trip," an extended period during which an Australian aborigine goes wandering in the bush as a way of getting in touch with his aboriginal roots or, as Walt (John Meillon) puts it, a way of discovering new things.

When Mick rustles up some dinner for Sue and himself in the bush, he brings back yams, grubs, sugar ants, and goanna. Goanna refers to various monitor lizards in the genus Varanus that inhabit Australia. There are 30 different species of goanna, 25 of which live in Australia.

When Mick checks into his hotel room in New York, he is faced with two toilet fixtures in the same bathroom. Mick recognizes one as a dunny, and Sue tells him that the other one is called a bidet. Dunny is a general Aussie term for a "toilet" used for the typical purpose of relieving oneself. The bidet, devised centuries ago in France, has the appearance of a low-slung, seatless toilet but is actually a sort of water-squirting basin for cleaning oneself after using the toilet.

There are actually two "ladies" in the movie whose gender is questionable. The first one is Gwendoline, who Mick meets when he's having a drink in a bar. Gwendoline turns out to be a man dressed as a woman. However, the character of Gwendoline was played by a woman, actress Anne Carlisle. The second "lady" in question is Fran, who Mick meets at a party he is attending with Sue. Fran turns out to be a woman, and she is played by actress Anne Francine.

Mick calls him a "pelican." It is common in Aussie slang to call a person some sort of animal or bird when trying to say he's an idiot. The assumption in that scene is that Mick is driving on the left side of the road (as he would were he in Australia) when he meets an American driving on the right side of the road, i.e., head-on. "Get on the right side of the road, pelican!" Mick shouts at the guy.