The film begins with the following lines appearing on screen, complete with deliberate spelling mistakes: "Attention!
Reporters Dave (Paul Newman), Peter (Dustin Hoffman) and Steven (Robert Redford) investigate his death by going to meet people who knew him during his life in "Tegzas".
[2] Hazanavicius and Mézerette set about producing an entire film from cut-and-paste existing footage, and hired the usual French dubbers of John Wayne (Raymond Loyer), Paul Newman (Marc Cassot) and Kirk Douglas (Roger Rudel) to perform the dubbing.
La Classe américaine, which lasts seventy-two minutes, incorporates scenes cut from about fifty films,[3] including All the President's Men, Rio Bravo, Band of Angels, The Cheyenne Social Club, Blood Alley, Bullitt, The Candidate, Chisum, The Cowboys, The Crimson Pirate, and When Time Ran Out.
It is the third and last film of a triptych entitled Le Grand Détournement, composed of Derrick contre Superman (September 1992) and Ça détourne (December 1992).