Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography pdfdrive com

particularly his growing teen fan base, disconcerting. Just as he had walked out
of a restaurant in Florida with old flame Nancy Armel because he was being
stared at, so in a New York eatery, Serendipity 3, he generously overtipped a
waiter who asked a quartet of teenage girls to stop gawking at him. At his Upper
West Side apartment he played detective when he noticed that he was being
spied on from an adjoining block by someone using binoculars. After
confronting the startled apartment owner, he discovered that the spies were the
man’s teenage daughters and their friends.
As when looking at a painting close up, he was not yet truly aware of his place
in the bigger picture. His only fixed references were his contemporaries. By his

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standards, the class of ’82, the group of young actors who’d appeared with him
in his first movie, Taps, were all doing just as well—none more so than his
wayward friend Sean Penn. While Tom was seemingly making excuses for
dating Cher, in January 1985 his buddy met Madonna and fell for the
controversial charms of the hottest female in showbiz. With a critically
acclaimed movie, Desperately Seeking Susan, to her name and a second album,
Like a Virgin, that outraged the establishment and delighted her teenage
audience, she was a startling and unique talent.
Artistically, the career trajectory of his contemporaries should have given him
pause for reflection. His friend Tim Hutton, who up to that time was the
youngest-ever Oscar winner for his work in Ordinary People, had chosen to
embrace serious projects, pointedly turning down the lead role in Risky Business,
the film that jump-started Tom’s career, as too lightweight. Although Tom won a
coveted Golden Globe nomination for the role of Joel Goodsen, his appearance
in Legend would have raised eyebrows among his Hollywood peers. While the
sets and special effects were extraordinary, the script was laughable—as was
Tom mouthing lines like “When I get to heaven I know just how the angels will
sound.” Meanwhile, Sean Penn and Tim Hutton were working together on The
Falcon and the Snowman, a stern movie about two young men who are
convicted of selling secrets to the Russians. “Two finer performances it would
be difficult to find,” said People magazine when the film was released in January
1985.
After Legend, released in the same year, sank without a trace, Tom and agent
Paula Wagner were determined to choose his future projects more carefully. His
two bombs—Losin’ It and Legend—had struck out because of poorly scripted
stories. While there were all kinds of offers on the table, the knack of choosing
the right script was ultimately a lottery. As screenwriter William Goldman
observed, the first rule of Hollywood is “Nobody knows anything.”
This truism perhaps helps explain why the gestation period of the average
movie is so long. In May 1983, when Tom was learning his lines for Risky
Business, producer Jerry Bruckheimer was in his offices at Paramount Studios,
absorbed in an article in California magazine called “Top Guns,” by Ehud
Yonay, about the flight school for the U.S. Navy’s best pilots in San Diego.
“Star Wars on earth,” he thought to himself as he slid it over the desk to his
producing partner, Don Simpson. Simpson was on the phone, and when he
glanced at the upside-down story that Bruckheimer put in front of him, he waved
it away, thinking it was a “Western.” By the time he’d read it, the two hotshots
behind the smash hits Flashdance and Beverly Hills Cop had a new blockbuster

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in mind: Top Gun.
In a way, Simpson’s first instincts were exactly right. It was a Western; these
sexy young pilots were modern-day cowboys with wild names like Viper, Jaws,
and Mad Dog, who pushed the edge of life’s frontiers with their testosterone-
fueled behavior. For all their arrogant swagger, the young men in their flying
machines lived by an old-fashioned code of self-sacrifice, comradeship, and
patriotism. It seemed like a slam dunk. “It’s about Yankee individualism,
nobility, excellence of purpose, and commitment to excellence,” Simpson
explained in his pitch to movie moguls as he tried valiantly to turn the concept
into a movie.
The studios and many screenwriters thought otherwise. After some initial
interest, Paramount Studios eventually told them, “Who wants to see a movie
with too many planes?” Don Simpson was reduced to falling to his knees in a
meeting with Paramount boss Michael Eisner and begging him to keep faith with
the project. “If they are this desperate, we’ve got to let them keep developing it,”
said Eisner. But top screenwriters were not especially interested, and, according
to screenwriter Jack Epps, after several drafts of the script, the film “just died.”
It was only at the end of 1984—eighteen months after the first discussions—
that the new head of Paramount, Ned Tanen, green-lighted the project. They had
a budget of $16.5 million to play with. First priority was to bring the navy on
board. At a meeting with top brass, including then–Secretary of the Navy John
Lehman at the Pentagon in Washington, they gained agreement to film at the
navy air base in Miramar, outside San Diego, and on board two aircraft carriers.
Mindful of the navy’s reputation, retired two-star admiral Pete Pettigrew was
seconded as technical adviser to ensure authenticity.
Hollywood seemed less enthusiastic. The reluctance of screenwriters was
followed by that of directors and actors. Apparently both John Carpenter and
David Cronenberg turned down the chance to shoot the film, Simpson and
Bruckheimer eventually opting for Tony Scott, brother of Legend director Ridley
Scott, who was back shooting commercials after his debut feature movie, The
Hunger, was roasted as “agonizingly bad.” His commercial showing a Saab car
racing a fighter jet apparently caught the eye of the two producers. Of course,
Simpson and Bruckheimer put a brave face on their choice, praising the director
for his stylish photography, if not for his storytelling ability. Their pick did not
seem to inspire confidence among actors or agents.