Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography pdfdrive com

part of Steve Randle, a street-smart youngster who works in a gas station. He
was a member of the Greasers gang, kids from the wrong side of the tracks,
whose sworn enemies were the Socs, kids who get the breaks in life.
Tom was in good company. The cast list reads like a Who’s Who of future
Hollywood stars, with Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, Ralph Macchio, Diane
Lane, and C. Thomas Howell taking major roles. It was a plus that his friends
Emilio Estevez and Rob Lowe were also chosen for parts. For the greenhorn
actor, the real bonus was that, like Taps director Harold Becker, Coppola
encouraged his actors to spend weeks together shaping and defining their
characters. The fact that Coppola had yet to secure financing for the movie
meant that rehearsals were extended while the deal was being thrashed out.
In early March 1982, they gathered in the gym of a local school in Tulsa,
Oklahoma, where filming was scheduled to take place. For a month the actors
were at liberty to explore their roles in convivial but intense daily workshops. It
was just what Tom needed. “I remember feeling very good, building up my own
instincts on acting,” he later recalled. “And understanding more of each level,
learning more about film acting and what I wanted to do.” As he explored his
strengths and weaknesses as an actor, he realized he had a flair for ad-libbing
and comic timing.
Coppola, whom Matt Dillon dubbed “Father Film,” pushed and stretched his
young team in most idiosyncratic and unexpected ways. He encouraged Matt
Dillon to go shoplifting and the have-not Greaser characters to mix with real-life

---

greasers for a few days so that they would understand their characters more
fully. To make himself fit the part, Tom worked out three times a day, removed
the crown from a front tooth he had chipped during a schoolboy hockey game,
piled powder into his slicked-back hair, and had a tattoo painted on his arm so
that he looked more rugged and unkempt.
But Coppola went even further. Away from the set, members of the upscale
Socs were given better hotel rooms and larger daily allowances, while the have-
not Greasers were assigned the shabbiest rooms and given measly expense
accounts. Even their social lives differed, so that the Socs sipped cocktails at
Tulsa’s glitzier clubs while the Greasers gulped down beer as they watched mud-
wrestling matches. The differing treatment gave rise to tensions between the two
groups, ill-feeling that spilled over during an overenthusiastic rehearsal for a
rumble in the rain. Emilio Estevez got a cut lip, Tom Howell a shiner, and Tom
Cruise a broken thumb. The rivalry continued away from the set. Tom joined in
a series of pranks on fellow cast members to celebrate April Fools’ Day.
He is widely credited as being the one who smeared honey on Diane Lane’s
toilet seat and scrawled “Helter Skelter”—a reference to the Charles Manson
cult killers—on her bathroom mirror. As she later recalled: “They ransacked a
couple of hotel rooms on April Fools’ Day. They got the keys from the maid
because they were so cute.” Not everyone was amused by the actors’ antics,
guests at the Excelsior Hotel, where the crew stayed, frequently complaining
about the noise. On one memorable occasion Tom came up to the front desk,
theatrically took out one of his false teeth, and dropped it on the desk in front of
the assistant night manager—who calmly told him that they only accepted cash
or credit cards.
At the end of filming, Coppola was impressed enough to offer Tom a small