Top Gun (1986)

<v Speaker 1>This is a podcast from Minute Media.
<v Speaker 2>Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Shirley You Can't
<v Speaker 2>Be Serious podcasts. Jason and I are on a cargo
<v Speaker 2>plane full of rubber dog out of Hong Kong. Jeez,
<v Speaker 2>I cracked myself out. Welcome back to Shirley fans, Jason,
<v Speaker 2>Shirley fans are the top fans. You are the best
<v Speaker 2>of the best, and this episode we'll make them better. Guys,
<v Speaker 2>have we got an episode for you today? We have
<v Speaker 2>the breakout movie for multiple actors, the breakout movie for
<v Speaker 2>a pair of producers that are arguably the biggest blockbuster
<v Speaker 2>producers of all times, that ultimately ends in a fiery
<v Speaker 2>crash when a naked rehab doctor is found dead of
<v Speaker 2>a drug overdose in Don Simpson's poolhouse. Is this going
<v Speaker 2>to be an exciting episode or what?
<v Speaker 3>I can't wait to hear that story because I have
<v Speaker 3>not come across that in my research. Okay, d I
<v Speaker 3>should talk about how we sorry, sorry we Yeah, they
<v Speaker 3>should talk about how this episode has been postponed three times, three.
<v Speaker 2>Times because this movie was supposed to come out in
<v Speaker 2>twenty twenty and then COVID and then twenty and twenty
<v Speaker 2>one and still COVID. And now finally, week from today,
<v Speaker 2>when you guys are listening to this, we will be
<v Speaker 2>watching Top Gun Maverick, the long awaited sequel to Top Gun.
<v Speaker 3>It's going to be fantastic. The reviews are already spectacular. Yes,
<v Speaker 3>so call it the movie of the year. Really, yes, wow,
<v Speaker 3>best picture of the year is what I've seen.
<v Speaker 2>So, guys, next week we are going to give you
<v Speaker 2>our take. We're going to we are reviewing this movie
<v Speaker 2>for you. We are going to see it before it
<v Speaker 2>is released to the general public, and we will tell
<v Speaker 2>you are the critics right or are they wrong? I
<v Speaker 2>think we're gonna love it either way.
<v Speaker 3>Probably probably, So all right, hey, I will tell you
<v Speaker 3>this people, if you're listening to this podcast today, this
<v Speaker 3>is all Top Gun nineteen eighty six. Okay, so there's
<v Speaker 3>no spoilers in this episode. Now, next week, when we
<v Speaker 3>talk about Top Gun Maverick, we're going to give you
<v Speaker 3>a preview.
<v Speaker 2>We're gonna give you.
<v Speaker 3>Kind of the history. Yeah, and then we'll tell you
<v Speaker 3>at certain point that this is the spoiler zone. Okay, right,
<v Speaker 3>you're entering the highway to the spoiler zone. Okay, go
<v Speaker 3>all right, So come back next week. Listen to us,
<v Speaker 3>and we'll give you plenty of room to hit the
<v Speaker 3>eject button and then you can see it on your own.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, okay, So let us start with the amazing pairing
<v Speaker 2>of two of the most iconic producers of the eighties
<v Speaker 2>and nineties. I can't wait to hear your Sins and
<v Speaker 2>Bruckheimer stuff here. Okay. So, Jerry Bruckheimer was mister outside
<v Speaker 2>and Don Simpson was mister inside. Okay, They're both born
<v Speaker 2>about the same time, different places. Jerry Brookheimer came up
<v Speaker 2>in Detroit. Don Simpson was born in Seattle, ended up
<v Speaker 2>being raised in Juno a last, and knowing what you
<v Speaker 2>know about his life, you will be surprised to find
<v Speaker 2>out that he considered himself a straight a Bible student.
<v Speaker 2>His parents were devout Baptists. He went to church four
<v Speaker 2>to five times per week, knew the Bible backwards and forwards,
<v Speaker 2>but it didn't stick.
<v Speaker 3>I guess Don Simpson, Don Simpson mister cocaine and hookers.
<v Speaker 2>Mister cocaine and hookers. So Don Simpson, raised in Alaska
<v Speaker 2>under this straight laced conservative household, ultimately leaves and becomes
<v Speaker 2>a ski instructor in Utah. Then he moves on to
<v Speaker 2>San Francisco, where he gets into theatrical advertising and does
<v Speaker 2>pr for the first International Erotic Film Festival. All right,
<v Speaker 2>you can see that too, knowing what we know about him,
<v Speaker 2>and ultimately he ends up in La marketing for the
<v Speaker 2>Warner Brothers exploitation films, including Woodstock, the documentary on Woodstock. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>you know, like Martin Scorsese and the other guys when
<v Speaker 2>they were nobody's at that time, right, and a movie
<v Speaker 2>you might have heard of called a Clockwork Orange. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>for sure. Now, Bruckheimer, let's just just take a pause,
<v Speaker 2>just for a second. Let's let me throw this out here. Flashdance,
<v Speaker 2>Beverly Hills, Cop Top Gun, The Rock, Crimson Tide, Conair, Armageddon,
<v Speaker 2>Enemy of the State, Black Hawk Down, Bad Boys Franchise,
<v Speaker 2>Pirates of the Caribbean Franchise, National Treasure one and two,
<v Speaker 2>the CSI series, all of them, Cold Case, The Amazing Race,
<v Speaker 2>all from Jerry Brookheim. He's got the golden touch. In
<v Speaker 2>high school, he was a stamp collector. He liked photography
<v Speaker 2>and stamps. He went to school, got a psychology major
<v Speaker 2>from the University of Arizona. He also went to work
<v Speaker 2>for an advertising agency that did commercials for Pontiac, Gto
<v Speaker 2>and Pepsi, and he decided, Hey, I'm going to go
<v Speaker 2>out to Hollywood start working with some directors. One of
<v Speaker 2>the guys he worked with was Dick Richards, who did
<v Speaker 2>Toutsie and Heat. Yeah, hadn't done much at that point,
<v Speaker 2>but in nineteen seventy three, some important events happened. Number one,
<v Speaker 2>he meets Don Simpson. Okay, Number two, Don Simpson, it's
<v Speaker 2>a job at Paramount. And then number three, a experienced
<v Speaker 2>pilot named Peter Pettigrew was released from active duty as
<v Speaker 2>a naval pilot. All of these things happen in nineteen
<v Speaker 2>seventy three. Yes, even though they met back in seventy three,
<v Speaker 2>they didn't start working together until later. Don Simpson gets
<v Speaker 2>a job at Paramount. He co writes a movie with
<v Speaker 2>Paul Bartel, who had done Death Race two thousand. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>you know what the movie is that they co wrote,
<v Speaker 2>No Cannonball, not Cannonball Run, but the original Cannonball with
<v Speaker 2>Keith Grodine.
<v Speaker 3>Or whatever his name is really really.
<v Speaker 2>Seventy five they wrote that. By seventy seven, Don Simpson
<v Speaker 2>is the VP of Production. By nineteen eighty one, he
<v Speaker 2>is president of Paramount and in nineteen eighty two he
<v Speaker 2>gets fired because he has passed out on drugs in
<v Speaker 2>the middle of a meeting.
<v Speaker 3>I read that too, But.
<v Speaker 2>Michael Aisner Jeffrey Cassenberg know that he's a talented guy.
<v Speaker 2>He's just obviously struggling with a drug issue. Before he
<v Speaker 2>became known as Mister Inside, he was known as don
<v Speaker 2>I've got some good blow for you upstairs Simpson. So
<v Speaker 2>because Eisner and Katzenberg are really fond of him, really
<v Speaker 2>think he's got some talent, he just can't lead this company.
<v Speaker 2>They say, hey, we want you to stay on as
<v Speaker 2>a producer, and they give him the movie Flash Dance,
<v Speaker 2>and that is when he goes and finds his friend
<v Speaker 2>Jerry Bruckheimer and says, can you help me out with us?
<v Speaker 3>Flash Dance was one of the first times you took
<v Speaker 3>great imagery and paired it up with the MTV rock
<v Speaker 3>and roll music video type of feel. They hit it
<v Speaker 3>big with Flash Dance, right, So that.
<v Speaker 2>Was really the first big hit for both of them.
<v Speaker 2>And in nineteen eighty four they come out with Beverly
<v Speaker 2>Hills Cop.
<v Speaker 3>By the Way, before we move on, Yeah, just please
<v Speaker 3>no charismatic people, charismanic characters. You know, interesting stories, great soundtracks, rock.
<v Speaker 2>And roll, high energy, and action is almost what Don
<v Speaker 2>Simpson's life was. Yeah it's true, right, yeah, I mean
<v Speaker 2>it says though he could pick that out, he wanted
<v Speaker 2>to live that life and he wanted to make those movies.
<v Speaker 2>At the same time they're making these movies. Don Simpson
<v Speaker 2>goes to the dentist. He picks up a magazine in
<v Speaker 2>the dentist's office, Are you kidding? And he flips to
<v Speaker 2>this article that's written by elid You nay, that's about
<v Speaker 2>the top was that guy's name again, elid yone? Okay?
<v Speaker 2>And it's about the top gun flight school in Miramar, California.
<v Speaker 2>Before he even goes in to have his teeth worked on,
<v Speaker 2>he gets the phone and calls the guy who wrote
<v Speaker 2>the article and says, this is awesome. I want to
<v Speaker 2>do this as a movie. Can I buy it from you?
<v Speaker 4>Wow?
<v Speaker 2>The guy seems interested. He goes to Katzenberg and Eisner
<v Speaker 2>and says, hey, this is going to be like Star
<v Speaker 2>Wars here on Earth? Will you let me do this movie?
<v Speaker 2>And they give him like three or four hundred thousand
<v Speaker 2>dollars to buy the script and to hire the writers.
<v Speaker 3>Incredible.
<v Speaker 2>He's fascinated by the call names of these guys. You've
<v Speaker 2>got Hollywood, You've got Radio, You've got.
<v Speaker 3>Rat and all kinds of viper and all these guys.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, he's also fascinated by like the reflection and the
<v Speaker 2>helmets and just the imagery of what looked like space
<v Speaker 2>fighters here in the blue skies of the world.
<v Speaker 3>Star Wars on Earth. How can you go wrong with that?
<v Speaker 2>So ultimately, how you can go wrong is they release
<v Speaker 2>a television series about aviators from the nineteen fifties that
<v Speaker 2>totally tanks, and the guys at Paramount freak out and
<v Speaker 2>they put the script in Turnaround. So at this point,
<v Speaker 2>Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson go to Michael Aisner and
<v Speaker 2>Jeffrey Katzenberg and they're begging them not to put the
<v Speaker 2>script in Turnaround. Don Simpson literally gets down on his
<v Speaker 2>hands and knees and begs and if you know Don Simpson,
<v Speaker 2>that's pretty impressive. Right. Yeah, They were impressed, and they
<v Speaker 2>decided to let them keep it going, and they gave
<v Speaker 2>them fourteen million dollars to shoot it.
<v Speaker 3>See, Okay, this is crazy, because I did hear that
<v Speaker 3>they were impressed by their enthusiasm, Like, if these guys
<v Speaker 3>believe in this project that much, we've got to let
<v Speaker 3>them do this.
<v Speaker 2>So the guys that they hired to write this movie
<v Speaker 2>were Jack Epps and Jim Cash. And the impression that
<v Speaker 2>I got was that these guys were really on fire
<v Speaker 2>at the time. And I looked and Jack Epps has
<v Speaker 2>like some TV writing credits and Jim Cash has no
<v Speaker 2>writing credits before Top Gun. So I don't know how
<v Speaker 2>it is that these two guys were the guys that
<v Speaker 2>they wanted to use. You got any insight on them?
<v Speaker 3>I was just gonna say Bruckheimer, I saw his interview
<v Speaker 3>and he said they felt like Cash and Epps were
<v Speaker 3>the best writers in the business at that moment, and
<v Speaker 3>for them not to have any credits, I was like, Wow,
<v Speaker 3>that's a really curious thing to say. But it turns
<v Speaker 3>out that Cash and Epps had written these four or
<v Speaker 3>five or six screenplays they just couldn't get anything made.
<v Speaker 3>But their screenplays were really good.
<v Speaker 2>They were hot to have them right, and they were
<v Speaker 2>hot to have something made.
<v Speaker 3>Yes, And I got to throw in a quick plug
<v Speaker 3>in for our over at the Film By podcast. Okay,
<v Speaker 3>So Brad and Jeff film by podcast, Hey Jeff, They
<v Speaker 3>focus on a movie in nineteen eighty six about every
<v Speaker 3>two or three weeks. Anyway, They actually invited me, I'm
<v Speaker 3>coming over there. I'm gonna do an episode on Legal Eagles.
<v Speaker 3>I was watching Legal Eagles the other day right there,
<v Speaker 3>right after Robert Redford. It's like a screenplay by Cash
<v Speaker 3>and Epps.
<v Speaker 2>There you go. So. Jim Cash was a three time
<v Speaker 2>college dropout who drops back into college at Michigan State University,
<v Speaker 2>gets his bachelor's degree in English, and then he goes
<v Speaker 2>and gets a master's degree in television and radio, and
<v Speaker 2>he becomes a professor. He's teaching over in Michigan, Okay.
<v Speaker 2>And as it turns out, he never goes to California.
<v Speaker 2>Like his entire life, he didn't go over there. A
<v Speaker 2>few years after he starts teaching, he has a young
<v Speaker 2>student named Jack Apps Junior, who does go out to California,
<v Speaker 2>and I'm guessing he gets out there and he's like, hey,
<v Speaker 2>professor Jim right they Professor Cash, I'm out here. You've
<v Speaker 2>got great writing abilities. Why don't we work together on
<v Speaker 2>these scripts? That they would talk to each other on
<v Speaker 2>the phone for hours and hours. Epps was the guy
<v Speaker 2>who was there in Hollywood doing all of the deals,
<v Speaker 2>and just Jim stayed over in Michigan and had a happy,
<v Speaker 2>quiet little life as he wrote these amazing screenplays.
<v Speaker 3>I heard Jack Apps talk about when they offered him
<v Speaker 3>Top Gun, he said he wanted to ride it because
<v Speaker 3>he was a private pilot and he was hoping to
<v Speaker 3>get a jet ride.
<v Speaker 2>So they've got the writers, they've got the budget. Now
<v Speaker 2>we've got to have a director, and they can't find
<v Speaker 2>anybody who they feel comfortable doing the aerial footage. Like
<v Speaker 2>the most recent well done aerial footage they can find
<v Speaker 2>is like Howard Hawks from like back in the fifties
<v Speaker 2>and sixties. It's nothing's good has been done in years,
<v Speaker 2>and so they're like, Okay, well, let's just start looking
<v Speaker 2>at directors. And one of the portfolios that they look
<v Speaker 2>at is from this guy named Tony Scott.
<v Speaker 3>Tony Scott is the younger brother of Ridley Scott.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, work together with him at the company that they
<v Speaker 2>had together that we talked about in our Alien episode
<v Speaker 2>that did advertisements before they started making movies. That's right.
<v Speaker 3>I also have in my notes that they went to
<v Speaker 3>John Carpenter and David Cronenberg to see if they wanted
<v Speaker 3>to direct a top gun. Okay, here's the interesting thing,
<v Speaker 3>just a little interesting coincidence. We're about to cover a
<v Speaker 3>movie by John Carpenter, Ridley Scott, you know, and today
<v Speaker 3>is Tony Scott.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. So, Tony had only done one movie and it
<v Speaker 2>was The Hunger. And we've talked about vampire movies, you
<v Speaker 2>and I quite a bit.
<v Speaker 3>I love vampire movies.
<v Speaker 2>And one of the movies that I said, hey, here's
<v Speaker 2>one I've never seen this, have you seen it? It
<v Speaker 2>was The Hunger. Yeah, how'd you feel about The Hunt?
<v Speaker 3>That movie sucks so incredibly boring.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you are not alone in your assessment of that movie.
<v Speaker 2>Everybody thought The Hunger sucked. And Tony Scott couldn't get
<v Speaker 2>a job in Hollywood for four years, but he was
<v Speaker 2>still doing advertising and one of the things that he
<v Speaker 2>was doing advertising for was the SOB car Saab SOB car. Right.
<v Speaker 2>His commercial involved the SOB in a sort of race
<v Speaker 2>with a contemporary Fighter jet. I saw this commercial and
<v Speaker 2>it's cool looking. Oh, it's way cool. I remember the
<v Speaker 2>commercial from when I was a kid. As it turned out,
<v Speaker 2>it was the best aerial footage they could find of anybody,
<v Speaker 2>and so they said, hey, Tony, how about you come
<v Speaker 2>direct this movie for us? Now. His idea initially was
<v Speaker 2>to have it be like Apocalypse now on the seat,
<v Speaker 2>and they're like, no, that's not it. And it took
<v Speaker 2>a lot of back and forth, a lot of back
<v Speaker 2>and forth, and finally he just wakes up one morning
<v Speaker 2>and he's like, Okay, I think I got it. Now
<v Speaker 2>it's got to be a rock video in the sky.
<v Speaker 2>And he called he said, how about rock video in
<v Speaker 2>the sky and Jerry Bruckheimer and Donald Simpson are like, yes,
<v Speaker 2>you figured it out, that's it, and so they tag
<v Speaker 2>him to direct the movie. He was fired three times
<v Speaker 2>during this I know three times. The first time is
<v Speaker 2>for filming that opening sequence in slow motion. Yes, he's
<v Speaker 2>He's like, I filmed several sequences. I kind of wanted
<v Speaker 2>slow motion. I knew they didn't, but I wanted a
<v Speaker 2>slow motion bit. So I filmed like five reels and
<v Speaker 2>one of them was slow motion, and the camera guys
<v Speaker 2>sent my slow motion to them and they fired me. Fortunately,
<v Speaker 2>they were hired me within twenty four hours. And he
<v Speaker 2>goes and then I decided to make Kelly McGillis look
<v Speaker 2>like a whore, and they said, you're fired. I know, Okay,
<v Speaker 2>well it's got to be for sure. This time at
<v Speaker 2>they rehired him again. Toned down, how slutty she looked, right.
<v Speaker 2>And the third time he got fired was because he
<v Speaker 2>was shooting scenes with the guys with their visors down.
<v Speaker 3>The actors.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, the actors, and they hired the actors because of
<v Speaker 2>their face. Yes, and so it was not he said
<v Speaker 2>once again, I had shot multiple reels with the mask up,
<v Speaker 2>shot one reel with the mask down, and of course
<v Speaker 2>the cameramen send in the one with the mask down.
<v Speaker 2>I got fired again. I think the cameramen were against
<v Speaker 2>me on this. Now.
<v Speaker 3>One of the things I think is vitally important to
<v Speaker 3>this project is that Paramount got the US Navy on board.
<v Speaker 3>That's a huge key. For instance, you go watch Iron
<v Speaker 3>Eagle about a teenager who steals a jet away from
<v Speaker 3>the Navy. Oh, the Navy's like bull crab, We're not
<v Speaker 3>signing on boy in no way, right, We're not putting
<v Speaker 3>our name on this.
<v Speaker 2>Right.
<v Speaker 3>Instead, they work in collaboration with the Navy, and all
<v Speaker 3>of a sudden you get access to real jets you
<v Speaker 3>get access to real flying, you get a top gun
<v Speaker 3>and it's pilots.
<v Speaker 2>Now you think about the budget on this movie of
<v Speaker 2>fourteen million dollars, I think it ended up being close
<v Speaker 2>to sixteen, but still a sixteen million dollars movie that
<v Speaker 2>you've got real, live f fourteen footage, I mean exploding
<v Speaker 2>planes in the sky. It's amazing that it was done
<v Speaker 2>for this budget. But the deal was with the Navy
<v Speaker 2>when they got them to buy in. The Navy didn't
<v Speaker 2>charge them for anything except fuel. But if you get
<v Speaker 2>all of those shots, plus if the Navy was doing
<v Speaker 2>aerial work anyway, they could film it and it was nothing.
<v Speaker 2>It was no cost to the Navy, and so you
<v Speaker 2>get this amazing footage for pennies. Yes, it's incredible.
<v Speaker 3>In fact, the Navy wanted a technical advisor on the
<v Speaker 3>set at all times make sure these guys do it right.
<v Speaker 3>But they couldn't have anybody in active service. They'd been
<v Speaker 3>burned during the movie the Final Countdown. Yea and the
<v Speaker 3>CEO of the base got in trouble for giving access
<v Speaker 3>to maybe some top secret stuff on accident, and it
<v Speaker 3>was just a bad deal, and so they needed to
<v Speaker 3>hire a non active duty technical advisor.
<v Speaker 2>Right. So, when Tony had gotten the job, he thought, Okay,
<v Speaker 2>I'm going to go do some research. He goes down
<v Speaker 2>to Miramar to do research at the top Gun facility,
<v Speaker 2>talk to the top gun pilots. This is where he
<v Speaker 2>meets Pete Pettigrew, who I mentioned earlier. Now Pete was
<v Speaker 2>a former top gun aviator. Ultimately becomes a consultant on
<v Speaker 2>the film after Tony spends several days hanging out, talking
<v Speaker 2>and drinking together. Let me give a little backstory on
<v Speaker 2>Pete Pettigrew because I had to go look. Okay, yeah, yeah.
<v Speaker 2>So he goes to Stanford. He's an All American in
<v Speaker 2>both swimming and water polo. He was on the nineteen
<v Speaker 2>sixty three National Championship water polo team. He graduates Stanford
<v Speaker 2>in nineteen sixty four and of course immediately goes into
<v Speaker 2>the Navy. Enters flight training in November sixty four, and
<v Speaker 2>by June of sixty six he is given his Naval
<v Speaker 2>aviator status. He is highly decorated. He flew in over
<v Speaker 2>three hundred and seventy five combat missions, and in nineteen
<v Speaker 2>seventy he is picked to join the fledgling Navy Fighter
<v Speaker 2>Weapons school as an instructor. Can you give me a
<v Speaker 2>little snippet on this weapon school?
<v Speaker 3>On March third, nineteen sixty nine, the United States Navy
<v Speaker 3>established an elite school for the top one percent of
<v Speaker 3>its pilots. Its purpose was to teach the lost art
<v Speaker 3>of aerial combat and to ensure that the handful of
<v Speaker 3>men who graduated were the best fighter pilots in the world.
<v Speaker 3>They succeeded. Today, the Navy calls it Fighter Webons School.
<v Speaker 3>The flyers call it top.
<v Speaker 2>Gun of it. I love it. So. Pete Pettigrew came
<v Speaker 2>in in nineteen seventy when it's brand new YEP, and
<v Speaker 2>is an instructor there until January of seventy two. In
<v Speaker 2>May of seventy two, he and his wingman engage four
<v Speaker 2>North Vietnamese MiGs over Vietnam. He takes out one, his
<v Speaker 2>leader takes out the other one, and the other two
<v Speaker 2>go away. They knocked out, They bug out.
<v Speaker 3>They bug out.
<v Speaker 2>Not one enemy shot is fired.
<v Speaker 3>Wow.
<v Speaker 2>So Pete Pettigrew, one of the original instructors there is
<v Speaker 2>still over there in the eighties. Whenever Tony Scott comes over,
<v Speaker 2>you know his call sign is by the way I
<v Speaker 2>do Viper. It's the reason that Tom Skerritt's character is
<v Speaker 2>named Viper, and it's also the reason why Pete Mitchell
<v Speaker 2>Maverick's character is named Pete instead of Evan exactly. So,
<v Speaker 2>right before he started working, he was still obviously there.
<v Speaker 2>He's still in the reserves, he's still helping out and
<v Speaker 2>doing stuff. He was also compeding in Ironman Triathlons before
<v Speaker 2>it was even really a thing over in Honolulu, and
<v Speaker 2>he has a part in the movie. Yeah, he does.
<v Speaker 2>So when Kelly McGillis, you know, has to leave to
<v Speaker 2>go meet with her date, he's the date.
<v Speaker 3>He's the older guy.
<v Speaker 2>He's the old man. I'm watched this movie, I'm like,
<v Speaker 2>why is she with that old dude? And then I
<v Speaker 2>just started thinking, I'm like, he was in his mid
<v Speaker 2>forties at that time. That makes me an old dude.
<v Speaker 2>At this point.
<v Speaker 3>He's in his mid forties, he's competing in triathlons. He's
<v Speaker 3>a awesome super pilot, smart guy, and he's the he's
<v Speaker 3>the old man.
<v Speaker 2>Twenty fourteen, he was a part of a swim relay
<v Speaker 2>group that's seventy plus year old guys, all of them
<v Speaker 2>who swam across the Catalina show. God. He is a
<v Speaker 2>bad ass among bad asses. He really is, and I
<v Speaker 2>see why they named Viper after him. He is the
<v Speaker 2>elite and the elite. He's the best of the best.
<v Speaker 3>I did hear Rick Rossovich talked about when you hang
<v Speaker 3>out with these top gun pilots. He said, he's talking
<v Speaker 3>to guys they're the best fighter pilots in the world.
<v Speaker 3>And the guy said, well, yeah, I'm a great fighter pilot,
<v Speaker 3>but I'm also a concert pianist. Oh I'm also studying,
<v Speaker 3>got my doctorate in philosophy. He's like, these guys are
<v Speaker 3>just extra super talented people.
<v Speaker 2>Yep. And probably they go hand in hand. Ultra competitive,
<v Speaker 2>mega competitive. An important note, an unrealistic part of this
<v Speaker 2>movie is the Top Gun trophy, right, and Pete Pettigrew said,
<v Speaker 2>if there had been an actual trophy, no one would
<v Speaker 2>have survived the Top Gun School because they would have
<v Speaker 2>all killed each other trying to That's how competitive they are.
<v Speaker 2>That's awesome. So a couple of the other guys that
<v Speaker 2>were involved. You had Scott Altman, whose call sign was Scooter. Okay. Now,
<v Speaker 2>Scott Altman was the guy who you see given the
<v Speaker 2>bird to the meg at the beginning of the movie. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>and buzzing the tower was one forbidden like it did
<v Speaker 2>not happen, Like, if you did that in real life,
<v Speaker 2>hand in your wings, you're done. You're never gonna get again.
<v Speaker 2>But they had to have it for the movie, and
<v Speaker 2>so he's like, well, I guess we have to have
<v Speaker 2>it for the movie. And so he is the first
<v Speaker 2>guy to actually buzz the tower. He ended up doing
<v Speaker 2>it nine times, but the first time they didn't know
<v Speaker 2>it was coming. That is awesome. Actually got in trouble
<v Speaker 2>and it wasn't that the guy just spilled his coffee.
<v Speaker 2>They blew the windows out of the eyes. That's fantastic.
<v Speaker 3>Hey, I did hear that? Michael Ironside, the guy who
<v Speaker 3>plays Jester, said that he was in a hangar. He's like,
<v Speaker 3>I was in the hangar. I was like upstairs in
<v Speaker 3>the hangar because those things aren't very tall, and I
<v Speaker 3>saw that tom Cat below me, and he's like, it's
<v Speaker 3>the craziest thing I'd ever seen. And in fact, by
<v Speaker 3>the time he had done it several times, people were
<v Speaker 3>gathering in the streets, going, what the f is going
<v Speaker 3>on here? They thought that some fire pilot had gone crazy.
<v Speaker 3>And was like, this is my last flight and I'm
<v Speaker 3>gonna go out in a ball of fire.
<v Speaker 2>So that was Scott Scooter Altman, who would go on
<v Speaker 2>after the movie to become a NASA astronaut, the guy
<v Speaker 2>who buzzed the tower, the guy who had them watch
<v Speaker 2>the birdie.
<v Speaker 3>You know finger.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, sorry, just does that. Yes, he became an astronaut
<v Speaker 2>at the NASA program in space. That is fantastic.
<v Speaker 3>Okay.
<v Speaker 2>One other pilot that I have to talk about is
<v Speaker 2>Art Shoal. Yeah, we definitely need to talk about him.
<v Speaker 2>So Art Shoal was a guy who had educated himself
<v Speaker 2>as a pilot, got his master's in aviation, was a teacher,
<v Speaker 2>had taught aviation for eighteen years, felt like he was stagnating,
<v Speaker 2>and that said, after eighteen years of teaching, like I'm
<v Speaker 2>gonna go be a stunt pilot. Yeah, and then he
<v Speaker 2>did it for the next thirty years. Like every major
<v Speaker 2>aviation film that you've seen, Art Shoal was almost certainly
<v Speaker 2>a part of it. He did air shows, he did movies,
<v Speaker 2>he did television commercials. Over two hundred films, documentaries and
<v Speaker 2>TV commercials just for Art Shoal. So the original script
<v Speaker 2>had a flat spin in that they wanted to get
<v Speaker 2>footage for right and Arshall was like, no problem, I'll
<v Speaker 2>go back up. And he had been shooting all day long,
<v Speaker 2>and of course was one of those like you know,
<v Speaker 2>you don't really need to go do this. He's like, no,
<v Speaker 2>I'm good, I'm gonna do this. I'll get it, we'll
<v Speaker 2>be done. So he goes up over the Pacific Ocean,
<v Speaker 2>goes into his flat spin and then they hear him
<v Speaker 2>say I have a problem. And then he says I
<v Speaker 2>have a big problem. And that's the last day ever
<v Speaker 2>hear of him. It never recovered his plane or his body. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>so this movie was dedicated to his memory because he
<v Speaker 2>lost his life in filming it.
<v Speaker 3>I heard that he was filming like second unit stuff.
<v Speaker 3>Oh yeah, like stuff to be projected behind Tom Cruise
<v Speaker 3>while he's you know, in the in the fake cockpit.
<v Speaker 2>Oh okay, yeah, just.
<v Speaker 3>Just junk stuff, not even screenworthy stuff.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 5>That was a bummer.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, let's flip back to Jack Epps for just a second.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, Okay.
<v Speaker 3>We talked about how he was interested in this because
<v Speaker 3>he was a commercial pilot and he was hoping to
<v Speaker 3>get a jet right out of it.
<v Speaker 2>They brought him down.
<v Speaker 3>To San Diego and he started hanging out with navy pilots. Now,
<v Speaker 3>I called you the other day we were in. I
<v Speaker 3>was in and I'm like, okay, I've got this thing
<v Speaker 3>figured out. So one of the things that he found
<v Speaker 3>out when he was hanging out with these pilots is
<v Speaker 3>that they have a language all their own. So sitting
<v Speaker 3>at the bar with these guys and they're talking about
<v Speaker 3>you know, ACM and you know, I got the RIO
<v Speaker 3>in the back, and he's like, I don't even know
<v Speaker 3>what these words mean, but they do, and they all
<v Speaker 3>speak the same language. And he said, it was a
<v Speaker 3>conscious decision. Do we try and like explain this to
<v Speaker 3>the audience or they just put the pedal down and
<v Speaker 3>hope that the audience can keep up.
<v Speaker 2>Just drop them in the middle of it. Just drop
<v Speaker 2>them in the middle of it.
<v Speaker 3>And so that's why you have RIO. And not once
<v Speaker 3>do they ever say Radio intelligence officer, You're just expected
<v Speaker 3>to keep up. So he gets his jet flight, he
<v Speaker 3>gets in there and he realizes when there's you start
<v Speaker 3>pulling four or five gs, He's like, right, you know
<v Speaker 3>it beat you to death's And he started to realize
<v Speaker 3>this is a super physical job. He goes, this is
<v Speaker 3>about aerial combat maneuvers, but really what it's about is sports.
<v Speaker 3>He said, this is the great greatest sporting event I've
<v Speaker 3>ever been a part of. At that moment, he decided,
<v Speaker 3>all these guys are going to be stud athletes.
<v Speaker 2>You have to have the trophy in order for it
<v Speaker 2>to be a sports movie, which is why they took
<v Speaker 2>that little deviation.
<v Speaker 3>You know, when they were talking to Pete Pedigrew that,
<v Speaker 3>you know, all of his Navy guys are like, Pedigrew, what,
<v Speaker 3>what in the world They've got a Navy trophy? What
<v Speaker 3>are you crazy? He's like, guys, I'm just trying to
<v Speaker 3>keep them from making it a musical at this point.
<v Speaker 2>Right, Yeah, they had a story and the b story,
<v Speaker 2>and one was the flying and the jets and the competition,
<v Speaker 2>and the other was the love story. And they kept
<v Speaker 2>realizing that the love story kept growing and growing, Like
<v Speaker 2>oh my gosh, yeah, Berlin song in here before too.
<v Speaker 3>I can't wait to talk.
<v Speaker 2>About the soundtracks here in a second. Yeah, so listen
<v Speaker 2>to this.
<v Speaker 3>So when Ebbs turned into screenplay to Don Simpson and Bruckheimer,
<v Speaker 3>they said it was the greatest screenplay they had ever seen.
<v Speaker 3>Epps was like, this was music to my ears. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>every screenwriter wants to hear this. But then Pedigrew read
<v Speaker 3>it and he's like, I know, the Navy's not gonna
<v Speaker 3>make this. There's absolutely no way they're going to go
<v Speaker 3>for this.
<v Speaker 2>A key reason that the Navy didn't want to be
<v Speaker 2>involved with Hollywood is for the last twenty years, Hollywood
<v Speaker 2>had been against the army. I mean we're talking about
<v Speaker 2>Vietnam era, We're talking about Yeah, the military was not
<v Speaker 2>portrayed in a favorable light at all, and a few
<v Speaker 2>of the artists and actors who were involved, are almost involved,
<v Speaker 2>didn't become involved because they thought it was a pro
<v Speaker 2>war movie, and it kind of was. It was. This
<v Speaker 2>was a flag waving, chest pumping I'm an American, let's
<v Speaker 2>go kick ass movie.
<v Speaker 3>It absolutely is.
<v Speaker 2>Which was unlike anything had been for probably thirty years.
<v Speaker 2>That's very true.
<v Speaker 3>So the Navy was in a little bit of a dilemma.
<v Speaker 3>They needed some positive propaganda. And of course Simpson and
<v Speaker 3>Bruckheimer are you know, balls out cowboys, so.
<v Speaker 2>Right, So Pedtigrew knew that the Navy.
<v Speaker 3>Wouldn't go for it because Goose's death in the original
<v Speaker 3>script caused for a in air collision.
<v Speaker 2>Yep, okay, yeah.
<v Speaker 3>So he goes to him and he's like, guys, Navy's
<v Speaker 3>not going to go for this and in their collision,
<v Speaker 3>no way. We are absolute competent pilots. This would not happen,
<v Speaker 3>no chance. And they're like, well, okay, Goose needs to die.
<v Speaker 3>Help us out, okay, right, Goose needs to die. Mavericks
<v Speaker 3>needs to feel responsible, but the Navy can't hold him accountable, okay.
<v Speaker 3>And so Pettigrew's like, okay, let's see here, and he's
<v Speaker 3>going through this list of accidents in his head. He
<v Speaker 3>comes to one where a guy flew through a jetwash
<v Speaker 3>that he couldn't see it caused his jet to spin
<v Speaker 3>in a flat spin.
<v Speaker 2>Guy's name was Gary Barrett. Bean was his call name,
<v Speaker 2>bean Bean. And so here's the interesting story. They'd never
<v Speaker 2>fully explain the flat spin and jet and Goose's death.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, I've seen a thousand times now, it really makes
<v Speaker 3>sense to me. So when the plane spins on its jaw,
<v Speaker 3>the centrifugal force throws the pilot forward, and if you
<v Speaker 3>look in the movie, Maverick's face is pressed against the
<v Speaker 3>glass up front, he can't reach the ejection handles behind him,
<v Speaker 3>and since the Rio is closer to the center of
<v Speaker 3>the spin, it's easier for him to grab the ejection.
<v Speaker 2>Cords or whatever.
<v Speaker 3>But when you eject, there's two parts to it. There's
<v Speaker 3>one the blast off of the canopy and then the
<v Speaker 3>second is the ejection seat. And they always tell the Rio,
<v Speaker 3>don't panic, make sure the canopy clears.
<v Speaker 2>Before you eject.
<v Speaker 3>Well, pe Pettigrew remembered a specific accident that happened where
<v Speaker 3>the Rio pulled the ejector seat too quickly because there's
<v Speaker 3>a low pressure spot above the plane and that canopy
<v Speaker 3>wants to hover right there. And so absolutely positively happened
<v Speaker 3>in real life Goose's accident.
<v Speaker 2>Now, I don't know if the guy died, but he didn't.
<v Speaker 2>They walked away from the accident. One of them broke
<v Speaker 2>a leg, but they were able to get away without
<v Speaker 2>more significant injury.
<v Speaker 3>Now, here's my funny story about call signs, right, Okay, Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>So I just got back from a trip with my
<v Speaker 3>buddy Doug Huggin.
<v Speaker 2>Doug's a listener.
<v Speaker 3>He's excited about our top Gun episode, and so he
<v Speaker 3>has a call sign right his name is Doug Huggin.
<v Speaker 3>I said, what's your call sign? He says, Huggy right, okay,
<v Speaker 3>and he said he got off light right, uh huh.
<v Speaker 3>He knew somebody in the Navy and his call sign
<v Speaker 3>was Skip. He said, think of your worst mistake and
<v Speaker 3>think of a funny name involving that, and that's how
<v Speaker 3>you get your call sign.
<v Speaker 2>Okay.
<v Speaker 3>So these cool names like Maverick and you know, Iceman
<v Speaker 3>and all this stuff. His buddy's name was Skip because
<v Speaker 3>he landed one time a little bit hard and went
<v Speaker 3>like bounced off the ground.
<v Speaker 2>So yeah, they noted in the commentary the fighter pilots
<v Speaker 2>who were involved with the movie noted, you absolutely cannot
<v Speaker 2>give yourself your own call sign. Yeah, because one guy
<v Speaker 2>tried to do it and give himself the call sign
<v Speaker 2>of Shark, and he was Mino for the rest of
<v Speaker 2>his career.
<v Speaker 4>I could totally see that.
<v Speaker 3>So one of the things that you said is that
<v Speaker 3>paramount when they went to Katzenberg and they got on
<v Speaker 3>the ground, they kissed his foot and they said, please, please, please,
<v Speaker 3>we're begging you to keep this alive. Well it didn't happen.
<v Speaker 3>The picture died right, and it sat until the was
<v Speaker 3>turnover at Paramount. When the new management came in, they
<v Speaker 3>went to lunch with Simpson and Bruckheimer and they said, well,
<v Speaker 3>what do you guys got We got nothing in the pipeline.
<v Speaker 2>What do you have?
<v Speaker 3>First thing out of his mouth, he's like, well, we've
<v Speaker 3>got this thing called top Gun and it's about airplanes
<v Speaker 3>and fighter pilots and it's amazing and we love it
<v Speaker 3>and we want to do it. The guy said how
<v Speaker 3>much and he said fourteen million. Guy said go for it.
<v Speaker 3>It was dead until new management took over and he
<v Speaker 3>said the right word, fourteen million.
<v Speaker 2>Right. Okay, So we've got the director, got the script, yep,
<v Speaker 2>we've got the money, yep. Who are we going to
<v Speaker 2>put in the movie?
<v Speaker 3>So Jack Apps went to Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer
<v Speaker 3>and said, guys, while I'm writing this, I'm thinking Tom Cruise.
<v Speaker 3>Tom Cruise got his first movie in Endless Love. Then
<v Speaker 3>in nineteen eighty three he did The Outsiders with Patrick
<v Speaker 3>Swayze and see Thomas Howell and Emilia Estavez and Robblow.
<v Speaker 2>We're going to cover that next.
<v Speaker 3>Year, right, They needed risky business. And then he did
<v Speaker 3>all the right moves and then he died legend with
<v Speaker 3>Ridley Scott Ye and so Jack Apps kept pushing for
<v Speaker 3>him to be the guy. But here's the list of
<v Speaker 3>all most Mavericks.
<v Speaker 2>You want to hear.
<v Speaker 3>You want to hear the list of almost Mavericks.
<v Speaker 2>I do, okay.
<v Speaker 3>Some of these I was like, yeah, I don't know.
<v Speaker 3>This is just kind of a list of everybody at
<v Speaker 3>the time. Some of them, I'm like, wait.
<v Speaker 2>A minute, what, So here you go.
<v Speaker 3>Matthew Modine was the closest one.
<v Speaker 2>He was one of those guys who said pro war movie,
<v Speaker 2>I'm out. So he does full metal jacket. Well, in
<v Speaker 2>full metal jacket, he's an anti warman. It is. It
<v Speaker 2>is absolutely yes, it is. Okay.
<v Speaker 3>So here's the other guys they had in mind. Tom
<v Speaker 3>Hanks in nineteen eighty six, Michael J. Fox, Sean Penn,
<v Speaker 3>Matthew Broderick, Nicholas Cage, Emilieu Stevez.
<v Speaker 2>So far, he's the closest one I could see to
<v Speaker 2>be in Maverick. But still Billy the Kid in an
<v Speaker 2>F fourteen. Sure I could go for that.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, John Hughes, Patrick Swayze, Scott Bao, Scott Bayo. Then
<v Speaker 3>you've got other names like Kevin Bacon, Eric Stoltz, Rob
<v Speaker 3>Low Charlie Sheen at age eighteen, too young.
<v Speaker 2>Right, yeah, but man has the right look.
<v Speaker 3>Then he does todper Harley a couple of years later
<v Speaker 3>in Hot Shots.
<v Speaker 2>Right, Jim Carrey, What.
<v Speaker 3>Jim Carrey is a name on the list. No, Jim Carrey.
<v Speaker 2>In eighty five they've got they're looking at Jim Carrey. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>that's nuts.
<v Speaker 3>And then ready for this one, uh huh, get your
<v Speaker 3>disco shoes on, John Travolta.
<v Speaker 2>That makes sense. Honestly, he was still very young at
<v Speaker 2>that time. Yeah, right, age to be a fighter pilot
<v Speaker 2>for sure. Yep. Yeah, totally could see that, but he
<v Speaker 2>was too expensive. I could also see that he was
<v Speaker 2>the number one box office draw Okay, last one for you. RDJ.
<v Speaker 2>Robert Downey Jr. Oh wow, yeah I can see that too,
<v Speaker 2>Tony Stark, Yeah I could. So they kept revising the script,
<v Speaker 2>and every time they would revise the script, they'd send
<v Speaker 2>it to Tom Cruise and go, what do you think?
<v Speaker 2>Because he was the guy all those other guys, he
<v Speaker 2>was always the guy that they wanted, yes, and he
<v Speaker 2>never would commit.
<v Speaker 3>He expressed some interest, but they could never get him
<v Speaker 3>to sort.
<v Speaker 2>Of sign it on the dotted line, right, And so
<v Speaker 2>finally Jerry Bruckhmmer's like, we're gonna get this kid up
<v Speaker 2>in the air. Yep calls his buddy at the Naval
<v Speaker 2>aviation He's like, when the Blue Angels going up again.
<v Speaker 2>Yep tells him. He's like, okay, come out, we're gonna
<v Speaker 2>take you up. So there's this fantastic picture that I
<v Speaker 2>have that is Tom Cruise skinny with a ponytail, because
<v Speaker 2>he's just finished up Bridley Scott's legend and they're about
<v Speaker 2>to take him up. They take him up and he
<v Speaker 2>throws up everybody. He's like, grabs the bag. He's trying
<v Speaker 2>to get into the bag.
<v Speaker 6>Oh and he, you know, finally kind of recovers and
<v Speaker 6>he's like, okay, well I've already thrown up, might as
<v Speaker 6>well see what this thing can do.
<v Speaker 2>And that's never something you're going to say to a
<v Speaker 2>fighter pilot. Oh yeah, sure is shooting. They showed him
<v Speaker 2>what he could do, brought him back down. He went,
<v Speaker 2>walked over to the payphone, called his agent and said,
<v Speaker 2>I want to do this movie, make it happen.
<v Speaker 3>I feel the need, the need first me.
<v Speaker 2>That's awesome, that's awesome. So here's what I heard.
<v Speaker 3>As he's in the jet and he bends to barfing
<v Speaker 3>the bag again, and as soon as he does, he
<v Speaker 3>does a straight, like five g climb straight up. So
<v Speaker 3>he's heaving and his face is like on the floor.
<v Speaker 3>And his pilot's name was Boso, right right, and so
<v Speaker 3>he's hitting the Callsigne trying to go Boso Boso, and
<v Speaker 3>then finally he releases and he is able to pop
<v Speaker 3>back up and he's like, dude, didn't you hear me?
<v Speaker 2>The guy said, well, they don't call me Boso for nothing.
<v Speaker 3>So he said when he got off the plane, he
<v Speaker 3>showed everybody held up the bag like here it is.
<v Speaker 7>Guys.
<v Speaker 3>Let's talk about Iceman for just a second.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, okay, you guys really are cowboys.
<v Speaker 3>What's your problem because as.
<v Speaker 7>You're everyone's problem.
<v Speaker 5>That's because every time you go the air, you're unsafe.
<v Speaker 5>I don't like you because you're dangerous.
<v Speaker 2>That's right, nice man, I am dangerous. Val Kilmer did
<v Speaker 2>not want to do this movie. He thought it was
<v Speaker 2>stupid and silly. Yeah, so when when they said something
<v Speaker 2>to him about flying, he was like, no way. As
<v Speaker 2>soon as we are done filming my part, I am
<v Speaker 2>the heck out of here. He had no interest in
<v Speaker 2>this movie at all, and as a part of that deal,
<v Speaker 2>he still hung out with the guys and played with him,
<v Speaker 2>but he would not communicate with Tom Cruise.
<v Speaker 3>It's the whole Greasers and the socials thing. Yeah, So
<v Speaker 3>Val Kilmer had done real genius and he had done
<v Speaker 3>Tom secret, top secret. He's notorious for being very difficult right.
<v Speaker 3>In fact, the director of the Island of Doctor Moreau,
<v Speaker 3>the guy who worked with him later in the nineties,
<v Speaker 3>said if I were making a movie called The Life
<v Speaker 3>and Times of Val Kilmer, I would not hire.
<v Speaker 2>That pract And this is a guy who worked on
<v Speaker 2>a movie with him and Marlon Brando, I know, right right.
<v Speaker 2>Of the two of those, you're not going to expect
<v Speaker 2>Marlon Brando to be the more agreeable one. The other
<v Speaker 2>guys who flew also threw up everywhere, except for Anthony Edwards. No, no, no, no,
<v Speaker 2>that There's Two. I was in Goose Boys. Anthony Edwards
<v Speaker 2>did not throw up. There's Two is a Goose Boys.
<v Speaker 3>So Anthony Edwards is the charming good nature everybody likes
<v Speaker 3>him Goose you know, so.
<v Speaker 2>He's perfect for this part. A lot of his lines
<v Speaker 2>are improvised. And he is a funny guy anyway, and
<v Speaker 2>he's lovable, boyish, fun and a good friend like he
<v Speaker 2>just he captured that good friend, comedy cut up guy perfectly.
<v Speaker 4>You know what.
<v Speaker 3>He never did his character never went to Maverick and said,
<v Speaker 3>stop doing this cowboy crap. We're gonna get kicked out
<v Speaker 3>of here. He just kept going, hey, man, listen, I
<v Speaker 3>know you're Duke Mitchell's kid, and you know this and that,
<v Speaker 3>and we'll make it and you know right, kind of
<v Speaker 3>very softly guiding him.
<v Speaker 2>At first, I was worried about being the best, and
<v Speaker 2>now I'm just worried of making it through the program.
<v Speaker 2>I got a family. I can't afford to blow this.
<v Speaker 3>Also, Anthony Edwards did not know he was going to
<v Speaker 3>sing Great Balls of Fire that day. Tony's god just
<v Speaker 3>went to him and said, hey, listen, I've been listening
<v Speaker 3>to jer Lee Lewis. We're gonna try something. You're gonna
<v Speaker 3>seeing great balls of Fire. You check my nerve then
<v Speaker 3>rather on my brain too much.
<v Speaker 2>Loved of the man insane, You browed my wheel.
<v Speaker 3>Race Great ball of Fire.
<v Speaker 2>He doesn't play piano either. Name of that bar that
<v Speaker 2>they are in is called the Kansas City Barbecue. Yes,
<v Speaker 2>how's the piano? Has it a juke box? Ended up
<v Speaker 2>getting a bunch of memorabilia and then and I think
<v Speaker 2>the early two thousand had a kitchen fire burned. Almost
<v Speaker 2>everything piano survived, but almost everything else would burn.
<v Speaker 3>Let's talk about Charlie for a second.
<v Speaker 5>What were you doing there?
<v Speaker 2>Communicating?
<v Speaker 5>Communicating, you know, giving him the bird? You know the finger, Yes,
<v Speaker 5>I know the finger goose.
<v Speaker 3>So Charlie played by Kelly McGillis.
<v Speaker 4>So here's here.
<v Speaker 2>You're almost on, Charlie.
<v Speaker 3>This list is amazing. Julianne Phillips okay, married to Bruce Springsteen.
<v Speaker 3>Kind of a eighties actress. Whatever, Yeah, she's okay, Ali,
<v Speaker 3>sheety almost got the part. She turned it down because
<v Speaker 3>she did not think anyone would want to watch a
<v Speaker 3>movie about Tom Cruise flying jets.
<v Speaker 2>She was wrong about Deborah Winger. You can see that.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know about that one man, really, I mean
<v Speaker 2>urban cowboy, Yeah, I could see that. Okay, Brooks Shields hmm, No,
<v Speaker 2>too young and pretty at that time.
<v Speaker 3>Speaking of too young and pretty, Daryl Hannah, Diane Lane,
<v Speaker 3>Sarah Jessica Parker, Dian Lane would have been great. Well,
<v Speaker 3>she's gorgeous, but is she old enough to be her instructor?
<v Speaker 2>All too young? Okay. That was an important feature as well,
<v Speaker 2>with the Navy saying no, you can't do it this
<v Speaker 2>way because the original script called for him to be
<v Speaker 2>in love with another Navy officer. Yep, and they said no,
<v Speaker 2>they are not allowed to fraternize at all. And they're like, well,
<v Speaker 2>are they ever around civilians and they're like, yeah, we've
<v Speaker 2>got you know, inspectors and auditors, technical advisors. Well could
<v Speaker 2>she be one of those? Okay? Yeah, And that's how
<v Speaker 2>that happened.
<v Speaker 3>So here's here's the rest of my list, though, Linda
<v Speaker 3>Florentino turned down this role. And here's the one that's
<v Speaker 3>gonna blow you ay ready Yeah, Carrie Fisher.
<v Speaker 2>That would have been a void one. Carrie Fisher, I
<v Speaker 2>mean Star Wars on Earth, right, she was old enough
<v Speaker 2>to be the instructor. She was also three years away
<v Speaker 2>from the Slave Girl outfit and Return of the Jedi,
<v Speaker 2>so she's looking good. So she was looking great yeah,
<v Speaker 2>and old enough, and she almost got the part in
<v Speaker 2>Saturday Night Fever. And she would have been probably a
<v Speaker 2>better height fit for Tom Cruise too.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, Killy McGillis is almost six feet tall.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, she said.
<v Speaker 3>The entire time they were filming, she had to wear
<v Speaker 3>her bare feet.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and she sat hunched over the whole. She's like,
<v Speaker 2>I watched that movie and I see my posture and
<v Speaker 2>I'm like, oh, no, you know why she was cast?
<v Speaker 2>Tell me she was cast? I do know why want
<v Speaker 2>you to say it. She was cast.
<v Speaker 3>Because she was old enough.
<v Speaker 2>She was twenty nine.
<v Speaker 3>She had just come off a Witness and Tony Scott
<v Speaker 3>had seen her with her shirt off in Witness.
<v Speaker 2>In Witness, yes, it was like, she's pretty and sophisticated
<v Speaker 2>and she took her top off in Witness, So there
<v Speaker 2>you go. That was enough for him. So listen to this.
<v Speaker 3>The character portrayed by Kelly McGillis is based on Christine
<v Speaker 3>fox Yep, who is a civilian flight instructor that everybody
<v Speaker 3>met while they're in Miramar.
<v Speaker 4>Right.
<v Speaker 3>She eventually went through the ranks and retired in twenty
<v Speaker 3>fourteen as Acting Deputy Secretary of Defense, the highest post
<v Speaker 3>ever held by.
<v Speaker 2>A woman in the Department of Defense. Wow, that's something
<v Speaker 2>that's a deep dive. Too, good job, thank you. I've
<v Speaker 2>also seen her. Yeah, it's pretty. She's a good living,
<v Speaker 2>all right.
<v Speaker 3>Kelly McGillis and Tom Cruise did not have a specially
<v Speaker 3>good chemistry.
<v Speaker 2>Offscreen, you know who? She did have good chemistry with
<v Speaker 2>very Tom Yep, yep, who was just I mean he
<v Speaker 2>was jung He was like twenty one or something. I
<v Speaker 2>think when they were shooting this movie. He's the guy
<v Speaker 2>with the cowboy at if you don't know it hasn't done.
<v Speaker 2>Just a whole lot of stuff after that. But apparently
<v Speaker 2>she was walking along the street fell flat on her
<v Speaker 2>face and he came and rescued her, and she said
<v Speaker 2>I was a sucker for romance, and so they started dating. Yep,
<v Speaker 2>that's a great story.
<v Speaker 3>I'm gonna go to bat for Kelly McGillis here for
<v Speaker 3>just a second.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, okay.
<v Speaker 3>A lot of people give her crap because she's not
<v Speaker 3>Hollywood glamorous, gorgeous. I thought she looked great.
<v Speaker 2>I thought she looked great, and I thought that she
<v Speaker 2>was The romance between them was very believable. Let's talk
<v Speaker 2>about Carol for a second. Hey, guys, your big dad
<v Speaker 2>that's me on it take me to better lose me
<v Speaker 2>forever showed me the way hole. But that is Goose's wife. Now,
<v Speaker 2>Meg Ryan hadn't been in anything except maybe soap operas
<v Speaker 2>before this As the World Turns. Yeah, how that's crazy
<v Speaker 2>knowing how big she became to think that this was
<v Speaker 2>her first major movie role. She was the second choice.
<v Speaker 3>And I did every thing I could to figure out
<v Speaker 3>who the first actress selected was.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, couldn't find it.
<v Speaker 3>Tony Scott hired this other actress. Bruckheimer went to Tony
<v Speaker 3>Scott AND's like, I'm not really feeling it with this girl.
<v Speaker 3>And he's like, well, who's your second choice? And he said, well,
<v Speaker 3>this young woman named Meg Ryan, but she's only done
<v Speaker 3>soap operas. And I'm afraid that if we hire a
<v Speaker 3>soap opera actress that people won't really go for. And
<v Speaker 3>Bruckheimer's like, dude, only guys are going to be watching
<v Speaker 3>this movie. Nobody watches soap operas. Who cares hire her?
<v Speaker 2>Well he's wrong about that. Well he was wrong about
<v Speaker 2>it because Tony Scott made a movie for men and women. Yes,
<v Speaker 2>And just not to deviate too far from your topic,
<v Speaker 2>Meg Ryan killed it in this role. I mean, she
<v Speaker 2>had just owns the part. She has a small part,
<v Speaker 2>but she absolutely She's the perfect combo for Goose. She's
<v Speaker 2>young and fun and silly and vibes so well with him.
<v Speaker 2>And then after Goose dies that moment. I mean they
<v Speaker 2>said that they filmed it nine or ten times and
<v Speaker 2>every single time she went from normal to I'm crying
<v Speaker 2>and this is the most emotional moment in my life
<v Speaker 2>on a dime.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, let's talk about Slider for just a second, Okay,
<v Speaker 3>Rick Rossovich, Yeah, we both love the movie Roxanne.
<v Speaker 2>We have to cover that soon. He plays Chris in.
<v Speaker 1>Roxhand because I was a freight of worms.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, one of the best movies in nineteen eighty seven.
<v Speaker 3>We absolutely love it.
<v Speaker 2>We're gonna have to cover that. At some point, he
<v Speaker 2>got kicked off the ship a couple of times.
<v Speaker 3>He was a bit of a hell raiser thing, a
<v Speaker 3>little bit of a turd. Yeah, he said he his
<v Speaker 3>bunk was right next to a nuclear warning sign, and
<v Speaker 3>so he's like, well, screw this, I'm not sleeping here.
<v Speaker 3>So he just went and found a bunk. Turns out
<v Speaker 3>he was in the bunk of an officer. That officer said,
<v Speaker 3>get the heck out of my bed, and he stood
<v Speaker 3>up and said, you want to you know, try to
<v Speaker 3>take me.
<v Speaker 2>On for this thing. Yeah, you want, mister big mouth.
<v Speaker 3>And so he got called up to the chief's office
<v Speaker 3>and the chief reprimanded him harshly and kicked him off
<v Speaker 3>the ship.
<v Speaker 2>He was like, you know, I was in better shape
<v Speaker 2>back then, which is why you catch me in the
<v Speaker 2>volleyball scene, which is a great, very memorable moment.
<v Speaker 3>Sure it is.
<v Speaker 2>And if at the very end of the movie, as
<v Speaker 2>they're all celebrated, you know the lines have changed. You
<v Speaker 2>can be my wingman anytime, bs, you could be mine, right,
<v Speaker 2>everybody's he's the one turning around so you can see
<v Speaker 2>his face. He's facing the camera the whllway mugging.
<v Speaker 3>All right quickly viper Yeah, played by Tom Scarett.
<v Speaker 4>You're on the top.
<v Speaker 1>One percent all naval aviators, the elite, best, the best.
<v Speaker 2>We'll make you better, who had done work with Tony
<v Speaker 2>Scott's brother, Ridley Scott an alien. Be sure and go
<v Speaker 2>back and check out our Alien versus Terminator episode.
<v Speaker 3>They originally thought of Lewis Goosst Jnr. Iron Eagle, Iron Eagle,
<v Speaker 3>an officer and a gentleman, so he played the military guy, right.
<v Speaker 3>They thought about John Boyd, who would have been great
<v Speaker 3>in that part. But I thought Tom Scatt does a great.
<v Speaker 2>Job, fantastic. Yeah, okay, all.
<v Speaker 3>Right now then Michael Limeside.
<v Speaker 5>Jester just dead, but about the heart deck and return
<v Speaker 5>to faith immediately.
<v Speaker 2>Michael Ironside didn't think he should be playing this part
<v Speaker 2>number one, he's Canadian. Number two. He didn't feel like
<v Speaker 2>he possessed the right kind of attitude and physique to
<v Speaker 2>be an officer in the Navy. And so he's on
<v Speaker 2>board the ship. He's obviously in costume at this point.
<v Speaker 2>There's he can hear this, and he sees this junior
<v Speaker 2>officer running along as fast as he can, and when
<v Speaker 2>he sees Michael Ironsides, he stops walks and Michael Ironside's like,
<v Speaker 2>slow down, son. The guy salutes him and says, yes, sir,
<v Speaker 2>sorry sir. He's like, okay, maybe I can't.
<v Speaker 3>Maybe I can do this.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that's great.
<v Speaker 3>Here's a funny story that I heard about Michael Ironside. Okay,
<v Speaker 3>so this is a couple of years after Top Gun
<v Speaker 3>and he's at a bar and he said, on either
<v Speaker 3>side of him, these two giant jarheads came up and
<v Speaker 3>they're like He's like, what's up? Fellas like, you're in
<v Speaker 3>that Top Gun movie, weren't you.
<v Speaker 2>He's like, uh yeah. I was like, you're.
<v Speaker 3>Theughing reason why we joined the navy, this bull crown
<v Speaker 3>because there wasn't fighter pilots and babes all the time.
<v Speaker 2>And he's like, eh, he said.
<v Speaker 3>It was very uncomfortable conversation and they were not happy
<v Speaker 3>in blaming him.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I can say that. I have you mentioned Doug Huggan.
<v Speaker 2>I've got two other friends that if they didn't become
<v Speaker 2>pilots because of this movie, it was sure a big
<v Speaker 2>factor in their decision.
<v Speaker 3>Doug Huggin, my college roommate, used to he was in
<v Speaker 3>the Naval R two C. He would get out Top Gun,
<v Speaker 3>put it in, play it to the bar scene, pause
<v Speaker 3>it so that he could put his uniform on correctly.
<v Speaker 2>That's great, have a reference. That's right, that's funny.
<v Speaker 3>Another college friend of mine, Eric Mentorier, I know Top
<v Speaker 3>Guns a big influence on him. Chris Alexander, one of
<v Speaker 3>our patreons. All right, I got two more guys I
<v Speaker 3>want to talk about before we move on. Uh huh,
<v Speaker 3>all right, I want to talk about one of the
<v Speaker 3>guys who got totally screwed over in this movie. Okay,
<v Speaker 3>I'm spiking my football. This guy, for whatever reason, got
<v Speaker 3>screwed the entire movie.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, Sundown my man, Sundown O.
<v Speaker 3>The O from die Hard and the quarterback is toast.
<v Speaker 2>Shame guy. Okay.
<v Speaker 3>So he gets paired up with Maverick halfway through Top
<v Speaker 3>Gun for whatever reason, he's there at all the classes,
<v Speaker 3>Goose gets killed, Sundown gets put with Maverick. Maverick won't
<v Speaker 3>take the shot, so.
<v Speaker 2>He confronts him.
<v Speaker 3>Unlike other people, He's like, dude, good hat him, why
<v Speaker 3>don't you take the shot? And Tom Cruise says, I
<v Speaker 3>will fire when I am good and ready. You got that?
<v Speaker 3>So what happens to Sundown? He gets fired, moved away.
<v Speaker 3>I don't know, he goes away.
<v Speaker 2>You never see him.
<v Speaker 3>No, So at the end of the movie, when they
<v Speaker 3>send Tom Cruise up, he still don't have a rio.
<v Speaker 3>Should Sundown go with him? No, sticking with Merlin. So
<v Speaker 3>they brought Merlin up. Tim Robbins and early in his
<v Speaker 3>career Yeah Yeah, who later plays Nuklelouche Yeah, and Andy
<v Speaker 3>Difran Yep. But Sundown, once he confronts Maverick, never see
<v Speaker 3>him again. And then one more that's with a bull
<v Speaker 3>you get to horn. He goes on to join an
<v Speaker 3>international terrorist and uh it is involved in the Nakatomy
<v Speaker 3>incident in December of nineteen eighty eight. All right, one
<v Speaker 3>more person I want to talk about is Stinger.
<v Speaker 2>We didn't spring him along for his charming personality, did we? Yes?
<v Speaker 7>Yes.
<v Speaker 3>Sundown goes on to get punched out by Argyle.
<v Speaker 2>At Nkotomi Plasma. Speaking of crossovers.
<v Speaker 3>Stinger played by James Tolkien. He is never referred to
<v Speaker 3>as Stinger, only sir. He's the guy who's like you.
<v Speaker 3>Two characters are going to top gun. Oh didn't that
<v Speaker 3>guy ever have had?
<v Speaker 7>Yes?
<v Speaker 3>How bad?
<v Speaker 2>Did you want him to call him?
<v Speaker 3>Slacker?
<v Speaker 4>Yeah?
<v Speaker 3>You too, slacker? Are going to top gone?
<v Speaker 2>Gosh? Yeah, perfect for that part. Have we moved past casting?
<v Speaker 2>We're done with casting. Let's talk about the movie itself.
<v Speaker 2>Tony Scott realized that he wanted a rock and roll
<v Speaker 2>in the sky movie, right, Yes, And it's interesting because
<v Speaker 2>it was very important to him that he hit the
<v Speaker 2>golden hour, right. So they're filming at six to seven
<v Speaker 2>in the morning and six to seven at night when
<v Speaker 2>the sun is just on the horizon and it's the
<v Speaker 2>perfect kind of sun. And so I watched the movie.
<v Speaker 2>If it's not a plane in the sky, it is
<v Speaker 2>Golden Hour, Like you're if you are on the deck
<v Speaker 2>or you're on the ground, the sun is hitting you
<v Speaker 2>from the side. It is Golden Hour every single time.
<v Speaker 2>And that very first scene that you see in the movie,
<v Speaker 2>which is all very technical, real guys doing their real jobs,
<v Speaker 2>which has the best music transition at the beginning of
<v Speaker 2>a movie that's seen my doors off every time. Fantastic
<v Speaker 2>and we can get there when we get to music,
<v Speaker 2>but so good. That was the scene that he was
<v Speaker 2>shooting in slow motion that he got fired for, right, yes,
<v Speaker 2>And it's definitely Golden Hour. It's all orange and beautiful
<v Speaker 2>and he's filming this stuff and all of a sudden
<v Speaker 2>the ship turns and it's going a different direction and
<v Speaker 2>he's like, what are you doing, Like this is putting
<v Speaker 2>the sun in the wrong spot, and they're like, well,
<v Speaker 2>we're you know, we're out of our time and all this,
<v Speaker 2>and then he's like, what do I have to do
<v Speaker 2>and they're like, it's going to cost you, like twenty
<v Speaker 2>five thousand dollars.
<v Speaker 3>Way before that, he goes, can you keep going the
<v Speaker 3>same direction. They go, nope, what will it take?
<v Speaker 2>Yes, it will take twenty five thousand dollars. He goes down,
<v Speaker 2>it's his own personal checkbook, writes a check for twenty
<v Speaker 2>five thousand dollars, gives it to them, and they start
<v Speaker 2>heading back that direction again so he can get the shot.
<v Speaker 2>You know what happened to that check? Don't check? It
<v Speaker 2>balanced like a baller only money he had from the hunger.
<v Speaker 3>That's exactly where.
<v Speaker 2>Now can we talk about the first scene of the movie. Yes, okay,
<v Speaker 2>so you got Cougar who That guy was real familiar
<v Speaker 2>to me and I looked him up. I think the
<v Speaker 2>only thing that I can recognize him from John Stockwell
<v Speaker 2>is from Christine the Stephen King movie. Yes, he was
<v Speaker 2>kind of the friends slash fullish kind of guy there
<v Speaker 2>in that movie. Do you see My Science Project? No,
<v Speaker 2>he was in that. Okay, well, there you go.
<v Speaker 3>He was also in Losing It with Tom Cruise, right,
<v Speaker 3>one of the first boob movies that Tom Cruise did.
<v Speaker 2>Oh, okay, there you go. I'll check that one out
<v Speaker 2>when we get home. So anyway, Cougar, his character is Cougar,
<v Speaker 2>and he they have this experience with the meg and
<v Speaker 2>he gets freaked out a Lilo cougar.
<v Speaker 3>Pull up cougar.
<v Speaker 2>Most war movies you start off with a death, right,
<v Speaker 2>and Pete Pettigrew talked about that. He's like all of
<v Speaker 2>these other war movies you start off with the death,
<v Speaker 2>and now the main character has got to like, you know,
<v Speaker 2>avenge the death or something like that. Sure, and so
<v Speaker 2>you're watching him come in and that plant I get.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know how they got the pilot to wave
<v Speaker 2>that plane side to side, up and down diagonal like
<v Speaker 2>he was, but I'm like, dude, that guy's going to crash.
<v Speaker 2>He's about to crash into the deck of the aircraft carrier.
<v Speaker 2>Everyone will die. You know that was in the original script, right, Well,
<v Speaker 2>that was what Pete Pettigrew said, You guys shouldn't do this,
<v Speaker 2>and they followed his advice. They're like, all the other
<v Speaker 2>guys do this. Why don't you have something where you
<v Speaker 2>build a relationship with a character so that when he
<v Speaker 2>does die, that you feel it. And so that's why
<v Speaker 2>they changed it.
<v Speaker 3>Was his advice, what you did was an incredibly heroic thing.
<v Speaker 3>What you should have done was land that plane. You
<v Speaker 3>don't own that plane. The taxpayers do, right. I listened
<v Speaker 3>to the commentary on this. Yeah, you got Pete Pettigrew
<v Speaker 3>and Mike mccabb and several other of the pilots right
<v Speaker 3>who were talking, and they all said they knew something
<v Speaker 3>like this happening to somebody that they know, and that
<v Speaker 3>doubt and that second guessing it really will make guys go.
<v Speaker 2>I'm turning into my wings. I'm not going to do
<v Speaker 2>this anymore. Wow, real life. Here's the thing I want
<v Speaker 2>to talk about about. The opening scene.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, so when Jackabbs was talking to all these guys,
<v Speaker 3>He's like, what's the scariest thing you guys do. He's like,
<v Speaker 3>man to man to man said, landing on an aircraft
<v Speaker 3>carrier in the Middy Ocean at night one hundred percent
<v Speaker 3>worst thing. And so he said, oh, that's great. We
<v Speaker 3>got to put that in the script. We got to
<v Speaker 3>find a spot for that. And they kept looking for
<v Speaker 3>that spot. I think it was Jerry Brukhimer said, well,
<v Speaker 3>let's just put it at the beginning. And so that's
<v Speaker 3>why you have that super tense cougar, pull up, pull
<v Speaker 3>up cougar, and uh, you start off that movie with
<v Speaker 3>with such tension of that.
<v Speaker 2>So of course, before all of that happens, you have
<v Speaker 2>the communicating, right, you know, keeping up foreign relations.
<v Speaker 3>You know the bird, you know the finger, Yes, I
<v Speaker 3>know the finger.
<v Speaker 5>Yes.
<v Speaker 3>Love that scene.
<v Speaker 2>Look at the bird, JEZU myself. So, Pettigrew said they
<v Speaker 2>did actually do this type of stuff with when they
<v Speaker 2>would engage with an enemy. You know, he says, if
<v Speaker 2>you're it's a true engagement, you probably are never going
<v Speaker 2>to see the guy if you get hit, right, I mean,
<v Speaker 2>if it's a genuine right we're in a fight. In
<v Speaker 2>the situations where there was a meeting, but it wasn't
<v Speaker 2>like a fight type engagement, they would communicate like they'd
<v Speaker 2>see each other and they just kind of appreciated, Hey,
<v Speaker 2>you know, he's just doing his job. I'm just doing
<v Speaker 2>my job, he said. But we wouldn't like flip each
<v Speaker 2>other off. It'd be like we'd show him playboy pictures
<v Speaker 2>and they'd hold up a bottle of vodka.
<v Speaker 5>You know.
<v Speaker 2>That was that was the exchange that they had between him.
<v Speaker 2>That's pretty funny.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I like that because, well, we're right here. This
<v Speaker 3>is one of my biggest problems.
<v Speaker 2>Okay.
<v Speaker 3>It's a total cowboy move to be in an inverted
<v Speaker 3>negative dive with a make twenty eight. I get it
<v Speaker 3>a meter and a half from an airplane going a
<v Speaker 3>meter and a half eight hundred an hour.
<v Speaker 2>Come on, ludicrous.
<v Speaker 3>Now giving them give pulling up next to him, give
<v Speaker 3>him the finger, no problem.
<v Speaker 2>A meter and a half. No, I'm not No, you
<v Speaker 2>can't do it. Yeah, not buying it. Okay, next scene,
<v Speaker 2>far scene. It's my favorite. Like I told you, I'm
<v Speaker 2>not a big, go fast sports guy, right, sure, So
<v Speaker 2>this movie was good for me. I liked it, but
<v Speaker 2>I didn't go crazy like ninety percent of the guys
<v Speaker 2>my age did for this movie. So what was my
<v Speaker 2>favorite scene for the longest time was She's lost that
<v Speaker 2>love and feeling? I hate it, but she does that. Yeah, oh,
<v Speaker 2>not to show.
<v Speaker 7>But.
<v Speaker 2>Oh that scene is so good.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, there's so many quotes in this movie. When
<v Speaker 3>they walk in the bar and Matreick says, this is
<v Speaker 3>a target rich environment. He said, even you could get
<v Speaker 3>laid in.
<v Speaker 2>A place like this.
<v Speaker 3>But the the you've lost that love and feeling scene?
<v Speaker 3>How so many proms and high schools and summer camps
<v Speaker 3>re enacted that scene and top.
<v Speaker 2>Gun we did it routinely in the classroom of school.
<v Speaker 2>We'd find a girl and we'd all go sing it.
<v Speaker 2>And the place where they went was called the Oak Club.
<v Speaker 2>And up until probably just a year or so before
<v Speaker 2>they started filming the movie, they still had strippers at
<v Speaker 2>the Oak Club. Oh yeah, they one of the officers wives,
<v Speaker 2>you know, probably had enough of that and they were
<v Speaker 2>sent out. But it's a real place where officers.
<v Speaker 3>Where her call sign was wet blanket pilots go right,
<v Speaker 3>and obviously where girls who were interested in dating pilots
<v Speaker 3>go looking for a naval aviator. By the way, you've
<v Speaker 3>lost that love and feeling, sung by Bill Medley.
<v Speaker 2>Who we covered in our Dirty Dancing episode that introduced
<v Speaker 2>Bill Medley to me.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I had never heard the Righteous Brothers. Okay, So
<v Speaker 3>when Dirty Dancing comes along and the song Time of
<v Speaker 3>my Life comes out by Bill Medley.
<v Speaker 2>And Jennifer Warrence, I'm like, hey, it's a guy from
<v Speaker 2>Top Gun. Right.
<v Speaker 7>All right, we have to talk about the volleyball scene.
<v Speaker 2>Okay. So Tony Scott wanted to create a movie that
<v Speaker 2>not only appealed to men, it also appealed to women.
<v Speaker 2>So the way to do that was to have guys
<v Speaker 2>who did awesome stuff like fly fighter jets, but guys
<v Speaker 2>who looked like fashion models. Yeah, And so he had
<v Speaker 2>this book by Bruce Weber that had all of these
<v Speaker 2>black and white shots of different male models in them,
<v Speaker 2>and a few of them looked like Tom Cruise and
<v Speaker 2>there were other guys. He was like, hey, that looks
<v Speaker 2>like Kimra. That's probably how he got cast in that part.
<v Speaker 2>But he wanted to have something that was enticing for
<v Speaker 2>both the men and the women. And the volleyball scene polleyball.
<v Speaker 3>Absolutely, you got the volleyball scene. You got the locker
<v Speaker 3>room scene, which we need to talk about both.
<v Speaker 2>There are no showers for the real top gun students, yes,
<v Speaker 2>there are not. They have locker rooms, yes, but usually
<v Speaker 2>they just they'll leave in their flight clothes and if
<v Speaker 2>they're going to the bar, they change clothes in the
<v Speaker 2>parking lot exactly. It's there are no showers. But that
<v Speaker 2>is pure Hollywood, the locker room scene. Yep. But as
<v Speaker 2>a sports movie you have to have it, and as
<v Speaker 2>a movie that you're wanting to appeal to women, you
<v Speaker 2>have to have it in a situation where guys are
<v Speaker 2>shirtless and wet.
<v Speaker 3>Yes, there's so many funny quotes in that locker room
<v Speaker 3>that I still say today, right m hm. So the
<v Speaker 3>one that cracks me up. It's in the background and
<v Speaker 3>you're the guy in the background, and go five more seconds, wolfman,
<v Speaker 3>I'm coming in. But when Val Kilmer and Maverick lockhorns
<v Speaker 3>in the locker room, you have that really intense stare
<v Speaker 3>down that we need to talk about. He goes, you
<v Speaker 3>two really are cowboys. Maverick turns around says, what's your problem, Kazansky?
<v Speaker 2>Which I say all the time? What's your problem Kazanski? Right?
<v Speaker 3>He says, you're everyone's problem. Every time you go up.
<v Speaker 2>You're unsafe. I don't like you.
<v Speaker 3>Because you're dangerous. That's right, man, I am dangerous. And
<v Speaker 3>then you get the teeth chump, which is a very
<v Speaker 3>ridiculous retort. I don't really understand that it's memorable, but
<v Speaker 3>that whole scene is put there so that you can
<v Speaker 3>have some interaction between the characters and something for the ladies. Now,
<v Speaker 3>then the volleyball scene. There was no volleyball net there.
<v Speaker 4>That afternoon.
<v Speaker 3>They brought in a dump truck full of sand, set
<v Speaker 3>up a volleyball net, told the guys to take off
<v Speaker 3>your shirts and let's look like studs. Tom Cruise is
<v Speaker 3>spiking the volleyball. I'm not sure how that works because
<v Speaker 3>he's five foot six. But the funny part about that
<v Speaker 3>is that Val Kilmer says, if you look at that scene,
<v Speaker 3>he's almost in none of that scene. You can see
<v Speaker 3>his face, he's off to the side.
<v Speaker 2>He's never really featured in it.
<v Speaker 3>And Tony Scott said, sorry, Val, your stuff all got cooked,
<v Speaker 3>which means got overexposed, so you can't use it.
<v Speaker 2>And he's like, man, that's bull crop.
<v Speaker 3>This is the best I've ever looked in my life.
<v Speaker 2>And Tony's guy's like a whole lot of ross, bitch
<v Speaker 2>right well. And then in the locker room scene, Val
<v Speaker 2>didn't know they were going to be shooting that scene
<v Speaker 2>that day and so he, you know, he was his
<v Speaker 2>food or something. Yeah, like, you've been drinking soda and
<v Speaker 2>not worked out in a couple of days. And they're like, oh, hey,
<v Speaker 2>we're shooting more in the locker rooms. What what?
<v Speaker 3>Okay before we tackle the big question. Yeah, I got
<v Speaker 3>one more scene I want to bring up to you. Okay,
<v Speaker 3>there's an elevator scene dropped in the middle of this
<v Speaker 3>movie where Kelly McGillis is wearing a ball capp and
<v Speaker 3>Tom Cruise just got out of a shower.
<v Speaker 2>His hair is wet, but it looks especially long. It
<v Speaker 2>does tell me about that scene. So they had finished
<v Speaker 2>with all of the primary filming of the movie. They
<v Speaker 2>thought they were done, and when they go back and watch,
<v Speaker 2>they're like they haven't built a relationship enough. The audience
<v Speaker 2>who would watch it would be like, I felt like
<v Speaker 2>there should be more between Kelly mcgillis's character and Tom
<v Speaker 2>Cruise's character. It's just like, Okay, well we need to
<v Speaker 2>film more. And so he's let his hair grow out
<v Speaker 2>at this point because he's you know, doing in Color
<v Speaker 2>of Money, Color of Money, which he's got the perm for, right,
<v Speaker 2>remember that, Yes, it's the hustler part too, that's right,
<v Speaker 2>great movie. And she's filming a movie called Made in
<v Speaker 2>Heaven where she has completely dyed her hair and she's
<v Speaker 2>also lost a huge amount of weights.
<v Speaker 3>The same reason why in the love scene it's completely
<v Speaker 3>dark and sort of blue hues and stuff like that.
<v Speaker 3>They're hiding the fact that the actors look totally different
<v Speaker 3>than they did five minues earlier.
<v Speaker 2>The love scene was filmed later.
<v Speaker 3>Really, the love scene and the elevator scene were filmed
<v Speaker 3>in the same day, one day in Chicago.
<v Speaker 2>Wow.
<v Speaker 4>And it was a.
<v Speaker 3>Rush job that literally they had like forty five minutes
<v Speaker 3>to shoot that.
<v Speaker 2>Wow.
<v Speaker 3>So that scene was dropped in the middle. After screening,
<v Speaker 3>audience has said they needed to fluff the love scene
<v Speaker 3>a little bit more.
<v Speaker 2>Wow. All right, good, you blow my mind here.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, all right, I got a big question for you. Okay, really,
<v Speaker 3>this is the biggest question in the movie. Ready, who
<v Speaker 3>is the better pilot, Iceman or Maverick?
<v Speaker 2>Are you asking me who I'd rather go out with?
<v Speaker 3>Do you want him on your side? Who do you
<v Speaker 3>want on your side? You get the first draft pick
<v Speaker 3>who you take it?
<v Speaker 2>It's unquestionably Iceman. You don't want a Maverick as part
<v Speaker 2>of your team. You don't want a guy who's unstable
<v Speaker 2>and reliable, unsafe. He's unsafe. Every time he goes up,
<v Speaker 2>he's dangerous. You called me about this, Yeah, this was
<v Speaker 2>the Walmart call, right, Yeah, you asked me this question.
<v Speaker 2>I said the same thing then. And then I'm listening
<v Speaker 2>to the commentary, and of course Pete Pettigrew says, well,
<v Speaker 2>you know Iceman is the better pilot because you don't
<v Speaker 2>want a Maverick. You want somebody who's going to be
<v Speaker 2>safe and reliable on your side, your wingman. So there
<v Speaker 2>you go, confirmation of your opinion.
<v Speaker 3>I totally agree Iceman is the better pilot. Maverick is talented.
<v Speaker 3>I tell you who I don't want is Hollywood, who
<v Speaker 3>got his butt kicked every time I Jester.
<v Speaker 2>Dido.
<v Speaker 3>Yes did.
<v Speaker 2>Here's another question for you.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, so we've already tackled the Iceman versus Maverick pilot question.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, here's the second question.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, is there any way you would have Maverick going
<v Speaker 3>up attacking MiGs at the end of the movie after
<v Speaker 3>he's demonstrated he's not ready to go back up.
<v Speaker 2>No, Iceman is completely right. And this is another thing
<v Speaker 2>that's completely inaccurate about the movie. So the guys who
<v Speaker 2>were called up to go to Top Gun, they were
<v Speaker 2>the top pilots in their particular squadron. So what happens
<v Speaker 2>was they would go train at Top Gun, and then
<v Speaker 2>when they were done, they would go back and teach
<v Speaker 2>the other pilots the dog fighting tactics that they learned
<v Speaker 2>at Top Gun. There's no situation where the guys at
<v Speaker 2>Top Gun would all go to the same place together.
<v Speaker 2>They wouldn't get their orders at the graduation ceremony or whatever,
<v Speaker 2>and they sure shooting wouldn't make it to the Indian
<v Speaker 2>Ocean in twenty four hours. Right, that's all just ridiculous.
<v Speaker 2>You got to have Iceman and Maverick flying together, and
<v Speaker 2>you have to have that tension of is Maverick going
<v Speaker 2>to lose it like Cougar did or is he going
<v Speaker 2>to come back? Because that's what this movie is all about,
<v Speaker 2>is can a guy get knocked down on his knees?
<v Speaker 2>I mean, this is the this is the definitive naval superhero,
<v Speaker 2>absolutely ego driven top of the I'm the best mentality
<v Speaker 2>who gets knocked down to his core and he comes back.
<v Speaker 3>By the way, something I wanted to mention Don Simpson
<v Speaker 3>had to go to rehab during the middle of filming Top.
<v Speaker 2>Gun and before and after, right, okay, mister.
<v Speaker 3>Cocaine and hookers. Right, But they said he would drive
<v Speaker 3>into the parking lot, like straight from rehab. They say,
<v Speaker 3>would crash the car in the parking lot. He would
<v Speaker 3>just break into a meeting, disrupt the whole thing. Fire,
<v Speaker 3>Everyone say, we're not shooting this bs And they were
<v Speaker 3>like who in the crap is this guy?
<v Speaker 2>And he'd jump back in the car with David Lee Roth.
<v Speaker 2>So Don Simpson a bit of a wild card and
<v Speaker 2>struggling at this moment. It'll be interesting to talk about
<v Speaker 2>the what happened after the movie with him. Yes, okay,
<v Speaker 2>so we've got the movie made. Now it's time for
<v Speaker 2>the soundtrack. One of the greatest soundtracks of all time.
<v Speaker 3>Absolutely, in the eighties, soundtracks were so important, so huge,
<v Speaker 3>and for me, like anytime I want to revisit the
<v Speaker 3>Summer of eighty six, I pop in the Top Gun soundtrack.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it was a huge album on the charts, and
<v Speaker 2>they did a great job. I mean they went and
<v Speaker 2>got Kenny Loggins, yep, who had just done Footloose and
<v Speaker 2>had done Caddyshack, both great songs in the movies. Right, Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>they go and get Harold Faultmeyer, who did Actual f
<v Speaker 2>which I mean, of course they were involved with that movie.
<v Speaker 2>Of course they're going to go get him. And then
<v Speaker 2>they did Giovanni Mordor, who was a multi award winning composer,
<v Speaker 2>did The never Ending Story, I mean, brilliant guy too,
<v Speaker 2>and they put together a incredible rock and roll album.
<v Speaker 3>Here's the story behind this Okay, They put an open
<v Speaker 3>call for artists who want to make rock songs for
<v Speaker 3>the movie. They show the movie to the people. Kenny
<v Speaker 3>Loggins and his people are there and they're watching. He
<v Speaker 3>looks around. He's like, man, there's tons of talent in
<v Speaker 3>this room. So we're gonna pick a scene that nobody
<v Speaker 3>else is gonna go for, and so they chose the
<v Speaker 3>volleyball scene. So they wrote playing with the Boys, which
<v Speaker 3>is classic fun, it's very memorable. So he writes that
<v Speaker 3>the other song, obviously that's super important to the movie
<v Speaker 3>is danger Zone. You know who they had in mind
<v Speaker 3>for danger Zone?
<v Speaker 2>I do because we talked about it in our Toto episode.
<v Speaker 3>The guys from Toto were scheduled to do danger Zone,
<v Speaker 3>which is incredible. They went to him and they said, hey,
<v Speaker 3>we like your singer. We want to get some session
<v Speaker 3>musicians to play instead of you guys, and they were like,
<v Speaker 3>we are a list musicians. What are you talking about? No, no,
<v Speaker 3>thank you, we are out. So Toto called the ball
<v Speaker 3>and said no, we don't have the ball. So at
<v Speaker 3>the last second, I mean, they had talked to Brian Adams,
<v Speaker 3>they had talked to Judas priests, about putting the song in.
<v Speaker 3>They needed somebody to sing danger Zone right, and they
<v Speaker 3>had Kenny Loggins, who was there at that time recording.
<v Speaker 2>Playing with the boys.
<v Speaker 3>So they called Kenny Loggins. They're like, hey, listen, we
<v Speaker 3>got this great song. We got no singer for it,
<v Speaker 3>Kenny Loggins, because I got one question.
<v Speaker 2>Is it up tempo?
<v Speaker 3>He's like, because I needed some up tempo songs for
<v Speaker 3>my concerts, And they said yes it is.
<v Speaker 2>He's like, great on too.
<v Speaker 4>It didn't know anything about it, never heard it.
<v Speaker 3>Said yes, and that is how you get Kenny log
<v Speaker 3>Is doing danger Zone perfect.
<v Speaker 2>It's perfect now. The song itself was written by Giovanni
<v Speaker 2>Moridor YEP, which we talked about YEP, and his writing
<v Speaker 2>partner Tom Whitlock. Okay, yep. Mordor did the music, Whitlock
<v Speaker 2>did the lyrics. Okay. Do you know how these guys met?
<v Speaker 2>He was this mechanic. Yes, Tom Whitlock was working on
<v Speaker 2>Giovanni Moridor's Ferrari and he goes, oh, by the way,
<v Speaker 2>in addition to being a mechanic, I'm also a lyricist.
<v Speaker 2>So if you've ever got a song, you need some
<v Speaker 2>words too. I'm happy I'm your guy bing bang boom
<v Speaker 2>danger Zone.
<v Speaker 3>Oh my gosh, that's amazing.
<v Speaker 2>So on guitar on this one, Yes, we've got Dan
<v Speaker 2>Huff from the band Giant. Yeah, he's the lead singer
<v Speaker 2>from Giant. Yes, and on saxophone. Into the song has
<v Speaker 2>saxophone on it. We have Tom Scott, who also played
<v Speaker 2>saxophone for the Blues Brothers.
<v Speaker 3>By the way, quick shout out for my man from Giant.
<v Speaker 3>He sings one of my favorite songs.
<v Speaker 2>Of all time.
<v Speaker 3>And absolutely I'm gonna fit this yeah song called I'll
<v Speaker 3>See You in My Dreams.
<v Speaker 5>I mean.
<v Speaker 3>Love this song, all right.
<v Speaker 2>I'm glad you got that in there, but I mean
<v Speaker 2>there's no way you can get in there otherwise because
<v Speaker 2>we're ever going to talk about Giant never never, Okay, Okay.
<v Speaker 2>So this song almost made it to number one, got
<v Speaker 2>to number two, kept out by a song that you
<v Speaker 2>probably had bleeding out of your ears in the summer
<v Speaker 2>of nineteen eighty six.
<v Speaker 3>That's true, sledge Hammer. Listen, Sledgehammer's good and the video's cool.
<v Speaker 3>It is not top Gun danger Zone.
<v Speaker 2>It was because of the video that that song received
<v Speaker 2>the attention that it did. And it's catchy but it
<v Speaker 2>it is obnoxiously catchy, obnoxiously in your ear.
<v Speaker 3>It's an earworm.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>The next thing we got to talk about is the
<v Speaker 3>song take My Breath Away.
<v Speaker 2>It is absolutely This was also by Mordoor and whitlock Yep,
<v Speaker 2>they had another person who sang it first. The band
<v Speaker 2>was called the Motels, Yeah, the Botells, and they recorded
<v Speaker 2>a version of it, but ultimately they decided, hey, you know,
<v Speaker 2>Berlin had us hit with us no more words, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>and great song and the girl's hot. Okay, stop the
<v Speaker 2>presses right there? Who's that all? Right?
<v Speaker 3>Rank the Top Gun babes because there's only three women
<v Speaker 3>involved in Top Gun basically Kelly McGillis, Meg Ryan, Terry Nunn.
<v Speaker 2>So Terry. It's interesting because Terry Nunn and the stuff
<v Speaker 2>that I saw, she was like really envious of Kelly
<v Speaker 2>McGillis in this movie because she's getting to get down
<v Speaker 2>and get dirty with Tom Cruise. It looked pretty nice, dude.
<v Speaker 2>Terry Nunn still good looking at sixty two, guys, she's
<v Speaker 2>still good looking. She is a major babe and still
<v Speaker 2>looks great. Ye, I mean and in the eighties, whoa yeah, yeah, yeah.
<v Speaker 3>The interesting thing about Berlin Terry Nunn is beautiful and
<v Speaker 3>she's got a killer voice. But they were known as
<v Speaker 3>kind of a synth pop band, true, and so this
<v Speaker 3>didn't really fit their style. And so her partner in
<v Speaker 3>the band, John Crawford, right, was like, this is not Berlin,
<v Speaker 3>this is not us, this is not our sound. We
<v Speaker 3>didn't write this, we didn't perform this, this is not us. Right,
<v Speaker 3>and now the mega success of this song, we got
<v Speaker 3>to play it every single concert.
<v Speaker 2>This is bull crap.
<v Speaker 3>And that song ultimately caused the Riff to split the band.
<v Speaker 3>That is why you don't have Berlin anymore.
<v Speaker 2>It's tragic. Song went number one in September of eighty six. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>To me, there's four songs that we really got to
<v Speaker 2>talk about this. We've hit two. The other one is
<v Speaker 2>Heaven in Your Eyes by lover Boy. It's good, which
<v Speaker 2>is interesting. Mike Rono. Obviously also in the Footloose soundtrack
<v Speaker 2>with Kenny Loggins almost Paradise, Yeah, yeah, yep, great song. Yes.
<v Speaker 2>And then of course the top Gun anthem. So Harold Faltemeyer,
<v Speaker 2>who had done axel f comes along and they're like, hey,
<v Speaker 2>we need a song that is like an anthem, but
<v Speaker 2>also kicks butt and he delivered in space.
<v Speaker 3>So they're at dinner with Harold Baltimore and Jerry brock
<v Speaker 3>Khmer's like, Okay, we need this anthem and it needs
<v Speaker 3>to be heroic.
<v Speaker 2>And awesome and inspiring. And Harold Feltimar is like, well,
<v Speaker 2>I've been kind of working on something.
<v Speaker 3>I think I've got it, and Jerry Bruckherber was like,
<v Speaker 3>I'd like.
<v Speaker 5>To hear it.
<v Speaker 3>And he's like, oh, okay, well, you know, i'll run
<v Speaker 3>it over next week or whatever.
<v Speaker 2>He's like, no, like right now.
<v Speaker 3>Carl Faltimore is like when I said that, I didn't
<v Speaker 3>really have anything ready, and so Jerry Bruckhermer was like, no,
<v Speaker 3>I'm coming over right now, like let's go, and Harrold
<v Speaker 3>Faltimore is like, I'm gonna get a head start on you.
<v Speaker 2>Put your fork down. Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>So he raced home and started kind of doing stuff,
<v Speaker 3>you know, and the next thing you know, bruck Himer's
<v Speaker 3>over there and he plays this thing for him and
<v Speaker 3>they're like this is great and he's like huh yeah,
<v Speaker 3>and of course it is great.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it turns out and who's playing guitar? Steve Stevens
<v Speaker 2>from Billy Aisles YEP. Steve Stevens from Billie Idol and
<v Speaker 2>Dirty Diana and all sorts of other acts that he's
<v Speaker 2>been with.
<v Speaker 3>But yeah, which is interesting because one of the connections
<v Speaker 3>I heard was they said before the Top Gun pilots
<v Speaker 3>would actually fly, the original guys, the actual Top Gun pilots,
<v Speaker 3>they would all listen to Billie Idol.
<v Speaker 2>Nice. How about that? That's good?
<v Speaker 3>Okay, Hey, one more song, two more songs. We got
<v Speaker 3>to talk out real quick. I'm gonna throw some love
<v Speaker 3>at the cheap trick song called Mighty Wings.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, I love it.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, A fantastic song they play while they're dog fighting.
<v Speaker 2>I love it. It was the only single that was
<v Speaker 2>released that didn't end up charting. But I'm glad you
<v Speaker 2>like it. I can't.
<v Speaker 3>I can't believe it. The other song we need to
<v Speaker 3>talk about is Great Balls of Fire. How in the
<v Speaker 3>world is that not on the soundtrack?
<v Speaker 2>Well? They it ended up being on the special edition
<v Speaker 2>in ninety nine, thirteen years after the movie. Yeah, thirteen
<v Speaker 2>years after the movie. You had that one you had
<v Speaker 2>sitting on the dock of the bay, and you've lost
<v Speaker 2>that love and feeling of course, right, that was the
<v Speaker 2>one that I was like, why isn't this one on there?
<v Speaker 2>But obviously we know it's pretty tricky to get songs
<v Speaker 2>on a soundtrack. It is. And if the basis of
<v Speaker 2>your song is, hey, I was listening to the Raid
<v Speaker 2>on the way over and we're going to have you
<v Speaker 2>sing this song, you probably haven't done a lot of
<v Speaker 2>preparation with, you know, Jerry Lee Lewis or the Righteous
<v Speaker 2>Brothers or whatever. Right, that's true, that's true.
<v Speaker 3>Interesting connection to Meg Ryan, Top Gun, Great Balls of Fire. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>Dennis Quaid plays Jerry Lee Lewis in a movie two
<v Speaker 3>years later, right, Mary's Meg Ryan.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, so there there you go. It all comes full circle. Yep.
<v Speaker 2>Before we leave on the music, throw back to that
<v Speaker 2>beautiful transition that we talked about. So the top Gun
<v Speaker 2>Anthem without the heavy guitar, and it is what you
<v Speaker 2>hear at the beginning, when you're seeing all of the
<v Speaker 2>guys on the aircraft carrier deck prep in the planes,
<v Speaker 2>pilots getting in the planes, all of that sunset. It's beautiful,
<v Speaker 2>it's incredible, and then finally the plane pulls the throttle,
<v Speaker 2>the jets light up, and you transition out of the
<v Speaker 2>top Top Gun Anthem right into danger. Zone and it
<v Speaker 2>blows your frickin' doors off, as you like to say.
<v Speaker 3>Oh my gosh, yes, my skirt is flying way off
<v Speaker 3>at that moment, that, at that moment of me and
<v Speaker 3>about a million other teenagers decide they want to be
<v Speaker 3>naval aviators exactly. Speaking of the Navy received a five
<v Speaker 3>hundred percent increase in people applying to be naval aviators
<v Speaker 3>after this movie. Yep, it was so much that they
<v Speaker 3>actually put naval recruitment stations outside the theater, the movie theater.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, well, might as well cut them off the pass, right,
<v Speaker 2>get them all. They're hot, that's right, all right. So
<v Speaker 2>just a couple of tidbits for you.
<v Speaker 3>The real Top Gun School, Yeah, institute's a five dollars
<v Speaker 3>fine for every quote of the movie Top Gun that
<v Speaker 3>you say, I am telling you twenty bucks.
<v Speaker 2>I'm in for the day.
<v Speaker 3>I would walk in. I'd be like Gushi, big stud.
<v Speaker 2>There's five.
<v Speaker 3>Oh my gosh, start a tab. And here's one that
<v Speaker 3>always stuck with me. When Maverick lands on the aircraft carrier.
<v Speaker 3>I've seen this movie thousand times, right, the guy in
<v Speaker 3>the tower, as Maverick called the ball. Maverick says Roger
<v Speaker 3>Maverick has the ball, and you get the idea that
<v Speaker 3>each guy knows what they're doing. But what that actually
<v Speaker 3>means is do you see the light up marker? And
<v Speaker 3>Maverick's reply is yes, I see it. Basically, do you
<v Speaker 3>see the aircraft carrier?
<v Speaker 2>Yes? I do, I see it, and I'm in control. Gotcha,
<v Speaker 2>Roger Maverick has the ball, right, all right, So let
<v Speaker 2>me ask you this question. You're ready, Yeah, most quoted
<v Speaker 2>line from this movie for you and your household talk
<v Speaker 2>to me goose. Okay, I say that all the time.
<v Speaker 2>Mine is negative ghost writer matters because my kids are
<v Speaker 2>always asking me for stuff and I'm like negative ghost writer.
<v Speaker 2>The pattern is.
<v Speaker 3>Fall whenever somebody comes up to me in my household
<v Speaker 3>and they're like that could ask you a question, I'm like,
<v Speaker 3>talk to my goose. Of course, my wife says, Jason,
<v Speaker 3>your big stud take me to bet and lose me forever.
<v Speaker 2>Uh huh, I wish.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, guys, we're gonna take a quick break and we're
<v Speaker 3>gonna have our shirly showcase this week. It's from one
<v Speaker 3>of my oldest friends of the entire world, Chris Alexander.
<v Speaker 3>Chris is a Patreo member. He's one of my best friends.
<v Speaker 3>So let's hear what Chris has to say about Top Gun.
<v Speaker 8>Everyone from the Shirley podcast. This is Chris Alexander. I'm
<v Speaker 8>from touls Oklahoma. Just wanted to say thanks to Jason
<v Speaker 8>D for doing the Shreley you Can't Be Serious podcasts.
<v Speaker 8>Love it, love it all, and thanks for giving me
<v Speaker 8>this chance to be part of the Shirley Spotlight. So
<v Speaker 8>let's get this started. I feel the need, the need
<v Speaker 8>for speed. I was twelve years old in May of
<v Speaker 8>nineteen eighty six when Top Gun was released. I was
<v Speaker 8>already obsessed with airplanes and especially in military aviation. Movie
<v Speaker 8>could not have started off any better. The opening scene
<v Speaker 8>is simply awesome. Visuals of the F fourteens and eight
<v Speaker 8>sixes and eighty sevens moving around on the flight deck
<v Speaker 8>of the aircraft carrier and all the deckhands, steam clouds
<v Speaker 8>from the cattibolts flying by. It was just amazing. Not
<v Speaker 8>to mention the music and how it builds up until
<v Speaker 8>the first launch of the Tomcat in full after burner,
<v Speaker 8>just as the electric guitar and drums kick in.
<v Speaker 2>It was just epic.
<v Speaker 8>I am positive that no matter what happened in the
<v Speaker 8>movie after that, it wouldn't have mattered. That opening was
<v Speaker 8>just that good. Luckily, the rest of the movie was
<v Speaker 8>great as well. So many iconic moments in the movie
<v Speaker 8>that remaining today's lexicon. All the one liners. You know
<v Speaker 8>it's classified. I could tell you, but then I'd have
<v Speaker 8>to kill you. Yes, goose, I know the finger sera.
<v Speaker 8>I hate it when it does that. Hey, mav, you
<v Speaker 8>got the number for that truck driving school slider you
<v Speaker 8>stink you never leave your wing man. And let's not
<v Speaker 8>forget the high low five of the sand volleyball pit.
<v Speaker 8>All those things were just immediately added to the slang
<v Speaker 8>across the world. Heck, I still say some of that
<v Speaker 8>stuff today. Overall, the flying and dog fighting scenes were great,
<v Speaker 8>the actors were great, the music was top notch. I
<v Speaker 8>don't think anyone could have done a better job. Top
<v Speaker 8>Gun two really has some pretty big shoes to fill,
<v Speaker 8>and I'm looking forward to seeing it seeing how it
<v Speaker 8>stacks up. Thanks again go to Jason and d and
<v Speaker 8>especially to Cougar for turning in his wings. Anyone seeing
<v Speaker 8>aircraft carrier around here? And oh, by the way, another
<v Speaker 8>reason I know this movie was great because I'm one
<v Speaker 8>of those guys that fell prey to the best Navy
<v Speaker 8>recruiting tool ever created. I spent twenty years flying in
<v Speaker 8>the Navy. Thanks Top Gun.
<v Speaker 5>Okay, there you go, Chris.
<v Speaker 3>I knew you were gonna have that opinion number one,
<v Speaker 3>because back in eighty six we probably saw this movie
<v Speaker 3>ten times together in the theater. Chris, Thank you for
<v Speaker 3>your service, thank you for your friendship, thank you for
<v Speaker 3>your patronage, and thank you for your shirly showcase.
<v Speaker 2>All right, we ready you talk reception? Yes quickly, Yes,
<v Speaker 2>let's okay.
<v Speaker 3>This was the number one movie of nineteen eighty six,
<v Speaker 3>number one, number one, number one, number one, number one
<v Speaker 3>by a mile. This beat Crocodile Dundee at number two
<v Speaker 3>and Platoon at number three.
<v Speaker 2>That's freaking incredible.
<v Speaker 3>And I know with me and my friends, anytime we
<v Speaker 3>got bored, we wrote our back to the movie theater
<v Speaker 3>watch Top Gun. That's all we did all summer of
<v Speaker 3>eighty six. This movie basically is credited with starting the
<v Speaker 3>home video industry.
<v Speaker 2>Can see that.
<v Speaker 3>Because VHS tapes before this were like one hundred bucks,
<v Speaker 3>oh wow, and they were only sold basically to video stores.
<v Speaker 3>Right when Top Gun came out on VHS is twenty
<v Speaker 3>five bucks.
<v Speaker 2>This is how Vestron made all of its money so
<v Speaker 2>that it could go on to produce sturdy dances.
<v Speaker 4>There you go.
<v Speaker 3>How about that good job, nice Tian right there?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that is not actually correct. I was just joking.
<v Speaker 3>Top Gun is the tenth highest grossing movie of the
<v Speaker 3>nineteen eighties.
<v Speaker 2>So this created the true Simpson Bruckheimer combo that went
<v Speaker 2>on to blow the doors off of all movie theaters
<v Speaker 2>for the next twelve years. Sure, as we've mentioned, Don
<v Speaker 2>Simpson was a bit of a wild card. Yes he was.
<v Speaker 2>He's a bit of maverick if you will. He was
<v Speaker 2>a maverick. And so I mentioned earlier, we would have
<v Speaker 2>a story about a naked rehab doctor. Let's found dead
<v Speaker 2>of a drug overdose in Don Simpson's poolhouse. This is true.
<v Speaker 2>So Don Simpson's behavior got worse and worse and worse.
<v Speaker 2>And these guys initially were known for guys who could
<v Speaker 2>take a fourteen million dollar budget movie and turn it
<v Speaker 2>into you know, hundreds of millions in revenue, which is huge.
<v Speaker 2>And then Days of Thunder happened and it was like, oh,
<v Speaker 2>maybe these guys aren't as gold as we thought sure,
<v Speaker 2>and so as that as things continued to escalate, his
<v Speaker 2>erratic behavior did as well. His drug use did as well.
<v Speaker 2>And he would go to this place called Canyon Ranch,
<v Speaker 2>which was supposed to be for rehab purposes, but probably
<v Speaker 2>it's just where he was getting plastic surgery. He denied
<v Speaker 2>getting plastic surgery, but good information is he probably had
<v Speaker 2>about ten different ones, including a penis enlargement.
<v Speaker 3>There you go, folks, where are you going to get this?
<v Speaker 2>And so his behavior was getting more and more out
<v Speaker 2>of control, and people with Jerry Bruckheimer, who was married
<v Speaker 2>Don Simpson was never married with him, including Jerry Bruckheimer's wife,
<v Speaker 2>was like, you got to end this. This guy's out
<v Speaker 2>of control. He's going to bring you down with him.
<v Speaker 2>And so at some point he's like, hey, I'm going
<v Speaker 2>to have my own private rehab guy come in here
<v Speaker 2>and help me out my own private rehabit. And so
<v Speaker 2>he brings in this guy named doctor Steven Amherman, who
<v Speaker 2>is a very sketchy rehab doctor, and his rehab is really,
<v Speaker 2>let's do different drugs to get off the drugs that
<v Speaker 2>you're on right now. Sure, and he ends up dying
<v Speaker 2>in the shower at Don Simpson's poolhouse, and so that
<v Speaker 2>news comes out and Jerry Brookheimer is like, Okay, we're done.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, we've got dead naked doctors in your poolhouse.
<v Speaker 2>I can't keep working with you. So it's the end
<v Speaker 2>of this Mammoth production team. And a month later, Simpson
<v Speaker 2>thinks he's getting back together. He's talked to a few folks,
<v Speaker 2>he's going into rehab again, doing some work. Has a
<v Speaker 2>guy call him, a guy named James Tobak who he's
<v Speaker 2>talking to him about this script idea he has called
<v Speaker 2>Harvard Man. Okay, that involves a guy who goes to
<v Speaker 2>Harvard and then gets involved in sex and drugs and
<v Speaker 2>it totally ruins his career, which is an interesting thing
<v Speaker 2>to talk to Don Hickson about, right sure. And so
<v Speaker 2>they talk like five hours straight about the script, and
<v Speaker 2>at the end of the conversation Don Simpson is like,
<v Speaker 2>I'm pretty sure I can get this movie green lit
<v Speaker 2>by tomorrow at five pm. While the problem is that
<v Speaker 2>the next day they come in Don Simpson is dead
<v Speaker 2>less than two months after he and Bruckheimer and part ways.
<v Speaker 2>And he's fairly young guy, right, yeah, fifty two years old,
<v Speaker 2>not an old guy at all but lived hard. Now
<v Speaker 2>with that happy note. Next week, we're coming in with
<v Speaker 2>Top Gun Maverick, the stories behind the making of the
<v Speaker 2>movie and our take on how good it is.
<v Speaker 3>Come back next week as we dive into Top Gun Maverick.
<v Speaker 3>I can't wait to see this movie with u D.
<v Speaker 3>It's gonna be awesome.
<v Speaker 2>Be sure and hit the follow button on your podcast
<v Speaker 2>app so that you will get that episode as soon
<v Speaker 2>as it comes out. Check out our Patreon page and
<v Speaker 2>if you are so inclined, please leave us a five
<v Speaker 2>star review. And if you would like to put in
<v Speaker 2>a rating that says she's lost that loving feeling or
<v Speaker 2>you've entered the danger zoner, any quote that would cost
<v Speaker 2>you five dollars in the Navy will enter you into
<v Speaker 2>a contest to win a special prize yet to be announced.
<v Speaker 3>Thanks guys, we'll see you here next week. Hit the
<v Speaker 3>brakes fly right by Summer. By the way, I'm just
<v Speaker 3>going to interrupt you for a second. Is there a
<v Speaker 3>worse name in the entire world than Dick Richard's