Risky Business Movie

Check out the exclusive TVGuide.com movie review and see our movie rating for Risky Business. As written and directed by Mr. Brickman, 'Risky Business' is part satire, part. This sequence begins the movie, and it seems to be rendered.

On this day, his parents sit their four children down – Marian, Lee Anne, Tom and Cass – and tell them what Tom has suspected all along: their marriage is breaking up. Around the room, the flow of tears is uncontrollable.

It was, Tom would remember, like someone had died.Later Tom’s father takes him outside to hit a few baseballs. But how can he forget what’s just taken place? Tom cries so hard that he can’t even breathe. His father is leaving – this time for good – and one great fear echoes through his mind: What’s going to happen to us now?

What next?An Ashen Jerry Lee Lewis, looking like he’s just back from a stop at the embalmer’s, is belting a surprisingly vital “Great Balls of Fire” onstage at the Lone Star Cafe in New York – while, who does his own yelping version of the tune in his new movie, Top Gun, bobs appreciatively to the beat in the packed balcony. Once the set’s over, Cruise quickly retreats to an out-of-the-way table and nurses a Diet Coke. Though he’s unfailingly genial and polite, he’s not much for crowds. Besides, it’s eleven, and he’s got a big day tomorrow – Good Morning America, a photo session, that sort of thing – so maybe he’d best be moseying along.

“Hey, Tom,” interjects a club official. “You’re looking pretty inconspicuous back here.

Wanna see the iguana?” (The roof of the club is dominated by a sculpture of an iguana.)“Let’s do it,” Tom says, leaping up from the table and bounding up the stairs. He’s three inches shy of six feet but prodigiously muscular, thanks to a rugged training program and more than the usual quotient of self-discipline. His crisp good looks – jet-black hair and bushy eyebrows cutting across a wide, open face – are accentuated by his everyday attire: bomber jacket, T-shirt, black jeans and boots, which take the stairs three at a time. A small crowd dribbles out of the dressing rooms that open onto the roof and starts to flock around Cruise.

He accepts a host of how-are-yas and then is asked, Would you pose for a picture with the iguana? Coke glass still in hand, he climbs up the struts that support the iguana, jumps onto a small ledge, turns and – omigod! – falls face forward onto the roof, about five feet down, landing with a gruesomely vivid thud.Suddenly, a dozen hands are on him, pulling him back up to his feet, asking him how he is.

He’s shaken, but intact – “I’m all right, I’m all right” – but you sense that what he mostly needs is to be outta here, so it’s down the stairs and out on the street and. “Hey, Tom, willya sign this, please?”Well, sure, he will.“Thanks. My daughter really loved you dancing to that Bob Seger thing.”Right, the Bob Seger thing. Ron Reagan Jr. Parodied it on Saturday Night Live. Campbell’s soup ripped it off for a commercial. It started as one line in Paul Brickman’s Risky Business script: “Joel dances in underwear through the house.” But when Cruise’s Joel Goodsen cranked up the stereo and slid out in a button-down shirt and B.V.D.’s to Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock & Roll,” he kicked off a memorable one-minute sequence of sexy air-guitar strutting and mock-macho hilarity that endeared Cruise to film audiences.

An uncommonly stylish loss-of-virginity movie, Risky Business made $65 million in the theaters. It was equally popular on cable, and its witty takes on entrepreneurship and getting into Princeton made it the Easy Rider of the MTV generation. After his next starring role, in All the Right Moves, Cruise was that much more able to write his own ticket in the movies – at an estimated price of $1 million per picture.

Instead, he disappeared in ’84 and ’85. What happened?In a word: Legend. Director Ridley Scott’s rococo fairy tale kept Cruise in London for what turned out to be more than a year, playing – yuck – Jack of the Green, a long-haired agent of goodness possessing all the emotional depth of Luke Skywalker; Cruise himself characterized his role as “another color in a Ridley Scott painting.” The film’s considerable production difficulties were dramatically augmented midway through when its set was destroyed by fire, but it was finally given a U.S. Release in April.

It took a year out of Cruise’s life, and eighty-nine minutes out of its audience’s.So it was clear enough, right? Legend was just one of those mistakes that an actor can make – “I’ll never want to do another picture like that again,” says Tom – and Top Gun was just the thing to put him on track again: a high-flying saga of elite navy fighter pilots.

It might not be a movie for the critics – who are likely to be troubled by the film’s go-get-’em attitude toward foreign aircraft – but provided Sly Stallone’s Cobra doesn’t bazooka it out of the box office, Top Gun is poised to make itself a fair piece of change this summer. Simple, right?Well, surely not. It was hard for Cruise to explain, but the year he spent in London making Legend was really important to him. The isolation of the set, the disruption of his personal life, even the profound innocence of the character he played – each of these seemed to rekindle some of the pain and fear of his childhood and enabled him to develop new strength. He learned to be patient: not to worry if something didn’t get done that day, or that month, or this year.

He found out how to ask the same questions that he asked when his father left – What’s going to happen to us now? – and be filled not with horror but with hope. He now had the ability to say goodbye to something precious – a romance, a career opportunity, even a parent – and come out of it stronger. It was all a little hard to convey, you know? So maybe it wasn’t time to go home after all. Maybe it was time to take a long walk uptown and talk it through.Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, the producers of Beverly Hills Cop, were first drawn to the Top Gun project after they saw a story in California magazine on the elite flying school at San Diego’s Miramar Naval Air Station. “These guys were rock & rollers in the sky,” says Bruckheimer.

“They looked like American Stings: these guys with these shocks of blond and black hair, with nicknames like Yogi and Possum and Radar. And it was all real.” And casting the lead was a cinch, according to Bruckheimer. “From the first time we went down to Miramar – even before the script was written – we said, ‘These guys are Tom Cruises.' ”The pair went to the Pentagon and obtained the full cooperation of the navy.

A script was commissioned and sent to Cruise, still hanging in there with Legend.“I liked it,” Cruise recalls, “but it needed a lot of work. I was worried.” After a meeting with Simpson and Bruckheimer, though, he was more encouraged.

“They seemed like they had that fighter-pilot spirit – the top gun, the best of the best.”Cruise made an unusual offer to the pair: he wanted to work on the script with them before deciding to commit to the project. “I said, ‘After two months, if I don’t want to do it, the script’s gonna be in good enough shape, and you’ll have more of a sense of what you want to do. And there are other actors.’ I think they were kind of taken aback at first, but after coming off Legend, I just wanted to make sure that everything was gonna go the way we talked about it.”Simpson and Bruckheimer agreed to the deal, and today Simpson has nothing but raves for Cruise. “He was terrific,” says Simpson. “Tom would show up at my house, grab a beer, and we’d work five or six hours on the script. Sometimes we’d act scenes out.

The guy doesn’t see things from just a couple perspectives – he can really wrap his arms around something and see it from all angles. We had a lot of fun.”.

Cruise headed off to Miramar to study and fly with the pilots – “These guys took one look at me and they said, ‘We are going to kick your ass‘” – and spent a lot of time working on the script. One of the problems was Cruise’s love interest, played by Kelly McGillis. Originally, the character was to be a gymnast, but everyone agreed that she should be more integral to the pilots’ world – hence she became an instructor at the school.But the key problem was Cruise’s character: Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, a spiky-haired rogue whose antics are too reckless for his fellow flying aces. From the beginning, the role showcased Cruise’s ineluctable energy and, at least occasionally, his handsome face (the flyers wear masks for much of the film). The chief worry was the asshole factor – how could Maverick be ultracompetitive and still be likable? Toward that end, Cruise and company created scenes in which Maverick reveals his self-doubts to his flying buddy.

And a subtext for Maverick’s actions was established – his need to prove himself and to discover something about his father, lost mysteriously on a mission over Southeast Asia in the Sixties.A guy who’s lost his father? Yes, Tom Cruise could portray that.What Tom Cruise wants right now is some ice cream, only it’s not so easy to find at this late hour, even in Greenwich Village.

He walks up to one stand that’s just closed, waving a dollar bill at the people cleaning up inside. “Look!” he yells to them, a big smile on his face. “I have money.” But it’s no-go.Finally, he tracks down a Haagen-Dazs, gets a coffee-chip cone, and we start to trek toward his uptown hotel.Though it’s been months since filming wrapped on Top Gun, he’s still charged up over the experience.

“I felt total support from Simpson and Bruckheimer that whatever wasn’t right, we were going to make right,” says Cruise. “No matter if they had to lie, cheat and steal Paramount out of the money, it was going to get done.”And what of his involvement with the structure of the film’s story – specifically of the details about the family?

Cruise pauses for a moment. “Well, obviously, my father wasn’t a fighter pilot and he didn’t die a hero, but I think a lot of the gut-level, emotional stuff – the love of the father and the conflict in that – is in there. And the love of my mother, also.”. His father, Thomas Cruise Mapother III, was an electrical engineer, something of an inventor, born in Kentucky and a graduate of the University of Louisville. His mother, Mary Lee, was a vivacious, outgoing, religious woman who was a talented actress.

“I was always interested in theater, but I never did anything with it,” she recalls. “When I was growing up, if you went to Hollywood, that was really risque. I would have lost my religion, my morals, all those things that young girls thought of back then.”Thomas and Mary Lee had four children: Tom, their third, was born in Syracuse, New York, on July 3rd, 1962. The family moved to a handful of cities, wherever Dad’s job took him. Once settled in, Mary Lee would find a way to get involved with a local theater group. And according to her, young Tom showed an early theatrical aptitude.

“He used to create skits and imitate Donald Duck and Woody Woodpecker and W.C. Fields when he was just a tiny tot.

I guess I was his greatest audience. He had it in him then. But as he got older, he was more into sports, and it stopped completely.”For Tom, sports provided an outlet for his natural aggressiveness, gave him a good way to make friends quickly in a new town and lent him some self-esteem – esteem he didn’t usually get in the classroom because of his dyslexia. He began at an early age with baseball, and when the family moved to Canada, his father noticed that, by golly, Tom could skate backward as well as those Canadian boys who’d been doing it all their lives. Here, also, Mary Lee – with a little help from Thomas III – helped to found an amateur theater group in an Ottawa neighborhood.But their family bliss was short-lived; Mary Lee refers to the divorce today only as “a time of growing, a time of conflict.” It was also a time of poverty. With precious little income, she and the children returned to Louisville and tried to start their lives again. “You know, women have dreams of having careers and being whatever,” Mary Lee says.

“I had a dream of raising children and enjoying them and having a good family life.”. Mary Lee worked a series of jobs to keep the family afloat: hosting electrical conventions, selling appliances, anything. One Christmas there was no money to buy gifts, so the family wrote poems to one another and read them out loud.Tom’s involvement in athletics continued.

He played hockey over the Kentucky border in Indiana, with kids older and bigger than he. “He was so fast they couldn’t keep up with him,” remembers Mary Lee. “One guy finally got so exasperated that he picked Tom up by the scruff of the neck and the seat of his pants and moved him outside the boundary. I laughed!“Tom pitched in financially with his paper route – occasionally swiping Mom’s car for the purpose – and helped out in other ways, too.

‘Every night I’d come home, bathe my feet and sit in the family room, and Tom would massage my feet for a half-hour,” recalls Mary Lee. “This went on for six weeks, then Easter came and went, and the Monday after Easter I came home from work expecting the same treatment. And he said, ‘Hey Mom – Lent’s over.' ”“After a divorce, you feel so vulnerable,” says Tom, tossing his icec ream cone away as he crosses Fourteenth Street.

“And traveling the way I did, you’re closed off a lot from people. I didn’t express a lot to people where I moved. They didn’t have the childhood I had, and I didn’t feel like they’d understand me. I was always warming up, getting acquainted with everyone.

I went through a period, after the divorce, of really wanting to be accepted, wanting love and attention from people. But I never really seemed to fit in anywhere.”School became a horror show of close-minded teachers and rigid cliques, a place to do time as painlessly as possible. “I remember walking to school one time with my sisters and saying, ‘Let’s just get through this. If we can just get through this somehow.

‘“I look back upon high school and grade school and I would never want to go back there. Not in a million years.”Mary Lee met Jack at an electronics convention; Jack worked in plastics. They got married when Tom was sixteen. “In the beginning, I felt threatened by my stepfather,” Tom remembers.

“There’s a part of you that’s in love with your mother. But he is such a wise, smart man. He loved my mother so much that he took us all in, four young people. We’d bet on football games, and he was a terrible bettor, so I’d make lots of money.”. The family settled down in Glen Ridge, New Jersey.

By senior year, though, Tom was still unfocused; after graduation, he planned to travel for a few years before entertaining any thoughts of college. When a knee injury terminated his varsity wrestling career in the winter, there seemed little to look forward to.He’d never been great at anything, not even athletics: he was hyperenergetic to compensate for his lack of skill and tended to flit from sport to sport. He would tell himself, “If I could just focus in and do something, I know I’ve got the energy and creativity to be great.” Then, on the advice of his glee-club instructor, Tom decided to audition for his high school’s production of the musical Guys and Dolls and nabbed the leading role of Nathan Detroit.Mary Lee still remembers opening night. “I can’t describe the feeling that was there. It was just an incredible experience to see what we felt was a lot of talent coming forth all of a sudden. It had been dormant for so many years – not thought of or talked about or discussed in any way.

Then to see him on that stage. “But the bigger surprise was yet to come.

“After the show,” says Mary Lee, “Tom came home and said he wanted to have a talk with my husband and me. He asked for ten years to give show business a try. Meanwhile, my husband’s thinking, ‘What’s this gonna cost me? Ten years of what?‘” She howls with laughter. “It’s kind of a joke in the family. Sort of a joke and not a joke. At any rate, Tom said, ‘Let me see.

I really feel that this is what I want to do.’ And we both wholeheartedly agreed, because we both felt it was a God-given talent, and he should explore it because he was so enthused about it. So to make a long story short, we gave him our blessing – and the rest is history.”Tom skipped his graduation, shortened his name and moved to New York City. Cruise tore into the struggling performer’s life: busing tables by night, hustling to auditions by day, catching workshops at the Neighborhood Playhouse when time permitted.He may have been raw, but he was handsome, and those who saw him then recall an urgency in his performing that was hard to dismiss. Within five months of moving to New York, Cruise bagged a small role in the film Endless Love.

Before a year had passed, Cruise had fired his manager – “She had me doing errands for her” – and had been cast in a minor part in Taps. Cruise was to play a sidekick of the hotheaded military cadet David Shawn. But the actor playing Shawn wasn’t hitting on all cylinders.

“Cruise was so strong that the other guy didn’t have a chance,” remembers Sean Penn, who costarred with Timothy Hutton in the film. “Very intense, 200 percent there. It was overpowering – and we’d all kind of laugh, because it was so sincere. Good acting, but so far in the intense direction that it was funny.”Director Harold Becker offered the role of Shawn to Cruise, who reacted with horror. “Tom told the producer, ‘If this isn’t all right with the other actor, I don’t want to do it,'” says Penn. “To the end he was like that. He really was a total innocent.

Talk to Hutton, he’ll tell you the same thing.” His naivete about the film business soon cost him, in the form of Losin’ It, a first-time-in-Tijuana teen titillater that he starred in with an equally embarrassed Shelley Long. “That’s an important film for me,” says Tom.

“I can look at it and say, Thank God I’ve grown.’ I thought anyone could make a great movie, all you had to do was just knock yourself out. I didn’t know anything about anything.”By this time, Cruise had met agent Paula Wagner and outlined his career plans to her: to grow as an artist, to work with the best people and not to care about money. She took him on – and he went on to do The Outsiders, with Francis Ford Coppola at the helm.And that’s where Cruise – who had already distinguished himself by mooning the camera during Losin’ It and sawing up lawns in a jeep during Taps – made a real name for himself as a prankster. He scrawled “Helter Skelter” onto Diane Lane’s hotel mirror and smeared honey on her toilet seat. For which he was rewarded with a bag of guess-what on his doorknob, courtesy of Emilio Estevez.And then came Risky Business. and then came everything else. At twenty-one, Tom Cruise was a movie star.Penn recalls a night out with Cruise at a New York club after Risky Business was released.

“The group of people we were with was amazing, you know? De Niro, Mickey Rourke, Joe Pesci. All these girls were coming over. And this really pretty girl came up to Tommy and started talking to him. And he realized that she wanted him for his body. And he screamed at her, ‘I have a girlfriend I’m in love with!’ And the girl said, ‘You should have told me that five minutes ago!'

That girlfriend was his Risky Business costar, Rebecca De Mornay. Despite their incendiary love scenes, they didn’t start dating until after the film’s release in late summer of 1983.In the first months of their relationship, De Mornay, also twenty-one, noted that she and Cruise had a lot in common.

“We have very similar backgrounds, with all the moving around and stuff, except that mine was through Europe and his was through the United States.“He really is a pure person,” she said at the time. “There’s something earnest and virtuous about him that’s quite rare. There’s definitely something different about kids who come from broken homes. They have this sort of searching quality, because you’re searching for love and affection, if you’ve been robbed of a substantial amount of time with your parents. I think that’s true of Tom.”Tom’s stardom – and the intrigue of his relationship with De Mornay – turned up the flame of public interest.

People asked him and Rebecca to pose for a cover; paparazzi stalked them outside their New York hotel; Rona Barrett tracked Tom down for an interview. The public started discovering how wholesome, gracious and kind he could be.

But there were still areas of his life he hadn’t yet come to terms with.The voice on the phone was hale sounding, robust with good humor, but it wasn’t coming easily. It was late 1983 – when Risky Business was a hit and All the Right Moves had just been released – and Thomas C. Mapother III, Tom Cruise’s father, was very ill.

“I’ve just had a cancer operation,” he told me. “It was pretty serious, and I’ve still got cancer other places, so it is still kind of a serious problem.”At first, he was extremely reluctant to speak about his son: “Tom and I are not in contact. I can’t take any credit for his success. I’m the last person who’ll ever criticize him.

Maybe that’s one favor I’ve done for him.”But there was something he wanted to say. “All four of my children showed up at the hospital, and all I could do was cry. That’s how bad the strain has been because of the divorce situation. It had been about four or five years – a long time, at least to me.”. His voice thickened with emotion. “I couldn’t believe it when he walked into the room.

I was a little concerned that I wouldn’t see my son, because I’d seen a lot of the pictures in the paper and the publicity shots. And that wasn’t my son. He walked into the room. And I knew who he was.” He began to weep.

“What those kids did for me, I could never explain. “Tom was in Los Angeles, about to go to London for Legend, when the phone rang.

“You know how sometimes the phone rings and – ping! – you just know?” He knew. His father was dead.“It cleared up a lot of kind of fog that I had about the man,” says Tom of his final meetings with his father, as he walks along Fifth Avenue. “I think that he felt remorse for a lot that had happened. He was a person who did not have a huge influence on me in my teens; the values and motivation really came from my stepfather. But he was important.

Really important. It’s all sort of complex. There wasn’t one thing I felt.”Cruise had decided to do Legend just before his father died. “After what I was going through emotionally, facing death and all of that,” he says, “somehow it was important for me to try to get back to the innocence within my own soul.” He sighs. “I’m just glad I had acting then. I don’t know what I would have done without my work. It gave me a place to deal with all those emotions.”It is 1984, and Tom is in London, cut off from his support system: his family, Rebecca, the U.S.

Moviemaking community. To pass the time, he hangs out on the set for hours on end. He takes long walks by himself around Hyde Park.Midway through filming, he throws his back out and walks around the following day bent over like Quasimodo.

Paula Wagner and her husband are on their honeymoon and have come to have lunch with him. It is the first time she’s visited Tom on the set of a movie. While they are eating, someone tells Tom that Legend‘s multimillion-dollar set – the fantasy world that is at the heart of director Ridley Scott’s elaborate vision – is engulfed in flames. The destruction is almost total.

Weeks of work have been rendered fruitless; many more will be needed to finish the movie. Tom turns to Paula. “I hope you’ll understand,” he says, “when I ask that you never visit a set of mine again.”.

“I really had to make a choice,” he says, even more intensely than usual, as he recalls his reaction to the fire. “When the set burned down, it was like, ‘What are we going to do now? Where does this take us?’ I said, ‘I can sit here and feel shitty and wallow in my frustration, or I can just come in every day.’ Instead of getting frustrated and banging your head against the wall, you say, ‘Okay, that happened, now what do we do? Let’s go ahead.'

”He had learned how to do that the hard way. “I mean, I always had that ability to just deal with things.

My whole life has been like that: ‘Okay, what do I do now?' ”Of course, not every problem responds to determination and resolve. Sometimes, says Tom, you have to let go. He and Rebecca sustained their relationship through the months of Legend-enforced separation – only to break up for good upon his return to America to begin work on Top Gun.“Relationships,” he sighs as we round the final corner toward his hotel.

“Relationships are hard. You have to know when you’re going to be in a different place from someone else, you have to have the strength to separate. People are more prone to stay together for the security, which is something in my life that I have really not done, in relationships or even in business. If something’s not working, you’ve got to face it and move on.”He isn’t sure about what he wants to do emotionally with his life.

“I don’t know if I could get married. Right now, in my present state of mind, I don’t believe so. I need a lot of space for myself and my work. You can’t say, ‘Okay, let’s keep that thought – I’ll be back to you in a couple of months when I finish this.’ But I do enjoy being in a relationship.”He admits to “officially” dating actress Mimi Rogers.

“I met her at a dinner party about a year ago, when I was developing Top Gun. She was dating a friend, and, uh, I thought she was extremely bright.”Alone or not, at work or at ease, the old questions – What’s going to happen now? – have a different ring; now Cruise asks them with a smile on his face. “For a while there I felt like I had to do everything in a weekend,” he says with a laugh. “Then, for the first time, someone died in my life. When someone close to you dies, it makes you face the fact that you are going to die one day. And then I started to realize – actually when I was living in London – it’s okay.

Hi Martin - Let me know how you get on with the Links game. Jack nicklaus perfect golf demo. Oh well back to TW08. I found a download game on the Steam site called 'Jack Nicklaus perfect golf' (£27). Looked promising but a lot of bad reviews put me off.

I can take my time, I can start trusting the fact that I’m gonna live a little longer. I’ve just grown a lot. I’m a little more relaxed.”The earlier part of this year finds Cruise in Chicago, filming The Color of Money – a sequel of sorts to The Hustler – with director Martin Scorsese and Paul Newman. Tom thinks he’s one lucky guy. Lucky to get to do Top Gun, lucky to get to star opposite a truly major star. He says as much to Newman one day on the set: “Gee, I’m lucky.”“Funny you should say that,” Newman replies. “I said the same thing once to George Roy Hill director of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Know what he said to me? ‘There’s an art to being lucky.' ”On another day, Newman takes Cruise out to a nearby race track. After a few laps, the champion race-car driver asks Cruise if he wants to take the wheel for a high-speed spin. You bet, says Tom.“Okay,” Newman says, strapping himself into the passenger seat. “Just don’t show me how brave you are, kid.”“Aw,” replies Tom, “stop givin’ me shit.” And he floors it.This story is from the June 19th, 1986 issue of Rolling Stone.

On August 5, 1983, Tom Cruise—wearing Ray-Bans and his skivvies—starred in the teen dramedy Risky Business and slid his way into pop culture history. In his first starring role, Cruise dealt with a killer pimp named Guido, romanced a call girl named Lana, and charmed his way into Princeton. The film’s $63.5 million gross launched Cruise as a bona fide movie star, a title he still holds three decades later. Here are 12 things you might not know about the '80s classic, on its 35th anniversary. AT ONE POINT THE MOVIE WAS TITLED WHITE BOYS OFF THE LAKE.Because the movie took place, and was partly filmed, in Chicago’s affluent Highland Park suburb, located along Lake Michigan, writer-director Paul Brickman (who grew up in Highland Park) that, 'The working title was White Boys Off the Lake. I think the studio rejected that because it sounded like an off-Broadway play. So we started doing word association to come up with a new title.” 2.

IT WAS INSPIRED BY THE CONFORMIST.Brickman also that Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist was a huge influence on the film: “I thought, ‘Why can’t you present that as a film for youth and aspire to that kind of style and still have humor in it?’ That was the test: to meld a darker form of filmmaking with humor. Tone is what I wanted to play with.” Though Risky Business comes off as a satire about capitalism couched as a teen comedy, The Conformist is a political drama situated during Italy’s 1940’s Fascist regime.

THE DIRECTOR WAS NOT INITIALLY SOLD ON TOM CRUISE. Warner Home VideoCruise was filming The Outsiders in Tulsa, Oklahoma when he got the call to audition for Risky Business. Cruise told, “Originally, Paul Brickman had seen Taps and said, ‘This guy for Joel? This guy is a killer!

Let him do Amityville III!’ Somehow, my agent, without me knowing, arranged to have me just drop by the office to say hello. So I went in wearing a jean jacket, my tooth was chipped, my hair was greasy. I was pumped up and talking in an Oklahoma accent, ‘Hey, how y’all doing?’ Paul just sat there, looking at me.” Cruise returned to Tulsa but flew back to L.A. And auditioned again. “I walk in and see this stunningly gorgeous woman sitting there looking at me and I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God,’” Cruise said. “Rebecca De Mornay had already been cast.

They wanted to see the two of us together. I tested, and to make a short story long, we didn’t test that well. Paul just believed in me.” 4. CRUISE LOST WEIGHT IN ORDER TO LOOK MORE BABY-FACED.According to an interview with Cruise in a September 5, 1983 issue of, Cruise “shed 14 pounds in five weeks by jogging in the Florida sun and strict dieting. When he had reached his weight goal, he stopped exercising ‘so I could put on a little layer of baby fat’ for his unathletic character.” Cruise explained, “Joel's a very vulnerable person. I didn’t want any physical defenses up for him. No muscle armor at all.” 5.

CRUISE IMPROVISED THE UNDERWEAR SCENE.In what became the movie’s most iconic moment, Cruise uses a candlestick holder as a mic and dances around his house to Bob Seger’s 1978 song “Old Time Rock and Roll.' “I was just looking for something that was a timeless rock and roll piece that wouldn’t be dated,” Brickman Yahoo! Of his song choice. The scene wasn’t filmed at the Highland Park-located house; it was filmed at a in Skokie, Illinois.Cruise Cameron Crowe how the scene unfurled: “So I took the candlestick, and I said, ‘How about making this the audience?’ And then I just started ad libbing, using it as a guitar, jumping on the table.

I waxed half the floor and kept the other half dirty, so I could slide in on my socks. As we went along, I threw more stuff in. Like the thing with the collar up, jumping on the bed. Originally, it was only one line in the script: ‘Joel dances in underwear through the house.’ We shot it in half a day.” And Cruise danced his way into history. SEVERAL PARODIES EXIST OF THE SEGER DANCE SCENE—INCLUDING TWO INVOLVING BEN STILLER.When Ron Reagan, Jr. Hosted a 1986 episode of SNL, entailed Reagan being home alone at the White House, where he does what any First Kid would do: strip down to his underwear and dance to “Old Time Rock and Roll.'

During a scene in, three of the characters hilariously recreate the dance moment. A 1992 episode of The Ben Stiller Show involves Stiller doing a spot-on impression of Cruise, who in the sketch is turning his life into a musical called, replete with a snippet of the underwear scene. Then, at the, Stiller once again parodied Cruise—but this time as Cruise’s stunt double. Cruise appears in the skit as himself and allows Stiller to once again act out the underwear scene. The Stiller/Cruise comedic partnership continued years later when the good-humored Cruise worked with Stiller in the Stiller-directed 2008 film Tropic Thunder.

SEVERAL PORSCHE 928S WERE USED IN THE FILM.“Porsche, there is no substitute,” Joel says as he speeds around town in his dad’s Porsche, only to have it later sink into Belmont Harbor. Porsche manufactured the 928 model from 1978 to 1995, and it was the first mass-produced Porsche with a V8 engine.

Four of the 1979 models show up in the movie (and a 1981 model), including one that was gutted for the lake scene, and another that was painted gold. A collector tried to track down all of the Porsches but only found one of them, which he for $49,200 at a 2012 Hollywood memorabilia auction. CRUISE THINKS THE FILM IS ABOUT CAPITALISM.Ten years prior to casting Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire, Cameron Crowe Cruise for and asked him what he thought Risky Business was about. “It’s about today’s capitalistic society,” Cruise said, in 1986. “Do the means justify the ends? Do you want to help people, or do you just want to make money?

Joel is questioning all of that. I’m not saying I’m some erudite political figure—but it bothers me. At least I’m asking the question.

The movie is Joel’s exploration of society, how he gets sucked into this wild capitalistic ride.” 9. THE MANUFACTURER OF THE CRYSTAL EGG WENT OUT OF BUSINESS IN 2011.“I’m very disappointed in you,” Joel’s mom tells her son after she comes home from vacation to find her prized crystal egg cracked. Earlier in the film, hookers steal the egg from the mantel but return it to Joel by throwing it like a football. In real life, the egg was made by a century-old Corning, New York manufacturer named, who made all kinds of prized pieces until they shuttered operations in 2011, mainly because the demand for crystal declined post-recession.

THE FILM WAS THE MOVIE DEBUT OF BOTH MEGAN MULLALLY AND BRONSON PINCHOT.Before she was a Emmy-winning actress, Megan Mullally played a hooker in Risky Business. Wearing pink lingerie and with a cigarette dangling out of her mouth, she for just a few seconds.

In the end credits she’s listed as “Call Girl.” Bronson Pinchot has much more screen time starring as Joel’s wise-cracking friend Barry. In a 2009 interview with, Pinchot said working with Cruise was “weird” and called Cruise “the biggest bore on the face of the Earth.” 11. TOM CRUISE AND REBECCA DE MORNAY DATED IN REAL LIFE.Cruise has always been coy about his private life, but in 1986 he opened up to Rolling Stone about a girlfriend whom he fell in love with. “That girlfriend was his Risky Business costar, Rebecca De Mornay,”. “Despite their incendiary love scenes, they didn’t start dating until after the film’s release in late summer of 1983.” The long-distance relationship dissolved some time after Cruise shot the film Legend, in London, and before he went off to film Top Gun. “Relationships are hard,” Cruise told the magazine. “You have to know when you’re going to be in a different place from someone else, you have to have the strength to separate.” In 1987, Cruise married his first wife, actress Mimi Rogers.

TWO ENDINGS WERE SHOT, BUT BRICKMAN ONLY LIKED THE ORIGINAL.At of Risky Business, Joel dines at a restaurant with Lana and he says, “I was just thinking where we’ll be in 10 years,” and she says they’re going to make it big. He asks, “Was this a setup?” and she says, “No.” Cut to them walking through a park at night and them talking about how they won’t be seeing each other for a while. She asks to spend the night with him and he jokingly asks if she has any money, and then his voiceover kicks in: “My name is Joel Goodsen. I deal in human fulfillment. I grossed over $8,000 in one night.

Time of your life, huh, kid?”But in the, they dine at the same restaurant and have a similar conversation. “Was our night together just a setup?” he asks Lana and she says “no” then adds “Why does it have to be so tough?” He summons her to come over and sit on his lap, which she does. The camera pulls back to reveal a stunning view of Lake Michigan (it’s obvious they’re dining inside the Hancock building). While still on his lap, the couple embrace and Joel’s voiceover is exactly the same except “time of your life” gets changed to “isn’t life grand?”—a subtle yet more sarcastic and ambiguous ending.“We had to change the ending to make it more upbeat and commercial,” Cruise. “Geffen Films felt it was too. Basically they felt it was a bummer, okay?

At one point, Paul Brickman said he wouldn’t direct the new ending. They were going to hire another director to direct it. Paul really fought it. We all did In the end, I think we got across the same point, though. Joel knows in his heart that this woman is more important than money.” At a 30th anniversary screening of the film, Brickman finally showed an audience the ending he had intended for the film.

Began as a humble in 1932, and it's since ballooned into a pop culture behemoth worth around. While there are plenty of out there that builders can't get enough of, the company is at its most successful when it brings blockbuster franchises like and Harry Potter into its world of bricks and blocks.So whether you're looking to recreate a 4700-piece Star Wars ship to display in your living room, or revisit the famed Central Perk coffee house from Friends, here are our favorite LEGO sets inspired by iconic movies and TV shows. Harry Potter Clock Tower; $90. LEGO/AmazonIf you’ve ever dreamed about attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, now you can (or at least, you can build this Goblet of Fire-inspired replica).

Standing three levels tall and housing some iconic locales—like the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, Dumbledore’s office, and a portion of the Yule Ball—this 922-piece set allows you to build the Hogwarts home of your dreams. It even includes eight minifigures, including Harry, Ron, and Hermione, so you can recreate that Potter fan-fiction you've got in your head.Buy it: 2.

Star Wars: A New Hope Imperial Star Destroyer; Prices Vary. LEGO/AmazonAs part of LEGO’s “Ultimate Collectors” series, this massive Star Destroyer set is more like a work of art than a mere toy. In fact, it comes with its own display stand and informational plaque, so you can proudly showcase it in your home once building is complete. Accompanying the 4784-piece set is a buildable scale model of the Tantive IV and two Imperial minifigures who are ready to do galactic battle at any time.

Measuring 43 inches across, this massive star cruiser is every bit as imposing as the Emperor envisioned.Buy it:, 3. Tim Burton’s Batmobile; $250. LEGO/AmazonA replica of the stylish car used in from director Tim Burton, this 3306-piece set also includes figures of the Joker, Vicki Vale, and the Dark Knight himself—and it’s completely up to you who’s in the driver’s seat. Although this Batmobile sadly cannot fit in LEGO's Batman '66 set, the screen-accurate car does include a slide-open minifigure cockpit and two hidden pop-up machine guns to give your ride some extra crime-fighting action.Buy it: 4. Marvel Avengers: Iron Man Hall of Armor; $48.

LEGO/AmazonTony Stark's Hall of Armor includes four of the Golden Avenger's favorite suits, an Igor suit with a mini cockpit, and two Outrider action figures. Also included is a rotating podium (great for showing off the chosen Iron Man outfit of the day); detachable modules, so you can customize your hall; and Tony’s command center, complete with the ever-important coffee mug that fuels his Iron Man shenanigans. With 524 pieces, this simple set is a great addition to the home of any Avengers fan.Buy it: 5. Friends Central Perk Set; $60. The LEGO GroupSo no one told you life was gonna be this way, but we bet if you told the Friends cast back in '94 that they would end up with a LEGO homage, they wouldn’t be too bummed.

This adorable interior of Central Perk—designed to look like the studio set—includes figurines of Chandler, Ross, Monica, Rachel, Phoebe, Joey, and Gunther, along with that iconic. Laid out in the same way as Central Perk on the show, this LEGO set includes sweet accessories, like coffee mugs, flowers, and an adorable blackboard menu that will have you humming “Smelly Cat” the entire time you build.Buy it: 6.

James Bond Aston Martin DB5; $150. LEGO/AmazonJames Bond wouldn’t be James Bond without his iconic Aston Martin DB5 from 1964’s Goldfinger. This mini version of 007’s getaway car includes a retractable “bullet shield,” a working ejection seat, a radar detector, and a rotating license plate so you can always stay undercover.

Despite all the damage Bond has, you’ll be able to keep this 1295-piece model in top condition for years to come (so long as you don’t try to take it for a test drive yourself, that is).Buy it: 7. Stranger Things The Upside Down; Prices Vary. LEGO/AmazonTravel back to season one of Stranger Things with this incredible LEGO set. The top level features the interior and exterior of the Byers’s house, while the bottom level features— gulp—the chilling Upside Down. This set includes eight Stranger Things characters—Mike, Lucas, Dustin, Will, Eleven, Joyce, Hopper, and the demogorgon—along with Hopper’s police truck.

Building this 2287-piece set might not be as rewarding as winning one of the party’s, but it’s close enough.Buy it: 8. Jurassic Park entrance; $250. LEGO/AmazonThis 3120-piece set includes the famed front gate to Jurassic Park, along with a buildable and posable Tyrannosaurus rex. The set also comes with figurines of John Hammond, Ian Malcolm, Ellie Sattler, Alan Grant, Ray Arnold, and Dennis Nedry, along with a “cute” baby dinosaur (a.k.a. A foreboding reminder of what’s about to befall the park).

The gate can even open and close, giving you the chance to rewrite the movie and save your favorite characters from being dinosaur chow.Buy it: 9. Steamboat Willie; Prices Vary. LEGO/AmazonRelive your childhood (or your great-grandparents’ childhood) with this replica of the S.S. Willie, the iconic steamship that introduced the world to Mickey Mouse in 1928's. This 751-piece steamship is fitted with grayscale bricks to mimic the original black and white film, and it comes with figurines of the original Mickey and Minnie Mouse, along with their pet parrot. With steampipes that move up and down (just like in the short) and paddle wheels that turn when the boat is pushed, building this LEGO model will make you feel more like a sea captain than an engineer.Buy it:, 10.

Star Wars Boba Fett Helmet; $60. LEGO/AmazonIf you’re someone who loves to build smaller—but no less satisfying—models, this Boba Fett helmet is the perfect project for you.

Part of build-and-display collection (which also includes this ), this piece won't be a challenge to get through, but the real reward lies in the details. With a movable helmet antenna and screen-accurate design, it's worthy of a place on any mantle or bookshelf. If supplies run low on the Fett head, you can always opt for a full-body Boba set or a model of his Slave I ship.Buy it:, Bonus: The Office Dunder Mifflin Set; $40. The Office/AmazonThis mini model of The Office's Dunder Mifflin set may not be an official LEGO product, but we couldn’t help but include it on this list. What really makes it are the small details, like Pam’s watercolor paintings, the company logo on the computer screensavers, and (of course) the knowing smirk on Jim's face. It's authentic enough to transport you from your own office to the gloriously gray walls of Scranton's famed paper supplier once that final piece is in place. At just 369 pieces, it's not a behemoth of a set like the always-sold-out —it's a casual set that makes for a delightfully cubic piece of home decor.Buy it:At Mental Floss, we only write about the products we love and want to share with our readers, so all products are chosen independently by our editors.

Mental Floss has affiliate relationships with certain retailers and may receive a percentage of any sale made from the links on this page. Prices and availability are accurate as of the time of publication. As we continue to blow through all the fun and nostalgic titles on, including a few re-binge sessions of, great news has emerged. Although the second season of the hit live-action series isn't being released until this fall, season 3 is already in the works. Be prepared for the craze to last for years to come, because Mando and his asset aren't going anywhere anytime soon.As reported by, insiders say that showrunner has been 'writing season 3 for a while,' and in recent weeks the art department has been working on some concepts for the third installment.

'We’ve just started pre-production and are looking into further adventures for The Mandalorian in season 3,' one source confirmed.Thankfully for fans, filming for season 2 of wrapped in early March, prior to the coronavirus pandemic putting a pause on productions around the world. This means that the planned release month of October presumably still stands.

Although we've still got a bit of a wait until we get to see more of and his (or her!) protector, it's extremely comforting to know that we've got so many more adventures from the fan-favorite bounty hunter to come.At Mental Floss, we only write about the products we love and want to share with our readers, so all products are chosen independently by our editors. Mental Floss has affiliate relationships with certain retailers and may receive a percentage of any sale made from the links on this page. Prices and availability are accurate as of the time of publication.