Top Gun- Don and Tom Part 3

In this episode, we go deep into the production of “Top Gun”. We learn of how Don’s insistence on throwing parties for the cast helped to fuel the rivalry between Maverick and Ice Man... The partying also would lead to Don’s stint in rehab- smack in the middle of the most important production of his career... We go into Don’s frustrations over the lack of chemistry between Maverick and Charlie... And his battles with the Navy over script notes, and how a fatal real life plane crash during filming was eerily similar to the crash written into the movie. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Episode eight, Top Guns, Part three, Don and Tom make
their movie. In this episode, we go deep into the
production of Top Gun. We learn of how Don's insistence
on throwing parties for the cast helped to fuel the
rivalry between Maverick and Iceman. The partying would also lead
to Don's stint in rehab smack in the middle of
the most important production of his career. We go into

(00:27):
Don's frustrations over the lack of chemistry between Maverick and Charlie,
and his battles with the Navy over script notes, and
how a fatal real life plane crash during filming was
eerily similar to the crash written into the movie. It
was the year of Speed, the year of the Tiger,
the fastest of the Chinese zodiac animals. It was the

(00:49):
year of Hayley's Comet, speeding towards Earth at one hundred
and twenty two thousand miles per hour. It was the
year of the Space Shuttle Challenger. The rocket would reach
mock speed at over one thousand, four hundred and seventy
three miles an hour before exploding just seventy three seconds
into flight. For Don, who was driving the then world's
fastest car, the three hundred horsepower Ferrari two hundred fifty

(01:12):
test a Rosa. The need for speed was not just
a tagline from Don's latest movie. It was his state
of mind ever since his meeting at Ned Tannin's house
when Don was given the green light to make Top Gun.
Don's manic energy to get Tom Cruise attached was all consuming.
He knew that as soon as Tom said yes, his
first order of business was a movie star makeover. How

(01:35):
would Don make Tom, who at the time was only
known to audiences as the boyish high school kid who
danced in his underwear and risky business into a credible
Navy fighter pilot. Even Tom was unsure the role was
written for a military veteran. Tom had to remind Don
he was only twenty two. In Risky Business, Tom sounded
like this, Bill, There's one thing I've learned all my ears.

(02:02):
Sometimes you gotta say what the fuck. Tom would have
to deepen his voice, which he would eventually do through
voice work. And then there was his baby face and
the slightly buck teeth, and the caterpillar eyebrows and the
baby fat and the boyish booklet banks. Don and Tony
had a vision for all that Don was back in

(02:23):
the mode of being a movie Stars Fengali. He had
taken Travolta from Vinnie Barberino. I think I think it
happened in England, the island, someplace? Would they would they
speak English? Really funny to Tony Manero on the come
on everybody, Fox though, Really, but worri about nothing. You're

(02:43):
you're You're great. I'm in a terrible rush. I hate
to leave you like this. It annoying how much I
appreciate that some of his cars were important for me today.
You know they called me to night, I'll call you'll
call you the door, but nothing picture he had made
Richard gear what somebody saw you? Some we followed us here? Okay, okay,
I'm just nervous. Where are you going into Julian Kay?

(03:07):
Like I said, I made a mistake. I heard you
speaking French. Often in these big hotels you you run
into women from foreign countries who may need a translator.
He took Eddie from Saturday Night Live sketches. Thank you
being much, but don't mary about but we just remember
wherever I am. I'm doing, oh day to America's favorite

(03:29):
detective acts of fully are you the supervisor here. Yes,
who are you? I'm Expector Raff of the United States
Custom Service? Has all this stuff passed through customs already? No,
this is the bonded area. Well, then tell me something
that's a question for me. How can a black man
dressed like me just march into your warehouse, walk into
the bonded area, start poking around about anyone asked me
any questions whatsoever? And now, Maverick, you can be my

(03:53):
wingman anytime. Bullshit, You can be mine. Lighting makeup, inserts,
fix his teeth, dyes hair jet black, bring out his jawline,
get him in the gym, add some muscle. He becomes
a movie star. Don and Tony would need to find
a sexy leading man to play opposite Tom. At the

(04:15):
top of the list was Val Kilmer. Paula Wagner was
also Vow's agent. She pushed him to meet with Tony.
Although Val didn't want to meet him, He wasn't really
interested in the path, so much so that he showed
up to his fighter pilot audition in oversized green cargo shirts.
He read the lines in a flat monoton and left
the audition as quickly as possible. But Tony raced after

(04:38):
him and cornered him at the elevator. He promised him
that changes would be made to improve the script. He
was so excited telling Val about how cool the jet
sequences were going to look, that he started making sounds
of jets flying past. He was like a little boy
cooing over a new airplane toy. Well. Val loved him

(05:00):
then and there. Tony Scott making jet noises would bring
Val on board, but not Ali Sheedy. She had just
come off Breakfast Club and was offered the love interest role.
Like many in the industry, she had no confidence that
Tom Cruise could carry the movie. She would tell her agent,
no one wants to see Tom Cruise flying around in
an airplane. More actresses would decline the role before it

(05:21):
was offered to a young theater actor named Kelly McGillis,
who had done just one major film where she played
an Amish woman in love with a cop. Oh, I
wanted to It was very kind of you to take
us in last night. Anyway, I needed something to do,
um Man, I could just some coffee. Anthony Edwards, who
had a small part playing John Cusack's buddy Gibb and
the shore Thing, would play goose. Hey, buddy getting any

(05:45):
I'm talking to a chordless What are you doing for Christmas?
Break hunt Well, I do You're coming to California? A
and a soap opera actress named Meg Ryan would play
his wife. Steve. My heart is so full of love
for you. We have been through so much to be together,
but we never stopped loving each other. We never stopped

(06:07):
believing in each other. Your love gives me strength and hope,
and now, with the people that we love all around us,
I take you as my husband. I will always love you.
Top gun pilots Tim Robbins, John Stockwell, Barry tub and

(06:28):
Rick Rossovich were cast and ready for training. Don and
Tony put the actors through a grueling four day flight
certification that included treading water for fifteen minutes in full
flight suits and simulating oxygen deprivation. Tom took the training
to a whole other level. He went full method actor
in his obsession with becoming a fighter pilot and going

(06:49):
you know twice, speed of sound and more, you know
three mark you you mostly feel the force when you're
banking left or right. You know you're pitching up or down,
pitching down. You're you're facing negative G force and uh
uh up or you know left or right, you're you're
facing positive gee. Now G one G is one times

(07:10):
your body weight pressure against yourself and so I pulled
up to eight G's eight and a half cheese. Actually
that's eight and a half times, you know, forcing the
blood from your brain and you've got a G belt.
It's actually hooked into a computer that fills up with
air that keeps the blood from all going down, you know,
into your lower section. You've got to you know, grip
your legs and your button, your stomach, you know, and

(07:31):
your back and your arms, and you're just really have
to almost grunt. It's you're forcing the air hard just
to keep the blood circulating in your brain because your
peripheral vision starts closing in and you you know, you
take a little ride with the black wall as they
call it. You know, everything just closes in and you
you know, you go down for a second. Tom's obsessive
attention to creating the most realistic pilot portrayal ever was

(07:53):
matched by Tony Scott's aerial footage. His team would create
a whole new technology for how to film practical flying sequence,
says The film's technical feats were impressing even the most
cynical officers in the military, so much so that when
the team simulated a ballistic missile launch, it triggered a
military investigation. While Tom stayed focused on preparing for the rule,

(08:14):
the other actors were blowing off steam and who encouraged
them to go out and party When we return Don,
that's the Top Gun cast run. Wild Dawn was basically

(08:34):
in Heaven, hosting parties three nights a week. We actually
stayed in a resort called the Bay here Mission Bay
it was. It was just a NonStop party, just nuts
guys riding motorcycles through hallways bringing back girls from Mission Beach.
The cast had two factions, the Vow Faction and the

(08:54):
Tom Faction. Vow was the ringleader of the actors that
wanted to have a good time and stay in character,
guys that worked hard and played hard. Of course, VAL's
iceman and the other characters weren't based on the real
life top Gun pilots, but rather on the idealized versions
of what Don and the writers thought Navy fighter pilots
should be. Dawn was all for the guys getting into

(09:16):
as much trouble as possible. They ended up renting a
van and making trips down to Tiajuana. They'd be hustling
to get back across the border to make their cool time.
The top brass at the d D knew nothing about
the Wild Donkey show exploits of the actors that were
supposed to be truthfully representing the greatest jet pilots in
the world. They were too preoccupied with the screenplay and

(09:38):
how the Navy would be portrayed to put their concerns
in context. America was just coming out of the Cold War.
The only military conflict they had been in was a
wimpy victory in Granada, and their last major war was
a humiliating defeat in Vietnam. The American military didn't have
much to brag about, and so they put a lot
of pressure on Dawn to make sure the military would

(10:00):
come across as the serious and mighty fighting force they
perceived themselves to be. But Dawn threw them a curve
ball right off the back. What if what if the
movie wasn't about war? What if the movie was about
a trophy? The military couldn't believe the scripts they were reading.
Top gun pilots competing against each other for a top

(10:22):
gun trophy. There was no top gun trophy, and the
pilots would never compete against each other. These guys were
too competitive, they'd kill one another. The whole idea was
the antithesis of the whole spirit of top gun. Competitive
was the word that Don kept coming back to. Don
was enamored with how competitive, how ego driven, how arrogant

(10:45):
these guys were. They basically reminded him of himself. He
somehow needed to capture that spirit. This was where Tom
came in. He was the only one that had experienced
eight g s and rolling scissors and snap turns. He
was the only guy who really understood just how physical
and demanding aerial combat maneuvers could be. For Tom, the

(11:08):
movie wasn't a military movie. It was a sports movie.
That's what we did a little. The hard deck does
not count. I decked my ass. We nailed that set
of a bit. You guys really are cowboys. What's your problem?
Because ski you're everyone's problem. That's because every time you

(11:28):
go up in the air, you're unsafe. I don't like
you because you're dangerous. That's right, nice man, I am dangerous.
Hence all the locker room scenes. These scenes, more than
any other, really piste off the d D. Top gun
pilots didn't hang out in a locker room. They didn't
snap towels at each other and hang around half naked

(11:51):
and point fingers at each other's wax chests. But don
knew he needed to show some flash. He needed to
get his handsome actors out from behind their air masks
and their flying gear and get them in battles. Dawn
was going crazy trying to convince the Navy that he
wasn't making a documentary, but what he was doing was
making the best damn recruitment video of what it means

(12:14):
to be a Navy pilot that the Navy could ever
conceive of. And if they would just stay out of
his way, he would change the reputation of the military forever.
But to do that, he needed to sell some sex.
He needed greased up bodies playing volleyball. The volleyball scene

(12:34):
was an add on to the script. It had nothing
to do with the story. It was purely gratuitous. The
only apparent story point in the scene is that the
game will make Maverick leap for his date with Charlie.
Don added the ingenious yet subtle action of Maverick checking
his watch three times to give the scenes some much
needed tension. Tom Cruise wearing jeans was also important, Don argued,

(12:55):
because he would have to leave abruptly on his motorcycle.
He couldn't make his exit wearing shorts. The d D
would reluctantly sign off on the volleyball scene. But what
Don and Tony Scott didn't reveal was that the look
of the scene was based on fashion photographer Bruce Webber's
iconic gay imagery of young shirtless men in close quarters,
often wrestling, bear hugging, and frolicking around, with an underlying

(13:17):
message of selling what little clothes they were wearing. Back then,
the male body was just beginning to be commercialized, and
films and commercials were still taking its cues from gay imagery,
most specifically soft porn, because that was really the only
reference point for the sexualized male body at the time.
This all goes back to Don's influence of repackaging gay culture.

(13:38):
He did it again with the Navy. They didn't bat
an eyelid at seeing four guys playing volleyball in jeans
with their shirts off and slapping each other on the back.
This was just good old fashioned male camaraderie. Put two
guys in towels and have them arguing hush tone six
inches apart, No problem. There was one scene that the

(13:59):
military would not permit, not as it was originally written.
It was the most important scene in the entire movie,
May Day, may Day Maps in trouble. He did a
Platts fan depending out to see as originally written, Goose
was to die in a mid air collision. Don knew
the Navy would have a problem with Goose's death, not

(14:21):
because they had an attachment to Goose, but because the
Goose storyline was absurd and patently inaccurate. The Navy had
contractually given Don permission to use their multimillion dollar F
fourteens off of Don's contractual promise to paint a realistic
portrayal of Navy pilots. The Navy didn't care for Don's
explanation that he needed and all is lost moment, the

(14:43):
screenwriting term for when the protagonist has hit his low point.
Don argued the movie needed something bad to happen to Mav,
an event that would cause him to question everything and
take him to the precipice of defeat. Only to see
him dig down deep to regain the strength and get
back up in the air and compete that top gun trophy.
Don was giving the Navy a master class in story structure,

(15:05):
a hero's journey structure that produce a Linda Oaps credited
Don with inventing All is Lost. Don knew these moments
all too well, but the Navy didn't care for All
is Lost or creative license. They only wanted to make
sure Don didn't make Navy pilots look like a bunch
of reckless cowboys. Real top gun pilots weren't competing against

(15:26):
each other and causing plane crashes. That was only in
the movies, or so they thought. The Navy offered up
their own fix on Goose's death. Goose would die in
a flat spin. Goose would die, and Maverick would take
the blame. Although if you go back and watch the
movie again, was it really Maverick's fault or was it
Iceman's fault? Come on, I get the hell out of air,

(15:50):
I can't get the angle. Iceman blocks Maverick's sightline to
get a shot at Jester. Now Maverick is on ice
and his tail when he gets mucked up in the jetwash.
I'm not sure how getting caught in jetwash can cause
the engines to catch fire, but it does, sending MAV
and Goose into a flat spin. No matter whose fault

(16:11):
it was, the Navy was going to go ahead and
shoot the aerial footage of the flat spin. Shure, We're
gonna point out that you're doing that. I'm jacking. Trold
comes not good. mAb's in trouble, needing a flat span,

(16:35):
pretending out to see eight thousand seven Fight forward. Jo
can't reach jecket An put it out to jug Jet.

(17:00):
But what happened during production around Goose's death was both
tragic and eerily coincidental. When we return a real life
top gun plane crash, disastrous test screenings, and the rewrites
that saved the movie. Art Shoal was one of the

(17:23):
top stunt pilots in the Navy. If a film or
TV series needed stock footage, Art was one of the
stunt pilots who could capture it. He was an aerobatics champion.
All the flight trade magazines profiled Art Shoal. He was
a hero to many pilots, and so it was Art
who was tasked with capturing footage of Maverick and Goose's
flat spin. He was flying his pits S two camera

(17:45):
plane about five miles off the coast of Carl's Bad.
Per the military's revisions, Goose would go into a flat
spin inverted so they'd have visuals on water and land.
It wasn't a major maneuver for a skilled pilot like Art,
but at about thirty five hundred feet Art reported that
he had a problem, and then feet he reported he

(18:06):
had a big problem. Art's plane disappeared through the clouds
around Palamar. There was no trace of the crash. He
was just gone. The set was in shock. The Navy
had gone and made sure the storyline was accurate, and
now that storyline had a real life, tragic ending. Don
for his part, was just as preoccupied with the disaster

(18:27):
that was occurring on screen. The chemistry problems between Tom
Cruise and Kelly McGillis were threatening to derail the entire movie.
There were little things like the height discrepancy, with Kelly
being a good two inches taller than Tom, and then
the bigger stuff, like the fact that Kelly had fallen
in love with Tom's co star Barry tub Dawn was

(18:48):
i right, How could she fall in love with Barry
tub She was supposed to fall in love with Maverick,
not Wolfman. If Maverick didn't have chemistry with the astro physicist,
the movie simply wouldn't work. There was a last ditch
effort to add a sex scene to give them chemistry,
to take away any ambiguity that these two were hot

(19:08):
for each other. The sex scene was choreographed with well
lots of licking, not so much kissing, just mostly close
ups of licking. Tom licking Kelly's face like a cat.
He even licks her teeth. With the blue light and
the Georgio Moroto synthesizers, the scene felt weirdly extraterrestrial, like

(19:30):
if aliens had a sex scene, this is how they
would do it. Did the scene achieve its desired effect
to most critics watching the movie, No, But the movie
wasn't catered to critics. It was catered to teenage boys,
and so you can imagine their strange curiosity and watching
their hero Pete Maverick licking his beautiful girlfriend. Was this

(19:52):
what kissing a girl was? Slow lizard tongue licks to
take my breath away? And earlier test screening had affirmed spears.
Nobody believed the relationship Top Gun was in crisis, Pilots
crashing to their death in the Pacific Ocean, massive script problems,
chemistry issues between romantic leads. Don couldn't bear to face

(20:14):
that music. He was handling the stress the only way
he knew how, with speed. There were rumors of more
car crashes. One report had Don crashing his sports car
on the way to rehab. Yes, Don went to rehab
in the middle of production. Did Don have a sense
the first Top Gun test screenings would be a disaster?
Did he know the endless battles with the Pentagon would

(20:34):
never let up? And if he did know, did he
have any faith that he could save the movie. Crashing
into rehab was Don's all is lost moment? Could he
now script his own third act comeback? Could he rise
up and show Hollywood that his vision to create the
most authentic flying movie ever made, using real aerial footage
with real actors in real f fourteens, in what Don

(20:57):
called his star Wars on Earth could become his big,
his blockbuster. He would have to find a way. Reshoots
were ordered and chemistry scenes between Tom and Kelly were added.
The movie started to come together. The final scene would
become iconic. I heard the best of the best. We're
going to be back here, so baby, Baby, I'll get down.

(21:23):
It could be complicated, you know. On the first one
night crashed and and the second. In the final days

(21:49):
of shooting, the advisors on the film, the real life
top gun pilots were called off on a secret mission.
Months later, it was confirmed that the US had carried
out air strikes on Libya as retaliation for terrorist attacks
on airports in Europe. It was a validation, if indirect,
that this movie was about something bigger than a trophy.

(22:09):
The movie was starting to test really very well. The
aircraft carry opening was vintage Tony score. It was just
a beautiful sequence. Val saw an early print. Was so
excited that he ran into Don's office and jumped on
his desk, And then Don jumped on his desk, stomping
in his big cowboy boots. That's how pump they were.

(22:30):
Two weeks before the release, the film Iron Eagle open
to dismal box office results. Some blame the weak numbers
on the Space Shuttle Challenger crash. Was it too soon
to celebrate? Maverick jet pilots when the nation just went
through one of the worst tragedies in history. The answer
would be no. Top Gun would open number one at

(22:51):
the box office and would go on to play in
movie theaters for over a year. It would surpass Star
Wars in box office. Military sign ups increased a staggering
five hundred percent. Ray bands and fighter jackets, and beach
volleyball and tanning with baby oil would become the hottest
trends of Top Gun was a cultural phenomenon. In the end,

(23:16):
Maverick doesn't win the Top Gun trophy. That trophy went
to Dawn, the new king of Hollywood. He had managed
to make Tom Cruise, at just twenty three years old,
the biggest movie star in the world. Don and Tom
were now officially a team. They made the biggest film
of the year. Soon they would set their sights on

(23:38):
an even bigger film, a film that would take the
two men's love for speed and race cars and violent
car crashes and do for race cars what Top Gun
did for jets. How could they know that in just
a few short years it would all come crashing down.
The Dawn Season two is executive produced by Will McCormick

(24:00):
and David Harris. Klein. Klein also wrote and created the series.
Mike Jursits is the editor, sound designer, and producer of
the series. The podcast is produced and narrated by Malia Rivera.
Drew That's Me. Louis Weymouth voices the character of Pierce
and also produces the series. For more episodes of The
Dawn season two, listen to the series on the I

(24:20):
Heart Radio app or wherever you listen to podcasts.