Top Guns- Don and Tom- True Religion

Don and Eddie Murphy have another box office hit with Beverly Hills Cop 2-- all in spite of Don's preoccupations with cocaine and call girls and plastic surgeries. After several failed attempts in rehab, Tom Cruise introduces Don to a new religion in the hope that Don can curb his addictions. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Episode nine, Don and Tom True Religion. How Don's reign
as the king of the blockbuster gave Don free rein
to indulge in every vice imaginable. That's a long title
to describe Don's wild ride between making Top Gun and
making Days of Thunder the movie were more than fifty
one hundred thousand dollar race cars were crashed in production,

(00:26):
a production that would set in motion Don's own personal
and career crash, a crash that would see him fall
into a six year period of despair and addiction from
which he would never recover. Now, a shorter title for
this episode might have been Cocaine and Call Girls, which
is what Don was primarily focused on after another blockbuster success,
Beverly Hills Cop Too. There was cocaine on movie sets.

(00:49):
There was cocaine delivered to his office by limo drivers.
There was cocaine to tip ballet drivers and bribe car
dealerships into bumping his name up to the top of
the list to be the first guy in town to
get that new black Ferrari Tester Rosa. How could everybody
in town not know Don was a coke addict, and
yet nobody in town thought to say, hey, Don maybe

(01:09):
you shouldn't be doing lines at your desk in the
middle of an interview with a writer for Esquire. Or hey, Don,
you've crashed another sports car while you were coked out
of your brain. Maybe it's time to stop before you
kill somebody. But no, nobody said a word. Not as
long as Don was making three million and gross domestic
on budgets of fifteen million. As long as the money

(01:30):
was pouring in, Don could do as he pleased. Pierce's friend,
the film historian David Thompson, summed it up best. The
average Hollywood tycoon prefers to be discreet about such plunder,
That Dawn was an animal, and the suave masters in
silk suits were tickled that he was so naked, so
acting out with it. Well he meant by that, I suppose,

(01:54):
was that the dealmakers and the executives and the shareholders
and all the rest who determined who hood and who
could not make movies were very much entertained by Don's behavior.
They enjoyed it, even encouraged it. In their minds, Don
was a Hollywood legend, and they were, as David said,
tickled to be part of the vice and scandal. And yes,

(02:17):
even the tragedy. I'm afraid in every decade there seems
to be some Hollywood character who would live on in infamy.
In the nine eighties it was Dawn. Pierce would often
say how Don's life was a sa dartha story in
the William Blake poem where the road of excess led
to the Palace of wisdom. Well, in episode nine, done

(02:38):
is right, snack dab in the middle of the road
to excess part of our story. Lieutenant John Simpkins, a
former top gun, was a consultant to the movie's producers.
Our goal was to make it as realistic because we
possibly could. So when people go up there and they
see those airplanes, they know there's no special effects. Those
airplanes flying a real airplanes and this real pilots flying
on them. The actors spent most of the time in

(02:59):
a simulated cockpit, but for initiation they were taken up
and shaken up. It was nothing like co star Anthony
Edwards had ever experienced hanging on to survive, and so
it's a lot of the dialogue that we shot up
there is completely useless because most of it was like help,
oh my god. The world premiere could boost San Diego's
image is a movie making location, but the night really

(03:22):
belonged to the Navy. It's supposed to be about the
guys that have to do a job that calls for
them to make it safe for America to sleep at night.
This movie may even help recruiting. It was a chance
for the Navy to show off what Top Gun really means.
Top Gun did what no movie in the history of

(03:42):
the movie business had ever done. It had turned thousands
of movie goers into military recruits. The Navy saw a
five hundred percent increase in applications from young men who
wanted to become naval aviators and where ray bands like
Tom Cruise. Recruiting had been part of Don's pit to
the Pentagon, but even Don couldn't have imagined that so

(04:03):
many young men would walk out of his movie and
enter into a career they knew nothing about other than
watching Tom Cruise flying f fourteens. And it wasn't just
the theater experience. People were seeing the movie two and
three times in the theaters and then going out and
buying the VHS tape. At that time, eight to ninety
bucks was a typical price for a new VHS release.

(04:24):
With such high demands from young teenage boys badgering their parents.
Paramount would lower the price to twenty six bucks. They
would sell a record three million tapes. Top Gun would
forever change the VHS market. The success of the movie
actually pulled Tom and donn apart. In the end, Tom
wanted to be taken seriously as an actor and Don

(04:46):
Well Dawn wanted to be taken seriously as the most
successful producer in the universe. To that end, I guess
they both succeeded in terms of quality of work. Tom
really stepped it up Paul Newman and Martin's Corsese in
the remake of The Hustler opposite Dustin Hoffman in the
Academy Award nominated Brainman his own Academy Award nomination playing

(05:08):
paraplegic Vietnam Vette ron kovec In born on the fourth
of July. It was a rapid transformation from teen boy
idol to award winning actor. He would also fall in love,
get married, and find religion in the Church of Scientology.
He was just twenty six years old. As for Don,
wanting to follow Tom's lead and working on a Martin

(05:29):
Scorsese movie, Don didn't work for autours because Don was
his own autour. Don's movies could only be Don Simpson movies.
He was the only producer in the world who could
take a one sentence idea and spin it into millions
of dollars. And after Top Gun, everybody in town wanted
to know what was Don's next big idea. Don had

(05:52):
this idea book that he carried around with him everywhere.
I remember there was this one particular car crash where
Don needed a ride home. He had swerved off a
windy strip on Mulholland near Jack Nicholson's house. He couldn't
call Jack, so he called me. His Ferrari was stuck
into the side of a U c L a heart

(06:12):
surgeon's garage. We were all worried his carm I actually
blow up the way it was hissing steam off the engine.
Don and a lady friend of his, Miss November named
Katherine Saint John if I recall, were safely in my
rental car. But as we were driving away, Don suddenly
screamed at me to pull over. I said, Don, you

(06:33):
can't go back to your car. It's gonna blow. For
God's sake. It was quite the site. Don running down
Mulholland Drive in the early morning fog. It was so
thick he actually disappeared for a moment. He dove into
his car, which was now starting to sputter and spit
out all sorts of fumes, and wedging his torso through

(06:55):
the door window because well, the door was too bent
to open. He found what he is looking for in
the glove box, and quite out of breath, he staggered
back to me and Catherine. What was it? Don? What?
What was in the car? The notebook? It had every
idea Don had jotted down over the last five years.

(07:18):
Don called it the billion dollar book. It was precious,
all of his thoughts and ideas, and more valuable than
all of Don's sports cars and real estate properties combined.
Dan's next big idea. Everyone in town was anxious to
see how Don would once again defy expectations. What are

(07:40):
you doing in a place like this? What are you
talking about? Places like We're it's like this women for Jacuzy,
we're talking about I'm spoiling myself, right, you mean the
construction is going on. Yes, I'm very embarrassed about that.
What I'm trying to do? Those just confined myself to
the other five bedrooms. I'm used to compromising my lifestyle.
You've stolen this house. How the fucking you steal a house,
my uncle's house seeing Rock and Roll. No, we'll look

(08:04):
at a big tenny yo man. Look at this teddies
irone juice beer. Will you gonna put your chunks on
and get in this pool? With a second Beverly Hills
cup movie. Don would indeed defy expectations in doing the
one thing he vowed he would never do, make a
sequel of one of his own movies. For ten years,
Don was the idea, man, if I can see it,

(08:26):
I can make it. Don came up with ideas. He
didn't do sequels, but working once again with Eddie Murphy,
and more importantly, telling everyone that he was again working
with Eddie Murphy trumped Dan's golden rule. The question wasn't
why but why not? I mean, why not put Eddie
Murphy in another action comedy where has to solve a

(08:46):
crime and do his signature fast talking stick. A sequel
would be just the beginning. Would see Excellent Tokyo, Axcell
in London, Axcellent Paris, A Fish out of Water detective
taking on the local cops, while stopping the bad guys
with his street smarts and sharp weight, plug and play,
New City, same formula. This was a franchise. I have

(09:09):
the money and I do want to do business, but
with you. I ain't doing noth in front of this
dud because it's dude as a cop. I don't know
when I can smell a pig inside the room. I
used to be a Musliman and I know that Paul
over here, and then yes, Paul, it's definitely Paul. I
ain't do a ship around this dude. Man, you want
to do business, you know where to find me. Fuck you, man?
And what would Don call part two of his soon
to be blockbuster franchise, Beverly Hills Cop Two. Don was

(09:34):
known as a title guy days of Thunder Crimson Tide.
When marketing was desperate to find a new title for
their film My Posse Don't do Homework, Don, who at
that time was holed up in Hawaii hooked on pharmaceuticals,
managed to come up with the title dangerous Minds. In
this case, Don's state of mind was one of clear
assured confidence titles. Who needs them? This movie Beverly Hills

(10:00):
Cop sequel would be so big, it wouldn't need a
new title, and Don was right. Beverly Hills Cop two
was the big event movie of seven. The box office
would once again crack three hundred million dollars. Even when
Don took his foot off the gas, he could still
deliver a hit movie. Remember that quote from journalist John Taylor,

(10:21):
who argued that the two most influential people of the
nineteen eighties were Ronald Reagan and Don Simpson. At that moment,
it would be hard to make a case against it now.
Unlike President Reagan, Don had no ambitions to run for
political office. But like Reagan, movies weren't enough. They were

(10:42):
a means to an end. Reagan delved into politics, and
Don delved into well. He created a one man black
market network of sex and drugs that could only have
flourished in Los Angeles. In the Don cared as much
about his after hours activity these as he did his
day job. He had detailed lists of car girls and

(11:04):
drug dealers, and he hired assistance whose sole purpose was
to procure what he needed. I can recall one tale
of a young man who was trying to break into
the industry who interviewed with Don. Don told him. The
job requirements were to travel with him internationally to procure
drugs and cool girls. The young man was stunned. Don,

(11:25):
I'm sorry, are you asking me to be your pimp
and drug dealer just when I'm overseas? Don responded, I've
got that position filled here in the United States. For Dawn,
Hollywood had gotten boring. A night on the town was
a screening or a work dinner. Most of his colleagues
were just trying to get home to tuck their kids
into bed. Don lived for the night, where any sinister

(11:47):
and nefarious transgression could manifest behind his gated walls. Let
me also just emphasize something, okay, Dawn took this world very,
very seriously. One could imagine how chotic and out of
control a traveling party of cool girls and drug dealers
and cocaine addicts might have been, But for Dawn it

(12:08):
was It was always a controlled chaos. He was always
very serious about his vice. He needed to control this
environment as much as he aspired to assert control over
his movies. This theme of control was Don's great paradox,
live a life of decadence and chaos while bringing absolute
order to such chaos. There was a Howard Hughes sort

(12:31):
of obsessiveness to Don's nocturnal madness. The last days of
Scorsese's The Aviator were not unlike Don's final days of isolation.
He used to open the bag with his right hand
and hold the bag out to me at a forty
five degree angle so around me, reaching into the bag
without without touching the paper. If there is any variation

(12:58):
of these instructions, even to the smallest degree, the entire
process must be repeated. From the beginning. Dawn tried to
keep his life on temperature control for over twenty years,
and as you can imagine, there were times when the
thermostat was broken, when things just got too hot and

(13:20):
the mercury spilt over. And in those moments when the
fun and games were over and the players passed out
in the bedrooms in Don's massive concrete mansion, Dawn was
left with nothing nothing but himself to contend with in
the silence of his own horrible self loathing. In her
book Never Enough the Neuroscience of Addiction, former addict and

(13:43):
neuroscientist Judith Gresol writes that the unfortunate bottom line of
all regular drug use is that there is no such
thing as a free lunch. All drugs act on the
brain in a way that diminishes their enjoyable effects and
creates unpleasant ones with repeated use. Now imagine that repeated
use ongoing for over twenty years. We mentioned that Don

(14:07):
went to rehab during Top Gun. These were cushy Malibu rehabs.
They offered a luxury stay and a retreat from life's troubles.
They would coddle down, charging him exorbitant amounts until he
demonstrated some short term sobriety, after which he would inevitably
relapse and the cycle would continue. Finally, Don had had enough.

(14:29):
He had heard of addicts foregoing rehab for a new
kind of treatment. They found it in the Church of Scientology.
When we return a look at Don's connection to Tom
Cruise and the Church of Scientology. In scientology, we use

(14:53):
the word theyton. The term theton is taken from the
Greek letter theta, which has long served as a symbol
for thought or spirit. We use saton to avoid confusions
with other concepts and beliefs regarding the soul or spirit.
It isn't something you have. You wouldn't say my theton.

(15:18):
You'd simply say me you have a body, you have
a mind. You are a Thetan. It was in Scientology
that Don and Tom Cruise would once again intersect. To
understand Tom's connection to Scientology and Don's interest in the religion,

(15:40):
It's important to know the story of one of Scientology's
youngest members. Her name was Miriam Schickler. Miriam Schickler was
by all accounts, a beautiful and highly intelligent teenage girl,
top of her class, high marks and science photographic memory.
Product of her divorce, she would live with her father,
a civil engineer whose job are the family to move

(16:00):
around a lot. Like Tom, she would attend many schools.
Because of her academic brilliance, she was able to skip grades,
and she graduated high school at the age of fourteen.
She would go to work for her dad at a
casino in Lake Tahoe. He had given up his civil
engineering career and had become a professional gambler. Miriam, with
her high i Q and disarming beauty, became something of

(16:22):
a prodigy poker and blackjack player. By this time, Miriam's
father had given up his Jewish faith and joined a
new religion, the Church of Scientology. This was the nineteen sixties.
A time when l Ron Hubbard's teachings really struck a
chord with many disillusioned hippies and Vietnam Vets, dissatisfied with
what was happening in America. The man's up again certain problems.

(16:44):
He's asking himself certain questions. How can I made more money?
How can I make my wife faithful to me? How
can I made my children grow up? How can well,
you're other words, how can I live a better life?
How can I make things are uh even more stable
for my family? How? You know? He's how? How? How?

(17:08):
And what am I up against? What is happening to
me in my life? What is my purpose in life?
And so forth? These questions, in actual fact, absorb a
tremendous quantity of his energy, and he himself is not
able to go out and do anything very progressive about it.
So the best thing for him to do is to
go out and do something about it. But he can't
do anything about it because he is so immersed in it.

(17:31):
So actually, in scientology processing, he resolves these questions. He
understands what he's doing, he knows what he wants to do,
He makes up his mind, and he goes ahead and
does it and he turns from a man who is
simply a puzzled stack being into somebody who's more dynamic
is they will accomplish on it. For Miriam's father, who
had long been dissatisfied with his career choices, the church

(17:54):
was a chance to join a movement. It was also
a chance to make a living. Hubbard had created a
asked food franchise model of Scientology centers, and Miriam's father
took over one of the franchises. Miriam would soon join him.
She soon became a top tier auditor. An auditor was
a church member assigned to ask a new parishioner known

(18:14):
as a pre clear, a series of questions. At the
end of the session, the auditor will have cleared the
pre clear of their traumatic memory and they will become
a satan, in effect becoming a member of the church.
Miriam was such an effective auditor that she was given
permission to train the top tier scientologists. She was all
of sixteen years old at one She moved to Los Angeles.

(18:37):
She would join Operation Celebrity. This was the Scientology project
to bring in as many wealthy celebrities as possible. She
married a fellow scientologist named Jim Rodgers. They would open
up a franchise or mission as it was called in
Sherman Oaks, and Miriam, who was smart and beautiful with
a photographic memory and now well connected in l a

(18:57):
celebrity scene, started to find success as an actor. Her
marriage would fall apart the next few years, but her
career was on the rise. At this point, she would
change her name from Miriam to the stage name Mimi
and take her ex husband's name Rogers. It was at
a party in Los Angeles when twenty one year old
Tom Cruise met the older and wiser beyond her years,

(19:18):
Mimi Rogers. Top Gun was still in development. Tom was
spending his days with Don working on the script. Tom
was uncertain about its prospects and still battle scarred from
doing the film Legend. He needed support and he needed structure.
Spending long nights with a party animal like Don wasn't
going to give him the foundation that he was seeking.

(19:39):
Mimi introduced him to the church at a time when
Tom was looking for a process, a life, philosophy, a
way to live. It's important to note that the church
at this time was in disarray. L Ron Hubbard passed
away in six just around the time that Mimi had
taken Tom into the church, several of my reporter friends
had actually done a fair bit of him investigation around Scientology.

(20:02):
The church back then was very private, very closed, very secretive.
They even had their own private intelligence agency, Operations snow White.
That was the code name for Hubbard's private Scientology intelligence
agency's spy scheme to infiltrate the federal government. They even
had a dossier on President Nixon. The FBI would launch

(20:23):
raids on Scientology centers across the country. Eleven scientologists were arrested,
including l Ron's wife, Mary Sue Hubbard. The charges stem
from wire tapping to burglary, to targeting government buildings, including
the I R. S and the Deputy Attorney General's office.
L Ron would go into hiding on the run from
tax evasion. He was said to be living under an

(20:44):
assumed name on a ranch in Creston, California. It was
there that he would write his novel Battlefield Earth, a
film would later be made starring John Travolta, and what
a film it was. Well, I can assure you, but
I was not gloomed since to have some cushy job
that even a moral like you could report. While you

(21:07):
were still learning how to spill your name. I was
being trained chicocka Galaxy. L Ron would also record an
album with an all star cast of friends, including Travolta,
Frank Stallone, Chick Korea, Leaf Garrett, and Karen Black. L
Ron can be heard singing on the final track, LNVOI

(21:27):
thank you for listening or two true than if the
then DESI to live with lines best. They're concern not mine,
my friend, They're free to rants. Soon after the recording,

(21:48):
Hubbard's body would be found in a motor home tucked
behind the animal stables on his ranch. There was no
family there, his wife was still in prison, and his
estranged son was thought to be dead. In the days following,
hubbard successor David Misscavage would address grieving members of the
church in a packed auditorium. Members were not told that
l Ron Hubbard had died, but rather that l Ron

(22:09):
had discarded the body he had used in his lifetime,
and that now he would continue his quest into the
most advanced levels as an ot and operating phaeton. Members
were reported to have broken out into rapturous applause. From
that day forward, Misscavage assumed complete power and authority over
the church, and his new best friend and most powerful

(22:30):
ally would be Tom Cruz. It was around that time
that Donn had got curious about the Sea Org. The
Sea Org Scientology's most powerful faction. They lived in an
exclusive international base, a compound of fifty buildings, heavily guarded
with high walls and barbed wire to prevent escape. They
had come into light after Hubbard died. There was a

(22:52):
purported coup ousting Hubbard's lieutenants, and David Misscavage took charge.
The yacht was where Donna had heard you could develop
a resistance to wog illness. A wag is what the
church called the common man, or anyone not involved in
the church. Now Don had more than a few wag illnesses.
Most serious were his wog addictions food, sex, and drugs.

(23:16):
Rehab hadn't worked for him, so why not try the church.
Don fell out of Scientology for the very reasons that
he started out. He was too undisciplined, too restless, too
indulgent to follow any sort of rigorous transformational path. The
essence of the religion is for members to identify and
clear away any and all past trauma that didn't exactly

(23:39):
sit well with Don. Don wanted to hold onto his trauma.
He wore it like a badge. He gave him his edge,
you know, the bad boy producer with a troubled past.
That was his narrative. In the end, Dan felt he
couldn't be a bad boy producer making his high octane
movies if he was cured of his bad boy behavior.
And nobody in the film business was going to tell

(24:01):
Don to knock it off. Nobody that is, except his
personal secretary. When we return, Don's secretary seeks revenge and
Don lawyers up. At the time, there were secretaries and
there were assistants. Assistants were supposed to be set up

(24:22):
for promotion and a career path in the business, and
executive secretary was more of a revolving door job. You
did it for as long as he could, and then
you hoped to latch onto another powerful, white male CEO
that could offer you a better salary. Monica Harmon had
no illusions of advancing in the film business, and in
some ways this made her more of a determined plaintiff.
She had nothing to lose. Harmon files a complaint for

(24:44):
two point five million dollars in damages, claiming emotional distress.
Don's legal team files a cross complaint for five million dollars,
claiming that Harmon invaded Don's privacy by searching waste baskets
and files for confidential documents that could insinuate Don's cocaine use,
even though Harmon hadn't filed a claim insinuating Don's cocaine us.
Harmon's claim gets tossed out of court. Harmon files a

(25:07):
new complaint, and this time she doesn't hold back. In
the suit, she claims Don called her obscene and demeaning names,
including garbage brain, and that he was often drunk or
on drugs during this abusive behavior. Worse, Harmon claims is
that Don asked her to clean up his cocaine crumbs
that she said Don would leave on tables and desks
around the offices. And even worse, she claimed Don asked that,

(25:30):
beyond her secretary duties, she maintained a list of call
girls and scheduled Don's dates. Don's team, led by super
lawyer Bertram Fields and Fields go to Gumshoe Anthony Pellicano
were brought on to file a counter suit, but Fields
was the most brilliant and the most feared lawyer in town.
Mariopoozo called him the great Consiglieri. He was regal and dignified,

(25:54):
and every power player in town wanted his counsel in
his spare time. He was a novelist and a historian
with an expertise on the matter of Shakespeare's authenticity as
the author of his plays. He left a will that
was so precise that he left his second best bed
to his wife. And yet he doesn't mention one book.
He doesn't mention any literary property. He doesn't talk about

(26:17):
unpublished plays. Isn't that amazing for a guy who had
this body of work. When you look at the people
who ran theaters at the time, you will not find
a payment for a play to William Shakespeare. He's paid
as an actor, but he's not paid other playwrights have paid. Why?
And then there was fields wildly feared Sicilian private eye
Anthony Pelicano. Pelicano had once been accused by entertainment reporter

(26:41):
Anita Bush of leaving a dead fish on her windshield,
a warning that if Bush didn't stop writing about one
of Pelicano's clients, Bush would, According to Sicilian mafia lor
Sleep with the Fishes. Tony Pelicano was brilliant. You know
that film The Conversation with Gene Hackman, all about why
t Happening? Well, Tony was that character. He actually invented

(27:03):
some of that technology. His electronic surveillance dated back to
the Kennedy administration. When you met Tony's surveillance expertise, with
his showmanship and the tough talking guarantees that he was
known for, you can see why Burke Fields and Tom
Cruise hired him. So what did Fields and Pelicano dig up?
For starters? They found that Harmon had used cocaine several

(27:25):
times during her tenure with Don, and that she had
rented sexually explicit tapes for home viewing, and that she
had been to a famous male stripper nightclub, Chippendale's, several times.
It was a character assassination, and Harmon wanted no part
of it. One brother obvious question was why didn't Harmon
report Don to h R and if she did, why

(27:45):
didn't Paramount protect her. Harmon later stated she feared telling
Paramount about Don's cocaine news, but she did claim on
several occasions to have notified the studio of what she
described as Don's illegal and moral demands. Paramount would issue
a one line response stating that company policy prohibited comment
on any pending litigation. Now, HR at Paramount in nineteen

(28:08):
eighty seven isn't the same as HR today back then,
and he claims if there were any claims against Don
would likely have been buried under the proverbial rug. A
woman in her position didn't stand a chance. The Harmon
case was nothing more than a minor nuisance for Don.
He would continue to drink as much whiskey and snort
as much below at the workplace as he desired. In
the end, the Harmon case was a hiccup at most

(28:30):
in Don's joy ride to enjoy the spoils of his
many victories. Don was riding high, figuratively and literally. Nothing
would slow him down. Not his car crashes, not his
madam's arrest by l A. P D, Not his ill
fated time in scientology, and certainly not the HR department
at Paramount. No, the only thing that would slow down
Dawn was Dawn. The Dawn season two is executive produced

(28:56):
by Will McCormick 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 dru that's me. Louie Weymouth voices
the character of Pierce and also produces the series. For
more episodes of The Dawn season two, listen to the

(29:16):
series on the I Heart Radio app or wherever you
listen to podcasts.