June 2, 2022 • 26 mins
THE DON Season 2: Maverick, Top Gun, Don’s Greatest Hits, And The Addictions That Killed Him”
In this episode, we track Don’s collision course with Tom Cruise-- beginning with Tom’s role in "Endless Love" and the world’s obsession with Brooke Shields virginity, Tom's breakout performance in the military film "Taps", the sex comedy he did with Shelly Duvall from Cheers, and his love affair with Rebecca De Mornay in "Risky Business". This episode is all about Tom.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Episode four, Top Guns Don and Tom. In this episode,
we tracked Don's collision course with Tom Cruise, beginning with
Tom's role in Endless Love and the world obsession with
Brookshields Virginity, his breakout performance in Taps, the sex comedy
he did with Shelley Duval, and his love affair with
(00:23):
Rebecca de Mornay. In Risky Business, this episode is all
about Tom. Don was still licking his wounds over his
dismissal at Paramount. He was no longer in a position
of power as a studio buyer, but rather one of
many hundreds of sellers hustling to get a green light.
Don didn't have a project for Cruise, but he was
(00:44):
keeping tabs for him ever since his grease to audition.
I was e monthly when Don first told me about him.
He was a baby, just two years out of high school.
Like Don, Tom had a rough high school experience. By
the time he had graduated from glen Ridge High School
in New Jersey, he had attended fifteen different schools. Like Don,
(01:06):
he found himself an outsider. Like Don, he joined the
wrestling team as a means to prove himself and blow
off the frustrations of being a new kid, and like Don,
he had a strained relationship with his father. I honestly,
I didn't want the name I really because I wanted
(01:27):
to define who I was for myself and when I
decided to be an actor, Ah, that's why I changed it.
I just dropped the My last name's Thomas Cruise Cruises
my middle name, and for me, I wanted some saying
what my name was. I didn't think he gave it
to me. And Tom's father, Thomas Maype third Sr. Was
(01:49):
an abusive bully with a drinking problem who could never
hold a steady job. The family nickname for him was
the Merchant of Chaos. Religion would play a central role
in tom childhood, but while Don rejected Bible study, Tom
sought it out. So I went to Saint Francis Seminary
when I was a freshman in high school. I mean,
I really never considered becoming a priest. I was two
(02:14):
years after the divorce. And somehow, I I quint have
figured out why I did that, Why I think I
needed When I went there, it was like a very
secure environment. You know what, we're boarding school, and I
guess I think I just needed that. Don always spoke
of his rosebud moment. Seeing the movie The Greatest Show
(02:36):
on Earth was the inspirational moment that led him to
the movies. For Tom, his rosebud might have been Guys
and Dolls. Tom had suffered a sports injury and a
wrestling meet his senior year. The injury forced him to
look elsewhere to try and fit in. With no prior
acting experience, he decided to audition for the school play.
The role was Nathan Detroit what can You Do Me?
(03:02):
I Love You? For Tom High School theater was literally
life changing. Unbeknownst to him, there was a talent agent
in the audience. She was there to scout the older
sister of one of her acting clients. The agent signed
him immediately. She suggested he moved to New York City.
My father gave me nine. He gave me nine over
(03:25):
a period and wants to help me out. And I
moved to New York and you know, worked bus tables
town didn't have to work odd jobs for long. He
booked his first movie within the year Bookshields and Martin
Hewitt Endless Loves Tom was cast as Billy, the friend
(03:52):
who inspires the lead character, David Axelrod to commit arson
in the name of his love for his girlfriend, Jade Butterfield,
played by Brooks Fields. The film also starred James Spader
as Keith Butterfield and Ian Zering as Brookshield's little brother Sammy.
The film was directed by Franco Zeffarelli, who made perhaps
the greatest of all the Romeo and Juliette films, back
(04:13):
to Endless Love. In Endless Love, Zeffarelli hired Tom for
one reason, and one reason only, his hot body. Tom's
performance is perhaps most notable for how little he's wearing.
He's shirtless in skin tight jean shorts. In the middle
of the scene, he randomly takes his shirt off. There's
no reason for him to take a shirt off in
his one and only scene in the movie, But for Tom,
(04:35):
it was strategic. It was the only way to get
noticed by the industry. So some woman did that to me,
I'd burn her down, house down, And I tried that.
Did ever tell you, guys? Eight years old? And I
was into Arci. It's serious. A little whole pile of newspapers.
You ever try to light a whole pile of wet newspapers?
Smokes like crazy? I Got real scared scene. Did you
(04:58):
want to hear the wild part? It's like I'm a
hero or something. They thought I saved the whole block?
Did this day my mother did become a hero? Other
than Tom's incredible abs, the scene is most memorable for
Tom's high pitched voice and goofy giggle. Did this day
my mother did become a hero? You know? Tom was
(05:19):
very aware that his voice didn't match his masculine intensity
on the screen. It's not easy for someone to permanently
change one's voice. His voice transformation was quite remarkable. You
are here for me too, enlighten you, to edify you,
to send you off into the now not so unknown future.
(05:41):
So come along with me. How do fake like you are?
Nice and caring? Not? I don't want to microphone. But
back then, tom squeaky teen voice was a perfect fit
for the eighties why a genre and there was no
bigger y A star than Brooks Shields. But if you
touch my Tommy right now, you can feel it. Feel
(06:02):
what how do you make your tummy moves like that?
I'm not doing it. It's not doing it by itself.
Yes it is. She had already played a teen prostitute
in Louis Miles Pretty Baby, and at age fifteen, she
(06:23):
had started in Blue Lagoon. After shooting Endless Love, she
was the most famous actress in the world, appearing that
year on over thirty magazine covers. There were all those
infamous Calvin Klein gene ads, merchandise deals, even her own
Brookshields doll. Brook she'els she's a beautiful dolls. The Brookshields
(06:43):
doll with long, beautiful hair. You can style in so
many ways. I'll make believe she's a model. You can
pose her and pretend she's a teenage doll. There's even
a ring for you, Thanks Brook. Brooke sheels she's a
beautiful dog. How having played roles where her character loses
her virginity, Brooks real life virginity became a national obsession.
(07:06):
The press had become so intrusive that she was forced
to announce she was no longer a virgin at age twenty,
revealing her dalliance with the actor Dean Kane. Tom thought
that being in a film with Brooke would lead to
bigger roles, except the only gig he could land was
an extra in tax It's a great example of there
are no small parts only small actors. An actor gets
(07:28):
a day player role, but he is so committed in
his role that he gets the attention of the director.
The story goes that one of the actors fell out
and there was an opening for the third lead, opposite
Sean Penn and Timothy Hutton. I guess I was eighteen
when I did TAPS, and I remember I remember being
(07:49):
I couldn't sleep at night. I was. I was both
very excited and very concerned that I might get fired.
You know when you dream about something and then it's
coming roue ah, you can't believe it, and there is
the sense of, well, if this is the only chance
I have doing this, I'm gonna I want to make
sure that I enjoy every moment of it. Tim Hunton
(08:12):
plays the cadet major, leading his cadets to resist the
authorities who are trying to shut down their academy. Tom
plays the hothead. He's all energy and intensity. You can
trust him to stay with us, and the hell we're
gonna trust him to save water. Son of a bitch,
whisk on our strength and a half. Everybody, listen up.
Did you feel pack some weapons and manager battle teas, carrots, itself,
(08:34):
did Charlie the factors. Tom was now on Hollywood's radar.
For a time, he lived with the Estevez brothers, Emilio
and Charlie Sheen. Amelia would later be Tom's best man
in Tom's wedding to Mimi Rogers. There were the low brothers,
Rob and Chad Lowe and the Pen brothers Sean and Chris.
Around the time Down was in retreat up in Laurel Canyon,
(08:55):
Tom was just down the hill, living in a spartan
rental in West Hollywood. He had just a mattress on
the floor and a telephone so whose agent could reach him.
He lived off pizza and the adrenaline of finding his
next film. When we return, we dive into the Tijuana
road Trip movie that Tom never talks about. He probably
(09:22):
shouldn't have taken the role in Losing It. Dave's been
itching for it. What he gets ended, I can wear,
I can't you awake, and Spider will do anything for it.
Stop him. There comes a time when nothing seems more
important than lose him. It was a terrible movie, and
(09:46):
it's no wonder he never talks about it, but I
must say he's quite good in it. Losing It was
one of those raunchy eighties teen sex comedies, part of
the zeitgeist of films like Porkies, Hard Bodies, and Hot
Dog by Day. They're the finest hotdogging freestyle skiers gave
a world by mind. They really take chances, are keep
(10:11):
busy for dinner. Yeah, that's a girl I can take
advantage of. This is the motion picture comedy that's proud
to go downhill fast. These films catered to a youth
market wanting to rent R rated comedies about kids losing
their virginity. It was as if the media's obsession with
Brooks Shields losing her virginity had sparked a whole new
(10:32):
film genre. In Losing It, as you might expect, Tom's
character sets out to do just that. He's got two
buddies to help him out, Pleaseball Dave played by Jackie
Earle Haley, who had just starred in Bad News Bears,
and the superjock known as Spider played by John Stockwell
in real life, a recent Harvard graduate who would later
play Cougar alongside Tom in Top Gun. The movie also
(10:55):
featured Top Guns Slider, Rick Rossovitch and as Tom's love
interest Ellie Long from Cheers. The film was directed by
the late Curtis Hansen, who would go on to direct
The Great l A Confidential. All this to say, this
was quite a powerhouse creative package for a film about
three boys who take a trip to Tijuana to lose
their virginity. The story plays out like a version of
(11:18):
it in the film. They pick up Shelley Long, a
housewife unhappy in her marriage. Naturally, as this is a
fantasy teen comedy, Tom's character and Shelley's character, who was
twice Tom's age, end up hooking up. The movie is
as shallow as it sounds, and yet there is an
endearing quality in Tom's performance. The kid had given a
(11:39):
strong breakout performance in Taps, and then his agent tells
him to go and do a buddy movie where he
travels to Tijuana to check out a Donkey sex show.
I mean this had to be the lowest point in
Tom's career and a low point for Don as well.
Paramount executive Don Steele recalls being una to reach Don
(12:00):
without having to drive over to see him at his house.
Don wouldn't come outside, and they ended up conducting meetings
from his intercom Callbox. Don was just too depressed to
be out in the world. I didn't see him in
person for almost gosh a year. He was humiliated. Paramount
had been his family and now they were making movies
(12:21):
like Trading Places in terms of endearment and old Don
had was a script about a welder who wanted to
be a ballerina. Don was a gambler and he had
put all of his eggs in one basket. Flash Dance
was everything for him. He willed the movie into production.
He came on board after Linda Ops had developed the
(12:42):
script with Tom Hedley, a British magazine editor who had
come up with the idea Don would bring in Joe
Esterhouse to write it, and after being turned down multiple
times by Adrian Lyne, he finally secured him as a director.
Don had a vision for the movie, an MTV style
music driven fantasy with great clothes and a hot soundtrack.
He was taking a page out of his American Gigglo playbook. Meanwhile,
(13:05):
Tom was picking himself up off the map after losing
it and was angling for a role based on the
biggest y a book in the world, The Outsiders, to
be directed by Francis Ford. Coppola. I'd heard a librarian
had inspired Coppola to make The Outsiders. Coppola had received
a letter from a middle school librarian from Fresno named
Joe Ellen. Missakean Dear Mr Coppola. She wrote, we are
(13:29):
also impressed with the book The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton.
We have a petition circulating asking that it be made
into a movie. On the petition were about fifteen pages
of children's signatures in different colored pens. Hinton had written
the book when she was in her late teens. Coppola
was touched by the sensitive, greaser kids with big feelings.
He had been a drama counselor at a summer camp.
(13:51):
The idea of working with a bunch of kids on
a movie made him nostalgic for his summer camp days.
If you were twenty year old actor in Hollywood, they
were is no bigger role than a part in The Outsiders.
You had You had Macchio, Swazy, low Estevez, Dylan, c.
Thomas Howe, Diane Lane. Sean Penn called him about the audition.
(14:14):
He he couldn't believe what he had heard Coppola was
doing with the actors instead of actors going in one
by one. Actors were assembled into groups and they would
take turns playing the different parts. They quickly realized they
were competing against each other. In a live rehearsal setting.
Tom would audition for the dreamy pony boy role, then
switching to the charming soda pop role. What's it like
(14:36):
being here over here? A man you know, like a
big shot, says how you saved him in Cade pony
Boy and they burned death hand and for you. He
ended up getting the part of Steve Randall. He went
from the preppie and losing it to full greaser with
snaggly teeth and greasy hair. Tom faced the challenge of
trying to stand out amongst perhaps the greatest ensemble of
(14:58):
young actors in movie history. He did everything he could
to make the part bigger than how it was written.
Tom didn't know how to do a standing back flip,
so when he's downtime, he asked the stunt coordinator to
teach him. While the cast was out partying, Tom was
in backflip training. This was classic Tom. How could he
give more energy to the scene do a backflip ten
(15:21):
ft in the air off a parked car? The movie
certainly isn't Tom's movie, but Tom makes his mark as
a young man who's not afraid to fight. What do
you do and walk him by your lonesome on the street. Huh,
let me none of my business. It is my business,
look at my nose. Huge movie stars in the Golden
Age of movies always played versions of themselves. That was
(15:43):
the point of it, to come across on screen as
they would off screen, so that they would be accessible
to their audiences. Stars wanted their audiences to feel as
if they really knew them. To do so, they needed
the right role, the right story, the right director. They
called this combination a dar vehicle. At age nineteen, Tom
didn't have the clout or the notoriety to choose his
(16:05):
star vehicles. But then in Risky Business, Tom gets his vehicle.
He could play the most winning and charismatic version of himself.
When we return, we tracked Tom's collision course with Don
after Risky Business and Flash Dance become unlikely. Hits all right,
(16:34):
but we do me a favor. Anything, Cookie, don't steal anything.
You know. If I come back here and I find
anything missing, I'm going straight to the police. I'm not joking.
The voice the cadence, the sensitivity. It's Tom playing Tom.
(16:57):
There's a vulnerability here that just wasn't present and other
male actors. One of the best Christmas is I had
my my parents got divorced and I was like twelve
years old. I was living in the Lowa, Kentucky, and
we didn't have any money, and so what we did
was is a month before Christmas. Um, the gift was
is that every time you know you did something good,
(17:18):
you get to put straw in the manger or something
and you had to pick We picked names out of
the hand and I have three sisters and my mother
at that point and it was just us five and
we would do something good for that person, you know,
throughout the whole month until Christmas Day, and then you know,
you told that person unless they figured it out already
(17:38):
who it was. But it's all I mean, through everything,
through such the hard times, our family kind of geared
things made things easier to keep things positive opposed to
dwelling on Hey, you know, look at it's Christmas and
you know we don't have any money to buy all
these gifts. I mean, it was the important thing was
is that we're together and we're health and enjoy the moment,
(18:03):
Enjoy Today. Risky Business was far from a shot fire hit.
On paper, it had the potential to be another Losing It,
with Tom again playing a team losing his ferdinity. But
first time director Paul Brickman had a vision of giving
the raunchy teen comedy genre a stylish French New Wave approach.
Brickman made a comedy about falling in love what the
(18:24):
ancient Greeks called ludus, that feeling of infatuation mixed with
the sweetness of first love. It was all there in
that infamous scene scored by Tangerine Dream, where Tom and
Rebecca de Mornay's character have sex on train car number twelve.
The screen tests for Tom and Rebecca were done in
Steve Tisch's living room, with producer John Avnett holding the
video camera. Well, I I was doing the outside of
(18:47):
the time, and I I only had this is my
last free time before you know. I told him Mike,
I wouldn't come in to tape for it, and so
I flew in late on a Thursday night and I
taped early, like o'clock in the morning. I met Rebecca
on a Friday, and then I had to fly out
a couple of hours later, because I had to work
all Friday night. We just got together. I mean, I
(19:08):
I came in, you know, I still like my tattoo
on my arm and twoth old chipped. My hair is
just kind of back, a little greasy and stuff. And
I just explained to Paul Brickman when I was going
to do physically with the character. Um, just so I
mean he could see, you know, where I was going,
my instincts and the choices of the scene, and then visually,
(19:32):
you know, I told him would play a big part
in the character. So just I told him just relax,
you know. Rebecca the Morning had initially been rejected for
the lead role. Her only film experience was a one
line scene in the Francis Ford Coppola movie One from
the Heart, the movie that led to Coppola's bankruptcy, which
led to his choice of directing The Outsiders, which led
(19:53):
to Tom scene stealing role as Steve Randall, which led
to Tom now in a position to take the lead
in Risky Business opposite the unknown Rebecca the Morning. It
may have been the longest screen test in film history.
It went all night and into the morning. By five am,
Paul Brickman, John Abner, and Steve Tish had found their cast.
(20:14):
Another producer on the film, The Future, billionaire David Geffen,
was so impressed with Tom's videotape he had a cassette
copy made for himself. Tom and Rebecca fell in love
during filming. At the time, Rebecca was dating the actor
Harry Dean Stanton, who was twice Rebecca's age. He was
known to keep fit by swimming laps. Tom would see
(20:36):
him at the hotel pool swimming for hours. I mean,
the man had some real stamina. But for Tom it
was quite frustrating. Here he was doing steamy sex scenes
with the beautiful Rebecca and her boyfriend was swimming laps
all day waiting for her to come back to the hotel.
On set, Tom self identified as a Christian. While the
(20:57):
rest of the cast members were partying, Tom would always
retreat to his hotel room from Bible study and a workout.
Perhaps the Bible study helped him to be patient in
waiting for Rebecca. There was a sweet love affair. Tom
would make her homemade tall House cookies and she would
introduce him to European art films. Between Rebecca's sophistication and
Paul Brickman's European sensibilities. Tom's game was elevated. I truly
(21:22):
believe that Tom wouldn't have had the career he's had
without Paul Brickman. Sadly, Paul's career never took off. After
they wrap production, Warner Brothers gave him the note that
the movie needed more sex and they wanted boobs in
the final party sequence. Brickman laughed them off at first,
he wasn't making a teen sex comedy, but unfortunately the
(21:45):
studio execs weren't laughing. They forced him to change the ending, which,
as Brickman had conceived, it was much darker and more truthful,
kind of a morality tale. But the studio didn't want
a morality tale. They wanted a Porki's poster, Tom in
bed with girls in bikinis and money raining down all
over him. David Geffen, in particular, drew a hard line.
(22:10):
They were going to fire Paul Brickman if he didn't
reshoot the endings have to be some time. My name
(22:49):
is Joel Goodson. I gained human fulfillment. I gross to
bright thousand dollars in one night. Isn't life Grand Brickman
was forced to make the ending more upbeat, more of
a teen movie. Get him into Princeton. Everybody wins. I
(23:13):
guess we will be seeing each other for a while.
I know, so are. You're going straight home now. I
don't know why. I just thought it might be nice
if I spent the Avinetes together. I really like that.
How much you got on you? How much have I
got on me? I got twenty dollars land. What are
(23:38):
we gonna do about this? What can I send it
to you? Can you send it? Because I don't have
that much here? How about I write you a check?
Do you think I'd accept a check from you? Stupid?
My name is Joel Goodson, ideal in human fulfillment and
(24:01):
crossed to eight thousand dollars in one night, Time of
Your Life. Brickman had no choice. He had to bring
back Tom and Rebecca for reshoots after the movie was finished.
He never watched the film, but he had done what
he could to preserve the integrity of the movie. When
(24:23):
the movie opened the following summer, I went to see
the first matinee in Times Square and people were going nuts.
They were screaming back at the screen and cheering on
the kids during the sex scene, and Usher walked up
and down the aisle with a flashlight trying to dissuade
the old guys from whacking off. That's how sexy the
(24:44):
chemistry was between Tom and Rebecca. Around the time the
movie came out, Tom's sister graduated from high school, and
Tom brought Rebecca with him. Like Dawn, Tom came back
to his high school with something of a chip on
his shoulder. You see, he was the guy who never
fits in, who never made the football team or could
(25:05):
get a date for the prom, and now just three
years later he was a movie star. Like Don, he
couldn't help but feel some resentment in coming home. Ironically,
Don was sharing in that same feeling of I told
you so with the studio that fired him for Done.
Flash Dance would go on to earn four OSCAR nominations,
(25:28):
including editing and cinematography, and winning for Best Original Song.
Don's comeback was complete, from getting fired from the studio
to delivering a two hundred million dollar movie on a
six million dollar budget, And Tom, who just a year
ago was starring in a Tijuana Donkey show comedy, now
had a hit movie due in large part to his
(25:49):
infamous dance scene in his underwear that Tom himself had choreographed.
Once again, Tom had elevated his role in creating a
movie moment. Nobody would forget his rabound from the film.
Saw revenue shoot up after the release, and Jennifer Beale's
off the shoulder sweatshirts became the hot fashion trend. Don
and Tom were back on the rise, and in a
(26:11):
few short years they would make history together. The Down
Season two is executive produced 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 Drew
(26:33):
That's Me. Louis Weymouth voices the character of Pierce and
also produces the series. For more episodes of The Dawn
season two, listened to the series on the I Heart
Radio app or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Episode four, Top Guns Don and Tom. In this episode,
we tracked Don's collision course with Tom Cruise, beginning with
Tom's role in Endless Love and the world obsession with
Brookshields Virginity, his breakout performance in Taps, the sex comedy
he did with Shelley Duval, and his love affair with
(00:23):
Rebecca de Mornay. In Risky Business, this episode is all
about Tom. Don was still licking his wounds over his
dismissal at Paramount. He was no longer in a position
of power as a studio buyer, but rather one of
many hundreds of sellers hustling to get a green light.
Don didn't have a project for Cruise, but he was
(00:44):
keeping tabs for him ever since his grease to audition.
I was e monthly when Don first told me about him.
He was a baby, just two years out of high school.
Like Don, Tom had a rough high school experience. By
the time he had graduated from glen Ridge High School
in New Jersey, he had attended fifteen different schools. Like Don,
(01:06):
he found himself an outsider. Like Don, he joined the
wrestling team as a means to prove himself and blow
off the frustrations of being a new kid, and like Don,
he had a strained relationship with his father. I honestly,
I didn't want the name I really because I wanted
(01:27):
to define who I was for myself and when I
decided to be an actor, Ah, that's why I changed it.
I just dropped the My last name's Thomas Cruise Cruises
my middle name, and for me, I wanted some saying
what my name was. I didn't think he gave it
to me. And Tom's father, Thomas Maype third Sr. Was
(01:49):
an abusive bully with a drinking problem who could never
hold a steady job. The family nickname for him was
the Merchant of Chaos. Religion would play a central role
in tom childhood, but while Don rejected Bible study, Tom
sought it out. So I went to Saint Francis Seminary
when I was a freshman in high school. I mean,
I really never considered becoming a priest. I was two
(02:14):
years after the divorce. And somehow, I I quint have
figured out why I did that, Why I think I
needed When I went there, it was like a very
secure environment. You know what, we're boarding school, and I
guess I think I just needed that. Don always spoke
of his rosebud moment. Seeing the movie The Greatest Show
(02:36):
on Earth was the inspirational moment that led him to
the movies. For Tom, his rosebud might have been Guys
and Dolls. Tom had suffered a sports injury and a
wrestling meet his senior year. The injury forced him to
look elsewhere to try and fit in. With no prior
acting experience, he decided to audition for the school play.
The role was Nathan Detroit what can You Do Me?
(03:02):
I Love You? For Tom High School theater was literally
life changing. Unbeknownst to him, there was a talent agent
in the audience. She was there to scout the older
sister of one of her acting clients. The agent signed
him immediately. She suggested he moved to New York City.
My father gave me nine. He gave me nine over
(03:25):
a period and wants to help me out. And I
moved to New York and you know, worked bus tables
town didn't have to work odd jobs for long. He
booked his first movie within the year Bookshields and Martin
Hewitt Endless Loves Tom was cast as Billy, the friend
(03:52):
who inspires the lead character, David Axelrod to commit arson
in the name of his love for his girlfriend, Jade Butterfield,
played by Brooks Fields. The film also starred James Spader
as Keith Butterfield and Ian Zering as Brookshield's little brother Sammy.
The film was directed by Franco Zeffarelli, who made perhaps
the greatest of all the Romeo and Juliette films, back
(04:13):
to Endless Love. In Endless Love, Zeffarelli hired Tom for
one reason, and one reason only, his hot body. Tom's
performance is perhaps most notable for how little he's wearing.
He's shirtless in skin tight jean shorts. In the middle
of the scene, he randomly takes his shirt off. There's
no reason for him to take a shirt off in
his one and only scene in the movie, But for Tom,
(04:35):
it was strategic. It was the only way to get
noticed by the industry. So some woman did that to me,
I'd burn her down, house down, And I tried that.
Did ever tell you, guys? Eight years old? And I
was into Arci. It's serious. A little whole pile of newspapers.
You ever try to light a whole pile of wet newspapers?
Smokes like crazy? I Got real scared scene. Did you
(04:58):
want to hear the wild part? It's like I'm a
hero or something. They thought I saved the whole block?
Did this day my mother did become a hero? Other
than Tom's incredible abs, the scene is most memorable for
Tom's high pitched voice and goofy giggle. Did this day
my mother did become a hero? You know? Tom was
(05:19):
very aware that his voice didn't match his masculine intensity
on the screen. It's not easy for someone to permanently
change one's voice. His voice transformation was quite remarkable. You
are here for me too, enlighten you, to edify you,
to send you off into the now not so unknown future.
(05:41):
So come along with me. How do fake like you are?
Nice and caring? Not? I don't want to microphone. But
back then, tom squeaky teen voice was a perfect fit
for the eighties why a genre and there was no
bigger y A star than Brooks Shields. But if you
touch my Tommy right now, you can feel it. Feel
(06:02):
what how do you make your tummy moves like that?
I'm not doing it. It's not doing it by itself.
Yes it is. She had already played a teen prostitute
in Louis Miles Pretty Baby, and at age fifteen, she
(06:23):
had started in Blue Lagoon. After shooting Endless Love, she
was the most famous actress in the world, appearing that
year on over thirty magazine covers. There were all those
infamous Calvin Klein gene ads, merchandise deals, even her own
Brookshields doll. Brook she'els she's a beautiful dolls. The Brookshields
(06:43):
doll with long, beautiful hair. You can style in so
many ways. I'll make believe she's a model. You can
pose her and pretend she's a teenage doll. There's even
a ring for you, Thanks Brook. Brooke sheels she's a
beautiful dog. How having played roles where her character loses
her virginity, Brooks real life virginity became a national obsession.
(07:06):
The press had become so intrusive that she was forced
to announce she was no longer a virgin at age twenty,
revealing her dalliance with the actor Dean Kane. Tom thought
that being in a film with Brooke would lead to
bigger roles, except the only gig he could land was
an extra in tax It's a great example of there
are no small parts only small actors. An actor gets
(07:28):
a day player role, but he is so committed in
his role that he gets the attention of the director.
The story goes that one of the actors fell out
and there was an opening for the third lead, opposite
Sean Penn and Timothy Hutton. I guess I was eighteen
when I did TAPS, and I remember I remember being
(07:49):
I couldn't sleep at night. I was. I was both
very excited and very concerned that I might get fired.
You know when you dream about something and then it's
coming roue ah, you can't believe it, and there is
the sense of, well, if this is the only chance
I have doing this, I'm gonna I want to make
sure that I enjoy every moment of it. Tim Hunton
(08:12):
plays the cadet major, leading his cadets to resist the
authorities who are trying to shut down their academy. Tom
plays the hothead. He's all energy and intensity. You can
trust him to stay with us, and the hell we're
gonna trust him to save water. Son of a bitch,
whisk on our strength and a half. Everybody, listen up.
Did you feel pack some weapons and manager battle teas, carrots, itself,
(08:34):
did Charlie the factors. Tom was now on Hollywood's radar.
For a time, he lived with the Estevez brothers, Emilio
and Charlie Sheen. Amelia would later be Tom's best man
in Tom's wedding to Mimi Rogers. There were the low brothers,
Rob and Chad Lowe and the Pen brothers Sean and Chris.
Around the time Down was in retreat up in Laurel Canyon,
(08:55):
Tom was just down the hill, living in a spartan
rental in West Hollywood. He had just a mattress on
the floor and a telephone so whose agent could reach him.
He lived off pizza and the adrenaline of finding his
next film. When we return, we dive into the Tijuana
road Trip movie that Tom never talks about. He probably
(09:22):
shouldn't have taken the role in Losing It. Dave's been
itching for it. What he gets ended, I can wear,
I can't you awake, and Spider will do anything for it.
Stop him. There comes a time when nothing seems more
important than lose him. It was a terrible movie, and
(09:46):
it's no wonder he never talks about it, but I
must say he's quite good in it. Losing It was
one of those raunchy eighties teen sex comedies, part of
the zeitgeist of films like Porkies, Hard Bodies, and Hot
Dog by Day. They're the finest hotdogging freestyle skiers gave
a world by mind. They really take chances, are keep
(10:11):
busy for dinner. Yeah, that's a girl I can take
advantage of. This is the motion picture comedy that's proud
to go downhill fast. These films catered to a youth
market wanting to rent R rated comedies about kids losing
their virginity. It was as if the media's obsession with
Brooks Shields losing her virginity had sparked a whole new
(10:32):
film genre. In Losing It, as you might expect, Tom's
character sets out to do just that. He's got two
buddies to help him out, Pleaseball Dave played by Jackie
Earle Haley, who had just starred in Bad News Bears,
and the superjock known as Spider played by John Stockwell
in real life, a recent Harvard graduate who would later
play Cougar alongside Tom in Top Gun. The movie also
(10:55):
featured Top Guns Slider, Rick Rossovitch and as Tom's love
interest Ellie Long from Cheers. The film was directed by
the late Curtis Hansen, who would go on to direct
The Great l A Confidential. All this to say, this
was quite a powerhouse creative package for a film about
three boys who take a trip to Tijuana to lose
their virginity. The story plays out like a version of
(11:18):
it in the film. They pick up Shelley Long, a
housewife unhappy in her marriage. Naturally, as this is a
fantasy teen comedy, Tom's character and Shelley's character, who was
twice Tom's age, end up hooking up. The movie is
as shallow as it sounds, and yet there is an
endearing quality in Tom's performance. The kid had given a
(11:39):
strong breakout performance in Taps, and then his agent tells
him to go and do a buddy movie where he
travels to Tijuana to check out a Donkey sex show.
I mean this had to be the lowest point in
Tom's career and a low point for Don as well.
Paramount executive Don Steele recalls being una to reach Don
(12:00):
without having to drive over to see him at his house.
Don wouldn't come outside, and they ended up conducting meetings
from his intercom Callbox. Don was just too depressed to
be out in the world. I didn't see him in
person for almost gosh a year. He was humiliated. Paramount
had been his family and now they were making movies
(12:21):
like Trading Places in terms of endearment and old Don
had was a script about a welder who wanted to
be a ballerina. Don was a gambler and he had
put all of his eggs in one basket. Flash Dance
was everything for him. He willed the movie into production.
He came on board after Linda Ops had developed the
(12:42):
script with Tom Hedley, a British magazine editor who had
come up with the idea Don would bring in Joe
Esterhouse to write it, and after being turned down multiple
times by Adrian Lyne, he finally secured him as a director.
Don had a vision for the movie, an MTV style
music driven fantasy with great clothes and a hot soundtrack.
He was taking a page out of his American Gigglo playbook. Meanwhile,
(13:05):
Tom was picking himself up off the map after losing
it and was angling for a role based on the
biggest y a book in the world, The Outsiders, to
be directed by Francis Ford. Coppola. I'd heard a librarian
had inspired Coppola to make The Outsiders. Coppola had received
a letter from a middle school librarian from Fresno named
Joe Ellen. Missakean Dear Mr Coppola. She wrote, we are
(13:29):
also impressed with the book The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton.
We have a petition circulating asking that it be made
into a movie. On the petition were about fifteen pages
of children's signatures in different colored pens. Hinton had written
the book when she was in her late teens. Coppola
was touched by the sensitive, greaser kids with big feelings.
He had been a drama counselor at a summer camp.
(13:51):
The idea of working with a bunch of kids on
a movie made him nostalgic for his summer camp days.
If you were twenty year old actor in Hollywood, they
were is no bigger role than a part in The Outsiders.
You had You had Macchio, Swazy, low Estevez, Dylan, c.
Thomas Howe, Diane Lane. Sean Penn called him about the audition.
(14:14):
He he couldn't believe what he had heard Coppola was
doing with the actors instead of actors going in one
by one. Actors were assembled into groups and they would
take turns playing the different parts. They quickly realized they
were competing against each other. In a live rehearsal setting.
Tom would audition for the dreamy pony boy role, then
switching to the charming soda pop role. What's it like
(14:36):
being here over here? A man you know, like a
big shot, says how you saved him in Cade pony
Boy and they burned death hand and for you. He
ended up getting the part of Steve Randall. He went
from the preppie and losing it to full greaser with
snaggly teeth and greasy hair. Tom faced the challenge of
trying to stand out amongst perhaps the greatest ensemble of
(14:58):
young actors in movie history. He did everything he could
to make the part bigger than how it was written.
Tom didn't know how to do a standing back flip,
so when he's downtime, he asked the stunt coordinator to
teach him. While the cast was out partying, Tom was
in backflip training. This was classic Tom. How could he
give more energy to the scene do a backflip ten
(15:21):
ft in the air off a parked car? The movie
certainly isn't Tom's movie, but Tom makes his mark as
a young man who's not afraid to fight. What do
you do and walk him by your lonesome on the street. Huh,
let me none of my business. It is my business,
look at my nose. Huge movie stars in the Golden
Age of movies always played versions of themselves. That was
(15:43):
the point of it, to come across on screen as
they would off screen, so that they would be accessible
to their audiences. Stars wanted their audiences to feel as
if they really knew them. To do so, they needed
the right role, the right story, the right director. They
called this combination a dar vehicle. At age nineteen, Tom
didn't have the clout or the notoriety to choose his
(16:05):
star vehicles. But then in Risky Business, Tom gets his vehicle.
He could play the most winning and charismatic version of himself.
When we return, we tracked Tom's collision course with Don
after Risky Business and Flash Dance become unlikely. Hits all right,
(16:34):
but we do me a favor. Anything, Cookie, don't steal anything.
You know. If I come back here and I find
anything missing, I'm going straight to the police. I'm not joking.
The voice the cadence, the sensitivity. It's Tom playing Tom.
(16:57):
There's a vulnerability here that just wasn't present and other
male actors. One of the best Christmas is I had
my my parents got divorced and I was like twelve
years old. I was living in the Lowa, Kentucky, and
we didn't have any money, and so what we did
was is a month before Christmas. Um, the gift was
is that every time you know you did something good,
(17:18):
you get to put straw in the manger or something
and you had to pick We picked names out of
the hand and I have three sisters and my mother
at that point and it was just us five and
we would do something good for that person, you know,
throughout the whole month until Christmas Day, and then you know,
you told that person unless they figured it out already
(17:38):
who it was. But it's all I mean, through everything,
through such the hard times, our family kind of geared
things made things easier to keep things positive opposed to
dwelling on Hey, you know, look at it's Christmas and
you know we don't have any money to buy all
these gifts. I mean, it was the important thing was
is that we're together and we're health and enjoy the moment,
(18:03):
Enjoy Today. Risky Business was far from a shot fire hit.
On paper, it had the potential to be another Losing It,
with Tom again playing a team losing his ferdinity. But
first time director Paul Brickman had a vision of giving
the raunchy teen comedy genre a stylish French New Wave approach.
Brickman made a comedy about falling in love what the
(18:24):
ancient Greeks called ludus, that feeling of infatuation mixed with
the sweetness of first love. It was all there in
that infamous scene scored by Tangerine Dream, where Tom and
Rebecca de Mornay's character have sex on train car number twelve.
The screen tests for Tom and Rebecca were done in
Steve Tisch's living room, with producer John Avnett holding the
video camera. Well, I I was doing the outside of
(18:47):
the time, and I I only had this is my
last free time before you know. I told him Mike,
I wouldn't come in to tape for it, and so
I flew in late on a Thursday night and I
taped early, like o'clock in the morning. I met Rebecca
on a Friday, and then I had to fly out
a couple of hours later, because I had to work
all Friday night. We just got together. I mean, I
(19:08):
I came in, you know, I still like my tattoo
on my arm and twoth old chipped. My hair is
just kind of back, a little greasy and stuff. And
I just explained to Paul Brickman when I was going
to do physically with the character. Um, just so I
mean he could see, you know, where I was going,
my instincts and the choices of the scene, and then visually,
(19:32):
you know, I told him would play a big part
in the character. So just I told him just relax,
you know. Rebecca the Morning had initially been rejected for
the lead role. Her only film experience was a one
line scene in the Francis Ford Coppola movie One from
the Heart, the movie that led to Coppola's bankruptcy, which
led to his choice of directing The Outsiders, which led
(19:53):
to Tom scene stealing role as Steve Randall, which led
to Tom now in a position to take the lead
in Risky Business opposite the unknown Rebecca the Morning. It
may have been the longest screen test in film history.
It went all night and into the morning. By five am,
Paul Brickman, John Abner, and Steve Tish had found their cast.
(20:14):
Another producer on the film, The Future, billionaire David Geffen,
was so impressed with Tom's videotape he had a cassette
copy made for himself. Tom and Rebecca fell in love
during filming. At the time, Rebecca was dating the actor
Harry Dean Stanton, who was twice Rebecca's age. He was
known to keep fit by swimming laps. Tom would see
(20:36):
him at the hotel pool swimming for hours. I mean,
the man had some real stamina. But for Tom it
was quite frustrating. Here he was doing steamy sex scenes
with the beautiful Rebecca and her boyfriend was swimming laps
all day waiting for her to come back to the hotel.
On set, Tom self identified as a Christian. While the
(20:57):
rest of the cast members were partying, Tom would always
retreat to his hotel room from Bible study and a workout.
Perhaps the Bible study helped him to be patient in
waiting for Rebecca. There was a sweet love affair. Tom
would make her homemade tall House cookies and she would
introduce him to European art films. Between Rebecca's sophistication and
Paul Brickman's European sensibilities. Tom's game was elevated. I truly
(21:22):
believe that Tom wouldn't have had the career he's had
without Paul Brickman. Sadly, Paul's career never took off. After
they wrap production, Warner Brothers gave him the note that
the movie needed more sex and they wanted boobs in
the final party sequence. Brickman laughed them off at first,
he wasn't making a teen sex comedy, but unfortunately the
(21:45):
studio execs weren't laughing. They forced him to change the ending, which,
as Brickman had conceived, it was much darker and more truthful,
kind of a morality tale. But the studio didn't want
a morality tale. They wanted a Porki's poster, Tom in
bed with girls in bikinis and money raining down all
over him. David Geffen, in particular, drew a hard line.
(22:10):
They were going to fire Paul Brickman if he didn't
reshoot the endings have to be some time. My name
(22:49):
is Joel Goodson. I gained human fulfillment. I gross to
bright thousand dollars in one night. Isn't life Grand Brickman
was forced to make the ending more upbeat, more of
a teen movie. Get him into Princeton. Everybody wins. I
(23:13):
guess we will be seeing each other for a while.
I know, so are. You're going straight home now. I
don't know why. I just thought it might be nice
if I spent the Avinetes together. I really like that.
How much you got on you? How much have I
got on me? I got twenty dollars land. What are
(23:38):
we gonna do about this? What can I send it
to you? Can you send it? Because I don't have
that much here? How about I write you a check?
Do you think I'd accept a check from you? Stupid?
My name is Joel Goodson, ideal in human fulfillment and
(24:01):
crossed to eight thousand dollars in one night, Time of
Your Life. Brickman had no choice. He had to bring
back Tom and Rebecca for reshoots after the movie was finished.
He never watched the film, but he had done what
he could to preserve the integrity of the movie. When
(24:23):
the movie opened the following summer, I went to see
the first matinee in Times Square and people were going nuts.
They were screaming back at the screen and cheering on
the kids during the sex scene, and Usher walked up
and down the aisle with a flashlight trying to dissuade
the old guys from whacking off. That's how sexy the
(24:44):
chemistry was between Tom and Rebecca. Around the time the
movie came out, Tom's sister graduated from high school, and
Tom brought Rebecca with him. Like Dawn, Tom came back
to his high school with something of a chip on
his shoulder. You see, he was the guy who never
fits in, who never made the football team or could
(25:05):
get a date for the prom, and now just three
years later he was a movie star. Like Don, he
couldn't help but feel some resentment in coming home. Ironically,
Don was sharing in that same feeling of I told
you so with the studio that fired him for Done.
Flash Dance would go on to earn four OSCAR nominations,
(25:28):
including editing and cinematography, and winning for Best Original Song.
Don's comeback was complete, from getting fired from the studio
to delivering a two hundred million dollar movie on a
six million dollar budget, And Tom, who just a year
ago was starring in a Tijuana Donkey show comedy, now
had a hit movie due in large part to his
(25:49):
infamous dance scene in his underwear that Tom himself had choreographed.
Once again, Tom had elevated his role in creating a
movie moment. Nobody would forget his rabound from the film.
Saw revenue shoot up after the release, and Jennifer Beale's
off the shoulder sweatshirts became the hot fashion trend. Don
and Tom were back on the rise, and in a
(26:11):
few short years they would make history together. The Down
Season two is executive produced 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 Drew
(26:33):
That's Me. Louis Weymouth voices the character of Pierce and
also produces the series. For more episodes of The Dawn
season two, listened to the series on the I Heart
Radio app or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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