I'd Like to Take a Moment for Vintage Tom Cruise
I have inadvertently entered my Tom Cruise era, and I'm not mad at it.
I watched Top Gun on the flight home from Dublin a few weeks ago, as Atlas slept – uncomfortably – on my lap. By the time the film (an hour and 50 minutes, 20 minutes longer than the ideal runtime) was over, my arm had gone completely dead, which I guess was fine because it could keep my brain company.
What is Top Gun about? Unbelievably, I had never seen this 1986 “classic” (inverted commas to show that I use that term lightly) before, but I was under the impression that it was about airplanes and probably about sex, the latter assumption made due to the fact that my parents had deemed it “unsuitable” for me to watch as a child, around the time the rest of my friends were watching it.
Well, let me tell you, Top Gun is neither about airplanes nor about sex. It’s not really about anything – or, it’s kind of about everything. It’s about talent and machismo and ambition and homoeroticism (so much sexual tension between Tom and Val I could barely cope) and also grief and bereavement then back to ambition and chutzpah and maybe a little bit about high achieving women, but not really.
It’s about Tom Cruise’s Teeth, before they became Hollywood’s teeth. Tom Cruise’s Teeth are the best thing about Top Gun, despite the fact that Meg Ryan is in it. I never knew Meg Ryan was in Top Gun! This was a very well-kept secret, let me tell you. She’s not in it for long, but she’s a notable high point.
Top Gun makes absolutely no sense, while being simultaneously very enjoyable (thanks, in no small part, to Tom Cruise’s Teeth).
Tom Cruise is an exceptionally talented pilot, and so he gets recruited to the talented pilots’ school for exceptionally talented pilots. But! There’s a problem. Tom Cruise knows he is exceptionally talented and is therefore a massive pain in the arse.
He also keeps flying his plane too close to people (or something) and spilling their coffee. See? Massive pain in the arse.
Kelly McGillis is 60 years older than Tom but also very attractive – a frizzy queen, let me tell you – and inexplicably attracted to Tom, a bizarre occurrence we can only put down to the effect of Tom Cruise’s Teeth.
She invites him over to her house and he is late (due to a volleyball game that makes no sense except to serve as a plot device to make him late… which also has no bearing on the storyline whatsoever) and then mentions, several times, that he has to take a shower which seems like a sexy come-on until you realise… he is literally leaving, to go home and take a shower.
Like I said, Top Gun makes no sense.
Granny McGillis falls in love with Tom Cruise’s Teeth (that makes sense) but is then offered some big job she must take due to being a 1980s career woman with shoulder pads, and Tom Cruise’s Teeth cannot join her due to being an exceptionally talented pilot. Oh and something something Cold War.
There’s a not-very-tense scene (following a not-very-traumatic trauma) where you wonder if Tom Cruise’s Teeth are going to lose their edge at the critical moment but – spoiler alert! – they don’t and all is well. Tom Cruise decides to use his exceptional talent as a pilot to become… a flight instructor.
I can’t remember if Tom and Granny McGillis end up together. I think they do. Something something there’s a jukebox involved. So 1980s.
What was the obsession with jukeboxes in the 1980s and 1990s, and what genius took advantage of that by installing faulty jukeboxes in every Eddie Rocket’s in Dublin? Would anyone like to go halves on an FOI request to see how much money those jukeboxes netted them? I bet it was loads. At least £100 (Irish punts) of it was mine.
ANYWAY.
I didn’t realise it at the time, but Top Gun was just the first movie in my vintage Tom Cruise exploration.
Last night, I watched Risky Business – another “classic” Tom Cruise film – with my friend Kim, who had invited me over for dinner. When she suggested we watch a trashy film, I was thinking more of something like Ticket to Paradise than 1983’s Risky Business, but when I saw the runtime (one hour and 39 minutes!) I was sold.
Risky Business, unlike Top Gun, has a plot, which revolves around parents on holiday and their idiotic school-age son taking terrible advice from his friends, oh, and driving his Dad’s Porsche despite being told not to (as I type this: why didn’t his parents just drive to the airport themselves and pay for parking? If they can afford a Porsche…).
It’s all a bit Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, despite being released three years earlier, although I guess when you take into account the fact that the opening scene is a dream montage wherein Tom’s Joel finds a fully naked woman in his bathroom and is then asked to wash her back for her, it’s not quite as wholesome as Ferris.
There are a lot of problematic elements to Risky Business that revolve around white male entitlement and race and sex work but if we try to pretend that we’re watching this in 1983, as God and Warner Bros intended, we can (kind of) look past it.
What do we find, though, when we do? Joel hires a sex worker, Lana, who he cannot pay and, when he goes off to the bank to cash the $500 bond granny and grandad gave him, she steals his mother’s crystal egg. (The crystal egg is very important to the plot of Risky Business, which feels symbolic in a way I can’t quite figure out.)
Joel asks Lana a lot of questions about her life although he doesn’t seem to care much about her answers. She makes a few barbed comments about his wealth and privilege that he doesn’t seem to pick up on. They have sex on a train.
Watching Risky Business on Kim’s couch last night, eating Dubliner (available at Costco) on crackers, I realised that Tom Cruise is (was?) actually a very good actor.
I felt guilty about that. I don’t want to like Tom Cruise! He’s a scientologist! He reportedly doesn’t see his daughter with Katie Holmes, Suri Cruise, because she is no longer a scientologist. (What kind of religion etc) He doesn’t seem like a bad guy – in fact, most accounts suggest that he is a pretty good actor to work with, kind to everyone on set, and incredibly hardworking – but still. SCIENTOLOGIST. Not great.
However.
My sleuthing has uncovered the fact that Tommy joined the church of scientology in 1986, the year Top Gun was released, three years after Risky Business.
So can I enjoy the pre-scientology Tom Cruise, the Tom whose teeth had not yet been touched by Hollywood dentistry, guilt-free?! I think so!
The sad news for me is that all of Tommy’s apparently decent work was done after 1986 (did the Church of Scientology help Tommy get ahead?! Surely not!) – but I could still sink my teeth into Endless Love, Losin’ It, The Color of Money, Legend, All The Right Moves, The Outsiders and Taps, if I felt like it.
It might just be worth it to see Tom Cruise’s Teeth in all their glory.
As a point of note, I am not slagging Tom Cruise’s Teeth. I am a big fan of people’s original teeth. See also: Katherine Heigl! Her teeth were adorable! So cute and unique! Then she fell victim to the church of veneerology, like all of the rest of them.
My list of people who had entirely unnecessary Hollywood veneers is long, but Heigl and Cruise are definitely in my top five least necessary dental transformations. Emily Blunt’s probably up there too. Vying for a spot in the top five also: Blake Lively, Millie Bobby Brown and, bet you didn’t see this one coming, 50 Cent.
Justice for their original teeth, all of them!