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The Last Movie Star — Tom Cruise
Forget the other three wives, Tom married Tom
Trigger alert: Aggressive Language
Ned Tanen, the president of Paramount Pictures movie group, was screaming again. In 1985, most of the execs who worked with him and adored him called those days, “the green-vomit days” in honor of the possessed girl in the hit movie, The Exorcist.
“Congratulations,” he shouted at me, as I entered his office. Ned was pale, his forehead strained in an accordion of tormented skin. I knew immediately that it had been a mistake to allow Ned to see a rough cut of “Top Gun” by himself. “Con-grat-U-lations for fuckin making a 13- million-dollar-fuckin-Pepsodent commercial!”
Of course, Ned was right. He was almost always right. Every 30 seconds in the cut, Maverick smiled. Prior to the movie, Tom had new caps put on his teeth. He was confident with the smile, eager to show it off. The director, who worked his way up the ladder through lipstick and lingerie commercials, Tony Scott, played into that smile. Our on-set rewrite author, Warren Skarren, kept writing new moments in the script where, in reaction, Maverick flashes his “million-dollar smile.”
