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Warren Skaaren: Uncredited Screenwriter of Original Top Gun
“I feel the need, the need for speed”
Producer Don Simpson had a golden-goose knack for finding non-fiction articles and making them hit movies. He had done that with The Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night (Saturday Night Fever) and Flashdance by construction worker-by-day, erotic-dancer-by-night, Maureen Mawder.
In 1983, when he sent over his latest acquisition, Top Guns by Ehud Yonay, that had appeared in California Magazine, he wanted some writer suggestions. The initial option agreement for the Top Guns article was $500 upfront against $50,000 if the picture got made.
This all sounds clean and clear, except Don Simpson, a functioning coke-addict, calling writers at all hours of the day-and-night, had become a liability in the creative process (more on this tomorrow in the, hopefully, sympathetic portrait of Don).
I admired Don and he had given me my big break as story editor at Paramount, but he was bonkers on the coke. All day. Every day. That was an era where destructive behavior was accepted if you had a golden knack in the golden-goose department.
The way to handle Don in script work was to make him think he was actually developing the screenplay but it was all lip service. Behind his back, I called him…
