Word: tops
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...around with Tom Terrific -- that's how he looks, that's how he makes moviegoers feel. They hitched a ride with him in Risky Business and made him a star at 21. They sat in the cockpit of his F-14 as he swaggered through the sky in Top Gun. They perched in a pool hall and watched him wield a cue like a master swordsman in The Color of Money. They flew to the Caribbean to join him in a frothy Cocktail. They traveled with him on a cross- country journey to fraternal reconciliation in Rain Man. And with...
...movie is a jeremiad not just against the war but also against the cultural authorities who encouraged it from the pulpit, the blackboard, the dining-room table and the movie screen. This is an anti-Hollywood movie too; everything that was terrific in, say, Top Gun -- the war, the sex, the male bonding -- is found to be toxic here. It is also a one-character story whose lead actor must grow and shrivel, rage and endure in every scene. And Cruise pulls it off. He carries the film heroically, like a soldier bearing a wounded comrade across a battlefield...
...morality play could be a turnoff if it weren't for Cruise's presence. Says Tom Pollock, head of Universal Pictures, the film's patron: "Tom Cruise is all America's all-American boy. The film's journey is more powerful when it is made by the maverick from Top Gun. It's not only Ron who goes through this wrenching story, it is Tom Cruise -- our perception of Tom Cruise...
...want to learn. I can't sit back. I like a challenge, so I create a lot of challenges for myself." For the actor, many of his films provide the perk of being able to test himself, master a new skill. He flew in Navy jets before making Top Gun. He played serious pool for eight weeks before The Color of Money. For Cocktail he tended bar in Manhattan. He plays a race-car driver in his next movie, Days of Thunder, a spin-off from Cruise's latest perilous hobby. But for Born on the Fourth of July...
...that bred frustration and a poor school record. "I didn't have any tools to study with," he says. "I didn't know what studying was." A grind for perfection, Cruise today often carries a dictionary so he can look up unfamiliar words. "He comes into my office," says Top Gun co-producer Don Simpson, "and goes over my stack of books, taking notes. Last night he used the word plethora. Two years ago, he didn't know the word...