Was Maverick gay?

Okay. I have a question for you. Who do you think would win in a fight? Maverick from Top Gun or Topper Harley from Hot Shots? I mean, have you seen Hot Shots Part 2? Right. I mean, that's the thing. Topper got ripped. Exactly. That's the same conclusion that I came to is that if you include Hot Shots 2, Topper is literally invincible. he's a killing machine he's unbelievably ripped he's super powered he's super strong super durable so i guess for this to be fair we'd have to pair him only against hot shots one topper who is a very normal man topper still wins hands down he takes out 10 enemy fighters with no guns or missiles at the end of that movie it's insane he's the best pilot ever just to get the facts straight topper harley took out nine migs i i guess that's what they call them with no weapons and then he took out the nuclear base which was their mission with no weapons using the bad guy's

own missiles to destroy the base and then he made it back and landed with no radar no fuel no wings and no engine as a kid that was my favorite part of the movie where he's like lost my wing you're doing great there goes the other one the other one just keep her steady straight down i love washouts unwavering optimism as he guides topper down dude wow we're coming off a high after interviewing jack epps jr what a guy he was so cool i can't believe it he came on our podcast he was super nice he was willing to answer all of our silly questions he is the writer of top gun anaconda turner and hooch uh he did a rewrite of die hard with a vengeance. He's just a prolific writer. It was such an honor to have him come on our podcast. And you listeners will get to hear some of the clips from our interview with him and some of his reactions to our theories. So without further ado, here he is, Jack Epps Jr.

Hi, it's nice to be here. I'm looking forward to talking to you about my movies and any questions you have. I was wondering if you could tell us just real quick, like how you got started as a screenwriter how you ended up pairing up with Jim Cash and and how that all happened I started getting involved in film at Michigan State University made a short film for a class and just fell in love and that was my life destiny and I just that was it every second moving forward was really focused on film and how I could make more movies Jim Cash was my screenwriting instructor at Michigan State and he was older than me but he was a novelist and I read his novel and he was a good writer. And we sort of hit it off. I moved out to California. I work as a PA. I also work as assistant cameraman. That was my day job is loading film, you know, and also the cameraman shooting on documentaries that paid my bills. It actually took me to a stint where I was able to work

for Orson Welles on the other side of the wind. And that was pretty cool. Just being in the aura of Orson Welles and seeing really the amazing guy putting this sort of wild movie together. I also wrote with another partner, Anderson House, a Hawaii 5-0 that got produced. Jim Cash, who was in East Lansing, heard that I had sold something. He said, you know, we should try to write something together. And I always respected Jim's work. We did a project long distance because Jim lived in East Lansing. He had a fear of flying, which is sort of interesting. He wrote, You know, he wrote one of the greatest flying films of all time. He did not want to get up in an airplane. And I was in Santa Monica, California, and we would write long distance, you know, pre-internet, where we'd be sending stuff through the mails and stuff like that. And AT&T had Monopoly on the phone, so we couldn't afford to talk that much.

So we had to do things, you know, long distance. And we started writing, you know, on spec. I realized that you don't enter the business, you know, with, oh, here's my thing I did in a week. No, you've got to make sure that you create something that people sit up and go, wow, this is really interesting. So Jim and I actually spent almost two years, five drafts, writing this script called Izzy and Moe, which was based on two prohibition agents in the 1920s. They're trying to arrest Carolina Sunday, the queen of speakeasies. And finally, I said, OK, this is at a level now where I think the town's going to pay attention to us. And we sent it out. Got an option from Bud Yorkin, who was part of the team of Yorkin and Lear, who had done all in the family. So they had a lot of money. We got well paid. It was for the option. And it's like, wow, we should keep doing this. Yeah. And then we did another spec. We sold that on an auction.

And then we got hired to write another script called Whereabouts for Joe Azan. And that was a script that it elevated us way to a high level on town because it just we nailed it. Sometimes you do good, sometimes you do great, and sometimes you do the impossible. And that one just got us to everybody in town. And that's when we started getting projects, and that's how ultimately Top Gun came to us. Well, actually, Dick Tracy first, through John Landis. And our work in Dick Tracy then brought us to Simpson, Breckheimer, and Jeffrey Katzenberg at Paramount. Top Gun. That's the movie we're discussing today. So Top Gun came out in 1986. It was directed by Tony Scott. And then, of course, starring Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer, Kelly McGillis, just tons of amazing actors. I think they're all perfect for their roles. It was written by Jim Cash and, of course, Jack Epps Jr. And Ehud Yone. He wrote a magazine article called Top Guns.

It was Jerry Bruckheimer who found an article in the California magazine that said there was this fighter pilot school called the Top Gun School. He then optioned it, took it to Jeffrey Katzenberg at Paramount. I was working with Katzenberg and Dick Tracy. I had a breakfast meeting. He pitched me eight ideas because he wanted me to do another project for Paramount. And one of them was Top Gun. I got my private pilot's license when I was an undergraduate at Michigan State. Flying was like something. I didn't do it anymore because I realized that I didn't fly enough and it was a license to kill myself. But every pilot wants to fly in a jet fighter. We had six unproduced movies at that point. And I figured if this movie didn't get produced, at least I could have a ride in a jet plane. But then it was talking my partner, Jim Cash, into it. It was difficult because Jim didn't like flying. So I'm going, oh, man, this is a movie.

You owe me this. Let's do this one. He agreed. And so it became my job because I'm on feet on the ground to find out what is that movie. It's fighter pilot. So I knew it was going to be an adventure. I knew it was going to be, you know, I wanted it filmed, you know, at 28,000 feet. And so I went and did research at NAS Miramar outside San Diego. Actually, with Jerry Breitcomber, we went back to Washington, met at the Pentagon, because we both agreed that unless we could get the Navy planes, we can't make this move. There's no point in doing it. We pitched the Pentagon, and they said, sounds like a good idea. They gave us access to the base. We got a technical advisor, a man by the name of Pete Pettigrew, who was a MiG killer in Vietnam, also a top gun instructor, and an amazing guy. And then I went to NAS Miramar and interviewed just a ton of pilots and just asked them about, you know, just their life and who they were and what was going on.

Then I got my jet ride, which changed the movie because I had to do three days of training because you have to know how to eject. Because if you're flying in a jet, there's a pretty good chance you're going to, you know, you might have to eject. And what goes through it? So you train for that and you land in the water. So you train for landing in the water and you train for getting in a helicopter. And that was great research because goose came out of that, the accident, the whole sense of Navy came out of that experience. And then flying in the jet, they said, well, we're not supposed to do this, but we're going to do this. So putting wingtip to wingtip, flipping over, doing high speed passes, pulling eight G's, you know, just doing all the vertical stuff. And for me, one of the most important things, I don't want to throw up in the plane. Don't throw up in the plane. And they really enjoyed making you do that.

So I was very cognizant. I didn't eat any breakfast. I didn't drink any water. I said, I'm going to have nothing in my body, man. And it was great. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. These guys were doing things at angles that, you know, we're trying to walk and talk at the same time. And these guys are just spinning stuff around and doing these close passes. I mean, it was breathtaking. And I was exhausted because when you pull G-force at eight Gs, you've got to sort of grunt to get the blood up to your head because otherwise you'll pass out. You're going through these jeans. I'm trying to get blood up there. I don't want to pass out, you know, because you'll get tunnel vision starts to gray out, which means you're passing out. And I called my partner afterwards. I said, man, we've been looking at this project. These guys are the greatest athletes in the world. Yes, they're pilots, but they're doing stuff that's aerobatic stuff and G-forces. We've got to look at this almost as a sporting event.

that sort of became the metaphor for us part of being a writer is how do you step into the project how do you find your way into what's your connection to it i played ice hockey i was a goaltender uh was on the freshman team at michigan state you know and part of that is if you're gonna be a goaltender you gotta be on the ice right you don't want to sit on the bench you don't watch some other guy play you know they don't rotate in so being the that guy that was part of the story is, you know, me being one number one goaltender, Maverick's got to be number one fighter pilot. So that's sort of how we got into the project. One of the reasons Top Gun to me is so fascinating is just because it's not what you would expect if someone says it's a fighter pilot movie, like it's the fighter pilot movie, the one that spawned a whole genre. You watch it and it does have a lot more in common with a sports movie.

It's a drama and it's about the characters. And I wonder, was there ever any pressure to like make it more of a fighting dogfight type movie? here's where we're really fortunate and this doesn't happen very often we as writers were suddenly in high demand because of dick tracy work and stuff our scripts went all over town i said to don simpson jerry bruckheimer the producers i said we'll do this but you have to leave us alone we have to find the movie i can't pitch this to you and if you don't want to do that then we're not the guys to write this movie and they wanted us and they said fine we didn't have to go in and pitch it because if we pitched it you're right it would have been more dog fighting more action because how do you pitch the guys you know yeah what we're lucky is we had Pete Pettigrew who was a fighter pilot and he introduced me to all these guys they were open to me and one

of the really most memorable moments I had we were sitting around in a grill talking and they started talking about the guys that they lost in Vietnam and I could see the pain that they were still feeling the sense of loss then it was really deep and personal and that really struck me just how tight they were as a community. And that's part of what gave me the inspiration for Ghost is if I can make the audience feel what I'm feeling right now and they're feeling that I will succeed. So we sort of built it around the idea that not only is it dangerous, but this is a community. And these guys are really connected in a very deep way. I think that Top Gun kind of stands on a pillar as the beginning of an era of Air Force style movies and kind of was the birth of a subgenre or like a trope of these two brotherly pilots relying on each other, but then possibly one of them dies and it's so sad and they have to get over it, right? But there's also a few other

theories surrounding Top Gun. Yeah, we've got like three theories we're going to talk about today. So the first one is sort of a theory about the cultural impact of Top Gun, specifically as it has to do with sort of spawning a sub-genre that we see mostly in Japanese animation. We're going to talk about just the impact it had on the evolution of the giant robot fighting sub-genre, which ultimately kind of culminated in Pacific Rim, Guillermo del Toro. Yeah. And then probably the most well-known theory about Top Gun is that the entire movie is a metaphor for Maverick's struggle with his own sexuality. And then finally, in the end, embracing his homosexuality instead of heterosexuality, which was, of course, popularized by the one and only Quentin Tarantino. But of course, it existed before him. And, you know, I think it's a little brazen if you'd even call it a theory. I think it's pretty much confirmed. The next theory that

we have is perhaps Maverick, the main character, was the villain and Iceman is the hero. I have seen it hypothesized that, like, every kind of problem in the movie stems from Maverick. Oh, hey, Torvald. You think he's such a villain, such an antihero? Yeah, he's bad. You think you can support that theory? He's bad news. What about the very beginning of the movie, where he goes out and does an extremely heroic, albeit rule-breaking thing, when he saves Cougar? Cougar is dying, and Maverick could just leave him to, like, run out of fuel, I guess. But instead, he goes, risks running out of fuel himself to go talk Cougar down from the sky and land. That was pretty heroic. It's true, but he was also blatantly disobeying orders and also risking himself and his aircraft. Also, what did he even do up there? There's nothing that he did up there that he couldn't have done from below with the radio, right?

Like, he just talked to him over the radio. This is right after he did an inverted 4G dive right next to a big thing. Directly above a MiG. That they took a picture of. Pretty cool. All of the scenes in the movie of aircraft flying around are just astonishingly good. It looks so good. So that's real. How did they even get those shots? Did they fly a jet with a camera that close to the other jets? It was Tony Scott, who was the director, who was a great visualist, who really understood it. So the pilots are the Top Gun instructors. They would actually go and figure out what they could tell. they'd say they'd say okay guys tell me what you want and we'll figure out how to do it and then you'll put the cameras and then tony set a camera on a sort of a mountaintop not too high so they could fly by real close the f-14 was a great plane and had mounts on it so they could actually photograph the plane and just you know learn about it and stuff like that so it had camera

mounts already on the plane your eyes go crazy so you'll see the guys will flick their eyes around it's because G-forces cause you, they flatten out your pupils. So the detailed work was really good. And again, I go back to thanking Pete Pettigrew, who then became the technical advisor on the film. So it was done with the help of Navy pilots, with the input of Navy pilots. So it was realistic. We tried to base it on real stuff and not just make up a bunch of crazy stuff. That is so cool. So to get back to the idea of Maverick as kind of the villain of the story, Maverick was blatantly disobeying direct orders and also risking himself and his aircraft. And I think this sets the tone for all of Maverick's decisions, right? Like he's very courageous, but he's also very risky and just kind of does what he wants instead of what other people tell him to. I was kind of wondering, did he pick his own call sign, Maverick?

Because that kind of seems like what he would call himself. Okay, so here's the true story on that, okay? So as writers, writing a script, and so we're coming up with the character, And we didn't want to use any call signs of existing pilots because I don't want somebody to say, oh, it was my story and therefore I'm suing you. You know, so it's like, let's think of all original call signs. If you were raised in my time watching television, you watch a great show called Maverick. So that name was very well known. And Jim and I say, look, let's call sign Maverick, thinking that it would never, that the studio would say, no, you can't sue on the nose, all that sort of stuff. so we we just we sort of used it to help clue us on the character so we knew exactly who that guy was and then we come to just like it because it's sort of epitomized now here's a true story you don't make up your own call sign okay if you make up your call sign it doesn't go well so a guy shows

up as a fighter pilot and he says his name is shark okay they said right no you're not shark you're minnow and for the rest of his career he was known as minnow you get attached to the call side. And that's yours. You have no choice in it. He was just so much of a maverick that they started calling him that. That's exactly it. He's that guy who's gay. Don't leave your wing, man. Let me see. I can give you like a whole list of all the things that he does that cause problems for people. Let's start off with before the movie even started, in my opinion, I think he's already basically disqualified himself as a pilot because according to Viper, Maverick has lost his qualifications as section leader three times he was put in hack twice by viper himself and has a history of high speed passes over five air control towers and one penny benjamin the daughter of a general apparently he uh he buzzed her house that was based on a real story that happened one of the

pilots did that these guys were like like they called they were like their hair on fire because at that point the navy really wanted the personality of the guys do your thing be unpredictable because we were in a battle with the soviets who were very you do it this way but we're like cowboys i mean there is a john wayne's up there come on baby and so he went and boomed this house and actually i don't know who the pilot was but he went over this house a low-speed pass and actually knocked the house off the foundation so oh my gosh no high-speed pass over a house but no so what was really great is the pilots were on set right these guys are there they're using real pilots in some of these scenes and so they throw stories and they tell stories and it would get written into the film immediately they just throw it in there that's crazy so here's another thing that he does in the movie which is not good in a training exercise with his commanding

officer jester he's trying to in a simulated way shoot jester's aircraft down jester flies below the hard deck which is an altitude that they have defined in the rules of engagement where they said we will not attempt an attack below this altitude so jester is below that altitude maverick follows him below that altitude and attacks him in the simulation that they're doing so he beats jester but he violates the rules of engagement now you do not violate the rules of engagement coming from a security perspective, when a company needs its security capabilities assessed, something that they might do is to hire a team of experts to perform something called a penetration test, which is when this team of highly skilled experts does everything they can to breach the security of this company and get past its defenses. Now, it's very important that before they do everything they can, they establish rules of engagement with the company because if they just want to do everything

they can then it can get out of hand like really really fast because otherwise I need to breach the security of this company well the easiest way to do that would be like I don't know buy a tank and knock down the wall and just walk in right like you need to have rules that you will not violate so you need to put specific limitations on what they can and can't do same goes here Maverick's actions in violating the rules of engagement, well, those rules were put in place to protect people. And then right after, to celebrate, he calls the air traffic controller and says, hey, can I buzz the tower? The air traffic controller says, no, don't buzz the tower. He says, the pattern is full. And basically what that means is that there is no available spot for you to do this maneuver because there are airplanes there. So what he's saying is don't do this or someone might get hurt why would they ever say yes buzz the tower just does it anyway

once again compromising other people's safety spills his coffee in this case just because he wanted a thrill well absolutely i mean we see him as a flawed guy who's got problems and that he's got something that he needs to deal with uh and comes to turn with and unfortunately it creates a huge tragedy um and it was more of not an anti-hero but not a traditional i'm not a big fan of mr perfect i really like flawed characters because they're like us you know i mean i'm messed up i don't know about you i got all sorts of shit i'm dealing with you know so and i like those sort of characters and maverick had stuff he was dealing with and things that he needed to come to terms with it's these flaws that actually culminate in his ultimate failure of riding iceman way too close and pushing and pushing until Iceman pulls off and he gets caught in the wash, which causes Goose's death. So I guess there's three camps in the fan community. One camp thinks that Iceman

was responsible. The other camp thinks Maverick was responsible. And then the third camp thinks it was just an accident. Nobody was responsible. Why did Iceman hesitate to take the shot against Jester? It kind of seemed almost out of character for him because he was just such a hot shot, right like he was so good but then he kept hesitating he kept saying just 20 more seconds just 10 more seconds what was going on here had to get it right had to get it right okay so he was like a perfectionist yeah so let me go back a little bit okay because part of this got it got changed originally it was a mid-air collision so the navy said i'm sorry but we don't have mid-air collisions and you cannot have a mid-air collision of course the fact they have them they just don't want it you know so okay that had to change for the navy and then it became okay it's a jet wash thing it's a great question because maverick's being super aggressive and he's pushing

into the jet wash and he's going above what he should do and he knows it's there and so i do believe he bears responsibility for being super aggressive and i think that's part of his guilt that was something done production wise so i have to be a fan at this point and so i give you my interpretation of it because whenever i watch it i always go shit shit he wasn't supposed to be responsible for this oh my god i think that theory there's a lot of support for that so you would say it's more maverick's fault than ice man's unintentional if mav just pulls out there's no problem he waits but he you know he's so aggressive and he's so much into this thing he's got to do that it puts him into a dangerous situation and you don't think there's any validity to the idea that ice man put maverick in his wash on purpose to kind of get him out of the running for the trophy? I would say no, no, no, no. You know, as a pilot, whether you're putting yourself

into a dangerous situation. So it's Maverick's responsibility from a flying point of view to not sit in the jet wash. I think the idea here is that maybe the movie was written with him in mind as if not the villain, then at least as the antagonist, right? Like he is the source of all the problems. Now he's also the main character, but you might say that with Maverick being the source of all the problems in this movie that Iceman is the hero of the movie you might be able to even write the movie from Iceman's perspective and have like a completely different movie featuring the exact same events because then we'd be cheering for Iceman I'd like to get that movie I'd like the Cobra Kai version of Top Gun that would be so cool I would love that just like this total disgusting idiot Tom Cruise just like doofing around and then you'd see Iceman just working so hard and like taking maverick aside to really tutor him and try to be a mentor for him

and maverick just blowing him off and being like screw you flipping him off and walking away and iceman just like punching the wall like how can i help him to learn you know at that point the team at cash naps really want to get a movie made and we're working really hard to emotionally involve the audience and one of the great things especially in american films is the underdog everybody likes to root for the underdog and that's why maverick was second choice he wasn't going there but you know cougar put in his wings and maverick's going he's second choice to top him which means he's always playing from behind he's playing catch-up playing catch-up you know man you shouldn't be here and i think we like that character and it's it's just sort of who we are you know we're all playing catch up to something or other so i think he's more relatable where ice man i mean ice man's got his problems i always say you know i teach writing and i say

well the movies have to be designed around the main character it's a different movie if this is ice man's movie and he's the main character it's a very different movie because now it's a survey guy who's holding on too tight he can't let people in he's you know he's he's rigid in his life it's cost him. I mean, I could write the Iceman movie and it'd be a very different story, but probably not as emotionally engaging because he's holding his emotions in check. He's holding them. I completely agree. I'm actually with you on this a hundred percent. But then I have to ask you in your mind, who was the better pilot, Maverick or Iceman? One, you've got two great pilots. It'd be a great fight. So I'd really like to see what they do. In the end of the day, from the navy point of view at that time maverick is the unpredictable one he's the one who is not going to do it by the book he's not going to do it the way that you would expect it to do

and he's going to do it something that will throw you off guard and so therefore he will basically in maneuvering have the upper hand but i would say that you're going to have to go four to five i mean it is going to be back and forth it's going to be one win it's not he's gonna win all the time and any given day they're gonna bring each other down but in the end in the biggest fight maverick is the one who is the maverick he's the one who you can't figure out what he's gonna do next that's his character now there's a lot of ice man fans out there who understand who goes bullshit i'm an ice man guy so he's the guy i'm all for that i like that that's great that's a really good answer and i love that you kind of kept to the character of Maverick. I mean, he's a Maverick through and through. Now, whether or not it was intentional for Maverick to be kind of the antagonist, it was impossible for the audience to dislike him

just because of Tom Cruise. I mean, Tom Cruise is just brimming with natural charisma and self confidence, right? You just can't help but be like, yeah, go Maverick. Don't listen to these stupid stuck up tight wads. You do your thing, you cool badass. We wrote the movie for Tom. you did yeah wrote it it's the only movie ever cast i had it in him in mind from the beginning i was a tom cruise fan all his early movies and in creating that character you know maverick's a bit of an asshole we need to have an actor that you empathize and like when i gave it to jerry brettheimer i said think tom cruise in this wall read the script sent back and said yes tom is the guy he is the guy he turned it down at first no no he didn't want to do it so what they did is they said well and his agents wanted to do it everybody wanted to do it he said i don't know i they said okay we're gonna get you a flight tom and so they sent him to a navy base he had just

finished legend so he had long hair he drives up in his motorcycle and the pilots look at this sort of hippie guy and you know he's not tom cruise as he is now right he's an actor okay so they do what they like to do they took him up they threw him all over you know they just shook him like crazy he threw up all over the plane he came out and said i love this i want to do this movie and that's how tom got involved but there was nobody else in mind wow that's awesome and that's how tough casting is because when you find that right person and is there another guy i don't think so no no he's val kilmer man now so going back to the beginning though when you say viper viper is his original commanding officer before he got transferred to top gun well i mean that's the scene we wanted to talk about where he goes in and this guy viper he's like man maverick you're just so bad such a total badass i hate that you're such a badass man you're so badass that i just i

just don't even have a choice but to send you to top gun because you're such a cool badass and i hate myself for having to acknowledge how badass you are yes like it's like in robot chicken star wars when boba fett is explaining why he fell into the sarlacc where he's like oh then a bunch of jedis flaked me and they're like man this guy's just too badass we gotta take him down i was like well i'm not gonna give you the pleasure so i jumped into the sarlacc myself and i actually want to point out that this exact scene and what you're describing is one of the reasons that i love top gun i think it's over the top in just the right way like it has i don't know you might call it like a kitschy or kind of a campy feel like they literally say I feel the need the need for speed it's great I love it and it almost reminds me of like I'm fast and furious or what it actually reminds me of is like an anime hero Tom Cruise in particular he is the anime

hero who is so serious and so badass and so self-aware about it right like he knows exactly how badass he is. And he's going to go be a badass, right? Just like you said. And I think the movie really points that out about him. I love it. And this really fits in with the theory that this movie was kind of deeply ingrained into a lot of Japanese anime culture that came out following the release of the movie. It kind of spawned this whole genre of giant robot animes where there's essentially just giant robots flying around and fighting. And they existed before Top gun like macross was before top gun amazing or z was before top gun and like if you watch the theme song of macross the original anime uh like it looks a lot like top gun like it shows these planes taking off and the guys you know waving around their glow sticks but after top gun they really kind of transformed and became a lot more like top gun where they're a lot more just about

like their relationships and the brotherly love between characters that's the first time i've actually heard about that what i do know is that top gun was very successful and popular in japan that it had a great run there and the japanese posters i love of top gun if you've seen them they're really great and you know i have a copy of of the script uh in japanese which is really published version of it and they just they embraced it so i could see where it had an influence because it really was a very popular movie there yeah i mean like if you look at macross versus macross plus macross the original anime came out in 1982 four years before top gun and macross plus came out in 1994 okay yeah so a good chunk after top gun and if you look at like the beginning of both of those both of them do feature kind of a hotshot pilot but macross plus like macross plus features is a very very maverick pilot he is just tom cruise to the extreme well and it starts with

him doing crazy maneuvers and it even has very similar shots to like top gun when they're like tracking their target kind of stuff yep and then getting called in to review with his senior officer who chews him out for being too badass and then says basically you're just so badass that i'm gonna have to send you exactly where you want to go right you're gonna have to go be a test pilot on these super awesome things we're testing out. And he does it in the exact same way as in Top Gun, where he's saying it as if it's like a big punishment, but really it's only a reward. And it's exactly what Maverick wants, or in this case, exactly what Dyson wants, is like a one-to-one mirror of Top Gun's opening. Right, well, and then when the main character from Macross Plus, Dyson, when he's driving in, he comes in on a motorcycle. On a motorcycle, and like a plane flies over him. Yeah, I mean, it's very, very Top Gun.

And of course it diverges. I enjoyed Macross Plus. In terms of the actual story. Oh yeah, yeah. The story is completely different from Top Gun, but it totally pays homage to it. It was very inspired by it, I think. Okay, so one I should watch. Tell me one. I'd love to go see one now. I liked Area 88. It's a little older, but I thought it was really fun. I don't know. It's maybe not the most serious, though. That's all right. I'll check it out. I want to see it. It sounds like fun. Plus, like other animes paid homage to Top Gun. 801 TTS Airbats. Has like the exact scene where the boy, he comes riding in on a bike and he looks up and sees the airplane fly over him. A bike instead of a motorcycle. But also he's so not a maverick. This is really just kind of, like I said, paying homage or tipping the hat to Top Gun. But the lady who's piloting the plane then buzzes the air traffic control tower and makes the controller spill his coffee all over himself.

It's like a one-to-one exact copy of the scene from Top Gun. And clearly it's a reference to it, right? And that's fun. Gundam has been around since before Top Gun. Yeah, Gundam. Yeah, it's been around forever. Gundam's been around a long time. But Mobile Suit Gundam 0083 Stardust Memories came out in 1991 after Top Gun, and it does have some similarities to Top Gun as well. And I think both of us agree that this kind of came to a head in Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim, which came out in 2013. It very much embraces this idea of two pilots that now in Pacific Rim, they actually have to link their brains in a neural link to control this giant ultra powerful robot to fight unbelievably huge kaijus, which are just big, big monsters like Godzilla's, right? But I really think that the core of this movie's emotional arc was very much the evolution and kind of the end result of what Top Gun set in motion. Yeah, I mean, and then there are other fun similarities to tropes we see

anime like how in a lot of anime you'll have the main character who's like a total cool hot shot who doesn't isn't necessarily good but somehow always wins right well usually they're talented but they're not like practiced like ash ketchum he's a good trainer but he's not a conventional trainer you know like he kind of just does his own thing and wins anyway through the power of friendship or like yugi from yugioh or big yugi you know he's like a random pharaoh who just kind of can win at any game he tries yes and will win at any game he tries no matter what right you know and then on the flip side you've got the rival character the ice man someone who's cold as ice the seto kaiba this happens a lot where you have this super cool main character and they're super by the books rival with whom they might share some sort of erotic relationship well they share a bond and no one really knows how deep that bond goes only they know kind of to go along with this

one of the most popular theories about top gun was popularized by quentin tarantino i don't know if you've heard this theory i don't know what could this possibly be i don't know jeez quentin tarantino really who yeah so he gave this whole monologue about top gun in the film sleep with me from 1994 basically to sum it up for you the roots of this theory have to do with just a lot of different events and things that happen in the movie that are either suggestive or just kind of hot i would say the majority of hollywood movies glorify women's bodies but this one glorifies men's bodies it's kind of a fun change of pace right well there's only one woman in the movie yeah yeah and she's not like super feminine which is fine her name is charlie yeah your name's Charlie. So I'm going to quote most of Quentin Tarantino's speech because he talks and talks. He goes on real long. He says, the whole idea is subversion. One of the greatest scripts ever

written in the history of Hollywood is Top Gun. What is Top Gun? You think it's a story about a bunch of fighter pilots, right? No, it's a story about a man's struggle with homosexuality. So you got Maverick, he's on the edge. And you got Iceman and all of his crew, they represent the gay man. And they're saying, go, go the gay way. And you know, Maverick, he could go both ways. kelly mcgillis who played charlie she represents heterosexuality she's saying no no go the normal way play by the rules he goes to her house all right it looks like they're gonna have sex they don't have sex he gets on the motorcycle he drives away and she's just kind of confused about this whole thing next scene literally and he's right about this this is next scene they're in an elevator and she's dressed like a guy she's got the cap on she's got aviator glasses she's literally wearing the same jacket that Iceman wears. She's like, OK, this is how I got to get

this guy. I got to bring him back. So I'm going to do that through subterfuge. I'm going to dress like a man. All right. So that's how she approaches it. Once again, this is Quentin Tarantino's version of the theory, which I actually like. I think it's pretty creative. I mean, further evidence is that the sex scene originally wasn't in it. And even that scene in the elevator actually originally wasn't in it. It is true that there wasn't enough of the relationship. So originally, um the story was that maverick had a relationship with one of the officers it was a female officer and the navy said you're not doing that you can't do that officers cannot cannot do that with each other yeah so therefore she had to be a contractor so we had to switch that story around and then it tested that you know at first everybody's thinking of the guys and they said no we need more of a love story here and so they went back that's why it's got that crazy shot in the elevator

where kelly mcgillis is wearing that hat and she looks different right because it was filmed way afterwards and they just it was a cheap set okay so that is why she's wearing a hat and that's why they're in an elevator it's called it's a pickup shot guys and they didn't want to spend the money and they did it in a quick afternoon and yes she did lose about 10 pounds in between those two well right that means in the movie all that happened was maverick stood up charlie for their date. He showed up late. He took a shower and then went home. They do kiss at some other point. So Quentin Tarantino continues. He says, all right, but the real ending of this movie is when they fight the Migs at the end because he's passed over into the gay way. It's all over. When they land, Iceman's been trying to get Maverick this entire time and finally he's got him. And you know what the last line they have is together? They're all hugging and kissing and happy with

each other and ice comes up to maverick and he says man you can ride my tail anytime and what does maverick say you can ride mine now this of course isn't actually what they say quentin tarantino deliberately misquoted it but what they do say is pretty similar iceman says you can be my wingman anytime and maverick says you can be mine i just want to note the phrase be mine being a popular valentine's day conversation heart right one issue with tarantino's theory is that charlie she is the one trying to get maverick to follow the rules but iceman is also trying to get maverick to follow the rules everyone's trying to get maverick to follow the rules except freaking maverick exactly but although he was very thorough quentin tarantino actually missed a lot of the sexual undertones in this movie i want to go through some of the stuff that i noticed very early on, right when Maverick goes to the Top Gun class, the instructor is explaining how

the pilots have gotten too reliant on missiles. They need to start getting better at dogfights. Wolfman, who's one of the pilots, turns to his RIO. His name is Chipper. Wolfman says, this gives me a hard on. And Chipper looks longingly at Wolfman and says, don't tease me. The only thing I have to say about this scene is that Iceman stares nonstop at Maverick during the entire meeting maverick keeps looking back at him and when he does iceman smiles at him he flashes those pearly whites and then later when they're at the bar shortly after that scene iceman is totally uninterested at the woman who is hitting on oh yeah no he's like i'm out i gotta go talk to this hot new hot shot maverick furthermore at that bar goose and maverick make a bet where goose says all right the bet's 20 you have to have carnal knowledge of a lady this time on the premises and then maverick smiles bashfully like oh geez you got me

maverick is just so determined last time they made this bet he couldn't get a girl but he was like i can't lose the bet i need to win the bet somehow so in very anime fashion he thought through everything he was like wait there's one thing goose didn't consider he just said i have to sleep with someone he didn't say what gender so then he went and found some guy who was willing to sleep with him throughout the movie there's a lot of talk of butts the flight control tower operator is really mad after maverick buzzed the tower at over 400 knots which is really fast and he's screaming about butts he says i want somebody's butts i want it now i've had it i want some butts he really wants some butts and of course we can't gloss over it the iconic shirtless sweaty glistening volleyball scene shining in the sun as the song playing with the boys blasts in the background now i want to note there are exactly two instances in this film that

make use of slow motion one is the all-important plot point when goose dies and the other the other moment of slow motion in this movie is when they are playing shirtless beach volleyball which means that these two scenes are of equal value plot wise because they both made use of slow motion so yeah i mean it's pretty important yeah well i mean you know i yeah it sort of came a bit out of nowhere but the answer is no it's not true it's quentin tarantino just being himself and just spouting off and you know going on a rant but i don't mind the interpretation i don't mind if people want to lay into that i really don't i actually had a young man who was a student saying movie helped him come out i mean it's good for him i'm glad that's great it did some of the choices were made by the director tony scott in terms of the look of the film nowhere in the script did we write and they stand in the locker room with towels on spending their bodies and doing this

or we didn't say and they they put olive oil on themselves when they play volleyball as they run around okay so that was what tony scott did in the on the set okay why did tony scott do this he sort of wanted to create male beefcake i think his thought his mind was he wanted to give the women something to look at and here are these guys and show off your pecs and do this sort of thing and there's there's a documentary on the top gun video the making the danger zone making a top gun where Tony talks about he used the work of a photographer I think his name was Dave Weber and he used his work in a book where he has a lot of models and he likes the look of the models you look at that look now I mean the handsome looking guys you know just look that top gun the cuts the haircuts the look the way they're dressed yeah well now you probably say that's a little West Hollywood and you go okay that's got a certain look now that we would associate

with that community add up all the pieces together and i can see where people draw that conclusion and again i don't have a problem with it it doesn't bother me whatsoever sort of people having fun with it have fun with it and if you like that interpretation go for it right and if you haven't noticed you know listening to this podcast and other episodes like both of us really love looking at a movie in a way that we never saw it before any theory that allows you to watch the movie and see it as a completely different movie is a-okay in my book right like this very much makes it into a very different movie so i love it there's nothing wrong with it you know but quentin if i ever see you my first experience with top gun was actually i was very young and of course top gun is rated r so i couldn't see it so my first experience with the movie was actually the movie hot shots by jim abrahams and then later on my dad showed us top gun so that we would know what it was about dude

hot shots let's get into it so hot shots is the very fondly remembered 1991 parody of top gun which was directed by jim abrams and written by jim abrams and pat proft i mean it was just loaded with amazing comedic actors like charlie sheen valeria galeno carrie elwis is great um oh yeah my deep blue eyes what does a chafing dish do why it keeps food warm for serving I thought that was a crockpot oh no no no no no crockpots for cooking all day well fine I don't want it I'll take it you stay out of this Topper why would Topper take it he had nothing to do with it he clearly misunderstood the entire exchange the problem wasn't that neither ramada nor carrie elwis wanted the shaping dish the problem was that carrie elwis was trying to take it home and it wasn't his so i actually think the plot of hot shots not the silliness and the craziness and overall zaniness of hot shots but the plot that this guy in charge of

this squad has basically sold them out by sabotaging their airplanes and by hiring topper who he knows is unstable and going to wreck the morale and the safety of the entire squad in order to get the government to sign a contract for better airplanes i think that's actually pretty interesting and believable arc is pretty interesting in some ways he knows he's a loose cannon and he doesn't want to screw anything up he wants to stay away every time block like tries to assign him to anything he resists like when he was like topper you're gonna be the point man for this. You're the lead. Topper's like, block, there's something my dad always used to say. Not playing to win is like sleeping with your sister. In the end, it's just illegal.

But like, no, clearly he understands the issue of putting him in charge of the squad. This movie starts with Topper's essentially backstory, which is actually his father's backstory. The thing that haunts Topper throughout his whole life. Oh man, what a backstory. Is that his dad, Buzz Harley, was just flying around being an idiot. Yeah, flying around with Ryan Stiles. And then he ejected, and then Mailman's ejection thing didn't work, and Mailman was mistaken for a deer and got shot. Well, no. First, he crashed and survived, and then was mistaken for a deer and shot and eaten. Eaten by the family of a guy who would later be in the academy with Topper. Who mounted his head on a wall. and you know if it's any solace he didn't have seconds and mailman's son doesn't care at all about that he's like oh it doesn't matter but like if you look at that scene what did buzz do like he ejected which is fine that's what you should do in that situation like just because

mailman's ejection seat didn't work that's not really buzz's fault but like he was totally dicking around like an idiot right he was just like all right let's see what this baby can do and then his co-pilot was like no this thing's not rated for more than mach 3 and he's like mach 4 mach 5 gotta push it to the limit it was like no you don't have to push it to the limit why does he suddenly think he needs to destroy this plane i mean it's a pretty good parody of the opening of top gun it is maverick is just being an idiot so at the end the thing that gets topper to get over what his dad did is block telling the truth which is not that he didn't go crazy and dick around destroy the plane just be lying but also it doesn't matter if he's lying or not because nothing about block's story fixes anything that happened in block's story his dad has presumably already done all that stupid stuff instead of just ejecting he tries to pull the plane

back together which doesn't matter the plane is falling apart that's not helpful no that's really good there's no reason to be stapling it together grabbing the wing he's gonna be helping he should be helping mailman who couldn't eject yes but yeah even if it was somehow helpful to put the plane back together instead of helping mailman none of that changes the fact that the whole reason this happened was because he was flying dangerously no one was saying that he did the wrong thing by just ejecting no that wasn't the failure he was being an idiot box story changes nothing no dude he was a hero according to that version oh man such a good movie oh my god i loved it i thought it was fabulous i loved it you know well you know it's a form of flattery right that it's so good you want to satirize it I mean, SNL has done satire as they've done a joke where we've seen it with Val Kilmer goes in the cockpit as Iceman in a jet plane, you know, not just with hysterical.

One of my favorite things is I got it. I got it. You know, it's I forget the character. We know he's about to die in the plane. This guy who killed Kennedy. You know, I mean, it was just three. And what was so smart is they used one of the producers from Top Gun and he could create a lot of the looks from Top Gun. And so I thought they did a really nice thing. Hysterical. It's a great takeoff. I don't know how connected you are to Top Gun Maverick. And it's okay. I understand you might not have anything to do with it at all. But there is one fan theory. Because we've seen a shot in one of the trailers where there is a woman who is dressed in military gear. And she's standing next to a general. And people are theorizing that this is Penny Benjamin next to her father. do you know if she's going to make an appearance in top gun maverick or well i'll have to use a quote from top i could tell you but then i'd have to kill you you know all right i guess we'll just

have to wait then i did a sequel in the early 90s different sequel we wrote one but tom at that point was deciding between doing a sequel to top gun or doing mission possible right and he went off and did mission possible and you know it was a good career yeah yeah he did a good job with that and paramount wouldn't make the movie without tom i said look let's just you know we'll create new stars here it's it's a vehicle there's a lot of young great actors and you know we don't have and they said no if it's tom or nothing so yeah from what we know about top gun maverick it seems like maverick throughout the past 30 years his character is still a captain i think he's a test pilot now so i was just wondering how you feel about maverick's evolution as portrayed in this new movie i would say they mind the original movie very well having read the script and knowing about it and i think it's a nice continuation maverick's his own worst enemy and therefore he doesn't go up

to the ranks and he doesn't get promoted where he should he doesn't become an admiral i don't think anybody wants him in charge of a ship you know that sort of thing i'm a big fan of tom cruise i think tom does great work and i know he's going to bring it and bring a life to the character and I think it's going to feel like it's a continuation. I think that they did a nice job with, okay, here's where we are now. Here's who these characters are. And there's some interesting surprises, which I can't tell you. I'm really excited to see it. I can't wait. Well, thank you so much for talking to us and entertaining our silly theories and telling us the backstory of the movies you've written. So we have some time now that we can talk about your book, which I read and I think it's great. This is Screenwriting is Rewriting by Jack Epps Jr. I graduated from the American Film Institute. I have a master's in screenwriting.

So at first it kind of seemed like stuff I'd read before. But then as I got into it, like you have some very interesting tactics and stuff for rewriting that I really loved that I hadn't necessarily heard before. The way you say to create a game plan, like to pick like five notes and then just create a plan of how you're going to implement those notes and create like a schedule for yourself. I think that just makes what could be a really daunting, overwhelming task into something that's just very easy and doable. Well, as you said, daunting, overwhelming task. And I think that's what happens to writers. We, I understand it. It's what I call the circle of confusion. You just can't figure it out. The notes are canceling each other out. They're contradictory. So it's actually a process that Jim and I used. And it was great because we're long distance. We had to organize our rewrites. By organizing, it starts to bring clarity and you start to see what the level of importance is and you see the areas that make sense.

Oh, yeah, I see this. I've gotten this note four times. There's something here I've got to deal with. And then a game plan is how am I going to attack this? What's my methodology rather than just hacking away at it? People get notes in the first draft and they hate their draft. They've lost faith in it. They throw it away. And now they start from page one to do a whole new draft. I'm a big believer in inspiration. When you do that first draft, you are inspired. There are things coming out of that draft that are great. And they may not all work, but they're really good. Now, if you throw that whole draft away, you do it, start from page one. Generally, it's a poor imitation of the first draft without the inspiration. Look to salvage the best parts of your first draft and then use that as a basis to start to build out your story unless there's something systemically wrong. Okay, for example, the first draft we did of Dick Tracy, we did not put Junior Tracy in.

Okay, that was a big mistake. John Lannis said, where's Junior Tracy? We said, oh, right. Well, that changed the whole concept of the movie. And that's the only draft we ever said, we have to page one this. Otherwise, what's good? Protect what's good. Preserve what's good. Use it as a basis to build out your story and to add elements to it. Most of the time, I just love whatever I wrote because otherwise I wouldn't have written it. right? And I'm like, this is so good. It's so good. And you can even send it out to people and maybe they think it's good as well. But then because we're such a like social species, you know, and the opinions of others matter to us, you might get one person who really, really hates it. And then all of a sudden you're like, oh man, maybe I, maybe, what am I doing? Maybe it really is terrible. And so what I really loved was toward the beginning of your book, you have an advice

where you say, create a touchstone, a symbol that represents your original inspiration, like something that you can go back to and that you always remember what was good about this story, what really hooked you to it emotionally so that no matter what notes you get, you can always go back and be like, okay, I remember why this was gold. I just have to uncover more of that gold so other people can see it. Well, you're exactly hit it on the nose there where it's easy to lose confidence in your work. And one person can really just undermine our confidence as writers. And that's why I believe it's important to create a writing group. No writer should write alone. And work with people who understand what you're trying to do, and they're going to give you notes for your intention. Because if it's that person who hated the script, well, I would do it this way. Well, that's not what I want to do.

And they've just hijacked your script from you. Before you do notes, say, okay, let's talk first about what's positive. Because that note, no one ever gives you. They don't say, hey, what I really like about this. They'll say, wow, here's the problem. And now you've got nothing but negativity. And negativity is hard to overcome. So if you have positive notes, then it's easier for you to hear the more the critiques. What do we have to work on? Your touchstone for Top Gun, you said your original inspiration was a photograph of a pilot in an F-14 with two other F-14s on either side of him. And that kind of became the inspiration for the screenplay. And I just, I thought that was great because that kind of is the core of that movie, right? It's not just a pilot in an F-14. It's a pilot with two guys on either side of him, right? It's about the team and the relationships and the friendships between them.

That photograph just really made me want to write the script. There were warriors at 28,000 feet, and there they are. And I said, wow, this is amazing. And I love the world, the location of it. And I said, this is going to be so great to see a movie shot up here. That's why I said Don and Jerry, we don't shoot this at 28,000 feet. I don't want to do the movie. That became the guiding light for the script. To our listeners who read this book, I will say read it to the end, because at the end of your book, you have interviews with a bunch of screenwriters, including Robert Town, who's, you know, arguably one of the greatest screenwriters ever. And then you also have like actual studio script notes that you received, like a letter you got from Tom Hanks about about Turner and Hooch and stuff like that. You know, we're all working together. We're writers working together. I want to share some of the things we have.

And I also want to talk to other writers about their process because there's no one way to rewrite this. This is my methodology. But you get, again, 10 writers in a room. They are going to do it differently. So there's no right way. I'm just trying to help people organize, organize your rewrite, because that's the most important thing. Organize your approach. And, you know, Robert Towne's great opportunity to talk to Robert Towne and just get his thoughts and what he does. And what's interesting, I just had one of my colleagues at USC who's in the games division and he was writing a book on gaming. he used the approach in terms of writing a nonfiction book, in terms of organizing his rewrite. One of the things I would emphasize, and this is very old school, and Richard basically said it really helped him, is print out a hard copy of your script and annotate your script and write notes to yourself. Because as you're reading through it, your mind is working,

your subconscious is working, you're getting thoughts and ideas you won't remember. So write about things you like in the script, write things you don't like, fixes, changes. If you print it out, you've got that wonderful white page. It's just a notebook to write on. So don't neglect that step. That's something I'd like to emphasize. Well, thank you so much for coming on our podcast. Thanks for talking to us about all your movies. It's been definitely a blast. And thanks for writing all your movies. Thank you so much for giving us so much of your time. And thanks for going along with all of our kooky theories and crazy questions. No, it's fun. I enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it. I thought it was fun to hear the fan theories. I think they're fun. It's just digging deeper and having it taken to a level. You know what I mean? It's sort of like, you know, it's like fan fiction where people write stories after work.

I think it's great. It just keeps it alive. And I'm glad you enjoyed them. The point is we wrote them for people to enjoy. That's the point. I'm going to include a link to Top Gun in the description. So watch it again with our theories in mind. With the words of Jack Epps, the writer of the movie, in mind. I'm going to include a link to the YouTube video of Quentin Tarantino's version of this theory. We're going to include a link in the description where you can buy the book. Screenwriting is rewriting. We had a great time talking to him about it. If you have any thoughts or questions or you just want to talk to us, maybe you have any theories of your own you'd like us to look at, you know, you can reach out to us on Twitter at Popcorn Isn't Real. Music for this episode was provided by Christine. And we're going to let Jack Epps Jr. play us out. The popcorn isn't real, but it sort of is real.

So I don't know. I'm sort of confused about that. but I think it's a good title. All right, everybody, take care of yourself, be well, and if you're a writer, just stay with it, believe in yourself, it's going to work out.