We feel the need, the need for a barf bag.<\/p>\n
\u201cTop Gun\u201d is one of the defining movies of Tom Cruise\u2019s career, but he was apparently hesitant to star in it until a memorable ride in a fighter jet.<\/p>\n
Screenwriter Jack Epps Jr. and producer Jerry Bruckheimer told The Guardian<\/a> that they had a group of U.S. Navy pilots took Cruise for a spin before he signed on.<\/p>\n Epps recalled, “They look at him and they don’t know who Tom Cruise is. They do what they like to do: They took him up, they shook him around, he barfed on himself, and he came out and said, ‘I love this.’ From that moment, he was on.”<\/p>\n Bruckheimer added he personally connected Cruise with the pilots, saying, “We couldn’t quite get him to commit [to the movie], so I arranged for him to fly with the Blue Angels in El Centro, California.\u201d<\/p>\n He also noted that Cruise didn\u2019t look like a clean-cut movie star at the time because he had longer hair from his previous movie, \u201cLegend.\u201d “He had long hair and a ponytail, and they saw this guy walk up and they said, ‘We’ll get this hippy a real ride.'”<\/p>\n “They sure did,” Bruckheimer continued, “and he got out of the plane, walked to a phone booth, because there were no cell phones then, called me up, said, ‘I’m in.'”<\/p>\n And thank goodness he was, \u201cTop Gun\u201d went on to be a major hit, becoming the highest grossing film of 1986 domestically and worldwide.<\/p>\n Follow us on Instagram @WeArePauseRewind<\/a> for all your pop culture obsessions.<\/p>\n