‘This gives me a hard-on”; “Don’t tease me”; “I want some BUTTS!” The comedy takes on sexual identity in Top Gun have become so widespread after Quentin Tarantino’s monologue on the subject that it would be revisionist now to claim that this film was 100% heterosexual. But maybe the joke arose from cinephiles’ civilian naivety about what military life and language have always been like in reality.
In the glory days of the Reagan administration, producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer optioned a magazine article about the US Navy Fighter Weapons School in San Diego, California; this trained an elite corps of pilots in dogfight confrontations with the enemy, with the sword-of-honour first prize being nicknamed “Top Gun”. Tony Scott was appointed to direct and 23-year-old Tom Cruise broke through into the A-list as Lt Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, a brilliant pilot whose dad flew in ’Nam and who infuriates yet entrances the uptight high-ups with his instinctive, courageous, rule-shattering brilliance. One cigar-smoking commanding officer almost does nothing in the film but bark “God-DAMMIT, Maverick!” as a junior officer reports Maverick’s latest piece of aerial cheek.
