

He absolutely gloried in the gossip and social comedy of the town. He was also one of my most important early sources on this beat, a true professor of Hollywood-ology.

Don was brilliant and funny and profoundly self-destructive. At Paramount, the two sat at a long shared desk. I wasn’t in Hollywood for the original Top Gun, but I was around for the aftermath, when Simpson and Bruckheimer were in their testosterone-fueled glory, with massive deals at Paramount and then Disney. Bruckheimer wasn’t obligated to give Don credit on the screen more than 25 years after his death, but he did. Paramount / Courtesy Everett Collectionįor me another wave of emotion came when the lights went down and the screen was filled with “ Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer” in giant letters. That’s how important he is.” (There’s no sign he’s considering it.) He adds that Top Gun is “a huge boost for individual Scientologists, who will see the success of the Top Gun sequel as a vindication of Scientology, even if the movie has nothing to do with it.”įrom left: Tom Cruise, Don Simpson, Kelly McGillis and Jerry Bruckheimer during filming of 1986’s Top Gun. If Cruise were to leave and denounce the group, Ortega says, “I doubt Scientology could survive it. Celebrities have always been valued by the group as “ornaments,” says longtime chronicler and Scientology critic Tony Ortega, but Cruise is the church’s biggest celebrity and crown jewel. The issue isn’t what Cruise believes in private. Lawrence Wright, Alex Gibney, Leah Remini and others have had plenty to say about what’s disturbing about the organization, and I’ve written a lot of words about Cruise and Scientology myself. Still, a lot of people can’t forget - and those old enough to remember 2005, couch jumping and all, were vividly reminded by Cruise himself - that he is also deeply committed to Scientology. He’s taken chances on a variety of material but still delivered the blockbusters, decade after decade. His commitment to being a movie star is unflagging. He’s been a movie star since he was 21, still huge in an era when there aren’t many left.

“Feeling a little bad for Cinderella,” I answered.įor many - including me - Cruise himself evokes a heavy mix of feelings. Even the old-fashioned The Lost City is a whisker away from $100 million in domestic box office, and that’s not supposed to happen anymore, at least for a comedic romp that is neither a franchise nor a superhero movie.Īt the premiere in San Diego, to which Gianopulos was unsurprisingly not invited, someone asked me how I was enjoying the party. It’s a cliche in Hollywood that executives hit a hot streak after they’re fired, but Gianopulos’ run in this respect has been pretty remarkable. Paramount+ is building subscribers, but on the theatrical-movie front, the company has been dining very well on meals prepared by the departed chef. She committed to a full push into streaming just before Wall Street’s infatuation with it started to cool. Now Paramount is poised to enjoy what looks like a global hit just months after Shari Redstone ousted Gianopulos partly for being (in her mind) too old-school about theatrical releases.
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The audience at the premiere I attended just seemed ready to surrender to the star power of Tom Cruise, who (with Mission: Impossible 7 still unfinished) is enjoying a spectacular international ride, including the helicopter landing in San Diego, a royal premiere in England plus a role in the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebration and, in Cannes, eight fighter jets overhead expelling smoke in red and blue to match the colors of the French flag and a “surprise” honorary Palme d’Or. military might.” And he raised another key point on the minds of many: “Is this movie one of the last gasps of a dying Hollywood empire? Or is its emotionally stirring, viscerally gripping and proudly old-fashioned storytelling the latest adrenaline shot that the industry so desperately needs?” Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times concurred that it was “best not to think too long or hard about … the fetishization of U.S. Writing that the original had “all the narrative complexity of a music video crossed with a military recruitment reel,” The Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney said the queasiness (despite the film’s multiracial cast) has only intensified in the post-Trump age, “with patriotism curdling into white supremacy” (a point he made weeks before the latest white-nationalist terror attack, in Buffalo). While most critics obviously liked the movie, the politics of the film created a sense of unease for more than one. Box Office: 'Top Gun 2' Scores Record $90M Second Weekend, Crosses $550M Globally
