Top Gun

Tony Scott’s 1986 film began with Ehud Yonay’s article Top Guns in the May 1983 issue of California magazine. Navy cooperation brought aircraft and crews, but the price was paid in the script: the opening dogfight moved from Cuba to international waters, the dialogue was softened, and a carrier deck crash was cut. Paramount paid as much as seven thousand eight hundred dollars an hour for fuel and operating costs whenever aircraft flew outside normal duties. That is why the enemy is never named; anyone watching for a political position should know it was negotiated away beforehand. The second point is how the romance was assembled. During reshoots Kelly McGillis had changed her hair colour for another production, so the elevator scene hides it under a cap. Knowing that scene is a patch shows how much of the love story was built after the main shoot. Aerobatic pilot Art Scholl, hired for in-flight camera work, died off Carlsbad in September 1985 filming a flat spin, and the film is dedicated to him. The familiar claim that it raised naval aviation recruitment by five hundred percent is disputed; recent analyses point to an eight percent rise instead. A fit if you came for flying sequences gathered with real aircraft. Not a fit if you expect the story to interrogate the institution.