playing with the boys

Thanks for the shout-outs to Tom Skerritt and Sam Elliott, two of the most important and consistent moustaches in the world today. I posted Anthony Edwards' pic more because his 'stache was such an awkward, unnatural thing -- it looked like it had been pasted onto his face to give him more of an adult look and separate him from his "Revenge of the Nerds" image. I always like seeing movies where youngish actors suddenly have moustaches. It's so ridiculous and it seems so out of place. You immediately lose your suspension of disbelief. It's awesome. Five genius points for each silly actor-stache you can name.

But Skerritt and Elliott, damn. Those guys don't fuck around. Check 'em out:

These are grown men who've earned the right to shove the evidence of their ample masculinity right in your stupid face. They've been in movies for like 80 years combined and you've probably only seen them without a moustache like twice. That's commitment. They're basically telling directors, casting directors, studios, etc., "Yeah, I'll play that part in your little movie, but you should know right now that the character's gonna have a moustache. What's that, JFK didn't have a moustache? He does now."

Since it's still sorta the 4th of July as I type this, it seems like a good opportunity to talk about a super-patriotic movie that Skerritt and his 'stache figure in prominently: Top Gun. I think I am qualified to talk about this movie, and here's why: I saw it in the theater like three times, including TWICE IN ONE DAY (paying full price both times) back in 1986. I loved it, and the saddest part was I didn't even love it for the cool and manly flying shootout scenes. The parts I liked were the inane macho banter and the scarcely believable relationship between the Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis characters. Since I had limited experience with girls/women myself, it seemed perfectly plausible that the way to seduce a chick was to serenade her with a horrid version of "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" and follow it up with all sorts of obnoxious insults, thinly veiled fuck jokes and unwarranted open-mouth grins. You couldn't miss. The two of you would soon be gently performing your sex dance together in silhouette, probing each other's mouths with your tongues as an industrial fan blew the sheets around and Berlin's "Take My Breath Away" played softly in the background.

So for about a year, impressionable young me went around assuming that Top Gun was some cool shit and Tom Cruise was the fucking mango. The closer you could get to living The Tom Cruise Experience, the closer you would be to fulfilling your promise as a man.

Then I went away to college. I'm not saying my perspective on the world changed overnight, but a lot happened in that year both physically and intellectually that would challenge my simple understanding of life and of Top Gun itself. About halfway through my freshman year our dorm floor rented it on video and I watched it with about 25 other kids, male and female. I couldn't believe it was the same movie. Tom Cruise wasn't cool. The romance between him and McGillis was as stiff as Val Kilmer's moussed-up hair. The whole movie played like a giant piece of Reagan-era propaganda, a military recruiting advertisement with a lame Kenny Loggins soundtrack. I was so ashamed of who I'd been that I decided to distance myself from the movie forever.

But time softens your resolve, and in recent years I've found myself watching Top Gun all the way through (or at least for a good half hour) whenever I stumble across it on TV. And I sort of love it in all its painful glory. It's a really weird fucking movie. We all remember Quentin Tarantino's motormouthed theory about the homosexual undertones in the film, and even if he comes across as an idiot it's certainly fair to say that there is something sort of gay happening throughout the movie. The volleyball and locker room scenes are completely homoerotic, and there is definitely a bizarre sexual-style tension between the Kilmer and Cruise characters. Pretty radical for a big blockbuster movie if it was intentional.

Anyway, I was watching the movie on TV the other night and I just want to describe one sequence that is particularly troubling:

1) Maverick and Goose play gay beach volleyball against Iceman and his buddy/partner Slider. With the score tied at 2 games each, Mav pusses out on a rubber match so he can get to his date with Kelly McGillis on time.
2) He arrives late, and sweaty, and gross. She lets him in anyway and says something like, "No apologies." He says he is going to go upstairs and take a shower. She says, no, that's not OK, ya pig.
3) They eat dinner. They drink wine. They talk about Maverick's dead father. She pushes it too far. The same way bad comedians try to wrap up their act with a reference to a joke from earlier in the set, bringing it all full-circle for the audience, Maverick says, "No apologies." He grins the Tom Cruise grin. They drink more wine and talk about his dead father some more.
4) She assumes he is going to stay and make tongue-probing silhouette love to her. There has been wine, and conversation, and grinning. All the elements are there. She has even brought in an industrial-size fan for the occasion. The dead father talk has apparently got her lady parts worked up nice and good.
5) She says, "This is going to be complicated," the word "this" indicating she is ready for him to initiate coitus. They lean in for what promises to be a probing tongue-kiss.
6) Suddenly, Maverick gets up to leave. "Where are you going?" she asks. "To take a shower," he says, possibly grinning, I don't remember. Is he going upstairs to her shower, where she can join him for some soapy yet romantic lovemaking? No, he is going home. There will be no coitus today. And Kelly McGillis will think twice before denying Maverick his showerly demands in the future.
7) After he leaves, she lets out a frustrated sigh and semi-humps her pillow.

What does this mean? What are we as young men supposed to take from this?