- 3 years ago
"Top Gun: Maverick” is gearing up for its home entertainment release, so of course CinemaBlend had to talk with Producer Jerry Bruckheimer, joined by stars Charles Parnell, Jay Ellis, Danny Ramirez and Greg “Tarzan” Davis about the epic sequel to the 1980s classic. Watch as they discuss some of their favorite moments with Tom Cruise, the surprise and anxiety of flying in real jets, when they realized "Top Gun: Maverick” had become a global phenomenon, and so much more.
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00:00 like a mountain that keeps growing.
00:01 - And people were still coming out in crazy, crazy numbers.
00:04 I was like, there's no way.
00:06 - You feel it in the air and we're all like,
00:08 this is definitely really special.
00:09 - That's when I realized it was headed for something big.
00:13 - That's an experience you'll never have in your life.
00:16 - And we're off.
00:18 (upbeat music)
00:20 - Combat medals, citations,
00:27 only man to shoot down three enemy planes
00:29 in the last 40 years, yet here you are.
00:32 What is that?
00:34 - Well, Tom felt that Maverick was an iconic character
00:39 in his filmography.
00:41 And if he was gonna make a sequel,
00:43 it had to hit a bullet with a bullet.
00:45 And Joe Kaczynski came up with an idea
00:47 that we'd been toying around with,
00:48 but Joe kind of capsulated it.
00:51 And we flew to Paris while Tom was making Mission Impossible
00:56 and Joe had a look book
00:58 and sat down with Tom and said,
01:00 "Here's a story I wanna tell
01:02 and here's what it's gonna look like."
01:04 And Tom looked at him and said,
01:05 "Look, Joe, if we're gonna make this,
01:06 we're gonna make it real.
01:08 I want everybody in those planes.
01:10 I wanna feel it."
01:11 And Joe said, "That's the only way I wanna make it."
01:13 And Tom picked up his phone
01:15 and called the head of the studio at the time,
01:18 said, "I wanna make another Top Gun."
01:20 And of course they were delighted.
01:21 - Your reputation precedes you.
01:25 - I have to admit, I wasn't expecting an invitation back.
01:27 Oh God, there's a lot of good memories
01:29 working with Tom Cruise.
01:31 The first thing that comes to mind is my very first day.
01:33 It kind of encapsulates him.
01:35 So my first day was a speech that I make
01:37 that Warlock makes introducing Maverick
01:40 to the new students.
01:42 And he wasn't supposed to be there that day.
01:44 I do the speech a few times on camera.
01:46 We do a few takes and everybody's used to relaxing
01:48 after I'm done because we're gonna cut there
01:50 and he's gonna shoot his another day.
01:52 I'm about to go again.
01:54 I see some activity behind a curtain
01:55 and it's him getting dressed.
01:57 And they're like, "Okay, do it this time.
01:58 He's gonna actually come in."
02:00 The other actors didn't know.
02:02 I introduced him.
02:03 Now, mind you, I hadn't met him
02:05 because I missed the table read because I was working.
02:08 So this was my day to meet him.
02:09 I thought I was gonna meet him in a few days,
02:11 but there he was.
02:11 And we didn't even say hi.
02:13 I did the scene again.
02:14 He walks up just like the way you see in the movie
02:17 and you hear his footsteps.
02:19 And I've been wondering if that's the take they used
02:22 because everybody kind of stiffened in their chair
02:24 when they realized that somebody was actually coming
02:26 and we weren't cutting.
02:27 And then he did his speech.
02:28 So I'm watching "Maverick" live, standing there on the side.
02:31 And then he just drops off and goes,
02:33 "Charles, how are you?
02:34 Welcome to set.
02:35 I'm Tom."
02:35 And so I met Maverick Tom at the same moment.
02:40 And that was pretty wild.
02:41 That's my first huge memory,
02:44 but I have a lot of great memories working with him
02:45 'cause he's great.
02:46 He was great to me.
02:47 He's great to the cast.
02:48 He's relentlessly positive.
02:51 He keeps your spirits up.
02:53 He keeps you feeling good
02:54 about what you're doing the whole time.
02:55 So it just lifts the whole spirit of the movie.
02:58 - All right.
02:59 That was awesome.
03:00 - The thing that kind of took down this veil of,
03:04 he's a superhuman already.
03:05 So I think he's genuinely somebody that is a superhuman
03:09 and he's Tom Cruise, right?
03:13 But the first time that we were gonna meet at an airbase,
03:17 there was a PA that was like,
03:20 "Tom's about to land.
03:21 Tom's about to land in like 10 minutes, 10, 15 minutes."
03:23 And so everyone got a little bit like,
03:24 "Oh my God, Tom's about to land."
03:26 And so we're all like waiting in this hallway.
03:30 He lands, he's saying hi to someone.
03:32 And then that person, like, I forgot who it was,
03:34 they leave and he's yet to come up,
03:36 like he's about to come up to us,
03:37 but he takes a sip of water and he spills a little bit.
03:42 And then there's just like a small little puddle
03:43 on the ground.
03:44 And with his foot, he just kind of like,
03:46 just like washes it away, pretending nothing happened.
03:51 And then he comes up and says hi to us.
03:54 And I remember seeing that and like that took away,
03:56 like that took down these walls of like,
03:58 oh, or like, it's just like, oh, he's just like us.
04:02 Yeah, and then from that building point,
04:04 he not only is like us, but he proved it.
04:06 And he's like, he's one of the most compassionate,
04:09 empathetic people that is just like,
04:10 he wants you to succeed as much as he wants himself
04:13 to succeed.
04:14 And like, he really shows that every single day.
04:15 So that's more so the overall story.
04:18 - I think my favorite moments on set with Tom
04:21 was like after set when we would wrap in,
04:23 we'd all like huddle up and he'll tell us stories
04:26 about the old times or he'll just, you know,
04:28 tell us about his experience.
04:30 - Oh no.
04:31 - Oh boy.
04:31 (laughing)
04:34 - Delete that.
04:35 - Come on.
04:36 - About his experiences growing up.
04:41 I thought that was the coolest thing to hear
04:43 because you read about it in books,
04:45 you see it on YouTube, but to hear from, you know,
04:49 the person who actually experienced it
04:50 and met these other, you know, icons
04:52 and what it was like for him to work with, you know,
04:55 great icons of his time in our position was truly special.
05:00 And I think that took down the walls too.
05:04 - Let me be perfectly blunt.
05:06 You were here at the request of Admiral Kazansky,
05:08 AKA Iceman.
05:10 - Well, Tom always said, I'm not making a movie
05:12 unless, you know, Val's in it.
05:14 And we called Val and talked to him about
05:17 the character he was gonna play.
05:20 And Val had some other ideas
05:22 and we collaborated along with Tom and Chris McCrory
05:26 and came up with the role that he plays in the movie,
05:31 which obviously is very emotional.
05:33 And it's one of the emotional cores of the film.
05:36 It's that ride that Maverick goes through
05:39 with an old friend and the emotions he feels
05:41 through the making of the movie.
05:44 And the audience feels that.
05:45 And that's a big part of our success.
05:48 - He seems to think that you have something left
05:49 to offer the Navy.
05:51 - What that is, I can't imagine.
05:52 Getting it was a bit of a process.
05:54 I had an audition and you get to a point in your career
05:57 where you have an audition,
05:58 you just kind of forget about it.
05:59 And especially with something this big, you go, okay,
06:01 I'm not gonna get too crazy about it.
06:03 But then I got an email that said,
06:05 Tom Cruise liked your tape.
06:06 And then you start getting a little excited.
06:08 And then I had a few more auditions.
06:10 And then once I got the job, I just kind of froze.
06:12 It's like, oh my God, I got it.
06:14 And I was like, oh my God, what am I gonna do?
06:16 How am I gonna do this?
06:18 So it was a combination of being frozen
06:21 and being really excited all at the same time.
06:23 - What the hell kind of mission is this?
06:25 - So when we auditioned for the movie,
06:28 shout out to our cast and director, Denise Chayman,
06:31 who's absolutely amazing.
06:33 We had to sign a release saying
06:35 that we were comfortable flying.
06:37 I don't think anyone equated comfortable flying
06:41 to the back of a F-18 for like 15 to 16 hours,
06:44 plus 40 hours of flight training.
06:46 I don't think we put those two together.
06:49 And I think we knew we were gonna fly for sure,
06:53 but I don't think we thought it was gonna be that.
06:56 And then the other piece,
06:57 I would say that none of us were prepared for
07:01 or definitely knew about was like the swim test.
07:04 Like the swim test is something that
07:06 none of us knew about at all whatsoever.
07:09 I mean, you're in a pool for about four hours,
07:12 moving the entire time.
07:13 And you have 40 pounds of gear on,
07:15 helmet, gloves, boots, everything.
07:17 So you start out swimming the length of the pool
07:19 a couple of times in a couple of different strokes.
07:22 Then you do another one where you have to go like
07:23 the full distance of the pool underwater
07:25 to simulate if there were like a fire on top of the water.
07:29 And then after that, you go into like
07:30 a couple of different floats that you have to do in order.
07:34 And you never put your feet down,
07:36 you never touch a wall, you're moving the entire time.
07:39 I feel like Michael Phelps.
07:41 Like I feel like I could probably beat Michael Phelps after.
07:45 Not now, but then.
07:47 - Damn right.
07:47 - We'll say we put some skin in the game.
07:49 - I did not know.
07:50 I knew Tom did his own stunt.
07:51 So I thought that was reserved to Tom Cruise
07:54 because it's Tom Cruise.
07:55 I did not know that he was going to say,
07:58 "Hey, now all of y'all are gonna be flying in jets."
08:00 So when I was told, 'cause they started before me.
08:04 So they had their training.
08:05 But when I was told that,
08:06 "Hey, you're about to join the crew
08:07 and start flying with them."
08:08 I was like, (gasps)
08:11 Okay.
08:12 - Try to stay with me.
08:13 - For me, it was much of the same.
08:16 Even though I was in the first group of people
08:19 that were training, but I just didn't,
08:21 I didn't read the flying print.
08:22 I did sign a paper that said like,
08:25 if you sign this waiver,
08:26 you're telling us that you're not afraid of flying.
08:29 And I signed it 'cause I'm like,
08:30 if I don't sign it, I can't audition.
08:32 And I wanna audition and therefore I'll sign it.
08:34 And before I knew it,
08:35 I was in the Cessna doing a couple hours a week
08:37 and then in the Nexa 300 and L39.
08:40 And it just kind of like crept up on me.
08:43 And it had been discussed once I got the role,
08:46 but I had no idea we were gonna be in the air.
08:48 Truly, truly.
08:49 I should like, I'm now gonna read every,
08:51 the Apple agreements that I'm now signing up on my phone,
08:53 I'm reading all of it now.
08:55 - Push beyond your limits.
08:57 - I gotta tell you something.
08:58 Every one of them, every one of them,
09:00 just roar it through this with enthusiasm,
09:04 enormous amount of effort and passion.
09:07 And pain and fear, everything that goes through you
09:12 when you, how they gave them underwater training
09:16 in case they got dumped in the ocean
09:18 and they were blindfolded and turned upside down
09:21 and had to find, in a cage and had to find their way out.
09:24 And then the pounding their bodies took
09:27 by doing the G-forces,
09:29 they were doing seven, eight times their body weight.
09:32 And when you look at the footage,
09:34 you see the pain on their faces and the contortion.
09:37 That's not acting, that's real.
09:39 They're feeling that.
09:40 So it's an experience I don't think an audience
09:42 will ever forget and they certainly won't forget.
09:45 - We're going into combat on a level
09:46 no living pilot's ever seen.
09:48 - Not even him.
09:51 - There was some talk when we first saw the movie,
09:55 after it had been edited, there was some talk of,
09:58 and then Glenn, let's just say it was Glenn,
10:00 who was begging Tom and Jerry Kaczynski, our director,
10:06 Eddie Hamilton, our editor,
10:07 begging them to do an extreme cut
10:10 and then also put us in 4D
10:11 so we would just get tossed around the entire time
10:14 while you were in the extreme cut.
10:16 Luckily, that is not out there right now
10:20 because I couldn't sit through it,
10:22 but I do want people to sit through it
10:24 so they can experience what we experienced firsthand.
10:27 - Every day was an adventure.
10:32 You never quite know what's gonna happen with an audience.
10:35 If it's gonna fall off a cliff or not,
10:37 but it's like a mountain that keeps growing
10:40 and yesterday's grosses were better
10:42 than last week's grosses on the same day.
10:45 So you just never know.
10:46 This movie just keeps going.
10:48 People have seen it multiple times.
10:50 It's enormously entertaining.
10:52 We take inside a world that they'll never be a part of
10:55 or most people won't be a part of, an aviator,
10:58 and show them how it actually works
10:59 and they get a ride in an F-18 in that movie
11:02 and in the theater when you see this on IMAX
11:04 or a big screen, it is a great ride.
11:08 It's something that I think will last with you
11:12 and it's just such a thrill ride.
11:14 You're in that F-18 with our characters
11:17 and that's an experience you'll never have in your life,
11:21 most probably.
11:22 - Literally.
11:23 - I'll tell you, the first three people
11:25 that approached me on the street, coffee shop,
11:28 none of them had seen the movie once.
11:30 They had all seen it more than once.
11:33 One guy told me casually that he had seen it before.
11:36 But the other thing was they didn't make a big deal
11:38 of how many times they saw it.
11:40 That was just part of their,
11:41 I'm sorry to disturb you,
11:43 I saw the movie four times, I really liked your...
11:46 And so that's when I went, oh my.
11:48 Wow.
11:51 I was like, you don't even need that many people to see it
11:53 if everybody's gonna see it four times.
11:54 But seriously, that's when I realized
11:56 it was headed for something big
11:58 'cause people kept going back to the movie theater
12:00 because at first you worry
12:02 whether you're gonna get people to go to the movie theater
12:04 because as a society, all of us,
12:06 we're just so used to having it on the TV.
12:09 But then, yeah, but then when you hear
12:11 people are coming several times,
12:13 it's like, that really made me alert.
12:17 - I mean, that opening weekend was, I think, for all of us,
12:20 I think that was really a big thing for us.
12:23 And I'll say, after that would probably be
12:26 like the following weeks.
12:28 Not only was the opening weekend such a big deal,
12:32 but every week that followed broke a record
12:35 in terms of how much the movie slowly fell off.
12:40 People were still coming out in crazy, crazy numbers.
12:44 Even last week, for example,
12:46 I think it was number two or number three
12:47 in the box office domestically in the US,
12:49 which is crazy because it's in its 12th week.
12:52 It gets wild that that's happening.
12:55 And I think that's when we really started to notice it.
12:58 And then I will say on the other side,
13:00 when we first started the press tour,
13:02 the response that we were getting from people,
13:05 I think it threw all of us because it was so,
13:08 people just loved the movie so much.
13:10 They were so effusive about how much they loved it
13:12 and wanted to know so much about it
13:15 and our experience doing it.
13:16 And I think that's really where we started to go like,
13:19 oh, okay, this is special.
13:22 This is a big deal.
13:24 I don't think any of us thought 13 weeks later
13:29 we would still be back in IMAX
13:31 and crushing in the box office.
13:34 And now obviously getting ready
13:35 to come out digitally next week.
13:37 I don't think any of us necessarily foresaw all of that,
13:41 but I definitely think we were like,
13:42 oh, there's no, who knows when this thing,
13:44 there's no limit to what this thing could do
13:47 because so many people around the world love it.
13:48 Like it's a film that anyone can go see and love.
13:52 - After the movie, we knew it before the movie.
13:55 What you talking about?
13:57 - Whatever.
13:58 No, no, no, no.
13:59 It was when we first started doing the interviews
14:01 and they had the early screenings for press people.
14:06 And every time somebody would come in,
14:11 they would just not stop talking about the film.
14:14 And it was like, hey, okay,
14:16 y'all want to come and sit down and do the interview
14:18 'cause y'all pitching this amazingly.
14:20 Like it was great.
14:21 And after it'll be done, we're just like,
14:24 oh, wow, this is, people love it.
14:28 People really, really love this film.
14:30 So yeah, that was when I realized like,
14:32 yo, we have a hit on our hands.
14:35 - Yeah, I think around that same time,
14:37 yeah, we were in the same room,
14:38 like basically being like, this is weird.
14:40 This is weird.
14:41 This has been a full day of everyone.
14:43 Like they would start talking
14:44 before the interview started recording.
14:46 - Yeah.
14:47 - And out of just like pure enthusiasm,
14:49 they were still from the high of like leaving
14:51 the movie theater, even though it was the day before.
14:53 'Cause I think when we saw it,
14:54 or even though we experienced it,
14:57 that like leaving that theater, I was on for a while.
15:01 And then I was like, oh, that's the same,
15:03 like they rode the same roller coaster I did
15:05 and they have the exact same effect.
15:07 And yeah, that first day was more so like,
15:10 we just, it was just like, oh, this is,
15:12 you feel it in the air and we're all like,
15:14 this is definitely really special.
15:16 - Yeah.
15:17 - But yeah, I'd say I agree with Tarzan.
15:19 - I honestly thought, I was like, okay,
15:21 this is what, you know, PR for a movie is like,
15:23 the studio pays interviewers to come in
15:26 and talk highly of the film.
15:27 'Cause there was no way every interviewer
15:30 would come in and speak so highly of the film.
15:32 I was like, there's no way.
15:34 They must be, you know, gassing us up.
15:36 But I mean, 99% Rotten Tomatoes score.
15:40 I mean, it's not like I watch it or anything, but.
15:43 - And then, audience score of 99
15:48 with over 50,000 plus reviews.
15:51 And so those 50,000 plus and then some
15:53 are gonna be able to watch it
15:54 from the comfort of their own homes
15:56 in their Sony Bravia home theater setups,
15:59 whatever setups they got.
16:01 They'll be able to watch it limitlessly.
16:03 And I'm really excited about that.
16:04 - August 23rd.
16:06 - 120 Hall has what it takes to follow me.
16:09 - Well, if we make, wait 36 years, I won't be around.
16:12 So if we make another one, I hope we do it quickly.
16:16 - The end is inevitable, Maverick.
16:19 Your kind is headed for extinction.
16:21 - Maybe so, sir.
16:23 But not today.
16:27 (dramatic music)
16:30 (gentle music)
16:32 [BLANK_AUDIO]