Midweek Mention... Risky Business

Risky Business

Sidey: This is risky business. Yeah, it's 1983 coming of age teen comedy slash film about prostitutes. And it's also the, I guess people would say the big break for Tom Cruise. For

Cris: Tom,

Sidey: yeah. Yeah.

Dan: T Town.

Sidey: I had never seen this.

This is my

Dan: surprised. Yeah,

Cris: I'm surprised even I've seen this before.

Sidey: Well, I hadn't, and now I have stars, obviously Tom Cruise and also Rebecca Derna, and there are other people in it.

Dan: She had a bit of a thing with Tom back in the day.

they have Yeah. I think that they were a bit of an item for a while and she was the one that.

Kind of because she was a serious actor,

Sidey: yeah.

Dan: Before this film. And it was a new film for Tom. She kind of got his claws into him and, and helped him with his career a little bit to find out, look, do you wanna be a serious actor or teen

You

Sidey: Is that what she said to him? Exactly, yeah. And

Dan: the rest,

Cris: need to dance in your pants.

Sidey: This is [00:01:00] set in Chicago. In an area called Glenco, which over here is our local auction house. Yeah. He plays, now this is important. A high school student. Just remember that. Yeah. A high

Dan: which puts him in Which year

Sidey: Well, at most, I think 17. Really? Yeah. I think 'cause they're not, there's not university age there, or college where they say and he, his character is called Joel Goodson.

Good.

Son get it.

Yeah.

His parents are very, very strict pri and proper, and his father is hell bent on him going to Princeton, which is his father's Ulma mater.

Dan: Yeah. Old school.

Sidey: That means they're old school. And what I have observed with Americans is they cannot get over where they went to university. They are fucking obsessed with that shit. Really? Yeah. Yeah.

Dan: go Seahawks or go fucking penguins or whatever it is

Sidey: think over here people just [00:02:00] go to uni and then maybe they like. Certainly from Jersey, like they might stay in the UK or whatever, or not come back to Jersey, but they're not like for their entire life, obsessed with where they went to

Dan: singing the songs

Sidey: like Yanks. They'll donate their fucking legacy to like buy a new scoreboard for the fucking sports team and all that shit. They just, anyway, so that's what his dad does. His dad is like. Really, really like domineering on like, like overbearing. And you must go to Princeton.

That's his, like, he will die a happy man if his son goes to Princeton.

Cris: It's Ivy League. That's part of the Ivy League. Right. Okay.

Sidey: And so, and he actually drops into conversation that he's arranged for the. The head of recruitment at, at Princeton to come and interview him because he's, he's been sort of coerced Joel into going to these extracurricular activities to boost his application, let his

Dan: Future

Sidey: he's, he's a part of the future enterprise crew, which is these nerds from school who are starting these small businesses so that they can put it on their CV and their application letter.

Say, well, I've done this and I'm really great 'cause we [00:03:00] achieved blah. And so he's doing that and he. Just plays it very much by the book. He's he does what his old man says and one of his friends gives him some advice that you should just give zero fucks very snake bite.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah.

Sidey: He says you should just say fuck it and just do whatever.

Dan: he was gonna start a a newspaper business, but it folded.

Cris: Wow.

Sidey: So he is, he's been given this advice by his mate, like, kind of like, you know, Jim Carey, yes, man, just say yes to stuff. Start doing some shit. And at the same time, his parents are both going away. And they're very strict about the rules. Don't know. You're not allowed to have people around. Don't fucking even look at the car, don't do this, don't do that.

Yeah. You know,

Cris: the usual

Sidey: Keep it on the straight and narrow and its mate's like, no, fuck it. And so he does have one or two people around and one of his mates just turns up, knock, like knocks at the door with a bird a lady,

Dan: Miles, I think it is,

Sidey: it? And says, go, can we just use a bedroom? And he's like, what?

He's like, just use, you need a place to fuck.

Dan: what it's like when you're young, [00:04:00] isn't it?

You, you, yeah. You've got a, a mate with a a, a gaff. Yeah. You're like that gaff. I'm, I'm not gonna, you know, pay for a hotel 'cause you can't afford one. All the money's gone on on her. And yeah,

Sidey: yeah, I was doing a whole lot of this at high school age.

But

You

Dan: went to the wrong

Sidey: it was all boys.

Dan: Go Seahawk.

Sidey: It was an all boys

Cris: that. When, when? When? I, it is, a couple of times when I went, I was by myself. My parents went away and my

Dan: call up prostitutes.

Cris: No, but my mate was exactly like you say, he is like, oh, can I bring so and so? I was like, well, yeah, of course. Will you?

Sidey: I just, I was just looking at the girl and like certainly girls from back when we were young, we would've been a bit more coy, I think about. Being just known that you were gonna get fucking rattled upstairs. And everyone downstairs is like, listen, probably listening in.

Dan: definitely not gonna

Sidey: Anyway, so they do that and a bit later on his mate that is given him the to stop giving a fuck and do something arranges for a prostitute to come round.

And he says, no, fuck, I don't want that. Like, I, I really don't want that fuck off. And he is like, don't worry, it's happening.

Dan: And Jackie turns

Sidey: Jackie turns out, which is, turns out to be a male [00:05:00] cross-dressing prostitute.

Dan: Yeah. Which way ahead of his time.

Sidey: And Big black fellow is Yeah. And Tom Cruise is well, but he has done, also done his famous dance, we should point

Dan: Yeah. He's done the dance

Sidey: done the dance all time rock and roll.

Which memorably redone by Homer Simpson and The Simpsons. And so yeah, he has to sort of, I think he pays Jackie for. Her time to leave. But can you please just leave 'cause I'm not into it and he says what you need. And what all boys like you from the lake. You need a Lana? Is that what you

Dan: Is it Lana or Lana?

Sidey: Yona or Lana? It's Lana. Yeah. You need a

Dan: Yeah.

yeah,

Sidey: yeah.

Cris: Well, you got one

Dan: Yeah. Well

Sidey: And very kindly passes Lana's number across and he's like, okay, I'm not gonna do that, but

Dan: Well, Lana backwards.

Cris: Yeah,

Sidey: yeah,

Dan: yeah.

Cris: It's dangerous territory there.

Dan: I guess So

Cris: Lana.

Sidey: and I think he, for a little while, he just gets his numbers up.

Yeah. But then after that he's sort of thinking about Lana. He's like,

Dan: well, she's gorgeous blonde.

Sidey: he doesn't know that.

Dan: No,

Sidey: is just got a number.

Cris: It's just a number.

Sidey: but [00:06:00] he's horny and alone and he thinks, well, I'll just give her a call and, and sort of see what

the worst happen.

Yeah. So she turns out and you know, it's fucking Rebecca Des Moate and she's looking R hot.

Dan: I mean, still had a, a good acting career, but obviously they're a little bit on

Sidey: they, he sort of goes into fancy mode and she turns out the door like swings open and there's wind blowing and she's all, you know, like music video. Her clothes get ripped off and they have sex all night, which seems

Dan: oh long.

Sidey: High schooler.

Dan: Yeah.

Sidey: In the morning you hear about these horror stories where people think they've got lucky and then in the morning the woman's like, well, that'll be.

Cris: so and

Sidey: This is a transaction. She wants 300 bucks and he's, he knew that it, that this was a, you know, she was a call girl. Yeah. But he didn't know it was gonna be 300 bucks.

He's like, well, I've only got 50. And she's like, well, I ain't gonna cut it. So he has to go to the ATM. And when he comes back, she's

Dan: she's robbed the house, isn't she? She's taken an

Sidey: the egg. Yeah. This crystal egg thing. That's very precious ornament of his mother's.

Dan: Yeah, it's a [00:07:00] uben glass egg. And obviously the Uben is an American art glass manufacturer, founded in the summer of 1903 by Frederick Carter and Thomas g Hawkes in New York.

And it was one of the largest cut glass firms operating in, in Corning.

Sidey: Right? Yeah.

I mean, we all knew that, but for the benefit of the

Dan: background info. Yeah.

Sidey: Yeah.

So he needs to get this back, so he is gonna go and find her. And this is where I meet Guido. He takes his dad's car out. So there was certain, like up to this point, getting quite a lot of Ferris buer vibes.

Cris: Yeah. That's why I told you, I, I kind of got confused with, with this one in Ferris Buer because it is very similar in,

Sidey: in high schooler sort of day at leisure day,

Dan: de leisure. I gets into

Cris: parents, all that

Dan: Yeah. Guido is is the pimp.

Sidey: Yeah, it's Joe Pantano. And he is sort of threatening. The way that he acts, but I'm pretty sure if he squared up to this guy, he is about five foot two. He's like tiny.

Dan: but he is got a gun,

Sidey: Yeah, he is packing heat. He has to, they do a bit of car chase actually. He boots it off in his [00:08:00] Porsche.

It's a 98. So I don't like that shape of that car. Not my favorite. And they, he does get away. And Lana actually falls out with Guido and gives him a load of shit and ends up having to stay at Joel's house.

Which is

Dan: It's, it's the, there's lucky mom and dad are away a little while longer.

But he's going back to school.

Sidey: Well, she invite, he, some of his friends come over, then she invites another prostitute to come round.

Dan: Yeah. She's already stolen an egg and charged him 300 bucks. She, she doesn't stop taking the piss there. Yeah, she, so she starts inviting friends round and invites another of her friend Vicki to stay.

He kicks it. Into touch. He says, look, mean, he's, he's this Ivy League, 17-year-old w wannabe kid that, doesn't, you know, he is in over his head here. And he's feeling the stress of it all. But but they, they, I think they have an accounter, don't they? They have another kind of bust up with

Sidey: Guido.

turns up and she gives him a load of shit telling him to fuck [00:09:00] off. And again, and Joel's quite intimidated and a bit afraid because Guido's got a gun. And you know, she, he's obviously a pimp. She's giving him loads of shit. And she says to Joel, actually, no, we, we have these fucking fights all the time.

It's actually nothing to worry about. He'll calm down and it will be fine. It's just the arrangement. So he lets them stay another day. And they start smoking the devil's lettuce, don't they? They they, they get high on mariajuana. Ah and then they go out for a cruise in his Porsche and they're sitting around and they're sort of parked.

On a top of a, like an embankment and she knocks out gear

and it's not got the handbrake on, so it's sort of starting

Dan: got the

Sidey: slowly. Well, 'cause he's an idiot slowly, slowly creeping down towards the lake. It's Lake Michigan actually. And he's sort of trying to slow it down. He is like in front of the body, like he doesn't get run over.

Do you remember what's his name from he 17? Brian Harvey. Brian Harvey. He got run over by his own car, didn't he? Yeah. And it does, it does well. It sort of stops with its own accord actually on a [00:10:00] little jetty thing. And you know what's coming. It's this sort of flimsy, wooden platform and eventually the car

Cris: collapses

Sidey: through, goes in soaked, and he has to get it.

Dragged out, basically towed outta there completely and utterly emerged and more so completely fucked. And he's panicking now 'cause his dad ain't gonna be thrilled with that. Yeah. So he has to take that to the garage to get mended. And they come up with this idea. That Future Yeah, it was business acumen to get Lana and Vicki and all their other whore friends, round to his house and just turn the parents' house into a knocking shop for the night.

Yeah. Charge obviously everyone, obviously for the entertainment. And she's like, we'll make this blah, blah, blah. We'll make this all this money. We'll cut it this way, blah, blah, blah. And he's like. Okay, fuck it. I've got nothing to lose now. And so that is what happens. They just, like these high schoolers just have loads of prostitutes.

Dan: wouldn't, wouldn't, you know, that is the night that the recruiter from Princeton's coming round.[00:11:00]

Sidey: He like plays it remarkably cool 'cause he does still agree. Have the interview. Yeah. They go into one of the bedrooms. They're having this issue on this like the side of a bed, constantly getting interrupted by prostitutes or people wanting like Johnny's or fucking no other booze is and all this.

And it,

Dan: and he says that he's, he's not impressed by Joel's

Sidey: Yeah. He says he's not that great. You're not, he's not really Ivy League material, not really Princeton material. But on his way out decides that actually this looks like quite a fun party. Yeah. And he just goes off and he's there for the whole night.

Dan: mingles in, doesn't he? Yeah. And he, he's got the he comes home from the repair shop and it's just getting from fucking bad. The worst, isn't it?

Sidey: Well, first of all, Lana says to him, she says, I, I, let's get out here. I don't want any of this. She's starting to get a bit of a connection with him and she says, I just wanna make love on the train.

I want to fuck, I shouldn't say fight. I wanna make love on the train. And it gets all like fucking weird. And they go out onto the, I think it's the l isn't it? In in and there's people like there, there's a woman looking at him. She knows exactly what it's about to go [00:12:00] down. She's, she gets off for the next stop.

And she climbs on top of him. And they have sex. They have sexual intercourse

train.

Public indecency. Yeah. They fuck on the train. Yeah, they do.

Cris: Oh my God. Tom, what

Sidey: you seeing? I know

Dan: along.

Sidey: the lady of the night as well. And so they do that, but

Dan: 300 bucks,

Sidey: when they go

Cris: yeah.

Sidey: Greeno has been around and burglarized the gaff and taken every single fucking thing.

The gaff is a shell. There's nothing there at all. Which is suboptimal. 'cause his parents' phone up and they they say, oh, we're on our way back. This reminded me, do you remember all Yellow Pages advert where the kids had apart and he scratch the let's get a French polish around. And he looks at the, the painting.

It's got mustache on it. It reminds me of that. So there's a, now a big panic to to get this stuff

Cris: recover everything.

Sidey: And it turns out that the amount of money they have made from their one night of prostitution is exactly the right amount of money that it will take Guido to give up all the goods

and they're literally putting the last bits of furniture down.

When the parrots

Dan: Guido, Guido comes [00:13:00] up. Trumps really doesn't he? He's he's got all the money. He, the, the pimp wins on this one. But there is a crack in the egg.

Sidey: a crack in the egg.

crack

mother seems to me that she walked straight in the front door, straight and straight out there to inspect if anything had happened to her precious egg.

And it is just like this amorphous, generic bloob of glass. What's so special about it? And she says, what's going on? There's a crack in my egg. And the old man's really fucked off. And then they get word from the recruiter Princeton that actually he super fucking material. He had a fucking great time.

And actually you're in.

Dan: you are

Sidey: Maybe you keep the prostitutes

natural. keep the prostitutes coming and, and we'll be happy days. So he's in Princeton. Mom's I think slightly still disgruntled about her egg. And then I think they we're just in the diner with Lana and

Dan: with Inel Lana. Yeah.

Sidey: anal Lana.

And she says that she would like to keep on seeing him, but job flips it on his head. What a guy. And says, well, it'll cost you.

Cris: Yeah.

Sidey: Yeah.

That's

Cris: it [00:14:00] is

Dan: that's some risky business. Cruz pretending he's something he's not in this I mean, yeah, maybe. I quite enjoyed this actually. I remember seeing this say a couple of times over the years and it's. Dated, you know, some of the stuff that goes on, you think, oh, bit crazy I can see how it was a hit in

Cris: Yeah. But this is work is 1983. We, we all, and do you know what I was thinking about this? The other, the other day we keep saying this about all these films that, oh yeah, it's dated this, but. You can only see it with your eyes watching it now. And that was the art in at the time you read a book is written in old English or is written you can't edit just because it

Sidey: No, no, no. It just, I just, you know, I was watching it yesterday for the first time thinking the story of the film, the concept of the film is high school is starting a prostitution ring.

It's like fucking weird.

Cris: Again, it's, and, and it's,

Dan: it was a good idea [00:15:00] back in the

Sidey: Yeah.

Cris: you think about it now, it's just the same as I call the, the Princeton guy.

It's, it's also a film. And, and it's exactly the same. When we do a, the thing that's a biopic, it's, we, we tend to take it so seriously. It's, oh, they didn't depict it the way it was. Well, no, because it's a film. It's not, it's not, it's not a

Sidey: a documentary. No. And the, the, you know, the, the call girls in this are all like super glamorous and pretty. It was like, yeah,

Cris: you're not getting that all the

Sidey: anyway.

Cris: You should

be lucky with

Sidey: Yeah. Also I was watching it thinking, you know.

I don't think from this maybe people would disagree. I don't think you can see from this that Tom Cruise is gonna be such a megastar 'cause he is kind of scrawny.

Cris: they did say that he was 20 in this as like,

as his age was 20 and

Sidey: they did a weird diet for him to get him to look

Cris: made him do something

Sidey: They made him get buff and then fat.

Cris: Yeah, to just

Sidey: the baby, to make it look like he had let baby fat.

Dan: Which he

Sidey: which he did, but he doesn't, I don't know. 'cause it's, it's not actually, it's not like he's not the. He's not like [00:16:00] a big bombastic character in this. He's just a kid. He's decent in it. I like Rebecca Derna.

She's like super hot and I dunno why she wasn't really like a bigger, bigger star. 'cause I think she was really good in this.

Dan: Tangerine Dream,

Sidey: Yeah, I know. Score is really good. And there's the rest of the Santa was

Dan: we got Muddy Waters. Prince Jeff Beck, journey. Phil Collins Bob Seeger.

Sidey: But to good soundtrack actually.

'cause the main film of soundtrack was excellent

Dan: Yeah. Bruce Springsteen talking heads the police. Yeah. They had it, you know. Yeah. They had, they had 'em all in there.

Sidey: They threw this together for $6.2 million.

Cris: It's still a big, it's still big money.

Sidey: not, that's not giving it away, is it? But imagine trying to get Tom Cruise for 6 million now.

Cris: No, but he got paid 70 5K for

Sidey: this. Really? Yeah.

Dan: Well, it, it made like 10 times

Sidey: It did, it did almost exactly 10 times.

Cris: But this is the period, this, this is the time of cinema, right? This is the time where you, there's no cable television. There's no, not nothing. You just,

Sidey: No. You go to the movie theater.

Yeah. You

Cris: watch it at the movie theater. That's,[00:17:00]

Sidey: yeah. I quite enjoyed it actually. I.

Dan: Yeah.

Cris: Yeah, it's a good little,

Sidey: than Ferris be though. I

Cris: what is it? It's 90, 90 minutes. 96

Sidey: This is Breezy 90 minute yeah. Yeah. How it all films should be just, just

Cris: walk through it. Yeah.

Sidey: You get to see some boobs. There is a rumor and they say, I think in is it in clueless where they talk about this film that if you pause it at the right time, you can see Tom Cruise's dick, but I didn't see his dick. But you do see Rebecca de Moreno's boobs maybe. There's another girl whose boobs I think you see,

Dan: you've gotta really pause it just right there.

Sidey: Yeah, I didn't, I wasn't successful unfortunately. So there is some nudity look out for that. This is a strong

Dan: know, Dene had she dated Harry Dean Stanton.

Okay. And that was, she kind of had an affair with Tom Cruise.

Yeah.

Sidey: His home wrecker.

Dan: Yeah. A bit of a, a home record. And then she went with Leonard Cohen.

Yeah. So, yeah.

There you go. But yeah, she was pretty hot and she was pretty good in this. I liked, I liked her performance.

For me it was [00:18:00] a,

Sidey: I'll follow this one under strong. Recommend

Cris: I, I agree with that. Yeah.

Strong