‘Top Gun’ Volleyball Scene Nearly Cost Tony Scott His Job: “They Were Really Angry

One of Top Gun’s most iconic scenes so angered Paramount

executives that the late filmmaker Tony Scott could have lost his job,

according to the Oscar-nominated editors who worked on the 1986 classic.

The signature volleyball scene featuring a glistening Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer has remained a pop culture fascination for 36 years.

To capture the magic, Scott burned an entire day on filming,

something the studio did not expect for the scene, which was only a paragraph long in the script.

“That scene was scripted as a real game,” editor Chris Lebenzon says on this week’s episode of THR’s Behind the Screen podcast.

They kept score and everything — and Tony shot it like a commercial, and they were angry.”

The studio was so pissed off. The head of production, Charlie McGuire,