‘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,