The scene that got Tony Scott temporarily fired from ‘Top Gun’: “I was very deceptive”
In 1986, the world felt the need to join the Navy as Top Gun burst into cinemas and whipped the movie world into a frenzy.
The Tom Cruise-fronted homoerotic volleyball movie (with some plane scenes sprinkled in) was a huge hit, ending the year as the highest-grossing movie in the entire world, and while you can question the quality of the film all you like (and I do), its impact on pop culture cannot be denied.
The film was directed by the late, great Tony Scott, who was hired on the strength of an advert he’d made for Saab, in which a car raced against a fighter jet. His brother Ridley had recently directed Cruise and was the one who helped get the young star into the movie. The film was Scott’s breakout as a director and led to an outstanding career that also included Beverly Hills II, Days of Thunder, and True Romance.
There were a number of occasions where Scott’s name was nearly erased from Top Gun. As he outlined to No Film School, he was technically fired from the production three times, due to clashes with Paramount over the style of the film: the studio wanted a classic action flick, while Scott wanted something darker and moodier. The director shot a version of the film’s opening scene that he described as “artsy and dark and… esoteric”, which set alarm bells ringing.
“Paramount saw these dailies when I was still on the aircraft carrier,” he recalled, “They panicked and forbade me to shoot another foot of slow-motion footage”. Scott was convinced that his ideas were good, though, so he devised a cunning plan to get one over on the execs.
“I was very deceptive,” he confessed, “I shot one roll of normal footage and continued to shoot all the rest of it in slow motion because I had a vision about how the beginning should look. Unfortunately, they sent the wrong rolls back; they sent the slow-motion rolls back. So I was fired.”
Fortunately for Scott, fate had other ideas, as despite being let go, he was unable to leave the aircraft carrier due to bad weather. With Paramount unable to get a new director in place without bringing the production to a screeching halt, Scott just carried on shooting, like nothing had happened.
By the time the weather improved, clearer heads prevailed, and over the next few weeks, Paramount and Scott clashed over Kelly McGillis’ character and the fact that the filmmaker wanted to have the actors’ visors down while filming the flying scenes. They never actually got rid of him, though, and his name remained on the credits.
As we now know, this was best for everyone. Top Gun was an enormous hit and turned Scott into a household name. He intended to return to direct a sequel, but for various reasons, that never happened, so when Top Gun: Maverick finally came out in 2022, it was dedicated to Scott’s memory, following his tragic death in 2012.
