This week, we could tell you all about Tony Scott’s 1986 military rollercoaster Top Gun, but then we’d have to kill you. Is this film nothing more than a macho fantasy? Is there a queer subtext — or text? Where is the danger zone, and who built this highway?

Content Warnings: militaristic violence, death of a loved one

Unanswered Questions:

• Does Maverick really change in the course of the film, or does the narrative confirm that he right all along?
  
  
• What are the queer dimensions to the film? What do we make of the exaggerated performance of masculinity?
  
  
• Is Charlie’s independence sufficient? What happens to her after the film?
  

Further reading:

• Roger Ebert on Days of Thunder
  
  
• Top Guns by Ehud Yonay
  
  
• Nothing On Earth Comes Close (Tony Scott, Saab)
  
  
• Flying High With Top Gun (American Cinematographer)
  
  
• Rewrite Man: The Life and Career of Screenwriter Warren Skaaren by Alison Macor
  
  
• Top Gun script draft by Chip Proser
  
  
• Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
  

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Join us next time as we get back to some old-fashioned Hollywood prestige – and the film that gets Paul Newman his Academy Award for Best Actor after being nominated for six previous movies – with Martin Scorsese’s 1986 film The Color Of Money. 

The Last Star In Hollywood is an independent podcast produced by Elizabeth Rae and Alastair Stephens.

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