Peer to Peer Magazine

www.iltanet.org 66 Peer to Peer I t's 1982. You're a 20-year-old actor with only a few co- starring roles, none of them a breakout. You're a handsome young fellow with obvious natural talent, but you're still polishing your craft, competing with a gaggle of hot young actors — "brat packers" they're called — and not certain what to do next in your career. One day a director named Paul Brickman approaches you with a script he's written that he thinks is perfect for you. Big starring role. You get to have a beautiful blonde for a girlfriend and dance around in your whitey-tighties strumming air guitar. "I don't know," the young man demurs. "Maybe. Well yeah, okay, WHERE'S THE PEN? WHERE'S THE DOTTED LINE!"The rest is history. The movie explodes. Audiences flock, and many critics rave: a signature film of the '80s . . . proof that a teen sex comedy could merit serious consideration . . . a stylish youth satire that conveys more vividly Reagonomics and the corrupt and decadent decade of 1980s . . . and this from none other than Roger Ebert — a movie of new faces and inspired insights and genuine laughs. It's hard to make a good movie and harder to make a good comedy and almost impossible to make a satire of such popular but mysterious obsessions as guilt, greed, lust, and secrecy. This movie knows what goes on behind the closed bathroom doors of the American dream. As for the young actor — it's his ticket to superstardom. The world falls at his feet — females, in particular. Everybody wants a piece of him. He can't even escape behind sunglasses because in the movie, his character's iconic look derives in large part from a cool pair of Ray-Ban Wayfarers! Did I mention the actor's name? Thomas Cruise Mapother IV. That's Tom Cruise to you. And the movie? RISKY BUSINESS. Cruise does more than play Joel Goodson — the teenager's sneakers fit him like a glove. Polite, handsome, intelligent, this is the Good Son parents would sell their souls for. But while his parents are on vacation and he has the house to himself, in the spirit of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he inhales some potion and discovers his darker side. That potion comes in the shape of a winsome and most enterprising young prostitute named Lana (Rebecca De Mornay). Bored with raiding the liquor cabinet, channeling Bob Seger and racing his dad's off-limits Porsche 928, Joel comes into possession of Lana's phone number (no e-mail in those days) and nervously invites her over. After selling him a night of bliss and temporarily moving in, she convinces him to turn his family home into a house of ill repute while his parents are away. Joel, a member of the "Future Enterprisers" club at school, likes the sound of the profits she promises and puts out the word to all his hormonal pals. The "meet, greet and then you-know-what" party is a huge success, the house overflowing with "business women" hosted by Joel and Lana. But the first monkey wrench in Joel's fantastic new life arrives in the form of a Princeton scout who, with the world's worst timing, arrives to interview Joel. Joel's mind is on anything but college at that point, but after some fast talking and the assistance of one of "the girls," he weathers the interview. And in fact, it costs Joel every ounce of fortitude, courage There's a time for playing it safe and a time for . . . Risky Business (1983)

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