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Risky Business is a 1983 comedy film written by Paul Brickman in his directorial debut. It is best known for being the film that launched Tom Cruise to stardom.
The film also stars Rebecca De Mornay as Lana and Joe Pantoliano as Guido. It features Curtis Armstrong as Miles, Richard Masur as Rutherford, the Princeton University interviewer and Bronson Pinchot as Barry.
Plot
Joel Goodson (Tom Cruise) is a tame high school student who lives with his wealthy parents in the North Shore area of Chicago.
Discussion
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Quotations
It seems to me that if there were any logic to our language, trust would be a four letter word.
Joel's Mother: Just use your best judgement. We trust you.
Joel's Mother: Please Joel, do what they say, just get off the babysitter.
Lock the door when you leave, Glenn. If you read me, grunt twice!
There's a time for playing it safe and a time for Risky Business.
All I'm saying is... walk like a man.
Encyclopedia
Risky Business is a 1983 comedy film written by Paul Brickman in his directorial debut. It is best known for being the film that launched Tom Cruise to stardom.
The film also stars Rebecca De Mornay as Lana and Joe Pantoliano as Guido. It features Curtis Armstrong as Miles, Richard Masur as Rutherford, the Princeton University interviewer and Bronson Pinchot as Barry.
Plot
Joel Goodson (Tom Cruise) is a tame high school student who lives with his wealthy parents in the North Shore area of Chicago. His father wants him to attend Princeton University, his alma mater , so Joel participates in Future Enterprisers, an extracurricular activity in which students work in teams to create small businesses.
When his parents go away on a trip, Joel's friend Miles (Curtis Armstrong) convinces him to take advantage of his newfound freedom by having some fun. On the first night, he raids the liquor cabinet, plays the stereo loudly, and dances around the living room in his underwear. Another night, he races his father's Porsche 928, despite his parents' explicit instruction to drive only his mother's car.
The following day, Miles suggests that Joel contact a call girl. Joel refuses, but Miles calls "Jackie" on his behalf and leaves Joel's address on the answering machine. Jackie (Bruce A. Young) turns out to be a tall, masculine black transvestite. Joel sends Jackie away, but before she leaves, she gives Joel the number for Lana, another prostitute, promising that she's what "every white boy off the lake wants".
That night, Joel is unable to sleep and hesitantly calls Lana (Rebecca De Mornay). She visits him that evening, and turns out to be a stunning blonde. They then have sex and spend a heated night together.
The following morning, Lana asks Joel for $300. She agrees to wait while he goes to the bank to get the money; however, when he returns, Lana is gone, along with his mother's expensive Steuben glass egg.
Joel and Miles go to the Drake Hotel, where Jackie says Lana will be. Joel sees Lana, but only waves at her before leaving. As they are leaving, Lana asks Joel for a ride. As they sit in the car, Joel demands the egg back in exchange for the ride. Lana agrees, but as the discussion continues, the car is approached by Lana's pimp, Guido (Joe Pantoliano), who pulls a gun. Joel (in his father's Porsche) is chased in his car by Guido, but eventually escapes.
The next morning, Lana tells Joel that the egg is with the rest of her stuff at Guido's. Joel lets Lana stay while he goes to school. When he returns, his friends are over, and Lana has invited another prostitute, Vicky, to stay. They agree that the stay is only temporary. Later Lana mentions to Joel that "we should get your friends and my friends together. We'd make a lot of money." Joel rejects the idea.
That night, Joel, Lana, Vicky, and Joel's friend Barry (Bronson Pinchot) go out. They get stoned, and while Vicky and Barry wander away, Joel and Lana talk. Joel says something that Lana takes as judgmental, and she leaves. While retrieving her purse from the car, she accidentally bumps the shifter out of gear. Moments later, the car rolls down the hill where Joel has parked and onto a pier. The pier collapses, and his father's Porsche falls into Lake Michigan.
Joel takes the car to a repair shop. Later he goes to school and argues with the school registrar that if his absence is labeled as unexcused, he will fail two midterms. The confrontation causes him to be punished with a five day suspension and his expulsion from Future Enterprisers. Exasperated, he goes to visit Lana, and they are reunited.
Joel and Lana arrange a huge party, turning his parents' house into a brothel for a night. Joel describes arranging the event using the same terms as creating the product for his Future Enterprisers business.
The party is a huge success, and the house is packed with young men and prostitutes. However, Joel has forgotten that the interviewer from Princeton (Richard Masur) is still coming by to evaluate Joel. The interview is plagued by interruptions, and the interviewer does not seem impressed by Joel's resume, telling him: "You've done some solid work, but it's just not Ivy League now, is it?" After the interview, he stays at the party for a while, and is evidently well-treated by Lana's friends. Later, Joel gets a call from his parents, reminding him of their flight home. After the party, Joel and Lana go out and have sex on the Chicago 'L'.
The next morning, Joel finds his house has been burglarized. When he tries to call Lana, Guido answers. He tells Joel that he will let Joel buy back his furniture. Fortunately, Joel and his friends manage to get everything moved back in just as his parents walk in, though his mother notices a crack in her egg. Joel tries to make amends by doing some extra housework. While he is raking the lawn, his father appears and congratulates him: the interviewer was very impressed, and has indicated Joel will be accepted into Princeton.
Later, Joel meets Lana at a restaurant, and they speculate about their future. Joel asks Lana if everything had been a setup; she tells him it was not. As they walk, she tells him that she wants to keep on seeing him; he jokes with her that it will cost her, reenacting the earlier scene where Lana asks Joel for $300.
Alternate ending
The newly-remastered 25th-anniversary edition from Warner Home Video offers "both the upbeat studio ending and Mr. Brickman’s original, more tentative and melancholic conclusion". In the alternate or "bummer" ending, Joel is not accepted into Princeton, and ponders his future with Lana on a rooftop.
Cast
Soundtrack
The film score was by Tangerine Dream; their songs composed nearly half of the film soundtrack. Also included were songs by Muddy Waters, Prince, Jeff Beck, Journey, Phil Collins, and the song for which the film is best known, "Old Time Rock and Roll" by Bob Seger.
The soundtrack album was released on Virgin Records, which was also Tangerine Dream's record company at the time the film was released.
The film also included "Hungry Heart" by Bruce Springsteen, and "Swamp" by Talking Heads (which includes the words "risky business" in the lyrics). The LP and CD versions of the soundtrack included two different versions of "Love on a Real Train (Risky Business)," neither of which matched the version used in the movie for the final love scene or closing credits.
Reception
Janet Maslin, in her 1983 review of the film for the New York Times, called it "part satire, part would-be suburban poetry and part shameless showing off" and said the film "shows an abundance of style", though "you would be hard pressed to find a film whose hero's problems are of less concern to the world at large." She called De Mornay "disarming as a call girl who looks more like a college girl" and credits Cruise with making "Joel's transformation from straight arrow to entrepreneur about as credible as it can be made."
Roger Ebert was much more positive, calling it a movie of "new faces and inspired insights and genuine laughs" and "one of the smartest, funniest, most perceptive satires in a long time" that "not only invites comparison with The Graduate, it earns it".
Ebert continued:
The very best thing about the movie is its dialogue. Paul Brickman, who wrote and directed, has an ear so good that he knows what to leave out. This is one of those movies where a few words or a single line says everything that needs to be said, implies everything that needs to be implied, and gets a laugh. When the hooker tells the kid, "Oh, Joel, go to school. Learn something," the precise inflection of those words defines their relationship for the next three scenes.
Variety said the film was like a "promising first novel, with all the pros and cons that come with that territory" and complimented Brickman on "the stylishness and talent of his direction."
In 2006, the film was 40th on Entertainment Weekly's list of the 50 Best High School Movies; the magazine called the film a "sharp satire of privileged suburban teens" about the "soul-crushing pressure to be perfect."
In Dec. 2008, columnist Stephen Metcalf looked at whether Cruise's career "bubble [has, with Valkyrie,] burst," and particularly looked again at Risky Business as not only important to Cruise's then-formative career but also as an important marker of the then-nascent Reagan and "money" cultures of the '80s and beyond.
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