Forty-two years after the film's release, the cast and crew recall the creation of a North Shore coming-of-age classic -- and the birth of a Hollywood megastar.
FFor Paul Brickman, the dream was always the same: to make a film for the youth of the 1980s that was smart and stylish and seductive. The Graduate for the Reagan era. While working as a Hollywood screenwriter in the late '70s, the Highland Park native (son of syndicated Chicago Daily News and Sun-Times cartoonist Morrie Brickman) clashed with Jonathan Demme and other directors he felt weren't fully realizing his material. Brickman quickly came to believe that if he ever wanted to see his unspoiled vision rendered on the big screen, he would have to not only write a cracking script but direct the picture himself.
Sometimes you gotta say, "What the fuck," make your move. That seize-the-moment mantra has become one of the most quoted lines from Risky Business. It was also Brickman's attitude as he set out for a rented cabin in a mountain town outside Los Angeles to write the film. He channeled his North Shore upbringing for the world of Joel Goodsen, a "white boy off the lake" (Glencoe, to be exact) so concerned about jeopardizing his future that he can't have a guilt-free erotic fantasy, let alone actual sex. That is, until his parents go out of town and he has a fateful rendezvous with a Chicago call girl named Lana, who turns out to be the ultimate capitalist -- and, for Joel, a masterful teacher of what he calls "the shameless pursuit of immediate gratification."
As Brickman and producer Jon Avnet sought to sell studios on their coming-of-age art film -- one that carried a broader social critique of the era's unbridled capitalism and the toll it was exacting on young people -- they bumped up against the vagaries of commercialism: companies interested in financing only vacuous teen sex comedies like the hit du jour, Porky's, as well as a powerful executive who, at the eleventh hour, would force Brickman to compromise his vision.
Nevertheless, the movie became a surprise hit of 1983, and a relatively little-known 21-year-old actor named Tom Cruise made an instantly iconic slide in his socks and skivvies into the consciousness of the moviegoing public. As for Brickman, in the wake of Risky Business's success, he turned down the chance to direct such films as Rain Man and Forrest Gump and helmed only one other feature, 1990's underrated Men Don't Leave, before all but vanishing from Hollywood.
For this behind-the-scenes account of the making of Risky Business, I talked to more than two dozen members of the cast and crew -- virtually every major figure except the guarded Cruise. They recalled their extended residence during the summer of '82 at the since-demolished Purple Hotel in Lincolnwood, Cruise and costar Rebecca De Mornay's on- and off-camera boffing, the Method-acting mischief of a visiting Sean Penn, and even a brush with death on Michigan Avenue.
The reclusive Brickman, who admits he's "from the J.D. Salinger school," has given few interviews. He once sent me a bulleted list to explain why he avoids talking to journalists. He didn't even do an interview with the Criterion Collection, which last year put out a restored edition of Risky Business that includes a version with his original ending. But Brickman, now 76, has been exceptionally responsive to my long-held fascination with his one hit. His words here are drawn from a recent conversation of ours, as well as one we had on Risky Business's 30th anniversary in 2013 (portions of which were first published in Salon).
Now, to quote Lana's advice to Joel: Go learn something.