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The Complete Works Ep. 108: Tom Cruise – LOSIN’ IT (1983)

·25 min·1 clip

Doug Hess compares Losing It’s $7 million budget with its roughly $1.2 million worldwide gross.

1. The Complete Works episode 108 examines Tom Cruise’s 1983 film Losing It. 2. Host Doug Hess reviews the film’s plot, performances, box office, and production trivia as part of his series on Tom Cruise’s career. 3. The episode asks whether Losing It deserves attention despite Hess rating the film three out of 10. 4. Losing It follows Woody, Dave, Spider, and Window, four Los Angeles school friends traveling to Tijuana, Mexico, in 1965. 5. The friends make a pact to lose their virginity before the night ends. 6. Shelley Long plays Kathy, a married woman who joins the group while seeking a quick divorce in Mexico. 7. Cale Brown plays Larry, Kathy’s husband, during a marriage-ending argument at a convenience store. 8. Hess describes the convenience-store scene in which the teenagers hide food in their shirts while Kathy and Larry argue. 9. In Tijuana, the boys visit a brothel where Woody leaves after rejecting the situation arranged for him. 10. Hess compares Losing It with Porky’s and places it below that film’s later cult following. 11. Hess identifies Woody’s hesitation as a recurring moral contrast with the other teenagers’ sexual plans. 12. Hess says Tom Cruise, Shelley Long, and Jackie Earle Haley make the film more watchable than its script warrants. 13. The film had an approximately $7 million budget but earned about $1.2 million worldwide. 14. Hess reports that the opening weekend gross was less than half a million dollars. 15. The low-budget, non-union production used at least 10 crew members as actors. 16. Hess notes that scenes set in Tijuana were filmed elsewhere and that California storefronts received period-looking facades. 17. Tom Cruise and John Stockwell later appeared together in Top Gun, while Cruise and John P. Navin, Jr. appeared together in Taps. 18. Hess says the film’s reception led Cruise to become more selective about scripts and directors. 19. Tom Cruise fans and viewers interested in early-1980s film careers may appreciate this episode. 20. Listeners seeking highly praised teen comedies may skip Hess’s negative assessment of Losing It.

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