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The Complete Works Ep. 110: Tom Cruise – ALL THE RIGHT MOVES (1983)

·27 min·1 clip

Tom Cruise persuaded the producers to drop one scene and volunteered to appear fully nude himself so Leah Thompson would be comfortable.

1. The Complete Works Ep. 110 covers All the Right Moves, the 1983 Tom Cruise football drama released October 21, 1983 and running about 91 minutes. 2. Host Doug Hess of Filmbook is working through Tom Cruise's filmography and reviews the film as football season begins in September 2024. 3. Hess's thesis is that the film is "believable" because it shows a high school quarterback and his coach each pushing the other toward a way out of a Pennsylvania steel town where unemployment is "the only employment." 4. He praises Craig T. Nelson's coach, who wants a move up to an assistant job in college and sees his quarterback as a "ticket," and he describes the clash between the two as "almost like a Greek tragedy." 5. He contrasts the film with Johnny B. Goode, Wildcats and Teen Wolf, which he calls 1980s sports comedies, and says it is one of the first to take a serious look at pressure on high school students. 6. He says the film combines about "six, seven different ingredients," including football, college, schoolwork, the town and Cruise's relationship with Leah Thompson's character, and he notes that teenagers still walk around "feeling guilty" in 2024. 7. He argues the night shooting suits Friday-night games and adds a "dark undertone," and he notes the film was shot on location in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, with 20th Century Fox and Lucille Ball Productions. 8. Production notes put the budget at about $5.6 million against a worldwide gross of about $17.2 million, with a $1.6 million opening weekend in the US and Canada. 9. Trivia includes Cruise and Thompson attending separate high schools undercover, Thompson's 2018 account of Cruise offering to appear nude so one of her two scenes could be dropped, and the film's origin in Pat Jordan's 1980 Geo Magazine article. 10. Fans of 1980s Tom Cruise films and serious sports dramas will enjoy this episode.

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