Risky Business

Risky Business is a 1983 American coming-of-age teen comedy film written and directed by Paul Brickman (in his directorial debut) and starring Tom Cruise and Rebecca De Mornay. It follows the sexual exploits of high school senior Joel Goodson (Cruise), who is staying home alone during his parents' vacation trip and meets a call girl named Lana (De Mornay). The film is considered to be Cruise's breakout role.

Risky Business was released theatrically in the United States by Warner Bros. on August 5, 1983. A commercial and critical success, the film grossed more than $63 million at the box office, making it the tenth-highest-grossing film of 1983 in the United States, and received acclaim, with many comparing it to The Graduate (1967). Cruise's performance earned him the first Golden Globe Award nomination of his career.

Retrospective critical analysis has recognized Risky Business as one of the best high school and teen films of all time.

Plot

High school senior Joel Goodsen lives with his wealthy parents in the Chicago North Shore community of Glencoe. College-conscious, Joel frets over the SAT and his participation in Future Enterprisers, an extracurricular activity in which students work in teams to create small businesses. His father wants him to attend Princeton University, his alma mater, and he arranges an interview for Joel with an admissions officer.

When Joel's parents leave on a trip, his friend Miles encourages him to relax and enjoy his newfound freedom. On the first night, Joel raids his parents' liquor cabinet, plays the stereo loudly, and dances around the living room in his briefs to "Old Time Rock and Roll". On the second night, Miles arranges for an escort named Jackie to visit Joel. Jackie turns out to be a burly, cross-dressing Black man, so Joel pays him simply to leave. As Jackie departs, he gives Joel the number of another escort, Lana. Unable to sleep, Joel hesitantly calls Lana, who turns out to be an attractive young woman, and the two spend the night having sex together.

The next morning, Lana asks Joel for $300 () for her services. He goes to the bank, but when he returns, she is gone, along with his mother's expensive Steuben glass egg. Joel and Miles later pick Lana up in the city and demand the egg back, but her pimp, Guido, interrupts them and pulls a gun. After driving off in his father's prized Porsche 928, Joel outmaneuvers Guido in a car chase. Lana tells Joel that the egg is with the rest of her belongings at Guido's place. Joel allows her to stay at his house while he goes to school. When he returns home, Lana has invited another prostitute, Vicki, to stay, but Joel objects. The women leave, only to encounter Guido on the front lawn, where they tell him that they now work for Joel. To avoid further escalation, Joel reluctantly agrees to let them stay one more night.

Later that night, Joel, Lana, Vicki, and Joel's friend Barry go out and get high on marijuana. After Lana accidentally bumps the Porsche out of gear while retrieving her purse, the car slowly rolls down a hill and onto a pier. Despite Joel's desperate attempt to stop it, the pier collapses, and the Porsche sinks into Lake Michigan. When Joel takes the car to a body shop, he is horrified by the repair cost. To pay for it, he decides to host a large pay-to-enter party in his home while simultaneously turning it into a brothel staffed by Lana's co-workers for one night.

Donning Ray-Ban sunglasses, a sport coat, and smoking cigarettes, Joel adopts a laid-back business persona and convinces many male peers to buy admission to the party. However, he is unaware that Princeton admissions officer Bill Rutherford was scheduled to arrive that same night for the planned interview. Their conversation is constantly interrupted by partygoers, and Rutherford remains unimpressed by Joel's average school record. Viewing his chances for admission as slim, Joel jokingly resigns himself to attending the University of Illinois instead. He and Lana drive to a Chicago "L" train, where they make love to each other.

The brothel venture proves to be a huge success, to the point that Rutherford stays. After retrieving the repaired Porsche the following day, Joel finds his house burglarized. He tries to call Lana, but Guido answers and tells Joel that he will have to buy back the furniture. Joel and his friends manage to move everything back into the house just as his parents return home, though his mother confronts him after noticing a crack in her glass egg. Later, Joel's father congratulates him: Rutherford was very impressed by Joel and accepted him into Princeton.

Joel subsequently meets Lana at a restaurant, where they speculate about their future together. She tells him that she wants to keep on seeing him; he jokes that it will cost her.

Cast

Production

Sean Penn, Gary Sinise, Kevin Bacon, John Cusack and Tom Hanks all auditioned for the role of Joel Goodsen. Michelle Pfeiffer was offered the role of Lana, but turned it down.

Soundtrack

The film was scored by Tangerine Dream. Their music comprises nearly half of the soundtrack album. Also included are songs by Muddy Waters, Prince ("DMSR"), Jeff Beck, Journey, Phil Collins ("In the Air Tonight"), and the song for which the film is best known, "Old Time Rock and Roll" by Bob Seger.

The film also includes "Hungry Heart" by Bruce Springsteen, "Every Breath You Take" by The Police, and "Swamp" by Talking Heads. The LP and CD versions of the soundtrack include two different versions of "Love on a Real Train (Risky Business)," both of which are different recordings from the version used in the film for the final love scene or closing credits.

Release

Risky Business premiered in New York and Los Angeles on August 5, 1983.

Home media

The film was first released DVD on August 20, 1997, and on Blu-ray by Warner Bros. in 2008. Extra features included audio commentary with the director and Cruise, a featurette titled The Dream Is Always the Same: The Story of “Risky Business”, an alternate ending, screen tests and trailer. The Criterion Collection released the film on 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray disc on July 23, 2024, with a new 4K digital restoration of both the director's cut and original theatrical release, with bonus material from the 2008 Blu-ray release. New special features include interviews with Avnet and casting director Nancy Klopper and a conversation between editor Richard Chew and film historian Bobbie O’Steen.

Reception

Box office

The film opened in 670 theaters, with an opening weekend gross of $4,275,327. It went on to gross a total of $63.5 million domestically.

Risky Business is considered by many critics as one of the best films of 1983.

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". He singled out the dialogue, saying:

<blockquote>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.

Accolades

{| class="wikitable sortable"

!Year

!Award

!Category

!Nominated work

!Result

!Ref.

| rowspan="2" |1984

|Golden Globe Awards

|Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy

|Tom Cruise

|Writers Guild of America Awards

|Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screenplay

|Paul Brickman

Legacy

The remastered 25th-anniversary edition offers "both the upbeat studio ending and Mr. Brickman's original, more tentative and melancholic conclusion".

In 2015 the film was #31 on Entertainment Weeklys list of the 50 Best High School Movies. The magazine called the film a "sharp satire of privileged suburban teens", portraying the "soul-crushing pressure to be perfect."

In the years since the film's release, the iconic scene featuring Cruise's character sliding across the floor, dancing in just his pink shirt, socks, and white briefs to Bob Seger's rendition of "Old Time Rock and Roll" has been recreated in episodes of many television series, as well as in films, parodies, viral videos and advertisements. The song was #100 on AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Songs list.