Risky Business - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of Risky Business or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to Risky Business

[wallace]

Curtis Armstrong, who played a teenager, was twenty-eight during filming (the summer of 1982).

[brent]

Curtis Armstrong and Tom Cruise, the two male stars of this movie; are very short. Cruise is 5'7"; Armstrong is 5'4".

[harry]

Tangerine Dream based parts of the film's score on material from their previous albums, particularly the album "Force Majeure": The title track is the basis for Lana's theme, and the intro to "Cloudburst Flight" was reused for "Guido the Killer Pimp". "No Future (Get off the Babysitter)" is based on the title track to the album "Exit".

[wesley]

Tom Cruise was 21 when Risky Business hit theaters, Tom Cruise became a star after the movie's Aug. 5, 1983, release.

[michele]

After their initial night together, Lana tells Joel that he owes her $300 dollars. When adjusted for inflation, that equates to $777.45 in 2020 dollars.

[nicholas]

According to Tom Cruise, Paul Brickman was initially unsure of casting him: "Originally, Paul had seen Taps (1981) and said, 'This guy for Joel? This guy is a killer! Let him do Amityville III!' Somehow, my agent, without me knowing, arranged to have me just drop by the office to say hello. So I went in wearing a jean jacket, my tooth was chipped, my hair was greasy. I was pumped up and talking in an Oklahoma accent, 'Hey, how y'all doing?' Paul just sat there, looking at me." Cruise returned to Tulsa but flew back to L.A. and auditioned again. "I walk in and see this stunningly gorgeous woman sitting there looking at me and I'm thinking, 'Oh my God,'" Cruise said. "Rebecca [De Mornay] had already been cast. They wanted to see the two of us together. I tested, and to make a short story long, we didn't test that well. Paul just believed in me."

[terry]

The sunglasses Joel wears are the Ray-Ban Wayfarer model. Annual sales of Wayfarers were languishing as of 1983 but skyrocketed 2,000 percent after the movie's release. This film and The Blues Brothers (1980) have contributed to the popularity of the Wayfarers since.

[kenneth]

In his autobiography, Revenge of the Nerd, Curtis Armstrong recalls working with Tom Cruise: "[Tom] self-identified as a born-again Christian and the rumor was he had actually considered shepherding souls for a living. I could believe it. Away from the set, initially, Tom made straight arrows look like corkscrews. I would ask him at the end of the day if he would like to join us at the bar for a drink. "No," I recall him saying, "Got an early call tomorrow. Got to work out still, study my lines. And then I like to read the Bible a little before bed." I laughed. He didn't. But then, returning late one night, I found three or four young girls - late teens, I suspect - lined up in the hall outside of Tom's room. I remember thinking, "Tom's going to be really upset if these hot girls interfere with his Bible reading." So I asked them, with all the stern gravitas of my 28 years, if there was something I could do to help them. They just stared at me, and at that moment, Tom's door opened and another girl came out, adjusting her hair and taking off down the hall, while the first girl in line slipped into Tom's room. This was a young man who knew something about time management and understood how to successfully juggle Bible study and blow jobs. I went to bed alone that night thinking it served me right for not being religious."

[aaron]

The face Joel makes after saying "Looks like University of Illinois!" was improvised by Tom Cruise. Paul Brickman loved the facial expression that he kept it in the film. This line is actually ironic since University of Illinois is actually a very exclusive university and considers itself to be almost Ivy League. A better line would have been "well I think we're looking at Illinois State University here my friend!" ISU more has the reputation of being an open enrollment not prestigious type college that they're trying to evoke here. University of Illinois on the other hand was doubtlessly deeply offended by being represented this way. (Infact there's a long standing controversy in the state of Illinois about how the University takes state funding but then has very exclusive enrollment practices, something which many people see as a conflict of interest.)

[kenzi]

Four 1978 Porsche 928 models were used in the movie (and a 1981 model), including one that was gutted for the lake scene, and another that was painted gold. A collector tried to track down all of the Porsches but only found one of them, which he bought for $49,200 at a 2012 Hollywood memorabilia auction.

[liam]

Tom Cruise and Rebecca De Mornay appeared in films directed by Francis Ford Coppola. De Mornay in One from the Heart (1981) and Cruise in The Outsiders (1983).

[frederick]

Tom Cruise and Rebecca De Mornay were directed by Curtis Hanson in Losin' It (1983), and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992), respectively. Although Curtis Hanson isn't the director here, Paul Brickman is!

[charlie]

This being the 80s there has to be your obligatory music video scene. ("I Like That Old Type of Rock and Roll"....)

[ella]

Paul Brickman cited Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist (1970) as a huge influence on the film: "I thought, 'Why can't you present that as a film for youth and aspire to that kind of style and still have humor in it?' That was the test: to meld a darker form of filmmaking with humor. Tone is what I wanted to play with."

[jessie]

The religious cone shaped castle Joel drives by in the chase scene is the Bahai Temple, situated on the lake in North Shore Wilmette Illinois.

[kim]

The dance scene where Joel dances to "Old Time Rock N' Roll" was completely improvised. In the script Tom Cruise was simply instructed to "dance to rock music".

[violet]

It's very difficult to imagine the original choice for the Paul role, Timothy Hutton, playing this role. It's impossible to imagine him doing the Paul Seger music video, (that whole thing was almost entirely improvised by Cruise anyway). It's also impossible to imagine him luxuriating in Ray Ban aviator sunglasses; or blasting around Chicago's Lake Shore Drive in a Mercedes-benz; or making mad and brutal love to Lana out in the open on an El train; those scenes just wouldn't have worked.