I was just turning 15 when Risky Business—the movie that launched Tom Cruise’s acting career—hit the theaters in August 1983. I was too young to get into an R-rated movie without an adult; and this wasn’t a film that either of my parents would have been interested in seeing with me.
I neglected to see Risky Business for more than 40 years, partly because I was put off by the much-played clip of Tom Cruise dancing in his underwear. Call me homophobic if you’d like; but that isn’t the way to get me to see a movie. And there were just so many other movies to see.
I finally got around to watching Risky Business a few days ago. (Better late than never!) The movie was quite well done for a film that was originally conceived as a throwaway flick for Reagan-era young adults. (Moreover, despite the ubiquity of that clip with Tom Cruise in his underwear, that scene is a minuscule portion of the 95-minute movie.)
This is the movie’s setup. Joel Goodson (played by Cruise) is a success-oriented high school senior in Chicago’s exclusive North Shore area. Joel is obsessed with his grades, and particularly obsessed with getting into Princeton University.
Until his parents go away on an extended trip. One of Joel’s friends convinces him that he should take advantage of the hiatus in parental oversight by letting his hair down a little. Have some fun.
And what does that mean for a teenage boy in the early 1980s? Joel opens the phonebook and starts dialing the numbers of call girls, of course.
The first call girl he phones, Jackie, turns out to be a black cross-dresser. Joel diplomatically informs Jackie that he is not interested in male companionship, however the party might be dressed. Jackie gives Joel the number of “Lana”, who, Jackie insists, will be exactly what he is looking for. (Jackie assures Joel that Lana is “what all the white boys are looking for.”)
Lana (played by the stunning Rebecca De Mornay) shows up next. Joel and Lana end up having sex in his parents’ house. But in the morning she demands her fee of $300 ($975 in 2025 money).
Joel leaves Lana unattended at home while he goes to the bank for money. When he returns, Lana is gone, along with his mother’s prized Steuben glass egg.
Joel goes on a quest to find Lana. He eventually finds her, and more hijinks ensue. Lana’s abusive pimp tries to intimidate Joel. Lana convinces Joel to turn his upper-crust suburban home into a brothel for a night. You get the picture.
Risky Business is not a movie that would get made in 2025. Everyone would kvetch too much, from all sides of the political spectrum. The pearl-clutching conservative commentator Matt Walsh—who was born three years after Risky Business came out—would have a conniption fit. J.D. Vance (who also wasn’t yet born in August 1983) would denounce the movie from the bully pulpit of the vice president’s office.
Feminists would bemoan the exploitation and objectification celebrated in the movie. The LGBTQ crowd would complain about the portrayal of Jackie. And so on…
I’ll freely acknowledge that a teenage boy’s relationship (and business partnership) with a call girl isn’t the most wholesome topic for a movie. But in the 1980s we were able to wink at such films. To begin with, everyone knew that such an outlandish scenario was extremely unlikely in real life. And American society at-large (this is the important part) was fundamentally solid and sane.
We now live in an era in which there is constant insanity on our daily news reports—far more insanity than a 1980s filmmaker would have ever conceived for the make-believe world of the movie screen.
Risky Business doesn’t really provide much insight into real life in the early 1980s. (Like I said, the setup and premise are unrealistic.) But the movie will show you what we were able to laugh at back then, secure in the stability of that better, vanished time.
-ET