tom cruise singing cocktail

Mixing It Up: Exploring the Iconic Cocktails from the Movie “Cocktail”

• developer on September 19, 2023

“Cocktail,” the 1988 romantic drama film directed by Roger Donaldson, is not just a classic of its time; it’s a celebration of mixology and the art of crafting the perfect cocktail. Starring Tom Cruise as the charming bartender Brian Flanagan, the film takes us on a journey through the world of bartending, love, and friendship. Along the way, it introduces us to several iconic cocktails that have since become staples in the world of mixology. In this article, we’ll delve into the delicious details of these cocktails, their history, and how you can recreate them at home.

The Red Eye

Our journey through the world of “Cocktail” begins with the Red Ey e, a simple yet refreshing cocktail. In the movie, Brian Flanagan (Tom Cruise) impresses his mentor Doug Coughlin (Bryan Brown) by making this drink for the first time.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 oz. vodka
• 1 oz. tomato juice
• 1 dash of hot sauce
• 1 dash of Worcestershire sauce
• Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

• Fill a shaker with ice.
• Add vodka, tomato juice, hot sauce, Worcestershire sauce, salt, and pepper.
• Shake well.
• Strain into a chilled glass filled with ice.
• Garnish with a lemon wedge and celery stick.

The Red Eye is a classic cocktail, often referred to as a “Bloody Mary Lite.” It’s perfect for those who enjoy the tangy flavors of tomato juice and a hint of spice.

The Woo Woo

Next up is the Woo Woo , a sweet and fruity cocktail that makes an appearance in the film during a beach party scene.

• 1/2 oz. peach schnapps
• 3 oz. cranberry juice
• Add vodka, peach schnapps, and cranberry juice.
• Strain into a chilled glass.
• Garnish with a lime wedge or a cherry.

The Woo Woo is a delightful and easy-to-make cocktail, making it a favorite at parties and gatherings.

The Jamaican Bobsled

The Jamaican Bobsled is another fun and tropical cocktail featured in the movie. It’s a colorful and flavorful drink that reflects the movie’s beachy vibes.

• 1 1/2 oz. white rum
• 1/2 oz. coconut cream
• 1/2 oz. blue curaçao
• 2 oz. pineapple juice
• Crushed ice
• Fill a blender with crushed ice.
• Add white rum, coconut cream, blue curaçao, and pineapple juice.
• Blend until smooth.
• Pour into a chilled glass.
• Garnish with a pineapple slice and a cherry.

The Jamaican Bobsled is a tropical paradise in a glass. Its vibrant blue color and refreshing flavors make it a hit at beach-themed parties.

• The Last Barman Poet

Named after Brian Flanagan’s poetic ambitions in the movie, The Last Barman Poet is a cocktail that represents the artistry and creativity of bartending.

• 1 1/2 oz. light rum
• 1/2 oz. lime juice
• 1/2 oz. simple syrup
• 1/2 oz. pineapple juice
• Lime twist for garnish
• Add light rum, blue curaçao, lime juice, simple syrup, and pineapple juice.
• Shake vigorously.
• Strain into a chilled martini glass.
• Garnish with a lime twist.

The Last Barman Poet is a cocktail that pays homage to the creativity and passion of bartenders. Its bright blue color and balanced flavors make it a true work of art.

The Flaming Dr. Pepper

In one of the film’s most memorable scenes, Brian Flanagan and Doug Coughlin introduce the audience to the Flaming Dr. Pepper , a daring and fiery cocktail that involves lighting the drink on fire before consuming it.

• 3/4 oz. amaretto liqueur
• 1/4 oz. high-proof rum (overproof)
• 1/2 glass of beer (lager)
• Pour the amaretto into a shot glass.
• Float the high-proof rum on top of the amaretto.
• Fill a beer glass halfway with beer.
• Carefully ignite the amaretto and rum in the shot glass.
• Drop the flaming shot glass into the beer glass.
• Blow out the flame, and drink the cocktail quickly through a straw.

The Flaming Dr. Pepper is not for the faint of heart, but it’s undoubtedly a showstopper at any gathering.

But here is more. Here is a list of cocktails that are either made, mentioned, or play a role in various scenes throughout the film:

• Bloody Mary
• Brandy Alexander
• The Righteous Bison
• Black Russian
• Jamaican Bobsled
• The Frozen Banana Daiquiri
• Planters Punch
• Irish Coffee
• Old-Fashioned
• Vodka Martini
• Amaretto Sour
• Screwdriver
• Tom Collins
• Dry Martini
• Flaming Dr. Pepper

The movie “Cocktail” may be a love story, but it’s also a love letter to the art of mixology and the delightful world of cocktails. Each of the cocktails featured in the film has its unique charm and flavor profile, making them a hit with fans and cocktail enthusiasts alike. Whether you’re sipping on a Red Eye, enjoying the tropical vibes of the Jamaican Bobsled, or daring to try the Flaming Dr. Pepper, these cocktails are a testament to the creativity and craftsmanship that go into the world of mixology. So, the next time you watch “Cocktail,” consider shaking up one of these iconic drinks to enhance your viewing experience.

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Top songs: a guide to Tom Cruise singing cheesy tunes in movies

Might as well face it, Tom Cruise is addicted to belting out an off-key classic in his films. Here's a quick guide to some of his most memorable – and more forgettable – moments on the mic

Photos: Alamy/Collage: The Big Issue

Ace fighter pilot, champion stock car racer, secret agent extraordinaire, barman at TGI Fridays: Tom Cruise has lived exciting lives which we mere mortals can only dream of through his blockbuster acting roles. And yet, from watching the vertically challenged sexy scientologist’s movies over the years, I can’t help but sense that his greatest ambition in life has never been fully realised.

I still haven’t seen Top Gun: Maverick – and I understand he judiciously leaves the theme song to Lady Gaga – but if it doesn’t feature a scene in which Cruise wonkily if gamely sings his little heart out to some sort of vintage rock’n’roll tune then he is selling us all and indeed himself short. The man clearly just wants to sing!

Not content merely packing the soundtracks of his movies with hit songs that can have taken anywhere between three and seven minutes to write – be it Take a Look Around , Limp Bizkit’s butthurt riff on a Lalo Schifrin TV theme classic from 2000’s Mission: Impossible 2 , or Paul McCartney’s fantastically lazy Vanilla Sky from 2001’s film of the same name (sample lyric: “Tonight you fly so high up/In the vanilla sky” ) – Cruise has on many a memorable occasion grabbed the mic himself, only rarely crashing and burning in the process. Shake your nerves and rattle your brain, with a short history of Tom Cruise singing in films. 

Great Balls of Fire  – Top Gun (1986)

Whether it’s spectacular aerial dogfights or a very homoerotic beach volleyball match, Cruise’s breakout action classic is full of memorable scenes, including not just one but two where he sings. The best is of course when Mav and Goose and their respective better halves are drunk in a bar, and Goose is banging away at an upright piano with his young son perched on top, and the two BFFs are going ballistic howling Jerry Lee Lewis’s horndog anthem like a right pair of flaming testes. Unbearably wholesome content.

Addicted to Love  – Cocktail (1988)

It’s hard to believe it happened not long after Top Gun , but Cruise’s arguably worst-ever film saw him play a flair bartender at a MOR American chain restaurant, serving up extravagantly made boozes with often sexy results. His credentials as the money-maker shakin’ lothario who can also do you a decent margarita are burnished by a scene in which the erotic mixologist starts ad-libbing to Robert Palmer’s Addicted to Love behind the bar while a woman stares at him longingly, whether smitten or perhaps just wondering when the hell she’s getting her drink. 

Free Fallin’  – Jerry Maguire (1996)

He’s a cocky American sports agent just been binned from his job, she’s a naive and let’s face it desperate secretary and single mum (played by the future multiple Oscar-winning Renée Zellweger). Their relationship makes no sense whatsoever and is actually quite tragic. But watch this much-overrated romcom anyway for the always enjoyable scene where Jerry’s driving off from doing what he thinks is a career-saving deal, searching the radio for a song to match his ecstatic mood, before finally settling on Tom Petty’s 1989 classic Free Fallin’ . Cue Cruise frantically car singing along at the top of his voice with no-one’s-listening aplomb. 

Little Deuce Coupe  – War of the Worlds (2005)

“The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one, but still they come!” OK, so sadly Cruise didn’t have a go at singing Jeff Wayne’s 1978 funky prog-rock opera based on HG Wells’ Victorian era proto-sci-fi frightener. But in playing the unlikely part of the deadbeat dad in Steven Spielberg’s 2005 blockbuster movie adaptation, he does have a pretty sweet moment when, searching his mind in vain for a lullaby to sing his terrified daughter, from somewhere he comes up with The Beach Boys’ 1963 hot-rod rock ode, sung in a fragile reedy voice with tears in his eyes. 

Various songs  – Rock of Ages (2012) 

Perhaps we should be more careful what we wish for. Back in 2012, Cruise really did get to fulfil many of his obvious rock star fantasies by joining the ensemble cast of a film based on a popular glam-rock Broadway jukebox musical. The actor took lessons with Axl Rose’s vocal coach to get up to scratch for his role as brooding superstar Stacey Jaxx, and ended up singing surprisingly passable lead vocals on various songs including Guns N’ Roses’ Paradise City , Bon Jovi’s Wanted Dead or Alive and Def Leppard’s Pour Some Sugar on Me . Luckily the film tanked at the box office, and music’s loss remains acting’s gain.

Malcolm Jack is a freelance journalist

This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine. If you cannot reach  your local vendor , you can still click  HERE  to subscribe to The Big Issue. You can also purchase one-off issues from  The Big Issue Shop  or The Big Issue app, available from the  App Store  or  Google Play .

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The Best Tom Cruise Year Is ...

… maybe not the most obvious one. But when Cruise made ‘Cocktail’ and ‘Rain Man,’ he unlocked a new side that would define the quintessential movie star’s career for decades to come.

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You’ve probably already heard the stories about Tom Cruise’s preposterous level of effort in the new Mission: Impossible—Fallout, in which he plays the role of Ethan Hunt for the sixth time in 22 years. Of course the aggressively ageless 56-year-old performs his own stunts. At one point, he broke his ankle after slamming into the side of a damn building—and then pulled himself up, and ran across the roof. And then there’s the spectacular helicopter chase sequence, for which Cruise (again, of course ) learned how to really pilot a helicopter. Elsewhere, when he’s not risking life and actual limbs in Fallout , he is doing that rigorous, purposeful Tom Cruise sprint , like Jim Fixx on a Red Bull bender.

That’s the one thing everyone — fans and critics alike — always says about him: Tom Cruise works hard. Working hard is his brand. He’s, well, worked very hard to make it so.

But what if he didn’t work quite so hard? Not to suggest that Tom Cruise has ever coasted, exactly. But what if he let himself lay back just a little bit and allowed the centrifugal force of his one-in-a-billion movie-star charisma propel him forward? Is it possible that this would make the longest-tenured A-list movie star since Clint Eastwood even more watchable?

Almost 30 years ago to the day, millions of people lined up to see the latest Tom Cruise movie, and the stakes couldn’t have been lower. The mission was not impossible; it was impossibly mundane. What mattered were dreams … and cocktails … Cocktails & Dreams, if you will. And people were fine with that! All it took to put butts in seats was this simple log line: Tom Cruise plays a sexy bartender . That’s it. Nothing else was required — no special effects, no elaborate cinematic universe, and certainly no broken ankles.

This is not to say that Tom Cruise sloughed off in Cocktail, one of the more popular, and least reputable, films in his oeuvre. He tossed bottles in synchronized motion with costar Bryan Brown. He rode horses on the beach with love interest Elisabeth Shue. He resisted the string-bikini’d bod of Kelly Lynch. He reacted with appropriate pathos to one of the all-time left-field suicide scenes. He put in work.

When was the last time you watched Cocktail ? Oh, you’ve never watched Cocktail ? Wow … I really don’t want to spoil this one. I’ll run down the essentials: Cruise plays Brian Flanagan, a wannabe business tycoon and military veteran (!) who moves to the big city in order to get rich, and then becomes a bartender at a TGI Fridays. And that’s basically all you need to know.

What Cocktail is really about is the desirability of Tom Cruise circa 1988. Put another way: Everybody in this movie wants to fuck him — Shue, Lynch, even Brown, kind of. Women literally paw at his legs when he stands on a bar top to recite tavern-inspired poetry. (This is also a thing that happens in Cocktail. ) He is, in no uncertain terms, a sex object.

“Doug says you’re incredible with women — a real lady-killer,” Lynch drools near the end of Cocktail as she corners a semi-willing Cruise. “What’s your secret weapon?”

“Well,” Cruise says, flashing his trademark toothy grin, “what you see is what you get.”

He’s not lying.

Cocktail played a pivotal role in consolidating Cruise’s burgeoning stardom, a star vehicle built on the flimsiest of premises that grossed $78 million domestically (and another $93 million around the world), good for the ninth-best box-office haul of 1988, an achievement that could only be attributed to Cruise’s mega-watt marquee appeal. But it never fully registered as a career triumph. Not long after Cocktail unleashed so many dubious fads on American pop culture — including two of the era’s most grating pop hits, the Beach Boys’ “Kokomo” and Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry Be Happy,” to say nothing of acrobatic mixology — Cruise distanced himself from the film.

“It’s painful as hell,” Cruise says of watching Cocktail in a 1990 Rolling Stone profile . “I mean, I worked my ass off on that movie.” Again with the work ethic, Tom.

Defenders of Cocktail have tried to couch it as a “secretly dark” look at ’80s “greed is good” culture, a depiction not far off from the eccentric barfly novel on which it is based. Screenwriter Heywood Gould, who also wrote the book, later claimed that the script went through 40 different iterations, with the film’s studio, Disney, constantly pressing to make Flanagan younger, more likable, and, ultimately, more Cruise-like. But even after all of those revisions, Cocktail was still watered down further during production.

“It was a much darker movie,” Lynch told The A.V. Club in 2012 , “but Disney took it, reshot about a third of it, and turned it into flipping the bottles and this and that.”

When I revisited Cocktail recently, I could see traces of the more biting film it might have been. Flanagan is a prototypical working-class stiff who is twisted by capitalism into a money-obsessed douche, lending his blandly handsome bro-ness a faintly tragic lilt. But I prefer to accept Cocktail on its own compromised, cheesy terms. Forget the Reagan-era subtext. This is an enjoyable dumb movie, and it is best appreciated as a superficial confection. What you see is what you get.

And it deserves better. Cocktail isn’t any campier than Top Gun , with its slow-motion volleyball action, overwrought “Take My Breath Away” love scene, and Val Kilmer’s playfully unrestrained homoeroticism. So why is Cocktail the movie that Cruise has to live down?

In May, Cruise started filming Top Gun: Maverick , which is currently slated to arrive in theaters around this time in 2019. Cruise started teasing the possibility of a sequel to the 1986 film two years ago, on Jimmy Kimmel Live! He is, as always, committed to the enterprise, even if it is wholly unnecessary. But the closest Cruise will likely ever come to reviving Cocktail was a career-spanning bit with another late-night host, James Corden, on that same 2016 press cycle. This is a shame — I would rather watch a prequel delving into Flanagan’s mysterious Army background than a movie about Maverick’s kid . Call it Cocktail: First Blood. (I will nevertheless watch the movie about Maverick’s kid.)

This willingness to revisit Top Gun , and reticence to embrace Cocktail , presumably boils down to one thing for Cruise: He had to train in an F-14 to make Top Gun , whereas Cocktail only needed that dumb hook — Tom Cruise plays a sexy bartender — to be a success. He worked hard on Cocktail , but he didn’t have to work hard. He just had to be Tom Cruise.

But he didn’t want to be that Tom Cruise anymore. And he wouldn’t be ever again.

For millennials and Generation Z, there’s never been a world in which Cruise wasn’t among the most famous people on the planet. (August 5 marks the 35th anniversary of Risky Business , Cruise’s big breakthrough, released one month after his 21st birthday.) He’s practically an elemental property at this point.

But there have been oscillations in his fame. You might remember them, the way you can recall down seasons for a dynastic sports franchise. Like in the mid-’00s, during that disastrous press cycle for 2005’s War of the Worlds , marred by the Oprah Winfrey incident and that time he got testy with Matt Lauer. (When does Cruise get awarded his revisionist history bonus points for the last one?) The past few years have been another struggle: 2016’s Jack Reacher: Never Go Back and 2017’s The Mummy were widely derided duds. But his late-’10s period hasn’t been as down as you might think: Last year’s American Made , while not exactly great, is awfully hard not to watch when it pops up on airplanes or HBO.

Cruise has been around for so long, all while working steadily and prolifically, that you can break his career into notable eras, or even memorable years. Many of his notable films come in bunches. There’s 1986, the year of Top Gun and The Color of Money , his first movie to gross more than $100 million and his first “adult” drama . There’s 1996, the “blockbuster” year, distinguished by Jerry Maguire and the first Mission: Impossible , which combined grossed more than $731 million worldwide. (That’s about $1.2 billion in 2018 dollars.) There’s 1999, the “prestige” year, with Eyes Wide Shut and Magnolia , neither of which nabbed him that elusive Oscar . And then there’s the opposite of a prestige year, 2012, marked by late-career guilty pleasures Rock of Ages and (the pretty good!) first Jack Reacher film.

But if I’m picking my favorite Tom Cruise year, I’m going back to 1988, his “transitional” year, when he released Cocktail at the end of July and Rain Man , his road movie–buddy picture with Dustin Hoffman, one week before Christmas. Between the release of those radically different movies, from October to December, he filmed Born on the Fourth of July with Oliver Stone, playing the paraplegic Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic, which garnered him his first Oscar nomination.

Rain Man was even more successful than Cocktail , tallying a worldwide gross of nearly $355 million and four Oscars. (It was no. 1 at the American box office that year, which seems all the more incredible in these franchise-saturated times.) Cruise undoubtedly was a primary reason for the former, though he wasn’t nominated for an Academy Award. But Rain Man gave him something far more valuable — a pathway to the “mature” second act of his professional life, to the success of Born on the Fourth of July and beyond.

When you look at the best years of Cruise’s career, there’s an obvious yin-and-yang quality, typically balancing an action tent-pole like Top Gun and Mission Impossible with a “smaller” film such as The Color of Money or Jerry Maguire. This contrast is starkest in ’88, between the disreputable camp classic and the award-winning family drama.

An oft-repeated complaint about Cruise’s recent filmography is the loss of that balance. It’s been this way for about 15 years. In the early ’00s, he made two risky sci-fi films, 2001’s Vanilla Sky and 2002’s Minority Report , and his overall best movie of the 21st century, 2004’s Collateral , along with requisite business-minded ventures like 2000’s Mission: Impossible II and 2003’s forgettable but very profitable The Last Samurai.

Cruise hasn’t made a movie remotely like Collateral since then. In the past decade, he has tilted heavily to tent-poles with astronomical budgets, including four more Mission: Impossible films. Then again, Hollywood has also abandoned yang in order to focus solely on yin. And Tom Cruise and Hollywood are nothing if not symbiotic. You don’t get to your 35th year as a movie star without always adapting to the present climate.

Cruise has been a rare constant in Hollywood since the early ’80s. But neither Cruise nor Hollywood has stayed the same. There have been several reinventions for both American institutions along the way.

Time, for one, moved much slower in 1988. A lot could happen in six months. The Tom Cruise of Cocktail is not the Tom Cruise of Rain Man. When you toggle between those films, you get the rare opportunity to witness an iconic actor grow up in real time.

Tom Cruise in 1988 is like U2 in 1983. In the video for “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” filmed live at Red Rocks Amphitheater outside of Denver, Bono is still an awkward kid — he has a mullet, a sleeveless shirt, knee-high boots, and an abundance of spirited high kicks. He’s not really the stadium-rock Bono yet. But every so often you catch a glimmer in his eyes that says, I think I know how to own these people. I’m not there yet, but I’m on my way. Cruise similarly came into his own as a grown-up star in the transition from Cocktail and Rain Man. Though Bono didn’t completely lose the mullet for another four years, Cruise’s transformation was far more condensed.

If Cocktail truly is a failure — I don’t think it is, but Cruise does — it is first and foremost a failure of career planning. It’s a little like Bono briefly reverting to his Under a Blood Red Sky guise between The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby. Cocktail was a throwback to the early ’80s Tom Cruise of Losin’ It and Legend , before he got his act together and became the Tom Cruise, a movie star who transcends time, generations, and bodily harm . Cocktail feels out of place between The Color of Money and Rain Man in Cruise’s catalog, in the midst of his “apprenticeship” period, when he dutifully shared the spotlight with respected elders from the ’60s and ’70s like Paul Newman and Dustin Hoffman, on the way to becoming an elder himself. (This continued with Robert Duvall in Days of Thunder , Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men , and Gene Hackman in The Firm , culminating with Stanley Kubrick and Eyes Wide Shut. )

Standing next to distinguished gentlemen makes you look distinguished. In Cocktail , Cruise resembles a man in his mid-20s who still lives with roommates and sleeps on a mattress on the floor. In Rain Man , he’s that same guy after he’s settled down with a nice girl and an IKEA charge card. This shift from innocence to experience defines the crux of Cocktail and Rain Man. After Cocktail , a cinematic mullet if there ever was one, Cruise would never be so guileless again on screen.

Rain Man made Paul Thomas Anderson realize that he loves Tom Cruise more than most people.

“He’s funny too!” Anderson raved last December to Bill Simmons . “Cruise is funny . When you see Tom Cruise on screen, name me anyone else that can do that right now.”

Cruise’s portrayal of Charlie Babbitt — luxury car huckster, mocker of his disabled brother, impatient clapper when people aren’t moving fast enough — helped to inspire Frank T.J. Mackey, the role Anderson created for Cruise in 1999’s Magnolia. You don’t need to squint hard to see the parallels. Charlie and Frank are unlikable assholes nursing wounded hearts and troubled relationships with their fathers. They abuse people as a way of keeping the world at arm’s length, the ultimate form of self-abuse. And when they achieve catharsis, they aren’t redeemed — their souls have thawed, but they haven’t stopped being assholes.

They are also, like PTA says, very funny characters, mostly because they are excuses for Cruise to launch into prolonged mental breakdowns. Is there anything better than Tom Cruise huffing, puffing, gesticulating, becoming unglued, yelling , and finally losing his freaking mind?

For years, distinguished directors lined up to run Cruise through the wringer: Scorsese, Levinson, Stone, Pollack, De Palma, Crowe, and Kubrick all delighted in driving him absolutely wild. What fresh torture can we inflict on Tom Cruise this time? Put him in a wheelchair! Strip him of his lucrative sports-agent career! Send him on a metaphorical “journey into the night” that doubles as a rumination on the compromises inherent to any marriage! Now, step back and watch the glorious madness commence.

During the prelude to the 61st Academy Awards, Hoffman was the favorite to win Best Actor for Rain Man . He did just that. (The other nominees that year included Tom Hanks for Big and Edward James Olmos in Stand and Deliver , both of whom seem leagues better in retrospect.) At the time, Hoffman’s performance was widely admired as a landmark in the portrayal of a disabled person on film. But since then, Hoffman’s stock has plummeted and Cruise’s has skyrocketed. It’s now become a cliché to talk about how much better Cruise is than Hoffman in Rain Man , even though he supposedly has the less showy role.

This is only half true. Cruise is indeed superior to Hoffman’s mannered, dated performance as Raymond Babbitt, which now seems like a cartoonish caricature of a person with autism. But Cruise’s work in Rain Man can’t really be described as not showy. While Hoffman exists as a static irritant, Cruise is reactive to the extreme. He’s big and bombastic, and he dominates the film’s dramatic arc. He’s the one the audience relates with, the one who changes from the start of the story to the end — not much, but enough. It’s dazzling to witness. Rain Man is the greatest breakdown of Tom Cruise’s career.

If Cruise’s role was merely to support Hoffman’s campaign to win a second Oscar, he doesn’t act like it. He knew how good the role of Charlie was. He spent two years working on the script, starting back when he was promoting Top Gun in 1986. “What I gave him is the thing that he hasn’t often had the opportunity to do: work with a full character,” Levinson told Rolling Stone in 1989.

As Charlie, Cruise is a man constantly reminded of how he falls short, and there is no guarantee that he won’t carry on making the same mistakes after the credits roll. It is a complicated depiction of adulthood, whereas Flanagan’s magical turnaround in Cocktail — he marries Shue, agrees to be a father to his unborn child, and opens his own bar — is a child’s fairy tale.

If it’s been a while since you watched it, or you’ve never seen Rain Man , go do it now. My wife and I revisited it last week, and we barely noticed Hoffman. Meanwhile, we couldn’t stop laughing — or cringing — at Cruise. We hadn’t seen it since our two kids were born, and now it was impossible not to watch Rain Man as an allegory about the frustrations of parenthood. Charlie is not a parent; he’s merely tasked (by his own greed and resentment over essentially being cut out of his father’s will) with taking care of his brother. But his rage over, say, not being able to get his brother to board an airplane , in spite of deploying simple logic and facts , felt extremely familiar.

The central struggle of taking care of a person who can’t take care of themselves is over control. The dance between caregiver and care-receiver requires the giver to convince the receiver to acquiesce; this means the receiver is actually in the power position at all times, even when it appears that the opposite is so. No matter Rain Man ’s other deficiencies, particularly when judged according to modern sensibilities, the way the film depicts that dance still feels true.

Charlie Babbitt is Patient Zero for Cruise’s strongest subsequent performances, which all concern power in some way. Cruise plays men who want to command their surroundings, and can’t, thus causing all that imminently watchable turmoil. Ron Kovic can’t control his body. Cole Trickle can’t control his emotions behind the wheel. Lt. Daniel Kaffee can’t control his court case. Mitch McDeere can’t control his own life once it is infiltrated by the mob. Jerry Maguire can’t control Rod Tidwell. William Harford can’t control his wife’s sexual desires. Frank T.J. Mackey can’t control the TV reporter who is about to expose him.

And that need for control clearly resonates with Cruise in his real life. What could be the cause of his fixation on hard work? Could it be a desire to account for every possible outcome, to ensure that he never falls from his perch? Either way, all of that planning and plotting and persnickety obsessing has clearly paid off. If you can will yourself to run on a broken ankle, or carry on each time news breaks about the weirdness of your personal life, you can accomplish anything.

But nobody is perfect. For Cruise, Cocktail represented a loss of control — he couldn’t change the final product or prevent the short-term damage it caused to his reputation. But with Rain Man , he was able to channel his control-freak tendencies into a character who must accept that the arc of the universe is long but bends toward accepting that Wapner must be watched in five minutes.

By the end of 1988, Tom Cruise showed that he could sublimate himself on purpose . He turned powerlessness into a superpower.

Steven Hyden is the author of two books, including Twilight of the Gods: A Journey to the End of Classic Rock , out now from Dey Street Books. His writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine , The Washington Post , Billboard , Pitchfork , Rolling Stone , Grantland , The A.V. Club , Slate , and Salon . He is currently the cultural critic at UPROXX and the host of the Celebration Rock podcast.

The MCU Time Capsule

‘civil war’ with alex garland plus: the 10 most anticipated movies out of cinemacon., ‘shogun’ episode 8, ‘ripley’ episode 3, and ‘top chef’ episode 4.

Summer is just around the corner, and long weekends are soon knocking on everyone’s door. With states reopening, and businesses about to come back into full swing, let’s take some time and meet up at a fictional bar to celebrate.

This week ‘Touchstone and Beyond’ looks back at a film that showed us what a bartender was willing to do for success, and how the price of success would cost him everything he cared about. Let’s shake it up for Tom Cruise’s second Touchstone Pictures film, Cocktail .

Brian (Tom Cruise) is looking to make it big in business and moves to New York after his army service ends. Though he hustles from one interview to the next, Brian can’t get a job anywhere, until he meets Doug (Bryan Brown). Hired on the spot to bartend, Brian is an instant success. He is enamored with being so popular at night but struggling with his city college classes during the day.

Fame is instant for Brian and Doug. Their flair bartending style brings a relationship for Brian with a photographer named Coral (Gina Gershon) but fame can be fleeting. His friendship with Doug sours and Brian leaves for Jamaica to bartend at a resort. Over two years later, Brian is content on the sunny shores of Jamaica where he has used his talents to build up his reputation at the resort. He meets Jordan (Elisabeth Shue), a guest at the hotel, and a relationship blossoms. When Doug arrives and reunites with Brian, he introduces his very rich wife Kerry (Kelly Lynch) and informs Brian about his plan to open a trendy club back in New York.

Old habits die hard for Brian. He is goaded into a fling with a rich hotel guest by Doug, which ends his relationship with Jordan. She leaves for New York never saying goodbye, while Brian is trying to pick up the pieces of what to do next. Brian eventually leaves Jamaica too with big dreams of success, but they crumble. After searching up Jordan, Brian learns that she is pregnant with his child.

Doug is on the cusp of success but it’s an illusion. Brian learns that Doug is in debt, and despondent over the future. His suicide inspires Brian to try again to reunite with Jordan. After professing his love, Jordan takes him back and Brian seems to be on the right track. Several months down the road, Brian and Jordan are married. He has started his own bar named Flanagan’s Cocktails & Dreams and at the opening night of the bar, Brian is surprised once more to learn that Jordan is pregnant with twins.

Cinematic Compliments

Tom Cruise is at his best in the role of Brian Flanagan. He is likeable and charming which helps the viewers forget the negative character traits of Brian. He’s shallow and self-centered, but Tom Cruise paints a shiny glow over these negative attributes which allows the viewer to root for the protagonist.

Elisabeth Shue is truly excellent as Jordan. She brings an individualism to the role that puts her on an even level with Cruise’s Brian. Not just a throwaway character, Jordan makes Brian own up to his faults, and she has all the power that will influence Brian’s future. Tom Cruise and Elisabeth Shue are a perfect match and complement each other well on screen.

Cinematic Complaints

The suicide of Bryan Brown’s Doug character came out of nowhere and was unnecessarily bloody. Doug was melodramatic but the brutality of his suicide doesn’t match up with the characters arc. It felt unnecessary to kill Doug. It would have been better to see Brian walk away from Doug because he was tired of his antics, and not because he was dead.  

If the idea of watching a cocky bartender scheming for success doesn’t appeal to you then Cocktail  is a film to skip.

Fun Film Facts

• Fans of Beverly Hills 90210 will recognize James Eckhouse as one of the patrons at the Jamaica bar.
• Though the movie takes place in New York, most of the film was shot in Toronto.
• Recently, a camera operator from the film revealed that while shooting a helicopter scene for the film, Elisabeth Shue almost walked into the rotor blade of the helicopter. Cruise noticed the imminent peril and lunged at her, saving her life.
• Andrew Shue has a brief role as a wedding guest.
• The film is based on the book of the same name by author Heywood Gould.
• Gould would also adapt the book by writing the screenplay for the film.
• Heywood Gould is reportedly not happy with how the film turned out. Apparently, there are over forty different drafts of the screenplay.
• Bryan Brown once talked about how the original script was the best that he ever read. It focused on the cult of celebrity and was a very dark picture. When Cruise signed on the tone of the script changed to turn the project into a lighter more upbeat film.
• Bryan Brown also had nothing but positive remarks about working with Tom Cruise.
• Charlie Sheen, Robin Williams, and Jim Carrey were all up for the part of Brian.
• The studio originally thought about casting Paul Newman in the role of Doug. Studio executives thought they could recreate the magic established between Cruise and Newman on The Color of Money .
• There is a bar named Cocktails & Dreams, after Brian’s bar on the Gold Coast in Australia.
• Tom Hanks was in contention for the role of Brian but turned it down for Big .
• Former Disney Studio head Jeffrey Katzenberg originally changed the name of the film to  The Bartender but changed it back to Cocktail  before the premiere.
• Kelly Lynch claimed the film was heavily edited which resulted in much of her storyline being cut from the film.

The Golden Popcorn Bucket Rating

Cocktail  gets a 2 Golden Popcorn Bucket  rating. It’s a shallow film that’s fun to watch, and easily forgettable.

Coming Attractions

The bar hop continues next week when we visit another famous establishment that offers talented and unique bartenders, Coyote Ugly .

Production Credits

Directed by Roger Donaldson

Produced by Touchstone Pictures / Silver Screen Partners III

• Tom Cruise as Brian
• Bryan Brown as Doug
• Elisabeth Shue as Jordan
• Gina Gershon as Coral
• Kelly Lynch as Kerry

Release Date:  July 29, 1988

Budget: $20 million

Box Office Gross

Domestic: $78,222,753

Worldwide Total:  $171,504,781

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TV & Film

When Tom Cruise sang on live TV and he was amazing

5 August 2022, 15:47

By Tom Eames

Tom Cruise is one of the world's greatest film stars, and it turns out he's a fantastic live performer too.

In 2015, the Top Gun: Maverick actor appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon in the States, and shocked the audience with his impressive command of the stage.

• Simon Cowell finally sang on the Got Talent stage and he was incredible
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OK, he wasn't actually singing, but rather taking part in the Lip Sync Battle segment of the show, miming along with The Weeknd's 'Can't Feel My Face', but he was particularly great at it.

Watch the clip below:

Tom Cruise, Jimmy Fallon do lip sync battle | 'Can’t Feel My Face' & 'That Lovin Feelin'

Tom impressed the audience and Jimmy with his performance, which he followed up by lip-syncing to Meat Loaf 's 'Paradise by the Dashboard Light'.

Even The Weeknd himself was amazed, tweeting about the show afterwards:

can't believe @TomCruise is singing my song. @jimmyfallon *** you're the MAN for this one. #tomcruisetomcruise ||| https://t.co/xVFZSkYCCx — The Weeknd (@theweeknd) July 28, 2015

But it's not like Tom can't sing at all. He's belted out the likes of 'Great Balls of Fire' in Top Gun , 'Free Fallin'' in Jerry Maguire and 'Addicted to Love' in Cocktail .

And of course, in 2012, he starred as stadium rock legend Stacy Jaxx in the musical Rock of Ages , where he convincingly performed various '80s anthems like 'Wanted Dead or Alive' and 'Pour Some Sugar on Me'.

Tom Cruise has just experienced the most successful film of his career, with Top Gun: Maverick grossing over $1.3 billion at the worldwide box office.

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The Alabama Slammer Cocktail is Alabama Crimson Tide's Drink of Choice

A shot of Vodka, some Southern Comfort , sloe gin, orange juice, and a hint of grenadine to add color. This is the preferred drink of choice for the University of Alabama Crimson Tide fans. The Alabama Slammer is one heck of a shot that'll have you singing, Yea Alabama all night long. 

What is an Alabama Slammer Cocktail?

https://www.instagram.com/p/ByH9ZZrF6_W/

Born in (or around) the University of Alabama, this cocktail got its start as a sweet shot you could take with friends while rooting for the team. Unlike today, where drinks are meticulously created for flavor, the classic cocktails of the 1970s were created as if the bartenders were going only for aesthetics. You can't deny that crimson color, but in today's tastes, sloe gin and Southern Comfort are rarely on the top of anyone's "must-have" cocktail recipe lists.

According to Punch , the cocktail was introduced nationally in the 1971 edition of the  Playboy Bartender's Guide,  where the drink recipe included amaretto liqueur and lemon juice. Then in 1984, the drink was revamped a second time in Mr. Boston Official Bartender's Guide,  where orange juice was still missing from the recipe. 

It wasn't until the 1988 film  Cocktail,  that the Alabama Slammer got the attention it deserved. I n Tom Cruise 's "last barman poet" speech, Cruise shared the lines: 

I am the world's last barman poet. I see America drinking the fabulous cocktails I make. Americans getting stinking on something I stir or shake. The Sex on the Beach, The Schnapps made from peach, The Velvet Hammer, The Alabama Slammer.

From then on, the shot got transformed into a pitcher cocktail at TGI-Fridays for years.

How To Make an Alabama Slammer

Related content, the gin rickey is the perfect drink to unwind with, the most popular cocktail in texas isn't what you'd think, rum runner is the ultimate tropical drink perfect for ushering in summer.

While this drink was originally created to be taken as a shot, it is very easily transformed into a cocktail with the addition of ice and a highball glass. Add all ingredients in a cocktail shaker filled with ice and shake until combined. Pour into a highball glass filled with ice and garnish with a cherry and slice of orange.

How to Make a Southern Slammer Shot

Grab the shot glasses and take this fruity drink as a tailgating shot! In a tall glass combine:

• 1/2 ounce sloe gin
• 1/2 ounce amaretto liqueur
• 1/2 ounce Southern Comfort (SoCo)
• 1/4 ounce orange juice

Shake with ice and pour into shot glasses. Serve with an orange slice and take the shot!

Alabama Slammer

Ingredients    1x 2x 3x.

• 1 oz Southern Comfort
• 1 oz sloe gin
• 1 oz amaretto
• 2 oz Fresh orange juice
• a few drops grenadine

Instructions  

• Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker filled with ice and shake.
• Strain into a highball glass filled with ice. Serve with a cherry and slice of orange.

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• Cast & crew
• User reviews

• A talented New York City bartender takes a job at a bar in Jamaica and falls in love.
• Bent on becoming a successful millionaire, ambitious ex-military man Brian serves drinks at a New York City tavern and studies for his degree while waiting for his big break. Then, veteran bartender and cynical mentor Doug enters the picture, convinced that their chemistry and flamboyant tricks behind the bar will soon make the dynamic bartending duo famous and rich. But all good things must come to an end. As Brian tries to raise money in Jamaica to open his dream bar, a chance encounter with beautiful young waitress Jordan leads to a whirlwind romance and heartbreak. After all, love is a delicate thing. Is Brian sure he wants a future with Jordan? — Nick Riganas
• After leaving the Army, Brian Flanagan tries to get a marketing job in New York City. But without a college degree, this is not possible. He then decides to start studying for a business degree at the local City College and gets a part time job as a bartender. He realizes that it's not easy but his new boss Douglas Coughlin teaches him the secrets of the bar trade and they become the most famous bartenders in town. Both Brian and Doug want their own top class cocktail bars someday and Brian's Cocktail Bar is to be called 'Cocktails and Dreams'. In order to get the necessary money to open it, Brian travels to Jamaica to work as a bartender at a resort Tiki Bar, and the pay is good. There he meets Jordan Mooney, a young and pretty, up and coming American artist on vacation with her girlfriend from New York City, staying at the Island resort. Jordan and Brian spend some quality time together and fall in love. But Brian takes a dare from his old buddy, Doug Coughlin to sleep with an older, wealthy woman, who is also staying at the resort. Jordan, herself the daughter of wealthy parents back in New York City, leaves the Island overnight, after seeing Brian and the older woman together after closing - Will Jordan ever forgive Brian and will they get back together? — Joshua Jaworsky <[email protected]>
• The 1988 blockbuster classic, Cocktail. After some swift study, it appears nineteen-hundred and eighty-eight transpired as a monumental twelve-month period destined to be revered in the annals of movie creation history. Flawless gems such as: Big starring Tom Hanks who played the role of a kid who hates the success every adult wants, chooses to be a kid again - only to lose his edge and become a janitor later on; Rain Man starring Dustin Hoffman, already known for his adeptness at female role-play, took on the challenging task of a relatable, semi-cognitively-challenged millionaire; finally, let us not forget Eddie Murphy's masterful role in the flick, Coming to America, where he assumes the persona of an African prince who sets out on a quest to find a plebeian Yank to be his queen and eventually, indubitably withhold coitus-rights only after depleting the monarch's coffers. Other notable flicks released in this segment of time include Beetlejuice, Mystic Pizza, Willow, Child's Play, The Naked Gun, Bloodsport, Akira, The Land Before Time, Rambo III, and Hairspray! Originally, I was reluctant to review the movie in question and a quick analysis of the IMDb profile only furthered my suspicions. Overall viewer rating, at the time of this writing, was sitting at a homely five point seven stars out of a total of ten. The metascore was even more deficient with a measly tally of twelve out of one hundred. Not to be careless, I made sure to pore over several reviews before becoming a viewer myself. One of my favorites I shall transcribe hereafter: " Cocktail makes beer commercials look deep, makes "Top Gun" look like "Hamlet." -written by Jay Carr of the Boston Globe [29 Jul 1988, p.21] Yes, friend, perhaps it is a rag. The copy writer for the Cocktail cover art would also seem to agree, as he decided to include the profound quote, "Totally Entertaining!" Let us get started then. The movie begins with a young, starry-eyed soldier named Brian Flanagan, played by everyone's favorite thetan (Tom Cruise), who has incredible ambitions of making millions, by means of mercantilism, in the Big Apple. It must be pointed out that for a film with a premise of alcohol consumption, naturally the main character would have Irish roots. After several rounds of unsurprising rejections, Brian finds himself at a crossroads; either get a job as a bartender or move back in with the parents. Naturally, Flanagan is unwilling to give-up on his dream of becoming an opulent entrepreneur, enrolls in the local business college while earning shelter and sustenance by working part-time as a rookie cockologist. Enter fellow spirit connoisseur and bullshitter, Doug Coughlin (represented by Bryan Brown), who takes the protagonist under his wing. Flanagan is taught all the tricks of the mixing trade: flips, twirls, under-hands, over-hands, in-betweens, short-pours, and long-pours; all designed to loosen men from their wallets and women from their chastities. It is not long before these two find themselves at the pinnacle of the bartending game in all of New York City, if not presumably the world. Doug and Brian are in Flanagan's apartment discussing how to get rich. They decide to become business partners and open a chain of "local-style" bars. The name for this franchise: "Cocktails & Dreams." Deliciously corny. It is around this time that I find my father fast asleep. Traditionally, he is more accustomed to a finely-tuned entertainment genre that typically focuses on exploding cars, unlimited ammunition firefights, Eastern Bloc nemeses and screaming damsels. 1988 happens to also be the year action flicks reached their golden age with the release of Die Hard starring Bruce Willis. My dad has a certain attachment to action heroes that have a predisposition to male pattern baldness, being one who is also afflicted. He loves and owns xXx starring the glabrous Vin Diesel, of which I can assure anyone reading this that it has little to do with the Eastern European sluts or Pontiac GTO cameos. Also, he has probably seen every Jason Statham movie ever made (42 at the time of this writing). Anyways, one fruitful night, Brian ends up getting seduced by a local playgirl, Coral (Gina Gershon), thus beginning a courtship based on nothing but heathenish desires. Apparently, the writer, Heywood Gould, expects the audience to believe that a gorgeous heiress is interested in a five-foot-seven-inch, hero bartender for nothing but fornication. I suppose that is all she really needs at this point, I mean, what is he going to do; buy her another purse? Doug bets Flanagan that his relationship with Coral is based on nothing and she will end up screwing with his head like a cold-hearted, aloof bitch. To win this bet, it is not long before the meister of mixology, Doug Coughlin, engages in an affair with Coral; Brian finds out. Doug claims it was for Flanagan's own good but naturally he gets walloped in the kisser, regardless. Hurt and betrayed, Brian plans to pursue his monetary ambitions in another part of the world. Feeling empowered by his business strategy of creating chain, dive bars in every mall and airport in the country, he sets off for Jamaica to earn himself roughly seventy-thousand fiat United States dollars, the sum needed for his very first one. Presumably months (years?) later, the viewer finds Brian slaving away at some seaside speakeasy serving patrons of the local hotel. It is business as usual until the very voluptuous and fetching Jordan Mooney, depicted by Elisabeth Shue, arrives barside to steal his attention. I am assuming at this point Brian was still very butthurt over the whole Coral thing and had yet to bed a nice Jamaican girl. Of course, on an island of chocolate pudding the female love interest would have to be of Celtic origins. I digress; cue montage of Brian and Jordan participating in cliché date activities like riding horseback, enjoying the local fauna, hanging out in town where stereotypical, dreadlocks dude is dancing in the street. After a mandatory conversation to see if Brian is ambitious enough for Jordan's tastes, over cocktails, the two find themselves raptured in each other's embrace. We are talking about 1988, R-rated skinny-dipping, where side-boob makes an appearance (played by Elisabeth Shue's left breast). Things start to get weird when Jordan brings up the topic of our bartender siring her offspring. Brian does not seem to mind too much; at least he knows he is doing something right and he might really like this one, this time. Sigh, if only she was rich. It is not long before Mister Flanagan finds his way to trouble, however. The loathsome shyster, and long-time amigo, Doug Coughlin makes his grand return; systematically. Coughlin is rich now; sucking from the affluent teat of his new wife, both literally and figuratively, and he has come to gloat to Brian. How can this be; how can that rat bastard have a gorgeous, young, millionairess wife? Thus far, Flanagan has been very preoccupied with wealth and status. Knowing this, Doug presents a dare, a bet, claiming that Brian is without the social graces & silver tongue to woo a rich, soon-to-be cougar by the name of Bonnie (Lisa Banes). Young and rash, Brian takes Doug up on the bet and sure shows him. Next thing I know, Bonnie is having the time of her life and is requesting more! Unfortunately, Jordan saw both Brian and Bonnie walking away together; clearly sloshed and primed for acts of intercourse. Mooney is a sweet girl and feels taken advantage of by Flanagan who clearly must be some sort of philanderer. The next day, Brian feeling disgusted with himself, sets off to find Jordan only to hear from her friend that she had already taken the red-eye back to New York City. Disappointment is only temporary as he decides to benefit from Bonnie's station in life. This could be his ticket to a high-salaried marketing career and besides, its not like she is post-menopausal, yet. New York, New York, here we are again. Brian assumes the position of Bonnie's apartment-bound gigolo; forever lured by the promise of a sales position at her company. One evening, Bonnie takes her pet to a local art gallery where her aspiring sculptor acquaintance is showing off his latest work. Flannagan is rather flustered at this point. First she will not follow through on the job, then she does not even bother to introduce him to her friends and makes him hold all her refuse. He is determined to vacate and implores that she comply. Bonnie is having a grand time talking to the artist and does not want to exit. Brian and the sculptor get into, first, an argument and then a pugilist bout. During said fisticuffs, Brian kicks the artist into a sculpture, knocking both the creator and creation to the ground. Overcome with grief, the artist loses all drive to fight as this particular statue was meant for posterity. My dad wakes up, possibly drawn to consciousness by the sounds of brawling craftsman; one of boulder, alloy and the other of ethanol, glass & garnish. With Bonnie and Brian's "relationship" finally brought to a close, Flanagan sets out to find Jordan and apologize. He finds her working at her diner job where she promptly gives him both of the day's specials; one on his head and another on his lap. Later on, Flanagan finagles his way into Jordan's apartment where he sees her impressive paintings. She reveals to him that she is pregnant, however, Mooney makes it clear she will have nothing to do with him, despite Brian's persistence. A few days later, Brian goes to confront Jordan but finds she is not at her apartment, but rather, her parents' Park Avenue flat. She is a princess after all! Naturally, Jordan's father does not like Flanagan or the situation. He attempts to pay him off but Brian refuses the ten thousand, which is an amount he could desperately use to get his bar started. Brian leaves to go grovel for a job promised to him by his old pal, Doug Coughlin. Brian sneaks in past the security of Doug's wife's club. The two cockologists reunite and decide to have a drink someplace private. Doug confides in Brian that he lost most of his wife's money by poorly investing in commodities. Having too much to drink, Coughlin falls asleep (or at least pretends to) as his wife asks to go home. Being a good friend, Brian takes her home and almost bangs her out. He leaves, resisting the horizontal-hokey-pokey and arrives where he left Doug, only to see that he has committed suicide with a very expensive, broken bottle of brandy (or something). After the funeral, Brian reads a letter left for him from Coughlin. Doug says he committed suicide because he was just a bullshitter. Brian does not want to be a piece of fecal matter anymore and discontinues emulating the deceased Doug. Flannagan goes back to Jordan's parents' Park Avenue apartment and eventually fights off both the doorman and butler. Jordan's father and Brian exchange some nasty words. After a confession of love, Jordan leaves with Brian and the father cuts them off from his vault of gold bars, jewel encrusted rings, old paintings, et cetera. After getting some seed money from his father, Brian finally opens his first bar and names it, "Flanagan's Cocktails & Dreams." Brian and Jordan have their wedding reception there; she reveals she is pregnant with twins; Flanagan gives everyone free drinks to celebrate; they probably get divorced in five to ten years; Jordan takes ownership of fifty percent of the dive bars in subsequent annulment proceedings. In conclusion, Cocktail is an iteration of an age old scenario; a coming of age story and a tale of overcoming greed and using one's pride the honorable way. Additionally, it is possible to not appreciate the good things, when you have them, and easy to not know they were good until they are gone. Real wealth is not what you have but whom you share it with. In the movie, Brian Flanagan gets a second chance but it is a lesson to all viewers that the same opportunity rarely comes around twice. When he pours, he reigns.

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15 Surprising Facts You Probably Didn’t Know About “Kokomo”

via ClassicVideos80s / Youtube

Of course, you’ve already heard the song “Kokomo” by The Beach Boys , but did you know the interesting and some quite funny facts behind the song? We listed down 15 of them, take a look below,

1. Kokomo for Cocktail It all started when music producer Terry Melcher was hired to work on a song with The Beach Boys for the Tom Cruise movie Cocktail and they were asked to record for the movie.

In a Songfacts interview with Mike Love , he explained how it came together:

“Terry was in the studio doing a track with a demo, because we were asked to do the song for the soundtrack of the movie Cocktail, featuring Tom Cruise. So we were asked by the director to come up with a song for this part of the movie where Tom Cruise goes from a bartender in New York to Jamaica. So that’s where I came up with the ‘Aruba, Jamaica’ idea, that part. So Terry was in the studio doing the track and they didn’t have the chorus yet. They just had a certain amount of bars, but there was nothing going on there. I said, ‘Well, here’s what I want to do.’ And I remember I had told them about the part before. But he said, ‘Uh huh. How does it go again?’ So I literally, over the phone – he was in the studio and I was on the phone – sang [deadpan slow recitation]: ‘Aruba, Jamaica, ooo, I want to take you.’ So he’s writing that down, and I’m singing it in the scene, the notes, and the timing of it in tempo to the track.”

2. Who wrote the song?

No, it wasn’t Brian Wilson , in fact, he had nothing to do with this song. At that time, Wilson had already released his first self-titled solo album and came out with the first single, “Love And Mercy,” three weeks before “Kokomo” was released.

The real brains behind the song is Love in collaboration with Melcher as well as John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas.

Regarding the composition of the song, Love said:

“The verses and the verse lyric was written by John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas. He wrote ‘Off the Florida keys, there’s a place called Kokomo, that’s where we used to go to get away from it all.’ I said, ‘Hold on. We used to go sounds like an old guy lamenting his misspent youth.’ So I just changed the tense there. ‘That’s where you want to go to get away from it all.’ So that was the verse. And it was very lovely. But it didn’t have such a groove, I didn’t feel. So I came up with the chorus part: ‘Aruba, Jamaica, ooo, I want to take you to Bermuda, Bahama, come on, pretty mama. Key Largo, Montego…’ That’s me, the chorus and the words to the chorus was Mike Love. The verse was John Phillips. The bridge, where it goes, ‘Ooo, I want to take you down to Kokomo, we’ll get there fast and we can take it slow. That’s where you want to go, down to Kokomo,’ that’s Terry Melcher. Terry Melcher produced the Byrds and Paul Revere & the Raiders, very successful producer. But he actually produced that song and he wrote that bridge part, which Carl Wilson sang beautifully. And I sang the rest of it. I sang the chorus and the verses on that particular song. I don’t know what Scott McKenzie’s involvement was, I honestly don’t, because all I know is John Phillips, Terry Melcher, and myself put that song together, all those different elements.”

3. Is Kokomo a real place? Phillips thought the name sounded good and wanted to use it for the title, but he pictured Kokomo as a place off the Florida Keys. However, there are several Kokomo in different places. There are a Kokomo Charters in Sarasota, a Kokomo city in Indiana, a Kokomo in the Fiji Islands and a community named Kokomo in Hawaii, but no Kokomo in South Florida where the music video was filmed.

4. The session musicians The Beach Boys are known for their vocal harmonies, but session musicians often played the instruments on their albums. The same thing happened with “Kokomo.” Jim Keltner was brought in to play drums and Ry Cooder was hired on guitar. Keltner has played on albums by George Harrison, Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello. Cooder has worked on many film soundtracks and has played with John Hiatt, Captain Beefheart and Taj Mahal. The session musicians were not credited.

5. Parks on the track Van Dyke Parks was called in to help record the song. He worked closely with Brian Wilson and was a big part of the “Smile” project, an album Wilson worked on when he was going through drug addiction and severe mental problems. Having Parks at the sessions made it more of a legitimate Beach Boys song: he arranged the steel drum band and played accordion on the track.

6. Kokomo before the film The song was released in July 1988, but it went nowhere until the movie came out a few months later and made it a huge hit. When The Beach Boys played it live during concerts that summer, it got no response. The single was released with the original version of Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti” as the B-side.

7. Kokomo after the film The Cocktail soundtrack was very successful. Before “Kokomo,” the last US #1 for The Beach Boys was “Good Vibrations” in 1966. At 22 years, it was the longest any act had gone between US #1 hits until Cher topped the charts with “Believe” in 1999.

8. Kokomo have gone popular When the song became a hit, many companies capitalized on the “Kokomo” name, which as a result of the song, implied relaxing fun in the sun. A resort named “Kokomo” popped up on the southern tip of Florida on an island called Grassy Key, like the song says, “Off the Florida Keys,” there have also been restaurants and bars with that name.

9. Other “Kokomos” The Beach Boys’ Kokomo is not the only Kokomo in existence of all Kokomos. There are other songs titled as the same name, but each has a total different meaning.

The composer Jimmy Wisner went by the nom de plume Kokomo and reached #8 US in 1961 with an instrumental called “Asia Minor.” That same year, the vocal group The Flamingos hit #92 with a song called “Kokomo,” where it’s the name of a girl, not an island. In the ’70s, there was a British soul group called Kokomo whose biggest hit was “I Can Understand It.”

10. The Muppets wants to go to Kokomo The Muppets did a version of this song. The plot was that Miss Piggy wanted to know if there could be anywhere more perfect than where they were, and Kermit starts in about how he’d love to go to Kokomo, with Miss Piggy sighing periodically as backup. It was supposed to be a Muppet Summer love song.

11. Who played the drums on the music video? The actor John Stamos played drums on the music video. He is famous for playing “Jesse” on the TV show Full House, where there was an episode with The Beach Boys performing the song entitled “Beach Boy Bingo.” Stamos would occasionally perform with the band.

According to Stamos, the music video was done in two takes at the Grand Floridian beach resort, which had not yet opened to the public. The cast and crew were some of the first guests to stay there.

12. Rock and Roll Hall of Famers The Beach Boys were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame the year the song was released.

13. Kokomo parody In 1999, DJ Bob Rivers parodied the song as “Kosovo.”

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Why Tom Cruise's Lowest Rated Rotten Tomatoes Movie Is Worth Watching

Tom Cruise is one of the biggest movie stars in the world, and that's been the case for a very long time. The actor rose to prominence in the 1980s thanks to movies such as "Risky Business" and "Top Gun," both of which amassed plenty of favor among fans and critics alike. That said, some of Cruise's biggest hits from his breakout decade haven't enjoyed similar acclaim. "Cocktail," released in 1988, was a financial success (per Box Office Mojo ), but the movie was savaged by critics, as evidenced by its 7% score on Rotten Tomatoes . As of this writing, it's Cruise's lowest-rated movie on the review aggregator. 

Based on Heywood Gould's semi-autobiographical novel of the same name, "Cocktail" centers around Brian Flanagan (Tom Cruise), a bartender who dreams of becoming a salesman on Wall Street. Unfortunately, the top sales firms only want to hire people with experience and college degrees, so he pursues his fortune by opening beach bars and flirting with the gigolo lifestyle. Along the way, he befriends a veteran bartender called Doug (Bryan Brown), falls in love with a woman named Jordan (Elisabeth Shue), and makes some costly mistakes. It's an experience, to say the least.

Is "Cocktail" the best movie in Cruise's oeuvre ? Absolutely not. But that doesn't make it a bad film by any means. In fact, "Cocktail" is actually an enjoyable dramedy that strikes a perfect balance between '80s excess and darker storytelling, and more people ought to put some respect on its name. 

Cocktail is a cheesy delight

"Cocktail" is far too entertaining to be Tom Cruise's lowest-ranked movie. The film is loaded with memorable moments that typify '80s cinema at its most excessive and ridiculous, and that's a good thing if you can appreciate a little bit of cheese in your cinematic diet. Characters juggling beer bottles at the bar like they're performing at the circus? Check. Bartenders performing alcohol-themed poetry to a nightclub full of wealthy socialites? Check. Fistfights at art exhibits? Check. Throw in a hip '80s soundtrack and Cruise singing Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love," and what you have is a recipe for success.

Of course, all of these moments pale in comparison to the scene in which Cruise and Elisabeth Shue's characters have a sizzling makeout session underneath a waterfall. It's the romantic peak of the entire movie, and Cruise deserves credit for his upbeat performance considering that filming the scene in Jamaica had a negative effect on the actor. "It's not quite as romantic as it looks," Cruise told Rolling Stone (per Mental Floss ). "It was more like 'Jesus, let's get this shot and get out of here.' Actually, in certain shots, you'll see that my lips are purple and, literally, my whole body's shaking."

While critics weren't taken by the excess and cheese on display in "Cocktail," the film clearly had an impact on fans. For example, the waterfall in the aforementioned scene is a popular Jamaican tourist attraction these days (per Wander Wisdom ), and many holidaymakers undoubtedly discovered it thanks to "Cocktail."

Cocktail explores the dark side of materialism

There's no denying that "Cocktail" is a cheesy flick at times. However, when you strip away the allure of the sunny beaches, romantic waterfalls, and flashy cocktail bars, you'll find a story about a flawed man who undergoes an interesting transformation. When we first meet Brian, he's a materialistic womanizer who only cares about making money, which causes him to demonstrate some self-destructive behavior. By the end, he's a changed man who values more substantial things, such as love and family.

"Cocktail" isn't particularly deep, but it doesn't gloss over some of the warts-and-all elements of the protagonist's topsy-turvy journey. The original screenplay was a complicated story about the dark side of power and money (via The AV Club ), but when Disney boarded the project, those elements were toned down as the studio wanted the characters to be more likable and hopeful. Still, some of those themes and ideas are still apparent in the version of "Cocktail" that exists today. Doug's death, for example, is particularly upsetting, though it does drive home the film's core message about the dangers of excess and living a vacuous, empty life. 

For a movie that was marketed as a lighthearted rom-com, "Cocktail" still possesses a cynical streak. Furthermore, the film's tonal shifts flow together pretty seamlessly, which is remarkable considering that it can shift from a ridiculous moment to a harrowing one at any given moment.

Cocktail is a quintessential Tom Cruise movie

It'd be unfair to say that Tom Cruise makes the same movie over and over again. After all, he's probably the best action movie star in the West, renowned for performing his own risky stunts and going the extra mile for his fans. He most definitely pushes himself. At the same time, some viewers have pointed out that Cruise is drawn toward playing specific types of characters, and they aren't wrong per se. That's not a bad thing, mind you, as audiences can't get enough of him.

In the 1980s, Cruise was prone to playing ambitious underdogs who wanted to be the best at their respective vocations. "Top Gun," for example, saw him portray a cocky pilot who experiences a crisis of conscience and falls in love. His "Days of Thunder" character experiences a similar arc, albeit from behind a racecar steering wheel instead of the cockpit of a fighter jet. "Cocktail" has a similar framework, only set within the world of bars and clubs. Cruise carries all of these movies with his trademark charm, and his performance in "Cocktail" plays to his strengths. 

In short, if you're a fan of movies like "Top Gun" and "Days of Thunder" (or any other Cruise flick that sees him play flawed aspirational characters who experience triumph, tragedy, and romance), then "Cocktail" will be right up your street.