Probably Unanswerable Questions
How does Salvucci know he can do the desk trick? Is Tom Cruise a good athlete?
In the discussion (5)
Approx. transcript time · 01:32:53Read transcript
- How does Salvucci know he can do his desk trick: teenage boys walk around with them 20 times a day, he has probably done it 20 times before, and he is meant to be extremely virile.
- Is Tom Cruise a good athlete: for the case, he is ripped and believable as a football player, convincing at cornerback apart from the stance, and does a gymnast-like flip off a railing in The Outsiders.
- More evidence for includes the Top Gun volleyball, Far and Away boxing, Color of Money pool, Cocktail bottle juggling and his softball line drives in A Few Good Men; against, the ball he catches is thrown right at him, the volleyball is heavily edited and his basketball shooting in Cocktail is awful.
- One answer is no: on the actor scale a seven or an eight, an effort guy whose running, jumping, push-ups and contact sports look good, as in the Magnolia handstand, but not specific hand-eye skills; he could have played the Matthew Modine part in Vision Quest.
- Another view is that he is fast with good hand-eye but probably played no sports in his first 18 years, unlike Benny the Jet in Sandlot, though hitting softballs naturally while delivering Sorkin dialogue is hard.