Name: Top Gun's Anthony Edwards Blacked Out During Flight | Letterman
Uploaded: 2022-06-04T14:18:52.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Top Gun's Anthony Edwards Blacked Out During Flight | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-06-04. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Top Gun's Anthony Edwards Blacked Out During Flight | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-06-04. Transcript available.

Our next guest is a very popular young actor who has been in such movies as
Heart Like a Wheel, Revenge of the Nerds,
and now he's co-starring with Tom Cruise in Top Gun. Please say hello to
Anthony Edwards.
Anthony, how are you? Good. Come on over.
Nice to see you.
Nice to see you. I don't go anywhere without the old kitty litter.
People steal it here.
Yeah, because you don't want to have to travel with a lot of stuff.
Can we talk about the fact that this is a big honor to be on The Letterman Show?
No.
And I get here, and there's a lady with a dog with a hat on who's pregnant.
Yeah.
Right? And then a lady's got kitty litter, and you're touching her tushy?
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Come on.
Now, that didn't happen. That didn't happen. She was a little excited. The
lights.
Right, right, right. And the book. You were going for the book.
I was looking for the book.
You know, I saw Heart Like a Wheel. It turned out I saw it, ended up seeing it
about five or six times
because I was doing a lot of flying when it was playing on airplanes.
I thought it was a real nice movie, and I thought you were terrific in it.
Well, thanks. It was one of those movies that you see a lot on airplanes
because it lasts too long in the theater.
Yeah, but I think it probably surprised people who heard that it was about drag
racing,
and they assumed it might not have been handled in as nice a fashion as it was
handled.
Yeah, exactly.
Anyway, Top Gun is all about flying.
Yeah.
Yeah. Do you fly? Have you ever flown?
No. I've always wanted to get my pilot's license, but it seems like every time
I go to get lessons,
I see a movie like Sweet Dreams. You know, it's another Cessna into a mountain.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
I've been staying away from that. But the film, I mean, we actually went up
twice.
With whom? Who do you go up?
Oh, F-14s?
Yeah.
These are like jet fighters?
This is the jet fighter that we see that was hanging out over Libya.
Mm-hmm.
And they're just incredible airplanes.
And so what they did for the film is they put us in the back seat and had a
camera locked off
and then took us up in the air and, you know, photographed us puking at 30,000
feet.
Did you actually get sick?
I didn't get sick. I was lucky. I kind of hung on.
But it was one of the most frightening things because they prep you.
You go through training and survival training, water survival training.
But when it came the day to go up, you know, we got briefed on what we were
going to do.
And they said, Anthony, this is your pilot. He's going to be taking you up.
Your pilot's name's Bozo.
Bozo?
Yeah, yeah.
At that point, I thought, great, I don't think I'll go up today with Bozo, you
know?
Why do we call him Bozo, this guy?
They all have call signs. Everybody has a name.
I play, my character's name's Nick Bradshaw, but my call sign's Goose.
And this guy's name is Bozo.
And we're getting ready to take off.
And I'm sitting there, there's a green light flashing in the back seat.
I'm scared.
And the guy on the ground's going like this.
No, no, he can't go up.
And I'm thinking, what's wrong?
Here, Bozo gets on the intercom there and says, Anthony, why don't you check
some of the fuses back there?
So I check, just like a hundred fuses over here.
I don't want to be an expert in this.
There's two sticking out.
I press those in.
No, I've still got a green light.
Guy's going like this.
Okay, well, maybe we should get out, Bozo.
You know, we can stop now.
He says, no, check them out.
There's some fuses in here I couldn't even see.
And I went down and got there and there were four sticking out.
Popped those puppies in.
Light went off.
Bozo says we're ready to go.
So that's how my flight started.
You fixed the airplane.
Right, exactly.
I'm thinking, I don't know what I'm doing.
I pretend for a living.
I don't think I should be here.
Yeah, that's very strange.
But did you ever find out why he acquired the name?
Was there a story to that?
Yeah, the story is he was a backseat.
There's two seats, a front seat and the back seat, and pilots in the front.
He was in the back seat, and they had a new pilot up front, and they were
taking off of a carrier.
And when you get shot off a carrier, it's very fast, very quick.
And the guy, the front seat guy was new, and he lost his left engine.
It went out.
And when that engine goes out, you have to take the throttle down on that
engine or something bizarre happens, and it blows up.
You have to feather it.
Is that what they say?
You have to feather the engine?
Feather, take it off.
Exactly.
Take it off.
Take it off.
Cut it.
And the guy in the backseat, who wasn't called Bozo yet, said, take off your
right engine.
I mean your left engine.
It was too late.
And by that time, a $38 million plane went into the ocean, and they went, we
should call you Bozo.
Now, when you go up there, the G-force is unbelievable, isn't it?
It's amazing.
It's your own weight being pressed against itself several times.
Right.
I mean, one G-force is what we're feeling now.
And there were times when we were up there and we were pulling six Gs, so we're
six
times of body weight.
And you wear a G-suit that keeps the blood from rushing out of your head.
But at one point in the middle of this long turn, I said, I'm not really
supposed to be.
I can relax.
It's okay.
I don't have to.
I relaxed a little.
Tunnel vision, black and white, out, cold.
You lost consciousness?
Yeah.
Blacked out.
Simply by not fighting the G-forces?
Exactly.
The blood went out from the head.
Oh, boy.
And how long were you out?
Until he came out of the turn.
Oh, goodness.
Right, I forgot.
That's a little frightening.
It is.
Yeah.
It's a little scary.
Let me show this one photo here.
This is from Revenge of the Nerds.
Now, you actually did some research for this film, didn't you?
A little training.
You had a little expedition that you went on.
Well, Bobby Carradine and I, who played, we were partners in the film, went
down to Tucson
a couple of months early.
I mean, a couple of weeks early, sorry.
And we got into the whole nerd regalia.
And they were actually rushing fraternities at that time.
And you showed up at fraternity houses?
We showed up at fraternity and rushed as Gilbert and Lewis.
They knew nothing about the movie.
Some places did.
We got into one where they didn't.
And we said, take us right to the president.
We want him to see us.
What did he say?
So we go in there, and he says, this is Lewis and Gilbert from UCLA, and they
want to join
the fraternity.
The guy turns around with a drink and takes a look and says, no way.
We got to do a commercial.
We'll be right back.
It's been nice to meet you.
I hope the movie's a big hit for you.
Thank you very much.
Come back anytime, sir.
Yes, sir.
My thanks also to Marge Schott and the lovely, the talented Rickette.
All over the world she's been.
Tomorrow, folks, Mike Tyson and Kim Williams.
Thank you very much.
Good night, everybody.
Thank you.