CROCK TALE

COCKTAIL (1988)
dir: Roger Donaldson

CROCK TALE
MAD #285, March 1989
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Angelo Torres

Brian (Tom Cruise) takes a job bartending as a last resort and ends up working in a TGIFridays type bar. He's taken under the wing of an older veteran Doug (Bryan Brown) and though he can't handle the job on the first day, he becomes a whiz on the second through the miracle of Hollywood. His uncle (Ron Dean) also runs a bar and doesn't have much faith in him.

By day, Brian is a student at business school. The professor (Paul Benedict) poo-poohs his dream of someday owning his own bar and flunks him for mouthing off. He and Doug become a team at work and start working at a high-end prison-themed club, where Brian wows the crowd with his spontaneous poetry. He meets a young woman (Gina Gershon) and beds her, then he brags of his sexual escapades to Doug, who woos her away.

Three years later, he's tending bar in Jamaica, and meets Jordan Mooney (Elisabeth Shue) after saving her friend from an accident. They have a date, and later while working he runs into Doug again, who's now married. But still being “bros” they make a bet that Brian can score with someone at the bar.

Brian goes back to New York with his bar pickup because she's rich and has promised to help him start his business, but after a few months, he realizes he's just her arm candy. At a gallery opening with her, he gets drunk and gets in a fight with the artist. He dumps her and goes to the restaurant where Jordan works. She isn't too happy to see him after being ditched in Jamaica. She reveals she's pregnant. He wants more than ever to be a part of her life but she just wants him to go away.

(The other customers at the diner are Pat Morita and Ralph Macchio, who had co-starred with Ms. Shue in The Karate Kid.)


She moves back in with her parents at Park Avenue, he tries to chase her down there, and they try to pay him off. He goes to Doug who passes out. Doug's wife (Kelly Lynch) makes a pass at Brian and he turns her down because she's married and Brian's in love. The next day Brian gets Doug's suicide note in the mail telling him to follow his dreams. He runs back to Jordan, telling her he's a changed man and wants to start a family despite the objections of Jordan's father. He finally fulfills his dream of running his own bar.