This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Guy Snodgrass, a former TOPGUN instructor and retired naval aviator who was also Communications Director and Chief Speechwriter for Secretary of Defense James Mattis. It’s been edited for length and clarity.

With the original “Top Gun” film from 1986 and 2022’s “Maverick” sequel, Hollywood and the producers did a phenomenal job. They worked in collaboration with the United States Navy, and all the flight scenes you see in both movies are pretty darn realistic.

When the pilots were ripping through canyons in “Maverick” to practice low-level flying and then popping up to release ordnance on target, all of those are things that we would train to do and would do in similar circumstances. Of course, everything else has quite a bit of Hollywood magic sprinkled on it. You don’t typically have a lot of love interests going on at TOPGUN. You’re not out on the beach playing football.

There are also a lot of liberties taken with the scenes of fights breaking out, too, like people getting in each other’s faces and yelling and screaming. There’s just not a lot of room for that in today’s military; it’s a very professional environment. There are disagreements, but you work through it as professionals.

As for which film is better at capturing TOPGUN, I suspect it would be a generational question. If you ask someone who was flying in the 1970s and 1980s, they might say the original is better because that was their time. Plus, the original has the F-14 Tomcat, and there’s a lot of nostalgia for that jet.

The second movie was great with the flight scenes, the camaraderie, and how they approached the mission. There’s still that Hollywood magic, like Capt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, who has been around for decades, being able to fly an F-14 against a Russian fifth-generation fighter and prevail. On that level, a fifth-generation fighter like Russia’s Su-57 is going to smoke the F-14 every single day and twice on Sunday.

But the person in the cockpit is the key element, and that’s what we really focus on at TOPGUN.

Becoming a TOPGUN instructor

Snodgrass said the application process is fairly straightforward but highly selective. Guy Snodgrass
I think in a lot of cases throughout my career, I was always attracted to trying to do the toughest things. And one of the pathways I could take after my time as a Navy fighter pilot was to go through TOPGUN.

That’s the path I wanted to pursue, so I could try and reach that pinnacle of fighter pilots in naval aviation.

But the most demanding part of being a TOPGUN instructor for me wasn’t the actual flying, like you see in “Top Gun” and “Top Gun: Maverick,” but the lecture process as an instructor.

Getting into TOPGUN is fairly straightforward. You’ve accumulated a body of work over your time in a flight squadron. You put in your application, you get letters of recommendations from pilots you’ve actively flown with, and typically your commanding officer from your unit will provide an independent evaluation.

When I was an instructor, I saw the other side of this. Once you have all the applications, maybe 30 people for eight spots, there’s this cascade — we call it the waterfall — in how people get chosen. You go through all 30 individuals and determine who are the few, usually maybe four or five, that we want to stay as instructors. The remainder of the pool can now be picked by other schools, so it kind of cascades down from TOPGUN.

In my case, I was selected to be an instructor. I went through the course, which today takes about 12 weeks, and at the conclusion of that, I was selected.

A day in the life at TOPGUN

The daily schedule is hectic, but debriefs after flights are the best time to learn and grow. Guy Snodgrass
You’re typically an instructor at TOPGUN for two-and-a-half, maybe three years. You’re flying every single day, Monday through Friday, and in many cases, twice a day. We’d get up early, around 4:30am, for our first brief at base around 5:30am to 6:00am. You have some time to relax, grab your gear, get into the cockpit, and then there’s a 30-minute period to get the jet started and get all the systems online and ready for take off.

Depending on how dynamic your mission is — meaning how aggressive and fast you’re flying — you’ll likely be airborne for about an hour, doing basic flight maneuvers and the dogfighting you see in the “Top Gun” movies. A longer flying mission might be about an hour and a half.

You might be dogfighting against an instructor or using the gun on the plane to strafe the target on the ground or drop bombs from high or low altitude, putting what you learn in the classroom towards practical application.

Then you’re becoming an expert in air-to-ground delivery and doing multiplane exercises, flying with one other plane to start and then you extend outwards with three other planes for pretty involved missions, dodging simulated surface-to-air missiles, fighting your way in and dropping weapons, then fighting your way out.

Back on the ground, you get out of your gear, get some downtime, and then start the debrief. The debriefs are epic because they typically last anywhere from three-and-a-half to five hours.

These sessions can go for a very long time because you’re learning lessons from what you just flew. We would always say that the debrief is the most important because that’s where you’re learning your lessons and able to call them out in a real, tangible way so that you can apply them moving forward.

After debrief, you’ll probably have an hour break and then do another flight and repeat the cycle. You typically head home around 10:00 pm, maybe 10:30 pm.

What they don’t show in the movies

Both “Top Gun” movies have their Hollywood magic, but they’re surprisingly realistic. Guy Snodgrass
As an instructor, you go through the entirety of the process, and after everyone else finishes training and graduates, you stay and become a subject matter expert for some element of teachings at TOPGUN. Mine was air-to-air mission planning, so being in charge of long-range aerial combat.

Then you have six months to prepare, study, and practice to give this lecture on your area. You get eight practice lessons to receive feedback. In my case, it was a four-and-a-half hour long lecture, hundreds of presentation slides, and it had to be completely from memory. They don’t let you look at your slides, and you can’t use notes.

That’s the biggest thing, the most demanding part for me wasn’t the actual flying, but the lecture process and being able to do it completely from memory. But once I passed that, I was a fully qualified instructor and continued to learn and instruct throughout the remainder of my time.
Teaching and leading your subject matter area lecture is the most difficult part, Snodgrass said. Guy Snodgrass
The most rewarding part of being a TOPGUN instructor was the personal relationships you form with the people around you, who are also dedicated to trying to achieve their best potential. There’s a competitive air because everyone wants to try to be the best, but mostly there’s camaraderie.

I also got to meet these students as they came through, interacting with the future of naval aviation, future leaders who are going to continue to grow for the remainder of their career and assume positions of greater authority. As an instructor, you’re having a real direct influence and ability there.

Content retrieved from: https://www.businessinsider.com/topgun-instructor-movies-flying-dogfighting-pretty-realistic-2024-3?amp.

Frankie is sent from London to Spain to make a delivery to Charlie, who likes the kid and shows him the ropes including the use of guns and drugs. Frankie likes the sun, pools and the cute, bikini clad girls and stays in Spain.

The Business is a 2005 crime film written and directed by Nick Love. The film stars Danny Dyer, Tamer Hassan and Roland Manookian, all of whom were in Love’s previous film The Football Factory. Geoff Bell and Georgina Chapman also appear. The plot of The Business follows the Greek tragedy-like rise and fall of a young cockney‘s career within a drug importing business run by a group of British expatriate fugitive criminals living on the Costa del Sol in Spain.

The film is narrated by Frankie, a young everyman living in South East London during the Thatcher era of the 1980s specifically 1984, with little hope of ever making anything of himself, yet he dreams of “being somebody” and escaping his lonely, dreary lifestyle. After severely beating his mother’s abusive boyfriend, he becomes a fugitive, and through family connections escapes to the Costa del Sol. His job there is to deliver a bag containing money to “Playboy Charlie”, a suave expat and fugitive who runs his own nightclub. Impressed by Frankie’s honesty in not opening the bag, Charlie takes a liking to Frankie, introduces him to his business associates, including the psychopathic Sammy, and invites him to remain in Spain and work as his driver. Frankie discovers that Charlie and his associates are in fact the “Peckham Four”, wanted for armed robbery back in Britain. However, Frankie decides he prefers the excitement, wealth, status, and luxury that Charlie’s gang offers, as opposed to his previous unremarkable life in London. Frankie therefore joins Charlie in the business of smuggling hashish across the Strait of Gibraltar from Morocco.

Plot

The film then follows the rise-and-fall pattern common to many gangster films, showing first the criminals living the high life as their cannabis trade is booming, and then their downfall as greed and paranoia introduce conflict between them, and eventually split them up. Tensions amid the group are exacerbated by the mutual attraction between Frankie and Sammy’s wife Carly. Charlie and Frankie decide to go into business alone, importing cocaine instead of cannabis through drop-offs from Colombian aeroplanes, but this fails to resolve their problems. Not only do both men become increasingly addicted to the drug itself, but their new smuggling attracts the ire of the local mayor, who had previously been happy to ignore the cannabis trade but warned them not to import cocaine. After discovering that Frankie and Charlie have entered the cocaine trade, the mayor cracks down on their gang and shuts down their businesses. A subsequent assassination attempt on the mayor’s life proves unsuccessful, and leads to the beheading of one of the gang’s affiliates.

Six months later, Frankie and Charlie are homeless thugs, reduced to stealing in order to survive. While organising a disappointing reunion party at Charlie’s old bar, now run by Frankie’s friend Sonny, Frankie meets Carly again and decides to make one last deal. He invites Sammy in on a pick-up, but while both intend to betray the other, Carly had given Sammy a pistol. Sammy tries to shoot Frankie, but this proves unsuccessful as his pistol was handed to him with an empty magazine, unbeknownst to Sammy. Frankie in turn attacks Sammy with a rock; the fight then ends abruptly as Sammy is fatally shot by Spanish Navy patrolmen while Frankie escapes through a sewage pipe and emerges to meet Carly, who was responsible for handing Sammy his unloaded gun. Preparing to leave town with Carly, Frankie discovers that she is plotting against him as well when he finds another pistol in her handbag amongst their money; Frankie knocks her unconscious and drives off triumphantly into the sunset on his own.

The ending reveals that Sonny cleaned up his act and continued to run Charlie’s old bar, which he did successfully, whilst Charlie was reduced to working as a bouncer. The theatrical ending also reveals that “Carly went back to her parents’ house in Penge“, “Sammy went to Hell” and “Frankie went to Hollywood“.

Courtesy of Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Business_(film)

Facts for the Lads

The DVD features an alternate ending where Frankie meets Carly at the border. There she promptly tells the border guard where to find drugs in Frankie’s car.

Quotes for the Lads

My old man wrote me a letter from prison once. It said if you don’t want to end up in here, stay away from crime, women and drugs. Trouble is, that don’t leave you much else to do, does it?