‘Let’s start a rumor right now’

What do you think Tom Cruise is doing right now? Our guess is that if he isn’t diving off a cliff or dangling from a helicopter, he’s actively planning the next time he’ll be able to do so. One thing he’s not doing is appearing on podcasts, but luckily some of his former costars are ready to pick up the slack.

On the latest episode of Literally! With Rob Lowe, Lowe’s guest was his longtime pal Ralph Macchio, currently in theaters with Karate Kid: Legends. The two both appeared in Francis Ford Coppola’s adaptation of S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, an early ’80s hit featuring an avalanche of heartthrob hunks.

Elsewhere in the cast (though in a role with limited screen time) was the young Thomas Mapother IV, better known to the world as Tom Cruise. The guys recalled how Cruise was dedicated to doing his own stunts well over 40 years ago.

Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe, C. Thomas Howell, Ralph Macchio, Matt Dillon, Emilio Estevez, and Patrick Swayze as the bad boys of Tulsa in ‘The Outsiders’.

Nancy Moran/Sygma via Getty

“Whenever I see Tom do these amazing, insane stunts,” Lowe remembered, “I look back at when Francis made us, for whatever reason, practice to be gymnasts. Do you remember this?” 

Macchio confessed that he was able to get away without as much training, as his character, Johnny Cade, was more introverted.

“There was never any pressure on you to do a backflip,” Lowe said.

“Well, I wasn’t in the rumble. I was in the hospital,” Macchio reminded him. (God, has Rob Lowe even seen The Outsiders?!?!?)

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“That’s what it was,” Lowe added. “But there was a lot of pressure on us to learn backflips and do all this s— and I don’t know if you’ve ever learned a standing backflip. It’s hard, it’s scary as s— . Tom was the only one who did it. And if you watch the movie, the movie’s playing but then the movie just stops and there’s a shot of Tom doing a backflip for no reason and then the movie continues.”

Lowe’s not lying here. In the sequence where the Greaser gang exits their HQ on the way to go rumble with those lousy Socs, Cruise jumps up on a car, then does a backflip off of it, just because it looks cool.

Tom Cruise, jumping backward off a car in “The Outsiders”.

Warner Bros.

“That’s where it started for him,” Lowe stated. “One hundred percent that’s where it started.”

Macchio remembered, “He was quite driven from day one. I mean, that gentleman had a plan, he really did. Very distinctly, it was happening there. He has the backflip and he comes up, grabbing the back of his head, because I’m not so sure he stuck the landing, but the car, it was out of frame.”

Lowe and Macchio then began to wonder if Coppola deployed a “Texas switch,” a filmmaking term for when careful blocking can mask when an actor is replaced by a stuntperson within the frame.

After Macchio playfully says that the shot could be a Texas switch, Lowe threw down: “Let’s start a rumor right now that Tom Cruise actually doesn’t do his own stunts and we have the evidence, and the evidence is The Outsiders.”

Rob Lowe and Ralph Macchio are not impressed by this! (Kidding, of course!).

Industrial Light & Magic

Macchio backed away from that, though, noting, “It’s kind of tough with the current footage that is playing on your feed right now of him not wearing a parachute,” referring to a particularly nutty moment in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.

“The burning parachute,” Lowe added. “It makes my stomach hurt.”

Macchio responded, “It’s incredible,” making it clear that both actors in truth have the correct amount of respect for Tom Cruise.

To hear more of the Johnny Cade-Sodapop Curtis reunion, listen to the latest Literally! With Rob Lowe podcast below.