Book excerpt: Top Gun Memos is the life story of the movie Top Gun (1986). It's based on more than 1,100 studio and production and other documents, more than 50 interviews, and hundreds of news accounts. It tells the story of the movie from conception through its rigorous prep, and the harnessing of the US Navy, and the people who made it happen. It's people like director Tony Scott and Executive Producer Bill Badalato and dozens of department heads and other movie crew that physically made the movie, along with a dozen Navy pilots. Memos winds through principal photography and the use of billions of dollars of military assets by telling stories of individual scenes and the funny - and sometimes dangerous - things that happened along the way. The books continues through post production and reshoots and launch. Then it follows the life of the movie over the decades. What makes a movie iconic? An intense following that never quits with help from a studio willing to spend money to keep it alive, even before there was a sequel.