It doesn’t seem like the Crimson Tide junket, held at the Marina del Rey Ritz Carlton, happened nearly 16 years ago. But it did. Sometimes you’ll turn around and realize something that happened not that long ago happened a good while ago. A kid born in ’95 could be six-foot-four and driving a Harley and writing screenplays and making big money as a model.

This Quentin Tarantino/Roger Avary riff about the gay subtext in Top Gun (from Sleep With Me, a 1994 relationship film) reminded me of a goof idea I threw at Crimson Tide producers Jerry Bruckheimer and the late Don Simpson during an interview. I told them, “Guys, you’re missing out on a whole marketing angle here. You need to do an Advocate cover story and talk about the gay metaphors in all your films, starting with the submarine in Crimson Tide.”