The scared & profane
In late December, a stressed- out Tom Cruise lost his cool on the set of the latest Mission: Impossible thriller.
He unleashed a profanity- ridden tirade against his British crew for failing to observe COVID-19 guidelines, accusing them of jeopardizing thousands of jobs.
It didn’t take long for Cruise’s words to make it into the pages of the Rupert Murdoch- owned Sun newspaper, and from there to ricochet around the world.
It’s easy to dismiss all this as one more peculiar chapter in the frequently peculiar life of an actor determined to preserve his superstar status. But that might be too facile. Other moviemakers have expressed support for Cruise over his legitimate concern for coronavirus precautions.
Nevertheless, something else has been going on here, and it has more to do with Cruise himself than with the challenge of this particular shoot. Cruise continues to deny the folly of embarking on a demanding project like MI 7 during a pandemic. But he’s also in denial over being in the twilight of his career as an action star. He’s in love with the idea of his eternal youth.
It’s always been tricky to get a handle on who he really is. His very name conjures up all sorts of images. It may be the memory of him prancing around the screen in his underwear in Risky Business, a 1983 hit released before his world became complicated. Or it may be his middle- aged mania for performing his own death-defy
ing stunts in the MI films.
For journalists who have followed Cruise over the years, the memories are less friendly. There’s a grudging critical acknowledgment that when he gets away from the nonsense of Top Gun or Days of Thunder, he is capable of outstanding work — so yes, he should have received an Oscar for his superbly nuanced performance in Rain Man rather than his self-absorbed co-star, Dustin Hoffman. But there are also memories of events when reporters would travel thousands of miles to talk to him only to be stood up at the last moment.
There were other occasions when Cruise did show up — like the notorious afternoon he used his press
appearance for The Last Samurai as an opportunity to preach the glories of Scientology. It was a watershed moment for Cruise’s longtime publicist, Pat Kingsley, who had spent 14 years protecting him both from tabloid sharks and his own bad judgment calls. She watched disaster unfold from the back of the room — her agitation evident.
A few weeks later, Kingsley was gone and Paramount, the key studio in Cruise’s rise to stardom, was getting edgy. It might tolerate the Scientology care tent on the set of War of the Worlds, but not the spectacle of Cruise jumping with joy on Oprah’s couch over his new- found love, Katie Holmes, and later saying he
would eat her placenta once she had given birth to their child.
In 2006, Paramount severed its 14- year production relationship with Cruise, complaining that his erratic behaviour was placing the new MI franchise in economic jeopardy. But Cruise lacks neither determination nor tenacity, and he rightly recognized MI as a lifeline and a bargaining tool. So because money always talks in Hollywood, Paramount would cautiously restore ties with overwhelmingly lucrative results. But all is not well.
The stunning success of 2018’s MI: Fallout has led some pundits to claim the series has wrested the franchise crown from James
Bond. Such predictions are premature. James Bond is a renewable resource whose longevity is ensured by giving us a new Agent 007 every few years and by throwing unexpected wild cards into the mix, be they Judi Dench as M or the cerebral Sam Mendes as director. Doctor Who is also a renewable resource — and a brilliantly devised one. Tom Cruise is not a renewable resource despite that aura of everlasting youth.
Mission: Impossible on film has been all about Cruise, obsessively so, which is why the directors on the first MI films — Brian De Palma and John Woo — never wanted to work for him again.
And Cruise’s recent involvement with the Jack Reacher franchise has ended embarrassingly. After two movies, novelist Lee Child took his fictional hero away from Cruise. “He’s too old for this stuff,” Child told the Times of London last year, saying Cruise, at 5- foot-7, had always been improbable casting for a guy who’s 6-foot-5 in the books.
Child also had some tough-love advice for Cruise. “He’s 57. He has the talent to move on, to transition to being a character actor.”
Cruise turns 59 in July. Does he really think MI represents some eternal Fountain of Youth? Or perhaps that he’ll be rejuvenated by a geriatric Top Gun: Maverick, completed but still awaiting release?
Anything, of course, is possible in Tinseltown. But at least Clint Eastwood, at 90, is acting his age. Meanwhile the abyss continues to widen under Cruise.