So, how was your trip to Mars?
Maybe he was afraid there were thetans in it?
His line about “I’m here giving you an interview, answering your questions and you do a nasty thing like that” sounded like “I’m here to bless you lessers with my presence, and you commit an atrocity like that? Who do you think you are?”
He kept his composure, but acted like he knew he was superior.
Cruise, you’re just an actor. Get over yourself.
I’ll bet he was thinking, “If I blow up here, it means another $100,000 worth of ‘cleansings’ with the E-meter to get rid of my bad engrams.”
I don’t think it was staged, and the fact that an aide had a towel is not surprising at all. stars get egged, they get pies in the face - I’m sure they carry all sorts of stuff for emergencies.
I am not sure that most dictionaries define the term quite so narrowly. The two that I’ve looked at left some wiggle room.
Oh, you wouldn’t believe the craters! But those Martians are as rude as ever.
I like the way you think!
Insert Chris Rock joke about Tupac and Notorious B.I.G. here.
I think the accusations of staging are silly. Put the absolute best case together for it:
Cruise knew about the prank because they did it to Sharon Osbourne. He wanted to look heroic and non-Russell Crowelike. He entered into a deal with Channel 4 to give their show a publicity boost. He was primed and ready for incident. He looked stern but restrained; taking advantage of by the evil press, yet still willing to spend another two hours being adored by his public after he wiped himself heroically dry.
That’s the best case scenario. And it stinks. He’s on the world’s most watched list for the movie and the proposal already. Additional publicity for a prank show attack gives him no extra value. It’s a live scene that would under the best of conditions be hard to control every detail of, and nobody plans a PR coup when the wrong things could easily happen. The water could squirt the wrong way and leave a big water stain on his crotch. Or it could hit someone else, Or Tom’s response would be considered too weak or too macho (as is has been). The Channel 4 people have to be ready to take a huge hit. They got arrested. They’re out on bail. Even if the charges are later quietly dropped by Tom, the government could still find charges. The individuals and the station can be liable in civil court for any amount of damages. They can easily be rolled to tell the truth of a setup in exchange for a lighter sentence. They can’t conceivably use any of this footage on the show so it gets them nothing in return for huge amounts of bad publicity that may keep the show from ever being aired.
If if was staged, therefore, it was staged by idiots who were never in control of the prank or of the aftermath and also seem to have forgotten how to spin the press to make them happy.
I say that any staged attempt involving professionals of this magnitude could never come off looking as rank amateur as this prank has. I can’t answer the question of why the Channel 4 people thought this might be a good idea, but I think they did it by themselves, without Tom’s knowledge or approval.
The same type of cost-benefit analysis works for the Tomkat relationship. I can buy them in fake boy-girl love burbbling all over Europe. But a quick engagement is a dealbreaker. If they do marry soon, they the big question becomes what does Katie get out of a multi-year sham marriage to Tom Cruise. More paparazzi trying to destroy their lives every time they walk outside; burial of her own feelings and loves for a long period; maybe a child that she’ll either have to keep on after a divorce or worse be forced to give up to Tom. A quick divorce doesn’t look good for her, because everyone would take it as part of the sham, so she’s likely stuck as Mrs. Tom for years out of her prime celebrityness. What’s in it for her? What can she get that she wouldn’t be able to get anyway and on better terms?
If you say all this is just a sham, then you need to back that up by doing the cold economic and social analysis of who earns what, how much, from whom, compared to whom, and for how long. If you can’t make the numbers work then it’s time to toss the sham aside and look for new answers.
I can’t make the answers work. It may yet be a sham of some kind, but not under any of the evidence that the cynical have posted. Your case falls apart like a squirted tissue. Come up with something new or better to make me believe.
OK, I’ll grant that assassin is defined on dictionary.com as “…especially one who carries out a plot to kill a prominent person.” But my own personal preference (as well as what the second entry seems to do), whether correctly or incorrectly, reserves that “prominence” for a head of state or government official. My point remains, however, that I never inferred that this was or may have been an assassination attempt (by my definition :D) or terrorist attack. Any inferrence was in the direction of a psycho fan.
I think you were whooshed.
I think L. Ron was there telling Tom to keep his cool.
I was baking cookies tonight, and asked Mr. Rilch to get the flour out for me. Flour and so forth are in the cabinet over the fridge, and while he was retrieving the canister, a roll of paper towels fell off the fridge and hit me on the head.
“Yer a jerk! What did you do that for? I’m baking cookies for you and you throw paper towels at me? Yer a jerk!” 
Yay its my first time to be able to say:
Wooosh
Haven’t seen the video showing the towel on the Cruise side of the, but it was mid 30s that day (I think that’s near 100F?), perhaps they were carrying a towel so that he could wipe his face as he was outside in a suit for a good hour. So it may have been there, but for a different reason.
I’m certainly glad that crime in Britain has dropped to the point where they have the time to fully investigate someone getting squirted with water. What’s it going to do, make his mascara run? Or is he going to disappear into the sidewalk shrieking “I’m melting, I’m melting”? Wow, Tom, you got squirted with water. Gimme a B. Gimme an F. Gimme a D.
And for that matter, how come when Anne Coulter almost got pied, it was “Oh, what a nervous ninny—she acted like he had a gun or something”, but now it’s, “Omigod! That could have been sarin or battery acid!”
Something as mild as sarin or battery acid might raise Ms. Coulter’s pH a few much-needed points.
Sure, because Criuse really needs the exposure. Something that’s going to make him look foolish, that’s going to help out a career that’s totally on the rocks. So he calls in some favours among the big guns at a Channel 4 independent production company. :rolleyes: Why, that way he can reach out to as many as 4 hundred thousand viewers! I wonder why they agreed to do it? Obviously he needs them far more than they need him.
As for those who seem to think it’s an over-reaction. How would you feel if you were working, being professional, presenting an image that your career depended on, and some total stranger was not only wasting your time, but squirted water in your face half way through the conversation? Would you be amused?
Now stop making me defend Cruise, dammit!
Someone who has as much going for him as you pointed out that Cruise does, and who has a crew of helpers facilitating every aspect of his life except his acting duties and other professional commitments, ought to be able to shrug off what really came down to a slight annoyance.
It’s been years since, to give one example, TC has had to stand in line at the grocery with someone who has a screaming kid, five items more than the stated limit, and who didn’t start filling out their check until after the purchase had been rung up. Having water squirted in his face is probably the first and worst annoyance he’s had to deal with in a long time. Unfortunately, the kind of pampering A-list celebs get tends to leave them with a lower threshold of frustration, not a higher one.