Tom Cruise: an Alternative Theory
It was the Saturday that I was busy with Pinewood & my wife went to Blockbuster w/o me. She brought back MI3 as ‘my’ movie. :rolleyes: I did what good husbands do. I watched it. (Kind of bad, gets worse)
I then started to wonder about TomKat and the past 12 months of melt down. I mean, it was so Stupid…so stupid. Too stupid? Or was it clever? :dubious:
Imagine you are 44; you have a younger pretty girl who you really feel is ‘the one’ and who loves you back unconditionally. You have everything except what yo really want: to be able to live your life with her and to have/raise kids with her in a semi ordinary lifestyle. You’d pay a million in Cash just to be able to sock your money into long-term investments & make the papa-nazi go away. I mean, life as a movie star is like being a balloon in the water-gun races: every new project, you try to be as big as you can be, becoming the largest target you can be along the way. After a release, all the water starts to drain out and the tabloids rip you for being a ‘fading star’. Now, imagine that to you, this totally Sucks, but you are under contract. How do you get out? How do you get away to the life you Really want? How would Ethan Hunt escape?
Well, first, see if you can change the ending of your current big release to show a not only totaly implausible ending, but that you are gaga over a girlfriend, disillusioning your female fan-base. Book a TV appearance on a leading talk-show and act irrationally. Over-Expose yourself to the point of complete and total over-exposure and show signs of extreme mental defect. (Have a small creative job lined up that will take you and let you work 9-5 with whatever days off you want if you can get out of your contract)
Next, fire your agent and hire someone who you can trust to let you truly and totally self destruct (which is your true goal). Someone who is only working in the industry because you asked them to and who will be ok with never ever working in the industry again. Someone blindly loyal to you, who won’t write a book about how and why you did it later. Someone who’ll never nag you to get back into show-business after you bomb out. Someone like your sister. :dubious:
Next, get arrogant beyond arrogant! Flaunt Hollywood traditions, like selling your kids pictures & giving the money to charity by allowing no pictures & making all the magazines wait months and months to get pictures. Make them wait so long that your kid is almost a toddler. Go “Coo-coo-for Cocoa-nuts” over an alternative religion, which most people believe is a cult and is not widely accepted/acceptable to your fan base. (Remember, he not only has to get Paramount to dump him voluntarily, he has to totally disillusion his fan base to get the papa-nazi to be re-assigned to some other show-biz suckers. He has to get the balloon to pop, Fatty Arbuckle style, so there’s no going back.)
Make sure to pick a fight with Really Popular creative icons with access to regular TV broadcasts on Comedy Central; do everything in your power to abuse your power & authority to piss them off so that they skewer you in public. Next, totally over react to their broadcasts, to the extent that your sanity is actually in doubt. Manipulate all this to happen while in the midst of contract negotiations with your studio. BTW, while this is happening, your wife has to stay completely silent & seem totally vegged out. (If she plays this part well, she’ll be free of the photographers forever and so will her children. It’s her Motivation. Good thing she’s an actress.) Keep all this up until studio heads finally say screw it and fire you.
Once fired, quietly take that creative job…with an effective start date 60-90 days hence.
Lastly, drop out of sight and live on salary plus 6% from your investments, photographer-free, gossip columnist-free, Late Night monologue-free, Hollywood Bullshit-free. Go into the office when you want to. And go raise go your kid interference-free.
Of course, the very last step would be to privately tell all Scientology leaders /headmasters /gurus to kiss-off, and to end all future association with them in order to get those leeches off your back too. I can’t help but wonder if that’s what’s coming next.