Poptarticus

Peggy Sue: I was impressed with what you said in English class today.

(From Francis Ford Coppola’s Peggy Sue Got Married.)

I’ve been thinking about Tom Cruise today. In a different way then many people are, these days. I was thinking that Tom Cruise is a really good actor, because I watched Vanilla Sky last night, and he is pretty damned good in that movie. Vanilla Sky was only made a few years ago, and at that time Tom seemed so normal. What happened to him? What happened to society? What happened to US? Gossip and the importance or hazardousness of being in the public eye has quantiplied in the past few years. We are all of us victims, including Tom Cruise. Victims of the gossip blogger, victims of crappy, cheap magazines, victims of ourselves. Well maybe not everybody is a victim, but me and Tom are. Tom in that he whores himself to these people, and me because I read that shit.

I grew up with Tom Cruise, chronologically speaking. When I was eighteen years old, Risky Business was like, a totally revolutionary film, man. Seriously. I was in film school and everyone was talking about it. I know it is hard to believe this now, but the film, and Tom Cruise, were very important in 1983. And somehow Tom Cruise has stayed on top for over twenty years. He really is an actor that has worked very hard on his craft. Remember Born on the Fourth of July? That one turned people’s heads. He wasn’t Mr. Top Gun or Mr. Cocktail anymore. He turned a corner there, and he kept working, and improving. For awhile he seemed to be headed in the right direction.

I was one of those people who thought he was fantastic in Interview With a Vampire, even though this was totally uncool, because in those days Interview and the Goths were in the higher echelon of coolness and no Goth ever saw Tom Cruise playing the Vampire Lestat.

I love, love, love the film Jerry Maguire, and I think it is the only thing besides Vanilla Sky that I thought Tom Cruise really stellar in, in the last decade. Both films share Cameron Crowe as a director, and this could be the reason. Is there a cooler director on earth right now than Cameron Crowe? Uh, no. Cameron Crowe clearly loves Tom Cruise, and he clearly doesn’t confuse Tom’s life, and his craft. This is a win/win situation for everybody.

Of course, Mr. Cruise isn’t making it too easy for us. He has really been spazzing lately, and why? He spazzes, and instead of people being worried about him, all we can do is say how he scares us, how he needs therapy, or drugs, that he is just a PR whore. All these things are true. He is a whore, and is running his mouth when he should keep it clamped shut, and he talks way too much about his religion, a big no-no. But, say your brother were acting so erratically. Wouldn’t you be WORRIED? Or would you just start spouting off about how he should stuck a sock in it?

I think the guy is messed up and needs help but I also think he is a cool guy who maybe just is going through a bad patch. It can’t be easy, being so pretty and getting old. Maybe in five years time he’ll chill out a little and go back to making great movies with Cameron Crowe.

In the meantime though, where the hell is TomKat?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 24th, 2005 at 7:32 pm and is filed under Tales from a Strange Land. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.