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White smiles and puff interviews – how Tom was in Cruise control
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TWO television interviews with Tom Cruise last week reinforced the media's need to reconsider its Faustian pact with celebrities, under which access is granted in return for guaranteed fawning.
Oh, you think maybe fawning is a harsh description? Let me pause, re-play the interviews, and see if anything kinder comes to mind. No, I've just sat through both TV appearances for a second time, and I'm cringing still at the gushing, courting and kowtowing before the Great God Cruise.
One interview was on RTE1 and the other on BBC1, so reverential treatment of stars is not simply an Irish problem. Both Ryan Tubridy and Graham Norton, on their respective chat shows, gave Cruise an open microphone to promote his latest action film (let's not mention its name here because he's had quite enough publicity already).
There wasn't a hard question in evidence. Not even a hard question in sheep's clothing – approaching a tricky subject in a roundabout way, as every journalist does occasionally to try and elicit information. Just: remind us how you came to be so wonderful, Mr Cruise, and let's run some clips from your fabulous films.
Is it possible Cruise Control stipulated conditions before agreeing to appear? Journalists regularly encounter attempts to limit the terms of engagement – not just in the entertainment sphere, where image manipulation is the alpha and the omega, but in all categories from sport to business. Refuse to abide by these no-go zones, and it's no dice for an interview.
Cruise's current publicity tour has seen him benefit from ego-massaging promotional opportunities wherever his entourage touches down. And it's a disturbing trend, not just in relation to the Great God Cruise, but to other celebrities.
The chat show hosts I watched didn't even appear to be soft-soaping Cruise as a charm offensive – cosying up in the hopes of a more revealing interview. No attempt was made to penetrate beyond the narrow representation on display. Not interviews, then, because that's a disservice to plain speaking – but a public relations puff. Audiences need expect no insights from such shameless promos.
Cruise, of course, is famously controlling. Back when he jumped up and down on Oprah's couch to declare his love for third ex-wife Katie Holmes, he made it look as spontaneous as running a marathon. This week, in Germany, he mentioned the lack of control he felt when Holmes blindsided him with last year's divorce petition.
All things considered, the chances of him doing a television show without pre-conditions attached are about as unlikely as his Scientologist friends ever proving they have ancient beings inside them called Thetans. Or that these aliens lived for thousands of years on other planets before arriving on earth by spaceship.
As regards his TV appearances in Dublin and London, Cruise was courteous and pleasant, if a little boring, and unleashed those white teeth regularly.
He allowed Tubridy to tease him about his abysmal Irish accent, and played along good-naturedly when Norton suggested calling an audience member's mother.
I have no problem with interviewers avoiding a guest's relationship history, and no desire at all to hear confidences about whom they might be dating.
It's none of our business, no matter how many cinema tickets we buy. As a society – and this is media-led – we take a prurient interest in famous people's personal lives. High time we stepped back.
But Cruise is closely linked with Scientology, a cult masquerading as a religion, and about which there have been persistent and disturbing allegations. For example, that it micro-manages the lives of members, and abuses them.
Cruise is its front man, arguably its most outstanding asset, and has appeared in a recruitment video produced by the so-called Church of Scientology discussing what membership means to him.
Now, I have zero curiosity about whether he believes there is life on other planets, or is convinced an ancient Thetan is living inside him, or even if he has demi-god status within Scientology. Here's what I care about.
The Great God Cruise has huge international celebrity status and corresponding soft power, with access to senior politicians. Which he doesn't hesitate to use. He has lobbied policymakers, both in the US and Europe, to have Scientology recognised as a religion – a move that would afford valuable tax-breaks and boost its reputation.
So, a valid question for Tubridy and Norton to have posed last week: will your current publicity tour include approaches to governments to campaign on behalf of Scientology? Have you set up meetings to further this end? If so, with whom?
Naturally, the star setting was adjusted to charm when he sat in 'The Late Late Show' and 'Graham Norton Show' studios. Everything was going his way. Not a whisper in the air about L Ron Hubbard, sci-fi writer turned cult guru.
There's always a warm-up process when an interview starts, with a few baby questions to break the ice. "Tell us about your new project blah-blah." But neither of the Cruise interviews graduated from there. Granted, if RTE and the BBC had refused him, other broadcasters would have snapped up the actor. Presumably they felt they couldn't take the risk.
But this media willingness to roll over and present tummies for tickling doesn't only apply to Cruise, nor does it apply only to RTE and BBC. It's all-pervasive. The media must stop letting celebrities avail of its platform without the trade-off of legitimate scrutiny.
Couldn't media outlets reach an agreement to break the stranglehold? The Great God Cruise is far from being the only one who likes to pull the wires.
Some interviews may be lost in the process. But while chat shows are entertainment-driven, they can't be blind or blinkered – such puffs do the public a disservice.
The Audio Book Club on Going Clear
Our critics take on Lawrence Wright’s epic investigation into Scientology and Hollywood.
Posted Friday, April 12, 2013, at 12:45 PM
To listen to the Audio Book Club discussion of Going Clear, click the arrow on the player below.
This month, Slate Book Review editor Dan Kois, DoubleX editor Hanna Rosin, and Slatecultural critic Meghan O’Rourke discuss Lawrence Wright’s Going Clear, his investigative report on Scientology, expanded from his exceptional New Yorker story about the screenwriter and director Paul Haggis. Slate’s critics discuss Wright’s investigative methods, the bizarre life story of L. Ron Hubbard, and how this book made them want to never watch another Tom Cruise movie as long as they live.
Next month’s Audio Book Club will celebrate the 100th anniversary of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time by discussing the first volume, Swann’s Way. Pour yourself some tea, nibble a madeleine, and revisit Proust’s masterpiece, then join us for our conversation on May 3.
Visit our Audio Book Club archive page for a complete list of the more than 60 books we’ve discussed over the years. Or you can listen to any of our previous club meetings through ouriTunes feed.
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See all the pieces in this month’s Slate Book Review.
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Podcast produced by Abdul Rufus and Andy Bowers.
Oblivion beckons: Tom Cruise hits a career low as his dystopian nightmare bores our critic to tears
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Oblivion (12A)
Verdict: Spectacularly dull
No stars
There's a poetic justice that Tom Cruise’s career as a movie star should have started 30 years ago with Risky Business and now ends in Oblivion.
Oblivion is the first blockbuster turkey of the summer. A stratospheric budget has been lavished on an unpublished graphic novel. It becomes embarrassingly obvious over 126 laborious minutes why the book was not published. The film has not a vestige of wit, originality or human interest.
It is astonishing that the writer-director Joseph Kosinski was given such generous resources after his last abomination, the flashy but impenetrable Tron: Legacy. Presumably, it got the green light when he persuaded Cruise to clamber aboard.
Scroll down to watch the trailer
Personality-free: Tom Cruise stars in the dull as dishwater blockbuster - but at least the star is photogenic
The film allows the 50-year-old actor a chance to indulge his various hobbies: driving fast, posing while beautifully lit, running away from exploding fireballs … There’s even an aerial chase and shoot-up to remind us of Top Gun, 27 years ago.
Cruise goes through the motions photogenically, but resembles a patiently trained horse performing dressage for the thousandth time. Everything seems formal, laid down by tradition. There is not an iota of personality.
His performance here is even more robotic than in his last turkey, Jack Reacher, where he bravely attempted to play a tough guy 12 inches taller than himself.
Cruise goes through the motions photogenically, but resembles a patiently trained horse performing dressage for the thousandth time
Set in 2077, Oblivion stars Cruise as Jack Harper (will he now only agree to play characters called Jack?). Harper is the last square-jawed he-man on earth, which has been devastated by a nuclear war 60 years previously. Cruise informs us in voice-over form that the people to blame were aliens, known as scavengers or ‘scavs’. He also tells us his that memory has been wiped — a pretty heavy-handed warning that he is an unreliable narrator.
His job is to repair the unmanned drones that patrol what’s left of New York City, protecting vast hydroelectric generators that convert Earth’s water supply into fuel for the world’s remaining population, who have moved to Saturn’s largest moon, Titan.
His one ally is an English woman called Victoria. Andrea Riseborough does her best to humanise her, but her only functions are to spout incomprehensible techno-babble, act as support crew to Cruise and give him 12A-rated sex in their transparent swimming pool, which seems improbably luxurious for a repair-man, however hunky.
The whole folie de grandeur is ponderous, humourless and derivative, says Chris Tookey
Occasionally, their controller appears on a video screen, in the form of a fake-friendly Melissa Leo, constantly inquiring ‘Are you an effective team?’ The correct response is: ‘We are an effective team.’ But I half-expected the perky and talented Ms Riseborough to complain: ‘I’m doing my best, gaffer, but I’m having to do the acting for both of us.’
The two other major occupants of screen time are Olga Kurylenko, formerly a Bond girl in the dreary Quantum Of Solace. She crash-lands on Earth, is literally the woman of Jack’s dreams, and acts like a former catwalk model and face of Lejaby lingerie, Clarins and Helena Rubinstein cosmetics. She is hopelessly out of her depth as an actress and appears to have learned her lines phonetically.
Also around to draw his paycheck is Morgan Freeman, who turns up belatedly and delivers vast gobs of indigestible exposition that don’t tell us much more than we have already guessed. For most of the time, he wears dark glasses. I’m not sure if he’s attempting to appear incognito. I wouldn’t be surprised if he tried to do the whole thing with his eyes shut.
As you would expect from a film of this magnitude, the scenery is spectacular. The trouble is that you’d find a good deal more excitement simply by staring into the Grand Canyon. The whole folie de grandeur is ponderous, humourless and derivative. Even the score is a rip-off of Hans Zimmer’s music for Inception. If you wish to see films based on similar premises, I would recommend Wall-E, the original Planet Of The Apes, and particularly Moon. All are far superior to this.
After more than two hours, I was surprised to discover that my cheeks were wet. I was, quite literally, crying with boredom.
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'I'm Irish!' Tom Cruise tells Jimmy Kimmel he recently learned his ancestry dates back to 9th century Ireland
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Movie star Tom Cruise said his ancestors used to own most of Dublin.
The Hollywood superstar told television host Jimmy Kimmel on Thursday night that he recently learned that his ancestors traced back to 9th century Ireland and once ruled the land.
The 50-year-old actor said two female fans traced back the Cruise family lineage as a gift.
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Irish ancestry: Hollywood superstar Tom Cruise told late-night host Jimmy Kimmel on Thursday that his ancestry dates back to 9th century Ireland
'I had no idea it went back that far,' Cruise said on ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live! show.
The actor also learned ironically that his Irish ancestors owned a town called Hollywood.
One ancestor was a so-called famine hero for returning to Ireland from New York to reinstate tenants who his agent had threatened to evict, Cruise said.
Acting challenge: Tom showed his funny side by delivering ridiculous lines in dramatic fashion as part of a skit
Tom showed his humorous side when he delivered ridiculous lines fed to him by Kimmel with dramatic overtones as part of a skit.
'Is there a way to get the soup and the salad?' Tom asked as he was illuminated on the couch with a spotlight.
The Top Gun actor ended the dramatic query with his patented muscle-flurrying jaw clench.
Looking dapper: Cruise looked cool after taping an interview on the Jimmy Kimmel Live! show
Cruise broke out in laughter while trying to sputter 'What's your return policy on this panini maker?'
Kimmel opened the interview session by noting that it's been 30 years since Cruise catapulted into stardom in the teen comedy-drama Risky Business.
Cruise told Kimmel that his first premiere was for the 1981 military school drama Taps, that also featured George C. Scott, Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn.
Greeting fans: The actor stopped to sign autographs after promoting his new film Oblivion on the Jimmy Kimmel Live! show
Cruise wore grey slacks and a similarly colored V-neck sweater over a long-sleeve button down shirt to the show.
The 50-year-old star also sported dark sunglasses as he made his way along Hollywood Boulevard before the show and waved to admiring fans.
Parts of the street had to be shut down on Thursday to make way for Cruise.
Big wave: Oblivion star Tom Cruise waved to fans on Thursday as he arrived for taping of Jimmy Kimmel Live! in Hollywood
The area was familiar terrain for the actor, who attended the premiere of his new film Oblivion on Wednesday along the same famous street.
The actor showed up early for the premiere and happily signed autographs and took pictures with many fans.
Tom plays Jack Harper, a former Marine commander, in the sci-fi flick set in a not-too-distant future of 2073.
Terrific Tom: The 50-year-old actor looked cool in sunglasses, button down and grey V-neck sweater
Jack is stationed on a fallen Earth following an alien invasion 60 years earlier.
Cruise's character comes across an enigmatic stranger played by Olga Kurylenko who crash lands in a spacecraft and Jack is forced to question what he knows about Earth's near-destruction and life as he knows it.
The film also features British star Andrea Riseborough, Melissa Leo and Morgan Freeman.
All three of Cruise's co-stars also attended the Hollywood premiere on Wednesday.
Fan favorite: Cruise reacted to fans as he arrived for the late-night talk show
Cruise recently has eschewed answering questions about his love live and divorce from wife of six years, Katie Holmes.
'Right now, all I'm thinking about is Oblivion!' he told People magazine.
Oblivion is scheduled to hit theaters on April 19.
Jack Harper: Cruise portrays a military vet in the sci-fi movie Oblivion based in a not-too-distant 2073
In happier times: Tom is pictured with his ex-wife Katie Holmes and their daughter Suri Cruise in 2008
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Understanding Scientology
A new book examines the controversial church.
Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief, by Lawrence Wright, Knopf, 448 pages, $28.95.
The last several years have been rough ones for the Church of Scientology. Since 2008, a number of high-ranking defectors have come forward and condemned the church’s current leadership, followed by a long list of books by ex-members that detail a shocking array of abuses within the church. Withering exposés of Scientology have appeared in The St. Petersburg Times and on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, while the faith’s innermost secrets were mercilessly ridiculed in a 2008 episode of South Park. Most recently, the church has been the focus of three major books: my own academic work, The Church of Scientology, and two journalistic accounts: Janet Reitman’sInside Scientology and Lawrence Wright’s Going Clear.
Of these last two, Wright’s book is arguably the more balanced, thoughtful, and empathetic, offering not an “exposé” but rather an attempt to understand the effects of religious beliefs in people’s lives, exploring the allure, the benefits, and the perils of involvement in this complex new religion. Indeed, at certain points, Wright bends so far over backward to be fair to the church that he risks undermining the credibility of his own narrative.
Wright, a staff writer for The New Yorker, begins his account by focusing on one ex-Scientologist, movie director Paul Haggis. Wright uses Haggis’ case to introduce the initial appeal of Scientology, the church’s powerful role in Hollywood, and also Haggis’ progressive disillusionment with the contradictory, unsettling, and bizarre aspects of the movement.
Wright then offers a remarkably sensitive portrait of Scientology’s enigmatic founder, L. Ron Hubbard, telling in a compelling way how a penny-a-word pulp fiction author wrote a tremendously popular self-help book, Dianetics, then went on to create one of the most successful new religions of the 20th century. While the Church of Scientology presents Hubbard as the most important man who ever lived and critics denounce him as a madman and a charlatan, Wright offers a more complex and human portrait, trying to account for the tremendous influence this figure has had on millions of readers. In Wright’s narrative, Hubbard appears as neither a monster nor a saint but as a man who was often surprisingly insightful, yet also egotistical, manipulative, and abusive. Wright narrates particular pieces of this tale especially well, such as the suicide of Hubbard’s gay son, Quentin, after which Hubbard allegedly complained, “He’s done it to me again!”
The heart of Wright’s book is part two, “Hollywood,” which explores the church’s success among celebrities and entertainers, at once attracting stars with the promise of unleashing their unlimited creative potential and exploiting their star power for public relations and advertising. Wright details John Travolta’s early entry into the church in the 1970s and provides the fullest account to date of Tom Cruise’s intimate relationship with the church’s current head, David Miscavige. Not only does Miscavige regularly work out and ride motorcycles with the actor, but apparently he also ordered an elaborate search for a new girlfriend for him after he broke up with Penélope Cruz.
Wright remains poker-faced throughout the book, even when narrating the more astonishing allegations of violence, abuse, and just plain weird behavior. Thus he provides graphic yet calm descriptions of the church’s infamous disciplinary program, the Rehabilitation Project Force, where members have allegedly been crowded into pitch-black basements, dressed in black boiler suits and filthy rags, and deprived of food, sleep, and rest. And he calmly narrates what is surely one of the most surreal episodes in American religious history, when Miscavige allegedly forced his senior executives to play a brutally violent all-night game of musical chairs to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
Wright works so hard to present a fair and balanced account of Scientology that in some places the reader may have trouble keeping a straight face. In his concluding remarks, Wright offers the following assessment of Hubbard’s work: “It would be better understood as a philosophy of human nature; seen in that light, Hubbard’s thought could be compared with that of other moral philosophies, such as Immanuel Kant and Soren Kierkegaard, although no one has ever approached the sweep of Hubbard’s work.” L. Ron Hubbard compared to Kant and Kierkegaard? Even for a sympathetic scholar of comparative religions like myself, these sorts of statements are difficult to take seriously. I suppose Hubbard’s work is greater in its sweep if we include his elaborate speculations about the past history of the universe and space-opera adventures on other planets going back 60 trillion years. Even so, I don’t see it being read in college philosophy classes any time soon.
A second problem with Wright’s book is methodological. Throughout his narrative, Wright relies heavily on the accounts of ex-Scientologists, whose versions of history he appears to accept largely at face value. Certainly the official accounts provided by the Church of Scientology need to be read skeptically and critically, and Wright rarely takes Hubbard’s or Miscavige’s versions of history at face value. But it is less clear that he has applied the same critical analysis to the accounts of ex-members, who surely also have agendas, axes to grind, and simply their own subjective views of events.
One final disappointment is Wright’s almost exclusive focus on the role of high-profile Hollywood figures in the church. As Wright sees it, “Scientology orients itself toward celebrity, and by doing so, the church awards famousness a spiritual value.” Obviously, this is what most general readers will want to hear about, and Wright does narrate this piece of Scientology’s tangled history in an engaging, thoughtful and entertaining way. Yet by continuing to focus our attention on the church’s comparatively tiny celebrity side, Wright perpetuates the most common stereotype of Scientology and also obscures the lived reality of the vast majority of ordinary Scientologists. What is it like to be a non-celebrity Scientologist in Cincinnati or Akron, someone who never “goes Clear” and neither knows nor cares about the Xenu story? What is it like to grow up as a child in the Sea Org, which Wright himself tells us is the true inner core of the church?
These and many others aspects of this complex movement remain to be explored and understood. We can only hope that another writer as thoughtful, even-handed, and eloquent as Wright takes up these other chapters in the long, strange story of Scientology.