I am sitting in my apartment watching the Redskins game on TV, and suddenly Tom Cruise is doing something weird.
Neither of these two things is all that unusual — the tragically comical sight of Mark Brunell trying to complete a simple 10-yard crossing route and the possibility of Tom Cruise acting like a googly-eyed maniac are two of the chief forms of entertainment in my life. Both have a certain perverse pleasure to them. I hate to use an analogy as clichéd as a car wreck, but really, that's what it is like. You simply cannot look away.
Right now — and I mean right now, as I'm typing this sentence — the ESPN cameras are showing Cruise sitting in the private box of Redskins owner/theme park tyrant Daniel Snyder, who recently teamed up with Cruise to finance his new movie productions after Paramount decided to cut ties with the elfin megastar after his numerous public-relations missteps made him a liability to keep around. Snyder, who has spent the last eight years turning the Redskins — probably the one thing people in my hometown can truly call our own — into a kind of burgundy and gold Frankenstein monster that has managed to alienate the core fan base, rake in obscene amounts of money and lose a lot of football games. Cruise is obviously hoping the magic touch of The Daniel will have a similar impact on his own stagnating career.
The second I see Tom Cruise in the box, I start to giggle, even though I am alone in my living room. If the last year and a half has taught me anything, it's that when Tom Cruise appears on live television something funny is going to happen. He's smiling, looking sort of disinterested, clutching the hand of Katie Holmes, the most tangible (and curvaceous) of those now-infamous public relations mistakes. Before she met Cruise, Holmes was a second-rate young actress, struggling with mixed success to break out of the WB mold. Now, she is allegedly the mother of Suri, a child nobody has ever seen and whose existence is still far from confirmed (Editor's note: Thanks to a recent photo spread in "Vanity Fair," the world now has evidence that Suri Cruise does exist).
Over the past two years, has any Tom Cruise television appearance not ended in alleged hilarity? First, it was jumping on Oprah's couch to say how much he liked Holmes, his new girlfriend. Then it was his showdown with Matt Lauer, in which Cruise revealed Ritalin is taking over America's streets and that Brooke Shields (remember her?) suffered from postpartum depression.
The camera lingers. I, along with the rest of America, wait patiently for Crazy Tom to emerge. Maybe he'll pull an Al Gore and start feverishly making out with Holmes (or Snyder, for that matter). Maybe he'll do one of his goofy little sprints down to the sidelines and start up an impromptu game of catch with some of the Redskins scrubs, so we can be reminded of how silly he looks when he tries to run or throw a football. Something needs to happen.
And then it doesn't. No wild gestures. No pontificating about how psychiatry is a pseudoscience. Nothing. He's just a guy trying to watch a football game with his girl and his business partner. Just a regular guy, it seems.
This, of course, does not stop everyone in the ESPN booth from hustling to get in their snarky remarks before the Redskins defense gets on the field. You know things are bad when Joe Theismann — probably the fifth or sixth best quarterback in Redskins history and almost certainly one of the worst color commentators of my generation — starts taking pot shots at you. And suddenly, all at once, I feel like a heel.
When did he snap? When did Tom Cruise become must-see TV? No doubt it was some point during the "War of the Worlds" press tour two summers ago, when he jumped on Oprah's couch and squared off against Matt Lauer, that glib Ritalin hustler and grand sage of the morning TV fraternity.
But really, what has Tom Cruise ever done that's so awful? Sure, he jumped on the couch, but at least he didn't throw up on it like a lot of us would have done had we engaged in that kind of strenuous physical activity in the presence of an ethereal being like Oprah Winfrey. That's something, at least. I mean, if you had just entered into an engagement that allowed you to have sex with Katie Holmes on a regular basis, I have to think you'd be pretty excited too.
As for Matt Lauer, well, who hasn't wanted to start something with Matt Lauer? If anything, the Lauer interview made me like Cruise more. Everybody complains that nothing Cruise does seems natural — to me, there's nothing more natural than taking Matt Lauer to task for being a smarmy jerk.
A lot has been made about Cruise's relationship with Scientology, an admittedly creepy pseudo-religion that may or may not involve aliens. Again, strange on the surface, until I remembered that I am a member of a religion that is led by a small Polish man in a pointy hat who may or may not have been a Nazi. When you think about it, that is not such an auspicious resume.
Tell me, what is a more irrational anxiety — worrying about millions of kids pumping themselves full of drugs that alter the way their brains function, or a paralyzing, all-encompassing fear of condoms? Exactly.
To the best of my knowledge, Tom Cruise has never been caught with a hooker in a BMW on Sunset Boulevard, never uttered anti-Semitic slurs after being pulled over for drunken driving and never come out against the policies of a politician from either major party. Granted, he was in part responsible for "Eyes Wide Shut" and "Far and Away," but really, these two offenses pale in comparison to what some of his peers have done.
He did allegedly say he wanted to eat his child's placenta, but that doesn't make him some sort of maniac — it just makes him kind of weird. At worst, he's just that one relative of yours who's never quite gotten things together. I have an uncle who once stated his desire to eat a plate of his own hair, but that's neither here nor there.
Except Tom Cruise has gotten it together. For 20-plus years, he's been an icon. I'm not saying that counts for everything, but I do think it should count for something. "Jerry Maguire," "A Few Good Men," "Cocktail" — invariably, Tom Cruise has starred in one of somebody's favorite movies. (You'll notice I left "Vanilla Sky" off the list, if only because I've been tirelessly touting its merits in this column for more than a year and nobody seems to be biting. I guess it's just going to be one of those movies that slips through the cracks.)
This is not a defense of Tom Cruise. Or maybe it is. The point is, I think it's time to give the guy a break, if only for a little bit. Let's wait for his next movie to come out before we gang up on him again. You know it will be hysterical. Hopefully, it will be one where he acts really goofy as he runs, throws a football, mixes drinks and defends a small village in feudal Japan. Because — for better or worse — nobody does those things like Tom Cruise.
Ray Gustini is a sophomore majoring in English and journalism. Want to debate Tom Cruise with him? E-mail him at [email protected].
