Tom Cruise Gets Pimp-Slapped
This entry was posted on 8/23/2006 6:53 AM and is filed under Musings.
The
eponymous production company of megastar Tom Cruise and his
agent/producing partner, Paula Wagner,
found their cushy studio
contract with Paramount — and its roughly $10 million in guaranteed
annual overhead — not renewed yesterday after a breakdown in ongoing
negotiations, but that wasn’t necessarily the worst of the news for the
star.
Instead, that came from Viacom Inc. chairman Sumner Redstone, whose
company owns Paramount Pictures, when he publicly spelled out the
subtext of the decision in an interview with the
Wall Street Journal.
“As
much as we like [Cruise] personally, we thought it wrong to renew his
deal. His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount,” Sumner
said.
That “recent conduct” — a tabloid-fantasy implosion of the star’s
carefully cultivated public image — of course includes Cruise’s wacko,
slightly-too-insistent courtship of Dawson's Creek weak link Katie Holmes,
his vociferous criticizing of the use of anti-depressants and other
prescription medications and simultaneous touting of Scientology, an
angry exchange with Today show host Matt Lauer regarding the
same, and, naturally, his Mad Hatter couch-hopping routine on Oprah
Winfrey’s daytime talk show (above).
Cruise/Wagner Productions has been housed at Paramount since 1992,
but still, this severing or whittling down of expensive ties was not a
complete surprise, given Mission: Impossible III's disappointing domestic box office take — despite the fact that more money was spent on cappuccinos during its production than most folks make in a year. No, the shock was in the way Redstone went out of his way to drop n-u-t-s on Cruise.
I love the apparently surging trend of twilight-era Hollywood
producers and media moguls evidencing the sort of gruff bluntness
that’s probably helped get them to where they are, whether it’s this or
Morgan Creek Productions CEO James G. Robinson blasting Lindsay Lohan for her serial tardiness and absenteeism.
But Redstone’s flat-out admission/assertion of his company’s trouble
with Cruise’s erratic public behavior — already countered by the
expected claims from Wagner that negotiations with Paramount had
already been broken off — runs counter to the normal Tinseltown
niceties, where as much (if not more) is often left unsaid as actually
stated in these matters.
Honesty is typically such a lonely word, but it looks like
it’s
making some new acquaintances in Hollywood these days. Movie stars, you
are on notice.
