I remember a moment from my teenage years in which I had to excuse myself to the restroom as I was seeing a movie at the movie theater in the town I grew up in northwest Georgia. There I was washing my hands as some younger kid came in. I was in high school as they were in middle school. As a matter of fact, I think I had gone to see Interview With The Vampire.
There were three of these middle schoolers. And two were asking the third, “Did you touch it?” I knew exactly what they were talking about and I didn’t know whether to cringe or laugh. The fact that a bunch of 13-year-olds were getting excited abou hearing their friend getting to touch a girl in her no-no hole. As I was walking out trying to remain oblivious to them talking enthusiastically seven feet away, one of the friends began to chant, “You’re going to get some pussy! You’re going to get some pussy!”
I remember that moment from the movie theater where many young kids spent their time finger-banging, touching boobs and getting handjobs while going to see a movie that had already been in theaters for five weeks. It gave a new insight to why the floors were always sticky. The theater shut down after I had moved away and then became a church around 2011. I pretty sure they had to perform an exorcism to get rid of all the remnants of debaucery that still lingered.
If you want to know where I’m going here, it’s because I saw this same middle-school second-base-with-a-girl enthusiasm when I watched Tom Cruise freak out over his relationship with Katie Holmes on Oprah on this date, May 23, 2003. Tom, dressed in all black including long-sleeve shirt, looking like a Midwestern theater instructor who spent his 20s and early 30s in NYC trying to make it on Broadway but repeating to anyone who would listen about all of of their Off-Off Broadway work. He was freaking out that he had probably had sex with Katie within the last 12 hours.
It didn’t help matters that Oprah had allowed every Gen Xer with double XX chromosomes who spent their early years rubbing their clits to Tiger Beat and watching Tom spend 10 minutes in Cocktail flipping cups to make a Bahama Mama. They say you should never meet your heroes. Well, you should never meet your childhood crushes. They were all acting like he was Big Dick Richie and he was going to impregnate each and everyone of them.
And for many of these young women, they needed it. They were women in their 20s and 30s who realized that the hot linebacker they dated in high school and was now more out of shape than the stagehands in flannel and beards setting the lights. I’m pretty sure a good third of the audience experienced their first orgasm in years.
As for Tom, himself, he acted like a 12-year-old boy who kissed a girl for the first time. Yes, Katie is gorgeous and men should express their emotions. But, dude, Tom, you went running around like someone who snorted a kilo of cocaine and downed it with a gallon of Jolt Cola.
In all fairness, Tom needed it. He had closed out the 20th Century on top of the world. He had gone from a supporting actor to an A-lister, working with Martin Scorsese, Brian DePalma, Francis Ford Coppola, Ridley Scott, Tony Scott and Stanley Kubrick. His costars were Paul Newman, Syndey Pollack, Robert Duvall, Jon Voight (before he went crazy) and Vanessa Redgrave to name a few.
And Tom wasn’t an actor afraid of taking chances. His role as Lestat in Interview With The Vampire is one of his most impressive. And what other actor would spend three years to work on a movie. But after his marriage to Nicole Kidman ended, everyone was Team Nicole. We don’t know what happens in a relationship. Yet, what we saw was Tom dumping Nicole for Seabiscuit, I mean Penelope Cruz, his co-star in Vanilla Sky.
So, it was nice to see a man in his early 40s finally happy after a rough few years of being villainized in the media. And Tom was always private up until this moment, even with that whole Scientology stuff. Remember those day?
But suddenly, he’s jumping around freaking Oprah out. Speaking of Coppola, he said he was scared while filming a scene with Martin Sheen on Apocalypse Now because Sheen was drunk and acting crazy. I think this is like that filming experience. Oprah looked she had her own special hand gesture to make so the burly stagehands woud move in and carry Tom off so they could cut to commercial without anyone knowing. “You get a psychotic special guest! You get a psychotic special guest! Everyone gets a pscyhotic special guest!” I don’t know if Oprah’s a teetotaler but I’m sure she bought out the liquor store for herself and the staff and crew.
This was coming one year after the infamous Howard Dean Scream in which the former governor of Vermont ended his Presidential chances by screaming to at a watch party like a car dealership owner reminding viewers of the special deals coming up for the Memorial Day Weekend. Christian Bale has said he based his famous role of possible serial killer Patrick Bateman in American Psycho on a lifeless empty interview he had seen Tom give. You could say the Oprah interview is a reminder of when Patrick loses his mind in the latter part of the movie.
What’s strange is ever since Tom has just gotten weirder. Maybe at 43, he decied to just say “Fuck it!” and act crazy. After he was poked fun of on South Park, it’s rumored he kept the episode from being rerun as it was a few weeks prior to Mission: Impossible III (the worst in the franchise in my opinion). And then there was that whole interview he gave where he criticized his Endless Love co-star Brooke Shields for using anti-depressants. Then, there’s the interview he gave still looking like a Midwestern theater instructor with a black turtleneck talking about how privileged he is to be a Scientologist.
Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFBZ_uAbxS0
And who could forget all those photos of him and John Travolta who look like they’re in love. Maybe they are. I don’t know. Maybe it’s all been a secret they’ve been hiding all these years. I mean, there’s a mancrush and then there’s a bromance. But this isn’t either one.
What’s interesting is how Tom has basically decided to just do action movies since this incident. There were a few times he changed things up with his performance as the foul-mouthed, angry and pudgy media mogul producer Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder. The Top Gun sequel has taken so long that technically Maverick would’ve been forced into retirement years ago. And there are two more Mission: Impossible movies. Okay, they’ve been very good, but at 60, but can someone tell Tom he doesn’t have to almost kill himself to do a stunt.
What’s crazy is that Tom and Katie have been divorced longer than when they were together. That’s what makes the couch jumping more silly when you think about it. If they were still together, then it would be a commendable for men to profess their feelings. But According to Jim lasted longer than their relationship, for crying out loud! Tom is no different than those young boys bouncing off the walls in a theater restroom because “they’re going to get some.”
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 